...or, George Will may be an out-of-touch elitist prick, but every now and then he does get something right. To wit:
...He (the president -- ed.) hopes buyers will choose American cars. A sensible person might add: Buyers should choose cars made by the Ford Motor Company.
This is so because Ford has, so far, avoided becoming an appendage of the government. And because the national interest will not be served by GM and Chrysler flourishing. It might cost taxpayers more in the short run, but in the long run it will be less costly for the country if the government finds its confident plunge into industrial policy so unpleasant that, sadder but wiser, the incumbent professors and others will flee from such adventures in extracting sunbeams from cucumbers.
Yep. Depending on Americans' outlook on the whole thing -- if they indeed think as some do, that buying a Chrysler or GM is out of the question considering they've given enough of their tax money to those companies, as JR so eloquently put it -- this could be a huge boon for Ford. And considering Ford has thus far not needed government money I'd say they deserve it. I got a kick out of Will's observation on how Toyota can justify continued production of the Prius by basically selling enough gas-guzzling trucks to make up for the lack of profits made on that car. No doubt if Obama thought he could get away with it he'd try to strongarm Toyota into making more of those hybrids using taxpayer money as the carrot and punitive taxes as the stick. But I'd better shut my mouth, lest I give those cretins any ideas...
|