Alaska News

Bailout would only sustain US auto industry's stupidity

This country needs a low-car diet, and the so-called bailout of the auto industry is corporate welfare at its worst. What kind of business would invest $25 billion to prop up the auto industry with no strings attached? The same one that is throwing $700 billion at the problematic credit industry -- the U.S. government. That $700 billion was supposed to keep people in their homes, but now is helping shareholders keep their millions.

Similar to the credit industry with its tentacles everywhere, the car industry now has its hands out, staking its bailout claim.

In the same way that I am now paying more taxes for paying my mortgage on time in a house I can afford, I will now have to pay more taxes for not buying a new car every year, not watching all the car ads on TV or reading them ad nauseam in magazines. I am once again being punished for being a prudent saver, not spending beyond my means and not financing a Hummer for nothing down and zero percent interest for a whole year. Evidently a whole year is what passes for a financial plan in this country.

Is there a better example of the failure of Adam Smith's invisible hand than the auto industry bailout (besides the $700 billion to the credit industry)? Whatever side of this you may be on, no one can argue with a straight face that a $25 billion bailout is not government interference with the free market.

Detroit is going under because the auto industry is continuing to make typewriters and buggy whips when it's time to modernize. It's time for car companies to join the 21st century. We need fewer cars that are more fuel-efficient. We need fewer ads. We need to put people to work making things that this country, and this planet, actually need ---- not simply propping up the car industry and its Madison Avenue pushers to sell more cars people can't afford so that the auto industry can continue to limp along.

Many conservatives claim that the auto industry is suffering from too much government intrusion, too many mandates for fuel efficiency. The fact is that late last year, Congress passed the first increase of average fleet fuel economy in 32 years. And it will take effect in 2020. It requires a 35 mpg average -- so that will mandate that Detroit step all the way into the 1990s by the next decade.

Maybe if the fuel economy standards had been raised, then Detroit would be making cars people could afford to fill up. Yet the auto industry continues to make the car version of a typewriter -- SUPERSIZED. Seems the least we could ask for $25 billion is that the car companies start building something that will be able to survive in the current market.

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Yet what did the car makers do recently though? They "refueled America" by giving consumers money for gas to put in their gas guzzlers.

All this should clearly show us that our economy is a house of cards. We can't keep consuming ourselves out of our problems. The endless "more" that our economy seeks to produce is not endless. There are costs, both to our economy and our community.

The more we prop up the credit industry, the auto industry and other industries promoting this unhealthy consumption, the more we push ourselves toward the precipice of environmental and economic collapse. Our economy needs to better reflect the realities of finite resources on the planet that we all share. Instead of dumping more money into unsustainable industries that refuse to change, our government should be encouraging businesses to plan for the future.

Businesses fail every day. No one said Ford is supposed to last forever, particularly if it continues to keep its head in the sand. The so-called $25 billion bailout to the auto industry is just more sand, which may make it harder to see reality, but it doesn't make that reality any less real.

Steve Cleary is a stay-at-home dad who lives in Anchorage. He is the former director of the Alaska Public Interest Research Group. The views here are his own.

By STEVE CLEARY

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