Pat Dollard | Young Americans

Today’s Reader Post comes from John Howell, you all know him as “Howie” here…

Automakers want between $50 Billion of tax-payers money to keep them afloat. The main argument is if the “Big 3” go under there are 50,000 plus jobs that will be lost, and several towns that will go under. They have six State Governors and a couple of U.S. Senators lobbying to make this happen. Personally I am getting sick and tired of bailing out businesses that have a habit of making bad business decisions. I especially hate it when it was greedy employees and unions that have created the situation I the first place!

You can disagree with me all that you want using whichever argument that you prefer. It would be catastrophic for the economy if all of those people were let go or fired. The auto companies did it to themselves by signing the contracts that have put them in this position; here you would be half right. My personal favorite is the old adage that as GM goes so goes the Country. With any of these arguments you would only be half right at best.

If you argue that it will be catastrophic to the economy to fire 50,000 plus employees with the position that our economy is in at this moment in time, and you are half right. Yes, it will not be good for the economy to have a rush of new applicants to our unemployment systems. But with the economic bail out already over a trillion dollars how can it be good to continue to lay out more tax-payer dollars to keep the “Big 3” in business. We already give them our money when we buy their cars. Well we give their retail distributors our money when we buy cars; those distributors give them our money indirectly when they buy those cars that we give the dealer money for.

If you argue that the auto companies did it to themselves by signing the contracts, again you are half right. The UAW, United Auto Workers, is the other half of this equation. Something tells me that GM or Ford did not just walk up to the men and women on the assembly lines and offer to put themselves belly up for the employees benefit. The UAW sat across the table and pushed for more and more. If they were not conceded to they would threaten walk outs and strikes, which is not a good thing for an auto company. I mean how much money can a company make when they are not producing anything?

The retirement benefits and pensions alone are killing the auto makers. It costs GM approximately $3,000 per car made to cove the costs of pensions and retiree healthcare. This simply means that GM loses about $1200 every time they make and sell a car to the dealership that you make your purchase at. If you have issue with the financial facts laid out here just Google it yourself, I promise you will not have any problem finding the same information is multiple places, some of it you can even find on GM’s own website. How can any business continue to operate when they are losing money to produce whatever product they are in business to produce and sell? And that is just because of what they are paying the people that no longer work for GM.

I am not going to even delve into the last argument that you could make, as GM goes so goes the Country. It is an old and antiquated argument that makes absolutely no sense anymore. Maybe it did at one point in time; but that was long before GM was drowning in the concessions made to the UAW on behalf of their employees.

The unions in almost every industry are making the same mistakes. These unions are pricing their constituents out of jobs. Now they will tell you that they are only looking out for those that they represent; but when you look at the recent history of unions and what they do for the employers that hire and pay their constituents it is obvious that like Wall Street the UAW and other unions are only looking short term. Forty years is not a long period of time in the grand scheme of things. Two hundred and thirty two years is not a long time in the grand scheme of things, and that is how long the United States of America has been around. Every time I hear about unions all I think about is their “gimme, gimme, gimme” attitude. UAW is complaining the GM is not financially as viable as it was in the past, and may have to cut pensions and retiree healthcare to continue to operate. Well something is always better than nothing isn’t it? Would you rather see all of the jobs and retirement benefits gone because GM goes out of business? I think not. But the UAW and GM have signed an agreement that keeps 2,300 workers employed and fully paid at a factory that is making absolutely nothing! Talk about wasting money. Talk about greed. Do these “workers” have no pride? Can we even call them workers?

Yes, GM, Ford, and Chrysler have done it to themselves. They did sign the contracts, they were a part of the negotiating process. But so to was the UAW and the workers that are complaining because their benefits are now going away.

Should we the American tax-payers bail them out? I think not. If we all went out today and bought new cars, sorry to those that bought a car yesterday, it would do nothing but prolong the death of the American auto industries.

Howie is a veteran of the United States Marine Corps, producer of Chandler’s watch (a Marine show), and also has a T-Shirt line called Thang, go on over there and buy a T-Shirt, would ya?