Obama's Help Won't Save Jobs at GM
Published in G1
(Brazil) on 2 June 2009
by Carlos Alberto Sardenberg (link to original)
Obama's administration is putting a lot of money into GM – giving more than 50 billion USD last time – something that characterizes a clear nationalist policy. The goal is saving an authentic American company, whose bankruptcy would hurt the national pride more than the economy.
In fact, President Obama is helping GM but not alleviating that said painful adjustment. It's really painful.
The new GM plans to have 38,000 workers in the U.S. by 2011. Do you know how many there are today? 243,000!
Do you know how many they were in 2002? 338,000. In other words, the cleaned-up company, with government assistance, will have a little bit more than one tenth of its workforce than it had at the beginning of the century
Take into consideration that with no government help, something similar would have happened under normal market forces. The good parts of GM would have been bought/absorbed by other companies, the bad part would have been closed, like what will probably happen.
But the process would be much more painful for national pride. Can you imagine the pictures and videos with the GM brand being taken off the tops of buildings? (Like what happened to PanAm decades ago).
In fact, President Obama is helping GM but not alleviating that said painful adjustment. It's really painful.
The new GM plans to have 38,000 workers in the U.S. by 2011. Do you know how many there are today? 243,000!
Do you know how many they were in 2002? 338,000. In other words, the cleaned-up company, with government assistance, will have a little bit more than one tenth of its workforce than it had at the beginning of the century
Take into consideration that with no government help, something similar would have happened under normal market forces. The good parts of GM would have been bought/absorbed by other companies, the bad part would have been closed, like what will probably happen.
But the process would be much more painful for national pride. Can you imagine the pictures and videos with the GM brand being taken off the tops of buildings? (Like what happened to PanAm decades ago).