The Northern Agrarian

Much has been made of the current crisis with the Big Three American car manufacturers and whether they are deserving of a bailout. Plenty have made reasonable cases as to why, based on pure free-market economics, the Big Three don’t deserve the rescue. I once subscribed to this way of thinking, always presenting an answer along the lines of “Companies, even big ones, should be allowed to fail in a free-market economy.” I recently revised my views, as well as linked to two great pieces by two great writers The free-market argument looks to me as something of a caricature. Try to play along.

Surprisingly Honest Fictional Enemy of the Bailout: America is a country built around free-market economics, and companies must be allowed to fail. I believe that the free-market operates in a vacuum, and while in one breath I will praise the inevitability of a globalized economy, I will pretend that other governments do not prop up their own industries with protective economic polices even though it is a major reason why foreign car companies are more competitive in the United States. I believe that foreign car companies have adapted better to the current market, which is why companies such as BMW have continued success on American shores. Yet I will ignore or push aside with semantics South Carolina’s subsidies to BMW, which give BMW a clear advantage in the region. I also believe this despite the fact that American companies have arguably adapted to the current car market better than any foreign companies have.

Big Government is an enemy of the people, yet I am unconcerned with Big Business or the relationship it has with Big Government. I Believe Big Business fights needless regulation, and is therefore a friend of the capitalist. Never mind that ” Enron was a tireless advocate of strict global energy regulations supported by environmentalists” and fought to keep laissez-faire bureaucrats off the commissions that regulate the energy industry; never mind that “Philip Morris has aggressively supported heightened federal regulation of tobacco and tobacco advertising”; never mind that a big tax increase in Virginia in 2006 was passed due to the tireless support of big businesses in the area, contributing to the long history of Big Business supported tax hikes. (Source: http://www.cato.org/research/articles/cpr28n4-1.html -PJF)

Companies like Wal-Mart and Target are great for Americans because they are far more competitive with the average consumer. The disappearance of locally-owned business is unfortunate but ultimately beneficial to consumers. I believe all of this despite what tax-authority David Cay Johnson calls “corporate socialism” that allows the big chains “to keep the sales taxes that you are forced to pay at the tax register.” (“Instead of that money going to the schools and the fire department and the police department and the library, it is funneled through a mechanism of local government, usually a special authority, to finance the purchase of municipal bonds so that means that the wealthy underwriters and the lawyers and auditors all get a piece of this money to buy the land and build the store,” Johnson told TV host Lawrence Velvel, dean of the law school. -PJF)

I am shocked and appalled that the Big Three would ask for a bailout, even though the politicians I support have little to say about government farm subsidies that lend credence to flawed and expensive industries like Ethanol or that plug American veins with dangerous high-fructose corn syrup. I also am a believer in low-taxes across board, yet I am fine with the idea that companies pay significantly less–percentage-wise–than most Americans, not even counting the billions in subsidies and handouts to companies cozier with those on the Hill than the Big three are.

I know that millions will lose their jobs if the Big Three fail, and that an industry inexorably intertwined with the history of modern America will cease to exist or become a mockery of what it once was. But as sad as that is, we as American capitalists do have our principles. It is worth it to stick to this strict capitalist ideology. I will even feign surprise and disgust when an American a Dutchman that wins the World Series of Poker ends up would have ended up with less money, after taxes, has he been an American than the COMMIE RUSSIAN that won second place (I’ll find the source and post it -PJF). Yet we are free capitalists. Never mind the loss of that which is immeasurable: pride, self-reliance, security. Never mind, never mind, never mind it all.

We do, after all, live in a free-market.