I am sure you have been reading the news about all of these businesses asking for bail-outs because they are all going under due to the poor economy and lack of buyers in the market.
Most recently the major automobile industries, such as
Ford,
General Motors and
Chrysler, asked for handouts.
You know what I say to all these companies? Stop whining and start DOING!
Don’t get me wrong, I think that the government does need to aid these industries in some way, but is $25 billion worth of money really going to fix the problem???
Bail-outs can be a bad thingLet’s try and relate this to an issue that every college student such as myself has.
Say you are walking around town and realize you only have five bucks in your bank account, but you really want a 30-pack of that great American beer,
Busch Light, for the festivities later in the night.
A 30-pack of
Busch will run you about 18 big ones plus tax. You have five dollars remember? What’s a college student to do?
Put it on your credit card of course! Hey, why not grab some
Panchero’s too! Hell yes!
$200 later your credit card bill arrives. Uh-oh! How did that happen? All I got was some
Busch Light and
Panchero’s and a few other things…
Having this credit card acted as a temporary solution to your lack of money problem. Rather than saying, “Man I only have five dollars, I need to rethink my budget,” you instead thought, “OK, I’ll start budgeting later, but for now, I will use my credit card.”
Having a credit card allows college students to pay for things they don’t need, when what they really should be doing is looking at their statements and thinking about how they could better save money the next time around.
But what does this have to do with bail-outs? Now look at the automobile industry, or any other industry for that matter. Sure, we can give them $25 billion, but is that really going to make everything better in the long run? The answer is more than likely NO.
Giving them the money is the easy way out.
Imagine if we didn’t give these industries hand-outs. They would be forced to cut costs, drop product and employees, but at the same time, they would have to come up with new ways to sell product to the consumer while reinventing themselves.
These companies should be putting more resources into developing vehicles that rely on new forms of energy and on making other advancements.
The Middle Ground If anything, I say we reach a consensus.
Sure you can have the $25 billion, BUT you must use ____% in the research and development of cars that work off of more efficient sources of energy.
Energy is the next big money-maker for our economy. The person who finds an efficient new way of providing energy will be the Bill Gates of our generation. Instead of Silicon Valley we will have Energy Valley powered by wind, hydrogen or some other source of power.
We can’t expect the economy to be saved by government funding. Instead, it is time for businesses to start doing, thorough internal analyses and change, before it’s too late.
Occasionally Eric agrees with Republicans! Check out this opinion article written by… gasp…
Mitt Romney that was recently published in the
New York Times. I am no Republican, but I have to say he is actually making some sense here.
Who knew I would ever come close to agreeing with
Romney?
Not everything is failing...Oh, and not all businesses are doing badly. In fact video game sales
jumped 18% in October!
If only money came out of cement blocks in the real world...
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