Dear American Taxpayer,
Congratulations! You are now the proud part-owner of fabled US automaker, General Motors.
Acting on your behalf, your Federal government now owns 72.5% of the company, which manufactures American automobiles in places as diverse as Canada, Mexico, and South Korea.
It’s true your GM has gotten itself into trouble these last few years, which is why the President’s Automotive Task Force is now overseeing the company for you. Together, we hope to return GM to totally-private ownership just as soon as is “practicable.”
Together, our goal is to create a New General Motors, where management and union work hand-in-hand to build the cars America really wants: Smaller, more efficient, and safer (pick two).
But with ownership comes responsibilities, and you’ll have yours to shoulder, too. Your Presidential Automotive Task Force has hardly begun its work on reshaping GM, despite spending more than $50 billion of your tax dollars. Another $50 billion might still be required from you to protect your investment. Maybe more. And we’re sorry to have to tell you that for now, even after GM starts making money — which could happen any day now, we swear — it won’t be paying taxes.
Those are just a few of the many things we’re doing to protect your investment.
We’ll be writing to you again soon,
Your Government.
P.S. : Just point out a couple of things to you lucky folks. As taxpayer-investors in “the New GM”, you are now in direct competition with the Ford Motor Company. You might want to make illegal those nasty, foreign owned cars to make your new investment pay off, but you will still end up competing with the folks across the street right here in this country. How does Private Enterprise compete against Government? Ask investors in FedEX vs. any patron of the USPS. Fast, efficient, cost effective versus the absolute poster child of poor performing government entities.
Now as we all know, the Government of this fine country hates competition and thinks that the primary way to fight competition isn’t to make better product at a lower cost but to hire more lawyers and pass more laws to hobble the competition. If thats not bad enough one of the largest owners in “The New GM” is the UAW, which as it turns out also has big nasty contracts with the Ford Motor Company. Thats right kiddies, a part owner of one company is providing labor to its last remaining competitor and the entity that is in charge of ensuring that labor contacts are enforced fairly just happens to be the other majority stakeholder owner of “The New GM”.
I know what you’re thinking, that this cant possibly work. Well if thats what you think, you are probably right, it cant possibly work and yet as much as we want the worst to be over, the worst has yet to come, for what you see here is the Government in charge of something rather simple, the industrial manufacture and distribution of automobiles. How can it get worse? Well this same “rats nest”, spaghetti logic nonsensical command economy “workers-owning-the-factory” process is about to be applied to the people who provide us medical care.
Oh yes, that will work out fine, because what could possibly go wrong.
As Mr. Green is known to say on occasion: “Sleep Tight”.
First off, I have to say that the USPS does a decent job at what it is intended to do: deliver mail to every address in the United States. FedEx isn’t super cost-effective everywhere, while the USPS is good enough pretty much everywhere. It’s the old business choice of time, quality, price: choose two. Each service chooses a different business path, and each is successful at different things. If FedEx was in charge of daily mail delivery, it would use the USPS as a model. And the Postal Service uses FedEx and UPS as a model as it competes outside its core business. They’ve gotten better with competition, so I don’t despair that much.
Mostly I despair because I have no confidence that Americans will be buying cars at the same rate they were in past years. This GM experiment isn’t doomed because of Federal Government involvement (though I await new and interesting ways they’ll mess with the innovation and changes needed by the business,) it’s doomed because the market has changed from an easy-credit living large economy toward one where eking out a living is both popular and all that’s affordable. We can pretend things will be like they were in the past, but the days of maxed-out credit are over. And cars and homes are just the first and loudest canaries in the economic coalmine.
I guess I picked a bad week to quit taking it up the butt.
Well, I can’t say this has reduced the odds that I would buy a GM or Chrysler since those odds were zero befor this happened.
So would that be a hand job for the taxpayer? I really am trying to look forward to something.
jon, I agree with your defense of the postal service. They do a pretty good job for a pretty good price. But we still have the problem of GM competing with Ford in a high-profile arena with a lot of powerful egos on the line. As the Forbes link indicates, the government is willing to change the rules to benefit GM. Ford has managed to avoid a bailout so far, but one way or another, Obama will force them to take one.
Veeshir, all I can say is LOLOLOLOLOL!!!!!!
Its time like this that I defer to the wisdom of the north. I submit the kids in the hall sketch ” Screw you taxpayer”:
I’m curious as to whether the USPS turns an actual ‘for real’ profit. In other words, are any losses simply lost down the rabit hole of government accounting. My guess would be, No.
I have some experience to back this up. At one time I worked for a major package carrier not named Fedex. I saw how massive the operation was and the mind boggling amount of technology they put into the package routing infrastructure. The fact that they could do this and turn a good profit, even with the onerous Teamsters hanging around thier neck and yet not be competitive with many USPS products leads me to think that the USPS is taxpayer subsidized and if forced to compete in the real world under real business conditions, they would fail.
mr. maguire, I’m not so certain the government will force Ford, one way or another or any other way, to take a bailout. Ford will have new rules to deal with, a new market to deal with, and a great opportunity to grow if such an opportunity ever comes up. GM is still at a humungous disadvantage, and a huge part of that is the new Government Motors tag. And it’s not like that hole dug itself.
Plus, if Ford can hold out for another week or so, the government won’t be able to afford it anyhow.
It’s a widely observed truth that competing with the government is a chump’s bet. Ford will find itself faced with the choice of seeking a bailout or simply going out of business.
One modification:
Your Government (until January 3, 2011 edition).
GM is starting to vaguely resemble Scientology.
Have the bank accounts achieved the state known as Clear yet?