Bankruptcy is Better

General Motors is better off having declared bankruptcy than being kept alive by the American government's money defibrillator. Multiple bailouts would have only prolonged the inevitable.

The company is now in the process of doing what it has needed for awhile – trimming excesses, organizing priorities, and re-establishing their focus. Bankruptcy has forced them to take action in streamlining their activities that wouldn't be immediately necessary with a steady flow of government crutch money.

Further, 80% of Americans were against giving them any kind of bailout in the first place. I have no idea how accurate that number is, but it does pretty clearly indicate which option society is more in favour of and how they would like to see their tax money spent (or, at least, how they would not like it spent).

So the government now has all of this money that they didn't use to bail out car companies just sitting around collecting dust, right? (Not true at all, the bailout would have been a huge debt to future taxpayers, but the idea is that they were prepared to spend this money and they haven't.) They still can and should spend it, or at least some of it, to help this situation. The people who are going to face the major impacts here are the workers, and the government should be doing everything they can to help and protect them. The company itself is rightfully on its own right now, but its employees should in no way have to face the same fate. It isn't their fault this happened.

Canadian taxpayers have ended up filling part of the void in American support. We all now own a portion of General Motors. Exciting, right? It might be, if the company is successful in restructuring itself into a viable and competitive entity. That's where our support now is both crucial and risky. Having GM rebuild itself without our involvement early would mean that we would also have to accept not being a part of any future success they may have. We might just need them to help get us out of our own economic troubles.

Nolan's next topic: C.S. Lewis