Why can we not let people fail? In the past it was ok to fail. You start up a business, it’s a success; then you screw up and you fail. You learn from your failure and start again.
What does saving GM at the tune of $1.4 Million per job do? What do we learn from this failure?
NOTHING! SFA! Zip, nadda, nothing!
It is going to cost the taxpayer, not the government, $1.4 million per job saved. $1.4 million to a failed company rewarding failure.
Here’s an idea, give each worker of GM $1 Million to never go into work again. Period! Here’s your cheque, get the “eFF” out.
What would a now unemployed GM worker do with $1 Million dollars? Invest in the economy, start a business, save for the future. The options are endless.
- Older workers would retire early and use the money as their nest egg to retire on.
- Middle Aged workers would likely invest for retirement and be able to live comfortably on the money with another, lower paying job as well.
- Younger workers would likely invest in starting their own business.
- Idiots and stupid people will just spend the whole amount as soon as they get it buying stupid things they cannot afford. Six months later they’ll be at the pawn shop selling the last of the stuff they bought to get a pack of smokes.
All four options are viable and needed:
- The idiots and stupid people will put an immediate cash infusion into the retail marketplace.
- The Younger People will create small business which stimulates the near-term market.
- The Middle Aged will have security in their future, will probably spend some money down the road and take lesser paying jobs in the market now, not having to cover all of the expenses they had in their family when they worked for GM.
- The Older Workers will spend short and long term as they will enjoy their retirement, travel, spend and for any end of life health care, the cash can be used there too which promotes stability in our service industry.
Stop me if this makes too much sense.
Lets take this one step further with a side-track. I’ve always been a train-geek, it goes partly with being the son of a railway employee and having lived around trains for 31 of my 33 years. My particular interest is in a railroad called The Rutland. The Rutland died in 1961 during a general strike on the line over wages and work rules. In 1962, the company petitioned and was granted permission by the US Government to abandon the line from Northern New York state across into Vermont and down the west side of Vermont. Parts of the line was sold, all of the equipment, real estate and even scrap material was sold. In total by 1965 the parent company had received $8,000,000 in income from the scraping of the line. If the railroad had received all of the concessions that they wanted from the strike and the railroad had survived, in 1965 they would have likely made about $350,000 in income after expenses. In this case the whole is not worth more than the sum of its parts, and neither is GM.
If you take GM as its parts and sell it off after paying off the workers to never come into the company again, you have incredible amounts of scrap, cars, plants, real estate and technology that in the end is worth more separately than as a whole. Look at the tentiave deal for Magna International to take over GM Opel Europe.
If you part out the good parts of GM to other companies, and then scrap the plants and buildings from what is left over and is not useful you should get enough money to clear the debt and possibly even pay for all of those $1 Million Dollar cheques.
Not a bad idea, too bad it would never fly. Common sense and government does not go hand-in-hand.
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