You are guessing as much as I or the economists. Time will tell.
Unions are the 50K workers. This union wasn't taking over the nation they were working jobs. Do you really perfer your fellow 50K+ Americans to be unemployed and on the streets?
Of the 23,000,000 Americans that would like to get full time work, what percentage is that 50,000? 50K doesn't even really add up in the weekly jobless reports.
I think it's very unlikely Ford would have survived. They were able, in part, to take out a loan. This loan would have had to been much larger. And likely they would have faced delays as some of their parts providers would have gone belly up.
Ford didn't take out the loan. Yes, some of the parts providers were going to be in trouble. Those I would have agreed to see having some type of government hand out for them to survive long enough to be merged or bought out right.
True cars are made all over. The Toyota Camry for example is mostly US sourced. As a leading seller it probably supports more US jobs than the much poorer selling American vehicles. Though this question is not only based on manufacturer but model. I think my statement was perfectly fair - buying a VW made with German parts, assembled in Mexico and shipped to the US is a very good example of the low end of scale of USA support.
Honda sources most of their transmissions in Japan. And even if the rest of the car is assembled in the USA they manufacture the same model overseas and ship some here. So it depends on what you're talking as to whether the Honda supports the USA more than GM. As for quality the new GM cars are seriously improved and even rivaling Honda.
http://www.leftlanenews.com/study-ford-gm-quality-surpass-honda.html
Only took them what, three decades? Good for them, still wouldn't buy a car from them either.
IMO part of this question is always determine by owner impressions. Those are biased. I bought a 99 Mustang and a friend a 99 Acura. He loved this car. He thought the Mustang pretty but he'd never give up Acura quality. Turned out he went to the shop far more than I did. He had electronic problems and a passenger side door that was never right. I went through brakes and tires quicker. 3 years ago 1 employee told me how wonderful her Honda is and how bad American cars are. Only to trade it in 6 months later due to the problems she was having. (And I'm still driving the same F150 which hasn't seen the shop for 4 years. Though there is now a gas tank strap recall which I should do as preventative.) --- Personal bias in quality pools is always hard to weed out in those sorts of studies. I prefer news, like the above, the use actual shop records.
Well you lucked out and bought a Ford, which is the only "domestic" car company I would buy from. I sold off my last Ford about 18 months ago, probably still going strong.
What I find interesting of this attitude is it's unfairly applied. 0 American airline companies would exist without the government's help. Yet no one is crying for them to go under.
Horsefeathers, plenty of airlines would have survived 911 aftermath. They might have had to go into bankruptcy to reorganize their debt and redo their existing labor contracts, but most of them would have survive, and those that didn't would be replaced by small airlines.
You make it sound one sided. Certainly Obama grew spending in his first budget - up 11%. But, far better than Bush's previous budget which increased spending -- up 18%.
Problem is the stimulus went into the yearly base line budgeting so every year, we get that same amount of spending PLUS an automatic increase of 5%-7%. Obama has managed to piss away $4.5T (heading well into the $5T in a few months) in borrowed money in little over 3 years while we have more unemployed/underemployed then when he started. Took Bush 8 years, Obama did it in less then 4 years.
In a down economy when money is cheap is the best time for investment. We should be making major improvements to our transportation systems, our buildings, etc. Labor is cheap, materials cheap, and borrowing is cheap. Unfortunately much of the government spending isn't wise. (BTW this is what Ford did. Borrow lots of money cheaply to accelerate quality improvements.)
Wrong, that is not the time to do stupid things with money you have to borrow, you let private industry keep their money so they can create new jobs which lifts the economy out of a depression. FDR tried this failed economic model that Obama is so hyped about and we know how badly it did, even FDR's Sec of Treasury testified before Congressional committee that all the spending they had done for the past 8 years didn't create a single job. So what loans did Ford get from TARP?
A fully government controlled market is dangerous for a nation. A fully unregulated market is dangerous for a nation. The best done is a lightly regulated market to help ensure competition and fairness for the consumer.
Which is what Obama/Pelosi/Reid made damn sure didn't happen by over regulating stuff that shouldn't be over regulated while ignoring the stuff that should be regulated and wasn't because their master's wanted to continue to reap unheard of profits. Did they do a proper investigation of criminal misconduct of Freddie/Fannie? Why of course not, too many of members of the Obama Admin were involved back during those days, can't have that, wouldn't look right.
