The CEOs of Chrysler, GM, and Ford all flew from Detroit to Washington to beg for money, because they fear their companies are going to run out of liquid capital and cease to be able to operate. And those same CEOs didn’t see anything remotely ironic about taking luxury private jets to go do it. What kind of “safety” policies are advanced by private jets for the CEOs? So they won’t be, what, kidnapped or something? I’ve flown commercial flights all my life and I’ve never been kidnapped once. Of course, whenever I’ve had to fly for business, I’ve been in steerage, so I guess I’m just not all that sympathetic.
First class, I can see. Give them some room to work, while they’re spending the company’s money on air travel. Get them in the executive lounge in the terminal, yeah, okay, that’s cool. These are elite dudes and some degree of elite treatment is part of the job.
But when you get shuttled around the country in a private jet, it’s just plain unseemly to ask for billions of dollars in government handouts because you’ve run your company into the ground.
Short on dough, GM? Here’s my suggestion: build a car that people actually want to buy. Otherwise, the $25,000,000,000 that you’re asking for to keep the doors of your plant open? We’d be better-off paying it directly to the hundreds of thousands of people who work in the auto industry so they can have a year’s worth of income or so to readjust for life without your sorry asses while you get reorganized, bought out, and restructured by people who know how to handle enterprises of your size and scale. It isn’t 1958 anymore and you don’t and will never again have a 56% market share. You must adapt or you will die.
And I, for one, am becoming daily more convinced that I’d be better off letting you die, rather than personally subsidize your private airplane flights through my tax tollars.
