The Big Three auto makers, Ford, GM, Chrysler : Should they be bailed out.
 

I am still undecided on this. I don't know all the facts. I think there should be more tax incentives for consumers to buy cars and that there should be government oversight on there accounting practices...What do you think?

No. No. No. We live within a free market economy. If we simply bail them out we are only going to set ourselves up for more mistakes. The idea behind the free market is that competition will force the best products to come about. If we bail these companies out, they are going to just continue down the same road of bad production. They need to realize that they have to offer a better product or they're going to fail.

I could use a bailout...but seriously folks!

No, they need to go bankrupt. The company has about 19,000 problems and keeping it afloat is just letting it hobble on for a few more decades until we need to do it again.

We should not be encouraging people to buy cars just to keep some businesses afloat. Those businesses were in charge of their future and they chose to partake in a market that is now failing, its their own fault. I dont support a free market economy (too much power falls into the hands of too few companies) but we should not be bailing out industries that are not crucial to society.

and we need less cars on the road.

The oil companies should bail them out. They really should've stopped making gas guzzling cars when people clearly weren't buying them.

anyone notice that honda and toyota are still turning profits?

the big 3 have had years if not decades to pull their heads out of their collective asses and restructure themselves in order to maintain a level of viable competition on a global market. they CHOSE not to. no amount of bob seger tunes is going to convince people to buy an expensive gas guzzling box of detroit steel anymore.

this is very much at catch-22 situation though. the people who are going to suffer most from the downfall of the big3 would be the unionized workers who ended up costing the big3 their profitability. i don't believe anyone who only has a high school education should make the better part of $20-$30 an hour for turning a wrench. hell the average labour cost per hour at GM is $69/hour. WTF? why do we get told to go to college when we could have just taken a factory job instead and hauled in mad cash.

take a look at these numbers...

Macleans.ca - The car industry crash, by the numbers

it's not like the big3 are the only ones taking a hit but yet toyota still manages to turn a profit on every car they sell....

this is going to be a VERY ugly situation when those companies fail and a prime example of corporate hubris that many smaller enterprises can and should learn from. whether or not that actually happens is yet to be seen.

why should the oil companies bail them out? i really don't see why the mismanagement of the big3 should fall on another industry's shoulders.

lol I wasn't being serious that was my way of saying they keep making giant trucks that no one wants to buy anymore and if they expect sympathy from it the only place that will give them sympathy is the people making the diesel.

it's all good. i happen to have a conspiracy theory friend who wouldn't have been joking about it though, i was just curious about the potential logic hehe

Where have you been? We don't live in a free market economy.

What is it then?