Wilson Fu

Joseph Farah has a great idea, given how bad all the other government solutions are likely to be.  Heck, they subsidized hybrids this way.

They have a plan. Perhaps even a cunning plan.  The ultimate point:

Washington is still battling over a bailout package, but Ford’s two domestic rivals may have to report to a “car czar.” That will not help them. In fact, if this person turns out to someone like Congressman Henry Waxman or one of his friends, GM and Chrysler could face ruin in 90 days. If so, Ford could pick up the pieces.

A good lesson on the economy.

Obviously these guys have their own thing that they are promoting, but Mr. Fu found their points interesting.

They have a blog. After some of the experiences that TUFF McFU went through with the unions, union tactics are nothing less than underhanded. They are not looking for a straight up deal, they are trying to appeal to your greed and fear in order to get you to sign up. Once you are in your are stuck. Sure, the UAW got huge pay and such for workers at the Big Three. And you are now seeing the fruits of their labor, total annihilation.

What effect will unions have on individual freedom?

Indeed:

Ackerman said there was “a delicious irony in seeing private jets flying into Washington D.C. and people coming off them with tin cups in their hands.”

Chapter 11, bust the union, end of troubles.  What is wrong with that plan?

This is hilarious:

The Japanese automakers broke into the American market in the 1970s by exporting small, high-quality, fuel-efficient vehicles during an energy crisis.

LOL! Mr. Vlasic, were you even alive back then? Fuel-efficient? Yes, given the lighter, under powered vehicles they produced. High-quality vehicles? Oh please! Datsuns came in three colors rusted, horribly rusted, and rust pile. The metal would last about six months before being perforated by reduction-oxidation. High-quality they were not. But that Japanese manufacturers did not just keep making crap, they adapted and overcame.

And now they have overcome the American automotive industry. Why? Because of the two factors that GM, Ford, and Chrysler cannot control in building cars, the unions and the government. When an autoworking union forklift operator makes $103,000 a year in the US while the average wage for forklift operators across the country is $26,000, then the government backed unions are going to kill the hell out of the auto industry. You can thank the draconian laws that permit the unions to operate the way they do for the collapse of this industry.

A summary on the basics of economics and power.

Government cannot do those things [solve problems] directly. If it tries, it will fail and make us worse off. The key to understanding this lies in the nature of human action. We live in a world of scarcity, and the list of scarce resources includes time and knowledge. At any moment demand exceeds supply. Under these conditions, we adapt means to achieve chosen ends. We face opportunity costs and make tradeoffs according to our subjective preferences. The perception of costs prevents us from achieving lesser values at the expense of greater values. Respect for other people and their property, backed by law, prevents us from shifting costs to them without their consent. The result is the market — that emergent order which serves the general welfare and encourages personal responsibility as each person pursues his or her private interests.

If government, which, recall, is force not eloquence, intervenes — to raise or lower costs, to increase or reduce rewards, to tamper with prices or interest rates — we will modify our behavior, knocking self-interest and the general welfare out of alignment. A subsidy for medical insurance will increase the demand for services and raise prices. A price ceiling will make those services less available. A floor under wages will make jobs for unskilled workers more scarce, as employers find it a losing proposition to hire them. A tax on production will mean less produced. A subsidy to production will mean too much produced relative to something else consumers want. A trade restriction will lower living standards at home and abroad.

Thanks to FLOURCHILD for the link!

Is this idea entirely dead? So what happens when a majority of the voters do not pay taxes?  Do the minority tax payers really have representation at that point?

And some of the reasons behind the current financial situation.

Heh, good ol’ Kim:

So the “ethanol mandate” (pushed by Greens, and implemented by their lickspittle lackeys in Congress) is keeping our food prices high. (It’s also causing Pore Brown People to die because we can’t send them food anymore, but that’s of little consequence to the Greens, because they hate mankind anyway.)

“They hate mankind anyway.”  Two legs bad!

Altruism does not mean mere kindness or generosity, but the sacrifice of the best among men to the worst, the sacrifice of virtues to flaws, of ability to incompetence, of progress to stagnation – and the subordinating of all life and of all values to the claims of anyone’s suffering.

The man who produces while others dispose of his product is a slave.

It stands to reason that where there’s sacrifice, there’s someone collecting sacrificial offerings. Where there is service, there is someone being served. The man who speaks to you of sacrifice speaks of slaves and masters. And intends to be master.  — Ayn Rand

I do not agree with everything Ayn Rand ever said, but she could smell a Commie ten miles off.  This has that certain communist stink about it:

An Obama campaign theme is that more Americans need to sacrifice for neighborhood and country.

He has put out a $3.5-billion national service plan that would double the size of the Peace Corps, recruit retired engineers and scientists to tutor students, and offer college students tuition aid in return for community service.

He has put out a $3.5-billion plan?  Is this his money he is talking about using?  No, it is yours.  You are the one that gets to sacrifice for his plan, at the point of a gun.

Americans are plenty generous and giving.  We do not need someone dictating to us where our charitable dollars should go.  Reduce our tax burden and our increased charitable contributions will support our neighborhoods and country without the Federal government taking their very inefficient cut off the top.