GM - Can We Have Some Socialism Please?

General Motors, the world's second largest vehicle manufacturer, announced today that they have been hemorrhaging money for so long, they will be in serious financial trouble (AKA broke) by next year.

So they are now calling for the government to bail them out, handing them a big chunk of cash because they ran their company into the ground.

It should be noted that their CEO Rick Wagoner earns about $5 million a year. Has a pension worth about $19.7m. And when he leaves the company he is likely to get a golden handshake of $15m.

As you might imagine, I have several issues and opinions with all of this:

• GM make shit cars. They have for years. Their cars are unreliable, depreciate like a stone, guzzle gas, are not innovative, and there are far too many different makes and models. Given the sheer cost of creating a new car these days, you can't be making such a wide variety and still make profits. Better to produce fewer makes and models, and do the job well.
• How the fuck is the CEO making five million dollars a year (or about 500 times what a minimum wage worker makes), when he is doing such a shit job? I'm pretty sure you could grab a random guy off the shop floor of one of the factories and they'd do a comparable job, and wouldn't demand a $5m salary.
  
• I have very little sympathy for this company. They shafted American workers. Started buying parts from Canada, assembling cars in Mexico, all while advertising that people should buy American.
  
• What's with this sudden push for socialism? We heard all election about how the evil Obama was a socialist. But now all these rich Republican CEOs are going to the government cap in hand after their poor management decisions have led to the destruction of the companies they looted.