Why General Motors and Ford Should Not Be Allowed to Fail

Here's 2 reasons why GM and Ford in particular deserve the support of the American car-buying public, and why the failure of either one or both would cause severe damage to our economy.

Reason #1: You simply cannot take billions of dollars out of the U.S. economy without there being a negative fallout that will affect every American. General Motors and Ford top the list in terms of spending on research & development in America, spending over $12 billion annually. In third place is Microsoft. Last year, GM spent $4.75 billion supporting their retirees and $2.1 billion in advertising (fourth highest in the U.S.)Gannett Co., publisher of the USA Today and other major newspapers, just announced on August 14, 2008, it was eliminating 1,000 jobs, partly due to falling ad revenue, reinforcing the notion that if the revenue pockets at GM dry up, so do other pockets of the economy.

Reason #2: GM and Ford combined have nearly 100 major plants in the United States. Toyota, Honda and Nissan each have eight. Ford and GM both get at least 80 percent of their parts from American factories, while Toyota, Honda, and Nissan get only 45-55 percent of their parts from here. German-owned Volkswagen, which gets only three percent of their parts from America, just agreed to build their first U.S. plant only after getting a record-setting $500 million in tax giveaways, courtesy of your tax dollars, to employ 2,000 people.