Archive for Auto Industry
Newtonomics
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Even cartoonists know old inefficient businesses need to be destroyed to make way for new and better things. Otherwise we’d be drawing on cave walls instead of computers.
Driving on Mute
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The National Transportation Safety Board wants cell phones banned in cars – except for devices built into the car by the manufacturer. Ron Paul objects by pointing out the constitution has nothing to say about cell phones or cars.
Jet Setter
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Chris Wallace famously asked Michelle Bachman if she were a “flake”.
Obama’s been called worse.
Tax breaks for corporate jets were included in the $800 billion stimulus package, right around the time auto execs were being slammed for arriving for congressional hearings in corporate jets. You can read about it here, here, or here.
Not only that, Bloomberg says it’s not even enough money to save student loans.
We’re All Investors Now
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Republicans used to call it tax and spend. Now it’s mostly just spend. Democrats call it investing. For all the hope and change, things have stayed pretty much the same.
I drew this in 1992. 
Scrap Stimulus
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Demand is up for used cars because people are poorer. Supply is down because last year’s Cash for Clunkers program turned used cars into scrap. The scrapped used car market was, according to George Will, “an important mechanism for redistributing wealth to low income persons”. In the Boston Globe, Jeff Jacoby sums up the program as, “a deplorable exercise in budgetary wastefulness, asset destruction, environmental irrelevance, and economic idiocy”.
Voltwagon
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Fredrich Hayek’s 1944 classic Road to Serfdom has become a best seller again. He said that governments tend to plan production for political, rather than market, purposes. Government owned GM’s new Volt costs $41,000, runs on a battery, and gets 40 miles per charge.
GM Pays You Back
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GM paid off its TARP loan with money from its TARP escrow account, then used more of your money to buy ads to brag about it. Nick Gillespie explains on Reason TV.
Twelve Steps to More Fame, Money, and Power
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Thomas Sowell had another good column last week in which he asked the age old question, “why is Tiger apologizing to me?”.
