A dead horse, sufficiently beaten, is dead. A green jobs government subsidy, never dies.
I’m particularly impressed by the unkillable and yet utterly unwanted Chevy Volt; the flagship product of GM’s fictional green-jobs lineup which has had sales between “low” and “damn near nothing”. (Because GM’s major customer is Congress and not consumers, it has had it’s lunch eaten by Ford. Henry Ford, that crazy loon, would be proud.)
I’ve beaten the Volt horse already:
- The Chevy Volt Is Still Shovel Ready: Jobs Money Quote. Summary: A dealer complains that they’re pretty much unsellable and when his employee saddled his dealership with one of these white elephants he fired the employee.
- The Chevy Volt Is Still Shovel Ready: The Great Leap Forward. Summary: The Chevy Volt has the range of an electric car from 1896. Nyuk nyuk nyuk.
- The Chevy Volt Is Still Shovel Ready. Summary: The Volt, which is a niche product at best, was advertised during the most expensive time slot in all of God’s creation (Superbowl halftime!). This proved that the car was not intended as an actual profit making endeavor. Also private companies have greater market penetration, are employing more people, and are making a profit selling even absurd vehicles while the Volt just sucks money. My examples were gold plated cars (the $300,000 Bentley Continental GT) and obscure wheeled modern antiques (the 1930’s design Russian military Ural sidecar motorcycle).
The fun is not over. Now there is something of a “quasi-recall”:
If the Volt was a real car, intended to make an honest profit by selling a desired product to willing consumers, this would be news. However the Volt is nothing more than a Potemkin village on wheels.
I’m disappointed but not surprised that a formerly capitalist entity has (quite reasonably) decided that it’s easier to get money from Congress than people spending their own money. This was all pre-orchestrated back in 1979 with Chrysler’s first bailout ($1.5 Billion).
Subsidized companies, like teenagers and stray cats, fall apart for want of proper discipline. Honest profit seeking companies are self-correcting if they need to turn a profit. Throw money at at a company and it eventually winds up sitting on the couch eating Cheetos and bitching. A once great organization is reduced to a Congressional plaything that is host to parasitic opportunists. (I don’t blame opportunists, like bank robber Willie Sutton, they go there “because that’s where the money is“.)
The stupidity of 1979 (another time Americans lost their shit when they encountered a recession) paved the way for Chrysler 2011 (note: the money was issued earlier but I used 2011 numbers) ($1.3 Billion, not counting the finance dept.) and General Motors 2011 (same general time of madness as Chrysler) ($23.6 billion, not counting the finance dept.). Which all inexplicably adds up to to $79.6 billion when you roll them together with their finance groups.
So what have we got? Two of the big three automakers aren’t beholden to their consumers. So GM is screwing around with a couple score cars that aren’t profitable and never will be. Meanwhile Ford, Toyota, and Honda are lean and hungry. They’re kicking ass!
Put another way; Studebaker (which didn’t have the forethought to die in a time of government madness) is gone. Do you miss Studebaker? I don’t. Could the assets of GM and Chrysler be scooped up and retooled to turn out better cars if someone else were pulling the strings. The answer is that you’ll never know so long as Congress can spend your money.
Also there are 307,006,550 Americans. Your share of the GM / Chrysler LLC bailout is:
$79,600,000,000 / 307,006,550 = $259
The average household size in America is 2.8. That means your house paid:
$259 * 2.8 = $725.20
When someone screws my family for $725.20 I expect dinner before and breakfast afterwards. Or at least a six pack of beer and an apology. I want my apology for the $725 Chevy Volt that I’ll never own.
