GM Deal: Our Socialist Experiment

Here’s the box score for the GM deal:

US Govt invested $19.4 billion in GM, and will get 72.5% of the company. (19.4B = 72.5)
UAW’s trust is owed $20 billion by GM, and will get 17.5% of the company. (20B = 17.5)
Bondholders invested $27 billion in GM, and will get 10% of the company. (27B = 10)
Stockholders who invested billions will get hosed. (Billions = 0).

Government and the Union will come out good on this deal. Individuals and organizations that invested in GM or loaned the company money were made to be schlubs. They simply pitched into the pot for the benefit of Government and the Union. People with money to invest or loan typically try to avoid being schlubs. Thus, it can be expected that they won’t make that mistake again. Speaking of which, investors greeted the unveiling of Government Motors by returning its stock values to where they were in the 1930s.

Having chased away non-governmental investors and creditors, the only way that Government Motors can work is by hobbling competitors with regulations and restrictions and/or by continuing to utilize additional taxpayer money.

We’ve seen socialism attempted time and time again. Other than for the people privileged to be in positions of power, it doesn’t work. Socialism robs people of liberty, and it kills the economy (further robbing people -- especially vulnerable people -- of liberty). And, for folks who get exercised about use of the word “socialism,” 72.5% ownership of General Motors qualifies.

UPDATE: Okay, I'm not falling for this. Though the URL says NY Times, this story about a critical player in the GM/socialism experiment having no relevant experience surely is something from The Onion:

WASHINGTON — It is not every 31-year-old who, in a first government job, finds himself dismantling General Motors and rewriting the rules of American capitalism.

But that, in short, is the job description for Brian Deese, a not-quite graduate of Yale Law School who had never set foot in an automotive assembly plant until he took on his nearly unseen role in remaking the American automotive industry.

Nor, for that matter, had he given much thought to what ailed an industry that had been in decline ever since he was born. A bit laconic and looking every bit the just-out-of-graduate-school student adjusting to life in the West Wing — “he’s got this beard that appears and disappears,” says Steven Rattner, one of the leaders of President Obama’s automotive task force — Mr. Deese was thrown into the auto industry’s maelstrom as soon the election-night parties ended.

“There was a time between Nov. 4 and mid-February when I was the only full-time member of the auto task force,” Mr. Deese, a special assistant to the president for economic policy, acknowledged recently as he hurried between his desk at the White House and the Treasury building next door. “It was a little scary.”

But now, according to those who joined him in the middle of his crash course about the automakers’ downward spiral, he has emerged as one of the most influential voices in what may become President Obama’s biggest experiment yet in federal economic intervention.