Canada is a fascist state: the auto sector bailout proves it
Here is an excerpt from Wikipedia’s article on fascist economics:
“Historian Gaetano Salvemini argued in 1936 that fascism makes taxpayers responsible to private enterprise, because “the State pays for the blunders of private enterprise… Profit is private and individual. Loss is public and social.”[26] Fascist governments encouraged the pursuit of private profit and offered many benefits to large businesses, but they demanded in return that all economic activity should serve the national interest.”
Now consider, in the recent $4 billion bailout, the government is stealing our money (called taxation), and giving it to businesses which are so inept that they are losing $6 billion per month. If these businesses were profitable do you think the government would have taken their profits and used it to pay for public services? No, that would be communist and that”s bad too. (What lunatic tries to make a profit when its just going to be taken from him. Communism punishes the able and rewards the weak, lazy, and stupid for being weak, lazy and stupid. It only lasted 70 years because there it was at least able to produce machine guns and people wiling to use them on their neighbours.)
No, profit (except for the amount stolen through taxation) remains private as it should but loss, well that”s another matter. I pay my life, car, health, and home insurance companies a pretty penny every month so that if I suffer a reversal in any of those areas, the insurance company will pay most of my loss. When did we, you and me and every other private Canadian citizen, become the insurers for the auto industry, or any other industry for that matter? When did these mega-businesses pay you and I a handsome premium every month so we would agree to bail them out if times got tough? When did we agree to work and earn money so our government could take it from us and give it to these failures?
If I am irresponsible enough to fail to buy adequate insurance and I suffer a loss, it is I who suffer. If the loss is truly too much for me to bear I can resort to private charity or welfare. But these corporate welfare bums are unwilling to suffer any such loss. Executives “need” to maintain their huge incomes and expense accounts. Workers “need” to preserve their inflated wages which people earning 10 times less than they do are taxed to preserve.
This is another feature of fascist economics – “corporatism” – referring to a system where the representatives of various interests within an industry (the largest businesses, unions, etc.) determine state policy for that industry. Sound familiar?
The last part of the Wikipedia excerpt refers to the cover story for all of this – that it is being done in the interests of the nation. Is anyone else out there like me and wish that all these people that are doing all these things supposedly in my best interest would just leave me alone?
What we need is not fascism, corporatism, or communism. What we need is for people and businesses to be self-reliant, to make it or break it based on the value of what they produce and not on how effectively they whine. The auto industry should not get one dime from the government. Instead they should be given the name of a trustee in bankruptcy so their assets can be sold to pay their debts and place those assets in the hands of people who can do something better than lose $6 billion per month.
“But what about all the jobs, lost both within the industry and as a spin-off effect?” Smoke and mirrors; slight of hand; distraction – these are all tricks used by both magicians and politicians. And the media (and the public) fall for them every time. The $6 billion that the government gives to the auto companies has to come from somewhere – take more taxes from people, redirect spending, borrow more money, print more money. That about covers the options. If they tax it from people or redirect spending they are just preserving auto sector jobs by losing jobs in other areas of the economy. Worse, since the auto industry is failing, more jobs are lost in other areas than are preserved in the auto sector. But the good news is that the big headlines “Auto industry saved” makes auto workers, politicians, media, and voters feel good. Never mind that even more jobs were lost, one here and two there, throughout the rest of the economy – no headlines there.
Another option is borrowing. But any amount borrowed just reduces the amount available for other productive businesses to borrow to fund their relatively more productive enterprises. So again, a pile of jobs get saved over here under the camera lights but even more jobs are lost spread fairly evenly across the rest of the economy.
The last option, printing more money, is inflationary by definition and thank goodness no one is talking about it so neither will I.
So, anyone who supports the bailout is either stupid (or ignorant, or thoughtless) or dishonest – lying about it being good for the whole country when it is actually only good for a limited few and for a limited time.
I am ashamed, ashamed, ashamed that I ever belonged to and supported the party that is most responsible for turning Canada into a fascist state. Conservatives should know better. They pretend to know better. They spout off about valuing free enterprise and personal responsibility. That means they have duty to stick to those principles when the chips are down. A would-be rescuer who throws a rope to someone who has fallen through the ice has a duty not to let go of the rope until the victim is safely ashore. Conservatives who say they believe in free markets but embrace corporatism when the market takes a bad turn are worse than enemies, they are traitors and they deserve a traitors fate.
Maybe a dose of Liberal purgatory or NDP hell will smarten people up and bring to power true believers in the economic heaven that only free-market capitalism can produce.