You might have missed it, but General Motors yesterday took out a full page advertisement in the National newspaper, USA Today? Today, that same newspaper’s website has this info online Bipartisan group of legislators craft auto bailout compromise So what was in the advertisement that poor little Ol’ General Motors paid for? They asked for $25 billion dollars, that’s what!
Imagine if you or I went bankrupt with the aid of The Lawyer online at Not My Tribe? Would he have taken out out an ad for us in the local Gagzette, asking for the government to give us $25,000 dollars to keep from going bankrupt and perhaps not being able to provide for our family members, give the landlord rental money, and pay the loan agency their monthly piece of pie? Just like GM, we have a lot of people depending on us, and would he run that ad for us asking for the US government to take taxpayer money and bail us out to save THE ECONOMY?
Maybe those on welfare assistance need to learn from the high paid CEOs and bless their hearts, take out a full page national ad in USA Today? Give us $25 billion now! We need it for our welfare cadillacs! Oops, they don;t actually have any of those cars, but the CEOs probably do. Big Pink ones!
Barack, what you going to do, Buster? Oops, I think we already know the answer to that. We haven’t been sleeping. All these dompanies aren’t advocating for their own brand of socialism at all. They are merely doing like the military industrial complex done always, even in the very best of financial times for them. They are merely looking for more governmental paid welfare for the super rich. What unmitigated gall they have! And they look down on the poor unemployed for asking for some scraps from time to time!
OK, I’ll take the bait. I actually do on ocassion attempt such a ploy, but with a critical difference. If a client has a new job or funds to protect, I can propose a “workout” with the creditors, offering each a substantially reduced settlement amount, telling them that the alternitive is bankruptcy, and have settled debts for as little as 20 cents on the dollar. Some creditors are more recalcitrant; but few would refuse an offer of 70% under those cirumstances.
The difference is that I don’t involve the government until all else has failed; i.e., I file the bankruptcy. But none of my clients have the financial means to influence the the actual power-brokers, that is, the dirty politicians.
I couldn’t agree with you more, Tony, that bailouts are wrong per se. The government should not be supporting failing businesses, if they can’t compete on thier own. That is a system that has failed us for ten thousand years: the king has always had his courtiers, lobbying for favors. Government is run by politicians, who are inherently corrupt, the grown up versions of the jocks and cheerleaders who always got elected to your high school student council.
This system of cronyism and political favors is what you call capitalism, but it has nothing to do with real capitalism. It flourishes under any system that concentrates power in government, rather than the individual, and exists under all types of goverments: monarchies, theocracies, communist states, socialist people’s paradises, mixed-economy welfare states. The only place where it wouldn’t work is in a true laissez-faire captialist state, where government by its very nature would be severely curtailed.
And these are the bozos you want running your healthcare system?
As usual, Michael, you are positing a fictional capitalist system to the real CAPIALISM that exists out there.
‘The only place where it (This system of cronyism and political favors) wouldn’t work is in a true laissez-faire captialist state, where government by its very nature would be severely curtailed.’
And how do you plan to take this REAL CAPITALISM away from the capitalists that currently run it? How do you plan to bring about taking control over this REAL capitalist government away from the capitalists that control it? Through the power of Libertarian ‘positive thinking’? That’s just not going to happen, and is a fantasy for the naive and Innocent like yourself, Michael.
I might add, too, that currently we have a US Medical System where the corporations are pretty much freely running the whole show for themselves, without much regard to others. It is a form of laissez faire capitalism that uses the Federal government against The People to help garnish maximum profits for the capitalists.
What you call ‘socialism’ is in fact, the capitalists getting together and making their own, totally controlled Federal government a sort of umpire, as is done in most European countries today. This is not socialism at all, and is merely a streamlining of capitalist Medicine.
Caregivers, those who receive care, and those capable people that could run medicine better without merely looking at profit making are still totally marginalized in European systems of Medical Care delivery. These Systems do deliver better general access to Medical Care and do do away with multiple duplicate systems of paper work, resulting in significant cost savings to the public. However, the systems in place have very little to do with socialism at all, and instead still are capitalist systems of Medical Care Delivery.