Adaptive Curmudgeon

The Volt (As Was Always Its Fate) Swirls The Drain

One Two Several of my loyal disloyal interested readers informed me that I’ve fallen behind in my self appointed goal of beating the Chevy Volt to dust.  My gosh they’re right.

It has been 27 days since I bitched about how my money has been pissed away on a car nobody wants.  I was busy baking bread and denying the existence of Primary Campaigns (Good grief 300,000,000 Americans to choose from and the Republicans turned up…them?  Really? How? Am I on Candid Camera?)

In those 27 days did the Volt take off? Did it gain wings. Did the Rainbow Faeries make it profitable? Did Solyndra figure out a way to charge them? (Yeah, it was a cheap shot but it was fun.) Maybe the Volt just needed a little love.  Maybe mean old Curmudgeons aren’t giving it a chance. After all, the price of gas is rising faster than a skirt at Spring Break.  Wouldn’t right now be the time when Rainbow Cars can shine?

Nope. You cannot make shine out of thin air. Life is cruel that way:

“With sales lagging and inventories building, GM has decided to idle production of the Chevy Volt for five weeks. During that time, about 1,300 workers will temporarily be laid off.”

Its an economic reality two-fer.  The invisible hand of the market is delivering a predictable and unavoidable dope slap to yahoos who keep spending my taxes on bullshit. Dope slap number one is the failure to sell that which the consumer didn’t demand.  To whit I say…”Duh”.  Dope slap two is a tragic demonstration that “green jobs” aren’t sustainable like “actual jobs”.

I’ve mentioned Green Jobs before (credit is due to Rhymes With Cars And Girls for the definition).

green jobs (n.): A category of employment properly viewed as belonging to the realm of mythology or fantasy, like the chimera, leprechaun, or centaur; jobs not tangibly observable in the real world but existing in the dreams of ‘progressives’.

I was even taken to task for my misanthropic attitude toward green jobs.  Indeed my insistence on reality is an unpopular buzz kill in the age of Obama.

The whole thing can be summed up in a Curmudgeonly Gem On Insight:

“If you make something people don’t want, you shouldn’t stay in business.  If you make something people want, that’s a ‘job’, not a ‘green job’ and by definition it won’t require a subsidy.”

Lest you think I’m a heartless cretin (or mysanthrope) I do have sympathy for the folks who bet on the Volt and are now unemployed.  Being broke sucks.  I sincerely hope they all adapt and persevere.

A.C.

P.S.  Some of my other thoughts on the Chevy Volt are below:

Slightly off topic:

About Solyndra:

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