Bail out the auto-industry? Yes, but how?
The American auto-industry is out of date. You can earn a 160K dollar a year by making your hands dirty in the auto-industry, so, that cars have to cost a lot more than the Japanese stuff to produce. Can that make American cars better? They say so, but the right answer is no. If you make Japanese cars, you can’t pay your workers 80 dollars an hour. That will give you a lot of troubles with the union. If the workers strike you can’t make any profit. If you don’t make profit you can’t get the capital to keep your plant rolling. But there’s one shining blessing: an unemployed worker earns nothing, so, he/she doesn’t pay a lot of taxes. To pay as less taxes as possible seems to be one of the primary goals of true Americans. It is very unpatriotic to pay taxes, they say. So, closing the non-profit worthless auto-industry is partly fulfilling the American dream. The unemployed workers don’t pay taxes anymore.
What a relief!
Less government is also on the wish-list of true Americans, so, there has to be no help for the unemployed workers and they starve to death, what will decrease the unemployment numbers. And with the workers dies the knowledge. That’s fine, because without terminal stupid voters the GOP (God’s Own Party) can’t exist so education and knowledge is not what the patriotic fighters for less taxes and less government can use. If you are qualified to do good work and the work is taken away from you, you have to die. Not anybody can win in the competition, even not if you are the best and the most diligent in the world. Without work you are trash and your spouse is trash and your children are trash, perhaps you are black, yellow or gay too. Shame on you! If you die, you go to hell and what option is left? None! If you don’t work, you don’t pay taxes and you have to die. It’s unpatriotic and un-American to provide social care by spreading the wealth. So die, but keep quiet. That’s how the Founders of the Republic want it. There is no hope for you and you have to know that.
Three million people are at work in the worthless auto-industry. It’s 1% of the population. Who cares?
This is what Richard Cohen of the Washington Post has to report:
[Obama] faces an economic catastrophe not seen since the Great Depression. The unemployment rate is still a modest 6.5 percent -- a trifle by Depression standards -- but back then only about 10 percent of Americans owned stock. Now nearly 50 percent do, and 68 percent live in homes they own. They all have been severely hurt. These people may not necessarily be out of work but they are certainly out of optimism and, if they are about to retire, out of their minds with worry.
In the past week, I've spoken with a gaggle of experts, some of them in finance, some in real estate and some in just plain investments. I've interviewed media magnates, both foreign and domestic, an investment banker, a manufacturer, and a former banker. This is what I have to report: Economically, we're in a recession. Psychologically, we're in a depression. The reason: None of these experts knows what to do.
Oh, sure, most everyone thinks some sort of spending plan would be a good idea -- get to work on the infrastructure. Most of them think we've got to thaw the frozen credit system. Schemes come and schemes go, but the suddenness of the collapse -- last year, the head of Goldman Sachs earned $68.5 million; this year, about $68 million less -- has produced a severe loss of faith in what once seemed an economic system blessed by God himself. Something has gone wrong. But what?
The solution is out there... somewhere. But it will take time and trial to find it. Obama knows this. It was one of the things he mentioned on "60 Minutes." But what he might not appreciate is that among his many gifts, the one that might matter most is how close he can come to Rooseveltian enthusiasm -- that optimism, that capacity for empathy that made so many ordinary people love this rich man and stick with him. Lincoln, a sometimes melancholy and somber man, belongs, as Edwin M. Stanton said, "to the ages." Roosevelt belongs to ours.
The other option is Sarah Palin, leading lady of God's Own Party and the solution to all misery: no palling around with terrorists, no abortion, no gay marriage less government and less taxes. Eh... do something? Yeah: pray!
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