Big Three Bailout

How important do you need to be to get help? One after another we have watched little factories close their doors and lay off workers. They can not make a profit and they go out of business. Fifty or sixty workers here, a hundred there, and how many jobs does it take to be important? If the company is poorly run should someone bail them out by throwing good money after bad? No amount of money can help if they are not profitable.
The size of the company and the number of jobs involved should not make a difference. The big three auto makers or an investment bank it should not matter. If they can’t make it maybe they need to change the way they do business.



The following is from the column, Other People's Money, written by CNET's Declan McCullagh. For CBS News.

"One of the best reasons why Detroit automakers should not receive a bailout can be found in a General Motors "Jobs Bank" program that, bizarrely, pays employees not to work. A beneficiary of that program was someone named Jerry Mellon, who worked for GM until his division merged with another in 2000 and he was no longer needed. Except for a brief period in 2001, Mellon received his full salary for not working, which reached $64,500 a year by 2006. Include benefits, and the annual cost to GM exceeds $100,000. To earn his pay, Mellon was given the formidable task of showing up in a windowless shed, sitting at a table, and doing nothing for eight hours a day for six years, according to a profile in the Wall Street Journal. Jobs Bank employees have the option of attending classes teaching such important manufacturing skills as dealing blackjack and poker. Mellon spent part of his time reading Reader's Digest, learning how to play Trivial Pursuit, napping on a makeshift bed of chairs pushed together, or simply staring at the wall for hours at a time. During those six years, Toyota surpassed GM as the world's largest car manufacturer, thanks to innovations like the fuel-sipping Prius. Nissan developed the GT-R, a technological marvel with a 0 to 60 time of 3.2 seconds and a lower sticker price than the Corvette ZR1. Honda kept its focus on smaller cars such as the Civic and Accord, and saw its sales continue to increase this summer while GM, Ford, and Chrysler have slid. The United Auto Workers union and Detroit executives concocted the Jobs Bank idea in the early 1980s. Now these same economic whizzes are lobbying for handouts in the form of your tax dollars."



I know these companies represent hundreds of thousands of workers and that their loss would have a devastating effect on the economy. I just don’t feel right about using our tax dollars to help them out. The underlying problems are still there and must be fixed. They should change the way they do business before they come asking for tax dollars to fix their problems.

Last One To Leave Turn Out The Lights

Everyone knows that the economy is bad, but here in Michigan it's really bad. Every day there is another story on the news about a factory closing or laying off workers.

In a small town it's not just fifty or sixty jobs lost, it's a dozen other jobs that depend on those people to spend money in the area.

Sure part of it is the fact that a lot of those factories make things for the auto industry,but part of it is the fact that we live in a big state that's made up of two peninsulas. The simple fact is that the further north you go in the state the more it's going to cost you to ship your raw materials and finished products. Why keep making things up north if you have another plant where it's cheaper to do business? As a result we depend on the tourist trade to keep our economy alive, and if people don't have the money to spend they aren't going to travel.

True the price of gas is coming down, but if people don't have the extra cash they are going to cut back on those trips up north to ski, snowmobile, ice fish, etc... and without them the restaurants, bars, motels, and everyone else that does business with them will have to lay off people because they can't afford to pay them.

It has gotten to the point that other states are coming here to recruit workers because they know we have the work force and they are looking for jobs.

Things will get better but before they do they will undoubtedly get worse. So like I said in the title "last one to leave turn out the lights".