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The failure of the Chevy Volt is just one of the many failed economic policies of the Obama Administration.
Ever since the dawn of automobiles, people have had a fascination with electric cars, which dates back to the early 20th Century. Environmentalists, government officials and market analysts have predicted that these cars would eventually overtake the market, but the lack of demand has showcased the continued failure of electric cars despite being heavy subsidized by failed government policies.
The failure of the Chevy Volt is monumental.
"Each Chevy Volt sold thus far may have as much as $250,000 in state and federal dollars in incentives behind it – a total of $3 billion altogether, according to an analysis by James Hohman, assistant director of fiscal policy at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy.
Hohman looked at total state and federal assistance offered for the development and production of the Chevy Volt, General Motors’ plug-in hybrid electric vehicle. Hohman included in his analysis 18 government deals that included loans, rebates, grants and tax credits. The amount of government assistance does not include the fact that General Motors is currently 26 percent owned by the federal government." Volt
1. Over 50% of all bailouts have been paid back, nearly all auto bailouts specifically have been paid back http://money.cnn.com/news/storysupplement/economy/bailouttracker/ Considering the original size of the loan, the number of people not in the unemployment line due to specifically the auto industry bailout (over 50,000), and it's only been about four years, that's a great deal.
2. Did I mention how many jobs the auto bailout saved? Your don't take a couple things into account, how much it saves and makes when you have people working and paying taxes instead of using government programs that cost money, and that it's actual people with lives and families who still have jobs.
3. The bailouts, for the billionth time, were during the Bush administration. You call a good thing bad, than blame it on a someone who wasn't president.
Focusing on one model of the hundreds of cars is a cute trick though. Sure, ignore that the auto industry is doing better now than anytime after 9/11, and find one car that isn't doing great and use that one vehicle to fuel your blame-the-government-for-everything psychosis.
Electric cars are a great idea. It's more American jobs, less money sent to foreign countries, more money in people's pockets so a boost to the economy, and is better for the environment. There is literally no downside. So one car is not doing quite as well as hoped. It doesn't mean you whine and cry and give up. So make a better electric model next time.
What are the sources? Sources: Federal Reserve, Treasury, FDIC, CBO, White House
All government information disseminated is always convoluted and distorted based on bias economic models and political agendas. Therefore, government is in constant lie mode. Price of GM Bailout
Did I mention how many jobs the auto bailout saved?
Saying that the bailout prevented unemployment is purely fictional. In a free market, demand readjusts and either buying the old assets of GM or building new companies, and ex GM employees find new jobs. Bankrupt is vital to capitalism.
how much it saves and makes when you have people working and paying taxes instead of using government programs that cost money, and that it's actual people with lives and families who still have jobs.
How is a car or company being heavy subsidized with each Volt being sold costing the taxpayers $250,000.
The bailouts, for the billionth time, were during the Bush administration. You call a good thing bad, than blame it on a someone who wasn't president.
GM is still 33% OWNED BY THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT, so IT IS STILL RECEIVING SUBSIDIZED money SINCE 2008.
Electric cars are a great idea. It's more American jobs, less money sent to foreign countries, more money in people's pockets so a boost to the economy, and is better for the environment.
Of course, electric cars are a great idea, and they have been since the early 20th century, but they don't create more jobs because they are expensive to produce with no demand.
New research suggests that you have to drive an electric car a long, long way for it to be greener than a gas-guzzling vehicle. Car
Yeah and the sources you cite have absolutely no political agenda whatsoever.
Anyway, that particular bailout did prevent unemployment. You can argue your economic theories till you're blue in the face, but actual people would be unemployed who are because of that particular bailout, employed. There was no "free market demand" therefore they would not have gone and found a job elsewhere.
Demand is what drives economies. To create demand people need jobs. In this particular case the free market failed (due in every area of failure to lack of regulation allowing for what amounted to investment roullete).
Now, you can say "that's no free market!" Fine, whatever it is then. But not fixing it would have lead to worse problems according to nearly every economist.
You are arguing I think against market manipulation by the government. Markets were already being manipulated though, by corporations, banks and lending and credit agencies. Government has to have a hand in large economies or what happened in 2007-08 and what happened in the Great Depression becomes the norm as these other entities are allowed to gain the system.
As for the Volt, it's a secondary concern to this larger question. Sure it didn't sell as well as hoped and yeah production should apparently be improved. But you have to start somewhere. You can't just say "Fuck it, I give up. Let's just keep sending our money to the Middle East until every oil well is empty and insane Middle East governments have most of the world's wealth."
Wrong, entrepreneurship is what drives economies. If demand drives the economies, how did the iPhone come into existence, it must have always existed, there just wasn't any demand before 2003, right. ;)
If demand drives the economies, how did the iPhone come into existence
Well anything can come into existence. I could make a rotary phone and no one would by it. Why? There is no demand for that product. Your example is biased. The iPhone is only successful because of the massive demand for it. Without demand, it is just another rotary phone...
To use an awful analogy, entrepreneurship is like a car. It's great, but if it has no engine (demand) it's useless. Both are necessary, but it is demand that drives the economy. IMO
To use an awful analogy, entrepreneurship is like a car. It's great, but if it has no engine (demand) it's useless. Both are necessary, but it is demand that drives the economy. IMO
That only backs up the fact that the Volt was a complete failure. If the economy is driven by demand, then General Motors should have produced a car with a high demand. Clearly the Volt wasn't economical as it needed to be subsidized in order to sustain a low price.
There are a lot of cool things on the market people can't afford right now. If everyone had money to buy all of these cool things, the people who make them would have to hire more people to make more of them.
Anyway, you realize you are arguing for entrepreneurship at the exact same time as you are arguing against making this relatively new thing right? Chevy Volt is a perfect example of how simply making something doesn't mean people will buy it.
The reasons people buy something varies, what does not vary is that they need to have the means to buy these things.
GM was a classic case of entrepreneurship 100 years ago, but the Chevy Volt is not the case today because of its subsidization.
The Apple iPhone is in great demand but it receives no subsidy from the government while Chevy is not in great demand but it receives huge subsidies from the government.
You really need to stop linking the von misses site to me. It's like when Srom links the story about Noah saving animals when I argue evolution with him.
When a caveman invented the wheel he got paid shit all. It was still entrepreneurship.
If a caveman helped gather some rocks or sticks or helped him eat or built a fire during the process then yeah, he was subsidized.
It's such a simple concept, the problem is you categorize government and everything it does with religious fervor in some alternative universe where magically bizarro style all they do is evil.
That is not the case in real life though. Some subsidies serve a purpose, no different than an individual investing. There is absolutely no difference in the end result when government invests compared to individuals, businesses, banks, etc.
If GE had given Chevy a loan to build the volt would the volt have magically been more successful? No it wouldn't. Would the volt magically be a different car? No it wouldn't.
In your head though, because it's government it's bad. It has nothing to do with results in your mind. Roads are bad, cops are bad, stop lights are bad, everything to do with government is bad.
If cops were privatized, crime shot up 200%, rape and murder were rampant, you'd excuse it because anti-government is your religion.
Seriously, your blind hatred for such an essential function of society, government, leads you to some really insane sounding ideas.
So one car failed. Last I checked the U.S. overall is doing pretty fucking good compared to every society ever to exist, even with this horrible magically evil government of the last 220 some odd years.
If a caveman helped gather some rocks or sticks or helped him eat or built a fire during the process then yeah, he was subsidized.
This comment is laughable. Where do you come up with this stuff? Subsidization only involves money, an indirect exchange economy, not an direct exchange economy or barter system.
There is absolutely no difference in the end result when government invests compared to individuals, businesses, banks, etc.
"Transfer spending or subsidies distort the market by coercively penalizing the efficient for the benefit of the inefficient. (And it does so even if the firm or individual is efficient without a subsidy, for its activities are then being encouraged beyond their most economic point.) Subsidies prolong the life of inefficient firms and prevent the flexibility of the market from fully satisfying consumer wants. The greater the extent of government subsidy, the more the market is prevented from working, the more resources are frozen in inefficient ways, and the lower will be the standard of living of everyone. Furthermore, the more government intervenes and subsidizes, the more caste conflict will be created in society, for individuals and groups will benefit only at one an other’s expense. The more widespread the tax-and-subsidy process, the more people will be induced to abandon production and join the army of those who live coercively off production. Production and living standards will be progressively lowered as energy is diverted from production to politics and as government saddles a dwindling base of production with a growing and more top-heavy burden of the State-privileged. This process will be all the more accelerated because those who succeed in any activity will invariably tend to be those who are best at performing it. Those who particularly flourish on the free market, therefore, will be those most adept at production and at serving their fellow men; those who succeed in the political struggle for subsidies, on the other hand, will be those most adept at wielding coercion or at winning favors from wielders of coercion. Generally, different people will be in the different categories of the successful, in accordance with the universal specialization of skills. Furthermore, for those who are skillful at both, the tax-and-subsidy system will encourage and promote their predatory skills and penalize their productive ones." ---Rothbard. Man, Economy and State
If GE had given Chevy a loan to build the volt would the volt have magically been more successful? No it wouldn't. Would the volt magically be a different car? No it wouldn't.
If GE loans the money to GM for the Volt, and nobody buys it, then GE and GM must suffer the loss while if the Treasury loans money to GM, and nobody buys it, the general public suffers the loss. Explained above. That is entrepreneurship. The risk of profit and loss. Entrepreneurship is not private profit and public loss.
If cops were privatized, crime shot up 200%, rape and murder were rampant, you'd excuse it because anti-government is your religion.
Whatever? Bounty hunters are about 50 percent more likely to bring back their man. What percent of the fugitives that the bounty hunters go after do you think that they land? 97 Percent Dog
Seriously, your blind hatred for such an essential function of society, government, leads you to some really insane sounding ideas.
Government as essential function of society is delusional.
So one car failed. Last I checked the U.S. overall is doing pretty fucking good compared to every society ever to exist, even with this horrible magically evil government of the last 220 some odd years.
One car. Electric cars have been failing for the last 100 years. Creative use of words though.
That's a definition of subsidy, but the underlying point of a subsidy is to help a business to become more successful for the overall good of more people. So in practice it is the same as any kind of "help." You are too lost in this narrow easily disproven economic farce of a philosophy you are constantly carrying on about to see any type of big picture.
If GE loans the money to GM for the Volt, and nobody buys it, then GE and GM must suffer the loss while if the Treasury loans money to GM, and nobody buys it, the general public suffers the loss. Explained above. That is entrepreneurship. The risk of profit and loss. Entrepreneurship is not private profit and public loss.
But the equation is that Chevy failing costs the public more than the price of helping them long run, which has been proven true. If the equation was helping them would cost the public more in the long run it would have been a bad loan. Again, you are too lost in this ideology to see the ultimate long term results.
Whatever? Bounty hunters are about 50 percent more likely to bring back their man. What percent of the fugitives that the bounty hunters go after do you think that they land? 97 Percent Dog
And that with law enforcement is more efficient, but in most cases it is the State that pays bounty hunters dumb dumb. Single mom with a daughter who was raped can't afford to send dog the bounty hunter to catch the bad guys. Law enforcement without government is just corporate thuggery and body guards for the rich. Big picture, end results.
Government as essential function of society is delusional.
No, it's an essential part of the human condition and nothing more than a very positive extension of our clan and family unit origins. Humans without government would be wild animals in caves or extinct.
One car. Electric cars have been failing for the last 100 years. Creative use of words though.
They are getting better, again, and there is no reason not to pursue it. Plus most electric cars are sold by private companies. The only reason this is an issue with you is because you have a delusional fear of government. It is worth it though to keep trying to make a great electric car, it's why companies are still doing it. If you don't think so start your own car company and don't sell them.
You are too lost in this narrow easily disproven economic farce of a philosophy you are constantly carrying on about to see any type of big picture.
Whatever, that is why the Austrian School of Economic scholars are increasing.
But the equation is that Chevy failing costs the public more than the price of helping them long run, which has been proven true. If the equation was helping them would cost the public more in the long run it would have been a bad loan.
This is jumbo that doesn't make sense.
Again, you are too lost in this ideology to see the ultimate long term results.
Wrong, Austrian School of Economics focuses more on long term effects, so the only person who is confused is you because you don't even the difference between Keynes and Austrian.
And that with law enforcement is more efficient, but in most cases it is the State that pays bounty hunters dumb dumb.
Obviously, you have no clue what you are talking about. Bounty hunters are not law enforcement, they don't enforce law, they merely capture fugitives.
Single mom with a daughter who was raped can't afford to send dog the bounty hunter to catch the bad guys.
Probably because government services don't have market based prices. Bounty hunters are only contractors catching fugitives.
Humans without government would be wild animals in caves or extinct.
Wrong, humans without rule of law would be wild animals in caves or extinct. Rule of law is what binds humans in a positive units. I am only disputing who is enact and implement.
They are getting better, again, and there is no reason not to pursue it.
Again, I agree, but not on the public's money.
The only reason this is an issue with you is because you have a delusional fear of government.
The only reason this is an issue with you is because you have a fascinate love for government.
Yes, it is. Even the design team will fess up to that. The real issue is not the fact it flopped, but the fact it has so many safety recalls they may have tio crush every last one!
I wouldn't say that it is a complete failure, but it didn't turn out as great as was expected. I believe that more people would have purchased the car if the price wasn't so high.
With all the subsidized money and with all those were sold, it could $250,000 to produce each car while the price tag is $40,000, that is the cost of 6 to produce one. Typically, products are produced under the price tag, just in case if you don't know, this is done for profit.