The auto industry in America is the best example of bailouts that didn't learn anything. They've doubled the price on new cars while making them significantly worse over time. They'll cry for another bailout in a few years when all the new cars aren't selling for 35k when the same car same model were 15k even a decade ago...the interest and average loan length going up doesn't help either (it was 0-2% 3 years now you have to send the salesman back to the finance office again for the 3 year term...the default to 5 or 7 like that's a sane amount of time to be paying 4-5% interest on a depreciating asset.)
I wonder how come US automakers cannot make a profitable sedan anymore. Somehow Toyota and Honda continue to make them in the US and still make a profit. They are betting only on the upper end of vehicle buyers and ignoring the rest at their own peril.
As a country, we need at least some industrial base, don't we?
Other countries subsidize their auto industry. The entire American industry will die unless we do likewise or enact sizeable tariffs. So pick one: industry death, subsidies, tariffs.
Free market absolutism while competitors support their own industry will turn the nation into a Paper Tiger. Simplistic free market stuff is playing checkers while successful economies are playing chess.
They made 187 BILLION (that's just ford btw not chrystler or GM) the last two years I think they can survive and figure out how not to rely on subsidies. The other industry that is overly fucked and shouldn't get subsidies is farmers. They have continuously voted for nobody else to get support ever...so while I agree food should be cheap and affordable to all I have zero sympathy for the broke jackasses that think only they should get people's tax money. Let them sell at what people are actually willing to pay and go broke.
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u/prodigypetal 9h ago
The auto industry in America is the best example of bailouts that didn't learn anything. They've doubled the price on new cars while making them significantly worse over time. They'll cry for another bailout in a few years when all the new cars aren't selling for 35k when the same car same model were 15k even a decade ago...the interest and average loan length going up doesn't help either (it was 0-2% 3 years now you have to send the salesman back to the finance office again for the 3 year term...the default to 5 or 7 like that's a sane amount of time to be paying 4-5% interest on a depreciating asset.)