No bread means no sandwiches today
The realization that tough economic times was driven home, when the local sandwich shop ran out of bread. No reserves in the back room. No customers waiting for a hot batch of buns in the oven. Just a handlettered sign in the front door. Might as well have declared “Gone out of business”.
Now, we know that life isn’t really like that. This was just a correction, after a busy weekend afternoon. Things will return to normal by morning. It could be, though. The recent request by some very large automotive manufacturers for what (to me) qualify as unreasonable monetary injections from the tax system point to a system that is seriously off the rails. Even when the numbers are very large, judicious use of a pocket calculator allow the math-challenged to work out the math.
How many cars could we buy with 6 billion dollars? If you keep your option list simple, at around the $20K mark, you should be able to fill the local big store parking lots. My calculator says 300 thousand new cars. Shiny, with that volatile plastic odour in every one. Instead, the people at GM are promising to keep seven thousand people gainfully employed, while the profits continue to benefit shareholders.
Let’s recrunch those numbers. Although the union denies that the assembly line lad pulls down $100K per year, the number comes from somewhere. By gum, that’s a request that we pay the whole salary load for the next eight years. While the profits continue to benefit shareholders.
I’ve got a better idea. Let’s use the sandwich shop model. No bread; no customers; doors closed until the oven kicks out a few loaves. Meanwhile, the shareholders can do something else. In the words of a headless queen, “Let them eat cake!”
