A Dose of Political Apathy: Should We Bail Out The Auto Industry?

A Dose of Political Apathy: Should We Bail Out The Auto Industry?: "I completely agree. I could go on a long rant about capitalism and how the free market is a large reason we became such a world power. But that aside, I agree. Why should our government pull large companies out of their self-dug economic graves? Times are changing: gas is becoming more expensive, cars are becoming more efficient, smaller. And China and Japan are just making better cars more cheaply. In addition to that, the American economy has always gone through phases of prosperity and poverty. Inflation and deflation. This 'recession' we're in is just a valley that we'll soon be out of, but that doesn't mean there won't be casualties. But for our government to try to keep afloat the dying auto companies, that if left to themselves would disintegrate because of their own inability to keep up with the global auto industry, is foolish to me. It also begins to reek a bit of communism. That would be a different topic however.

Yet, I wonder: if the government WERE to bail out our American auto companies, would that get them on their feet so they could actually produce competition for the auto companies of China and Japan? If so, it could be quite a useful investment for our government to make...although it is quite hard to predict such things..."

The price of an election= too much

Do you know how much it costs to run for president? It cost Senator McCain $333,000,000, and our new president, Barack Obama a whopping $730,000,000 according to opensecrets.org. The total amount raised for the 2008 presidential election by all the candidates was $1,000,000,000. That's $1 billion dollars. All that money was used for advertising, political rallies, speeches, the cost of signs etc. That's just what it takes to run for president these days. Even for someone to run for mayor, it can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. Does anyone else find this absolutely ridiculous?

The fact that that money could be put to different (better) uses aside, there are other problems with the massive cost of the campaigns and elections. One is the time it takes out of the actual political work. For presidential elections it's a little bit different, because they are devoting most of their time to the actual campaign, but for members of the House who only have 2 year terms, campaigns hardly ever stop. It's a time consuming process raising funds. The other problem I see with this is that it excludes those without money. Both John McCain and Barack Obama had millions of dollars of their own that they were able to spend on their campaigns in addition to the hundreds of millions they raised. America is supposedly a classless system, but when the political arena is only open to those who have the cash to spare, something is wrong. If you look at the statistics, you'll see that there is a direct correlation (most of the time, there are exceptions) between the amount raised and the amount of popularity the candidates amassed at the polls and, in the end, in the voter's booths.

I understand that the vast majority of the money raised came from enthusiastic supporters of the candidates. I'm not saying that if you're not rich you can't run for office. But I am saying that I think you can't get enough publicity to start your campaign unless you're rich, either to pay for advertising or to support yourself while you devote the time necessary to fund-raising.

Here's an interesting article from the Boston Globe on the subject