Foggers' Alimighty Blog of Awesomeness!!

I agree with you completely on the first bit. I think any sort of bailout is a mistake, but if we're going to give money to someone it should be the consumers. Take the Detroit situation for example. Congress wants to give the Big Three money so they can file for Chapter 11 three months from now as opposed to next week. Will it make people more willing to purchase their cars? No. If you want to prop up the auto industry, you should give money to consumers to purchase their cars, not to the automakers themselves so they can limp on awhile longer and nothing else changes.

As for bailing out companies/people who made mistakes, we shouldn't under any circumstances. There's no such thing as "too big to fail." Business failure is just as important as business success. It tells Chrysler that maybe it should create some benchmarks based on Toyota's practices. Failure tells you what you're doing wrong. If the gov't props up every industry that fails, it just encourages the same inefficient behavior. I think if the Big Three filed for Chapter 11 it would be a good thing. The companies would be restructured, management would hopefully be fired, and assets would be sold off. Those assets (production facilities, etc) would be bought up by entrepreneurs who would try to make cars more efficiently than their predecessors. The auto plants don't disappear. The jobs don't disappear. They just change hands and it leads to greater efficiency in most cases. You sort of touched on this. It's all part of the free market "system."

Annoyingly I don't know the full situation and have a limited (very) understanding of the economy. How I see it is that the companies that are receiving money aren't being controlled by the government, it is merely a helping hand. But I suppose how I could see it as a way towards nationalisation.

Ron Paul goes onto say that it is un American in the sense of economic freedom. By bailing out these companies you are forgiving them of their mistakes, a part of economic freedom would be that companies fail out of effects from the system and also due to their own fault. It would part of the system. But with the bail outs the government is supporting them and giving them another chance and a helping hand to the economy at large. I really don't know where I stand on the bailouts.

From my understanding, Congress was planning on appointing a "Car Czar" from within Congress. This person would basically take the place of a whole board of directors and make unilateral decisions for the Detroit automakers in terms of what cars to make, how to make them, etc. That sounds like nationalization to me.

I discovered Ron Paul a few months back. As of this moment, he's the only honest politician I know of. Look at his track record. He sticks to his guns despite the derision and laughter. He's a man of principle and he does what he thinks is right, not what is convenient. All he wants to do is guide the country back to the principles of the Constitution (which this country is built on but seems to ignore completely nowadays) so that all Americans can enjoy the personal freedoms that our Founding Fathers envisioned.

If you want to learn more about Dr. Paul and his supporters, you should check out http://www.campaignforliberty.com/. I'm a conservative, so I don't know if more left-mined people will find it palatable, but they say over and over that liberty is universal and Constitutional principles can mesh with many different political viewpoints. If you do check it out, I'd love to hear your reaction.

I checked out the website, a lot of interesting articles and ideas. The only thing I don't agree with it about though is the isolationist ideas and withdrawing US troops from bases in foreign countries. In our time, the world has gotten a lot smaller in terms of international politics and co-operation so America really can be force for good. But I disagree with the UN as they seem a bit useless. I was surprised to read that Ron Paul wasn't invited to the Republican Party primary election debate on Fox which is a real shame, we need more politicians like him. Honesty and a good, consistent voting record.

I used to be of the same opinion, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized isolationism is a good idea. People hate America because we have military bases on holy ground and just generally meddle in others' affairs regardless of whether they want our help. Then we have to increase our presence around the world to combat the terrorist organizations that crop up because people hate us. It's a vicious, escalating cycle. I mean, when's the last time we didn't have a policy of sticking our hand in everything? Not for many decades. Maybe it wouldn't hurt to try a noninterventionalist policy and see how it works.

The other big issue for me is that we don't take care of ourselves before we try and take care of others. Our borders are porous, and we can't really afford to be spending billions of dollars abroad with our economic troubles at home.

"But anyway I don't quite support a welfare state like they have back in Britain since most un-employed people are too lazy to get a job so they rely on benefits.".

Cheeky so&so. Most UK unemployed seek work, lead swingers and useless layabouts do exist but by no means are the majority.

You need a welfare state if only to provide decent working class cancer healthcare etc.

Good blog tho, keep up the good work.

Andrew

Yeah, welfare state is beneficial for those who need it. I guess I just believed the Daily Mail headlines but don't worry, I don't read it all the time and nor have I even bought it.

But something does need to be done about those that just sit on the dole for a long time. I heard of an idea which would get them doing community service, which would be nice.

The welfare state is beneficial for business as well in various ways. Nationalised healthcare saves business a fortune; providing unemployment benefits allows workers more time to find a suitable job rather than having to jump into the first thing that comes along (thus wasting human resources) as well as reducing crime; and so forth. Indeed, the current welfare system in the UK is unapologetically designed around the needs of business (it's what the 'Third Way' is all about), forcing more and more people into the labour market and thus suppressing wages, with tax credits being handed out so that business doesn't have to pay a decent wage.

The main problem with all this, and with the popular suggestion to 'get a job, hippy!' is that there are far, far more unemployed people than there are jobs -- and there were even at the peak of the economic boom. Take into consideration than most jobs aren't suitable for those on benefits (due to required qualifications, location, etc) and we have a rather large problem. Indeed, the ever-ignored problem of job supply has been demonstrated quite nicely by the recent crash. Have 2 million people in Britain suddenly just got lazy and that's why they're freshly out of work and on benefits? Or has the economic downturn made them redundant and left them with little option.

There's much more to it all than that, of course, but the point is to demonstrate that the welfare state is a lot more complex than supporting 'lazy unemployed people', and unemployment itself is a lot more complex than said people being lazy.