Originally Posted by White Fox

It's not just about the benefits to a policy, it's also about the cost. The real benefit to any policy is the net benefit of both it's costs and benefits. Here, you have singles out benefit to focus on. What you don't think about is the cost of that action. Demanding that all new energy be provided by alternatives would have massive economic costs in the form of lost opportunity.

Originally Posted by ocean_314

Sure much of the supply chain is offshore today. But that didn’t happen over night but over decades. The Auto industry was union way before there was any competition from over seas. Just because the ability to move over seas comes available to a company over the last 30 years, doesn’t mean that they can move.

The only reason why anything in the US auto industry comes from overseas is because the Video Camera stopped most of the Union violence against management. Before that it was suicide to resist the Unions.

Originally Posted by americanbottoms

Since the mid 1990s 60 to 80 percent of new jobs have been created by small business (less than 500 employees). In 2005 small business employed about half of American workers. Small firms with less than 500 employees employed 58.6 million and firms larger employed 57.7 million. Their share or employees remains steady. In 2007 there were 27.2 million businesses. Census figures show 6 million firms with employees and 20.4 million businesses without employees in 2005.

Small firms with less than 500 employees make up 99.0 percent or the 27.2 million businesses, including employers and non employers. The most recent figures show there slightly more than 17,000 large businesses in 2005.

In 2007 an estimated 637,100 new employer firms began operations and 560,300 firms closed that year.

It is logical to assume that most "start-ups" begin with only the "principle" or "principles" involved and far less than 500 employees, or even NO employees, and grow into larger firms with employees. Many times these are people who have developed expertise in a certain field while working for a large corporation or firm, and see the need for providing "feeder" parts into the end product they had been associated with and knew well. This is particularly true of the automobile manufacturers.

To tax them on their incipient business operation discourages them from making that leap in the first place, and be assured that Obama's tax increase beginning at the rate of $250,000, and doubling of capital gains taxes (not because that will yield more, but for fairness) will discourage the creation of many new jobs, keeping many who would leave large corporations in their thrall.

Originally Posted by Jeffpa

I'd like to start by saying that I partially agree with this topic. Their business practices have been appaling through the decades. I grew up in the Detroit area and have seen the effects first hand. This does not mean that they should been shut down.

Originally Posted by Anikdote

They should fail and should be allowed to fail, they should send their thank you letters to the UAW and the United States Imperial Federal Government.

Originally Posted by OldManOnFire

I'll vote for the latter...

Originally Posted by Trumanp

It had nothing to do with the unions, it had to do with the car companies and their inability to realize that oil won't last forever, and that they wouldn't offer good solid cars.

But lets look at it another way as well, they were selling what Americans were buying for gods sake, that is business, and the way business is supposed to work, you sell what people want, and that you can make a good profit on.

Would any of us have done much different, if gas was at historic lows (when inflation was taken into consideration) people were buying far more SUV's, trucks, etc... than anything else?

Get off your high horses in this case. This type of bailout is a loan, that will have to be repaid, and will do more to support main street, than any banking bailout could. Because while the auto industry may only directly employ 130,000 or so people, they subcontract out a great deal more work to other companies, most of them employing real middle class workers.

Originally Posted by White Fox

Why would you vote for one or the other?

Why not make your own economic decisions?

Originally Posted by OldManOnFire

...
Regarding the Big 3 which is what this thread is about, if they can't provide affordable products which allow citizens a little more sustainability, then they need to go extinct.

It costs a ton of energy to produce gasoline from oil and at the end of the day we are dependent on a finite supply in which the situation will only become worse.

It also requires energy to produce hybrid-electrics and solar panels and other alternative energies, but at the end of this day, we are moving closer to a sustainable lifestyle. I'll vote for the latter...