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Bailing out the US automakers is
not advisable in my view. We don’t need more combustion
engine cars and the US automakers are not serious about making
the kind of cars we do need. If taxpayers are to subsidize the
auto industry it ought to support those companies that are
enthusiastic and committed to making affordable electric
vehicles.
The big three, if they want to
produce cars fueled by renewable energy, can say so during
bankruptcy proceedings and reorganize themselves along those
lines.
Instead of using oil to burn as
fuel, a better use might be to make carbon based materials out
of which we can make durable lightweight cars.
Trying to protect jobs that
produce products we don’t need, and should not want—just
to keep workers’ paychecks coming—lacks wisdom. Instead,
we should review and restructure, if necessary, the safety net
that protects all workers who find themselves out of work or
working for failing companies. This is also why we need a
single payer healthcare system similar to what has proven to
be so successful in other countries.
We should protect those workers
but not their jobs. Any money the government doles out should
go to unemployed workers to help them get retrained and back
on their feet, not to corporations that will continue to
misallocate enormous amounts of physical and human resources.
This is not to say that workers should ever be rewarded for incompetence
any more than senior executives should be.
Every citizen is entitled to
basic human rights and protections, and that’s exactly what
we are talking about here. Government’s job is to protect
and serve The People and not a select class of elites who,
because of their undeserved wealth, have acquired enough
undeserved power to cause legislation and/or resources to be misallocated in
their favor.
Every citizen is entitled to
equal protection under the law, so government ought not to be
picking and choosing which companies and their workers are too
big to fail. Companies should be allowed to fail; but people
should be protected wherever possible.
We need electric cars and the
electricity to run those cars should come from wind and solar
energy and perhaps other renewables, but not from fossil fuels
which are... not renewable, not safe, and not economical when you
consider the true cost of using them. We know for certain that
fossil fuels are damaging to our environment. Let's try
to use some common sense. Our environment is our life
support system… our most valuable asset and resource. Let's stop
destroying it for near term economic expediency.
I have no objection to
government offering incentives to industry in order to promote
what society needs. In that sense we need to amend our tax
laws on one hand, and offer imaginative incentives on the
other... to promote products, ideas, and opportunities that
are progressive… which is to say, that make progress towards
a secure, sustainable, and humane future for all life on
spaceship Earth.
Some things only a government
can do efficiently... like protect basic human rights.
When government fails to protect those rights, it no longer
serves its purpose and needs to be replaced.
www.gpln.com
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