Silverado "top truck"

Charlie D. wrote:
Thank you for pointing out the reasons that a bailout of the auto makers was a good investment.

You are right Charlie, the ONLY place the government gets those taxes is from GM. Ford, Chrysler, Toyota, Honda etc don't pay the taxes and wouldn't have absorbed GM's market share. Those millions of vehicles made and sold by GM every year would have vanished and the government wouldn't have seen a penny of taxable income...

And in reference to the commentary posted, it is just that... commentary. It is an opinion, no different than mine or yours. Unfortunately, it has misqouted information. The government still owns an estimated 270 million shares of GM, which would need to sell for about $72/share for the government to recoup its losses. As of today, GM is selling for $37.25 per share... right about at 50% of what the government would need to recoup its losses.

Again, there are many theories as to what could have happened. It is all speculation at this point. I don't know what would have happened if GM had been allowed to fail like any other business. I'm not disappointed that a million people kept their jobs. I think it sets a HORRIBLE precedent moving forward.

My wife has 2 cousins that never accomplished anything. Daddy would always step in and pay their rent, pay their car note, give them money for food. On mornings when you and I don't want to get out of bed and go to work, we do because we have bills to pay. On mornings her cousins don't want to do anything, they just stop going to work. It doesn't matter if they work or not, daddy is going to take care of them. Guess what, daddy is eventually going to run out of money and/or die. Then who is going to take care of them?

My wife, on the other hand, had to take care of herself financially. She saved money to buy a car. She worked and saved money to go to school. What she couldn't afford in school bills she got a loan for them. We go to work everyday. We make intelligent decisions about how and where to spend our money. If we go belly up, we are on our own. We knew the rules of the game when we started. We play by the rules and have found a little bit of success.

What message are we sending to businesses? Hire a lot of people and mismanage the company, don't worry daddy (the federal gov't) will take care of you if you screw it up?

If you are okay with that message, thats your opinion. I was raised to be held accountable for my actions and either make wise decisions or suffer the consequences of poor decisions. I have made poor decisions in my life and have suffered for them. I learned from the bad decisions. All that GM and the large financial companies learned is that if you screw up big enough, daddy will make everything better.

To each their own...