Economic Commentary Just Stinks...

I need to get a job writing for AP or Yahoo! Finance... Today on Yahoo! Finance, there was a headline titled "Inaction on Big 3 would Cost Taxpayers Billions". This peaked my interested, because it is obviously intended to get public support of the bailout. At the very beginning, I find this brilliant thought:

The U.S. auto industry's problems will cost taxpayers plenty whether or not the government helps Detroit.

Just walking away and letting the struggling Big Three automakers go under would drain government coffers by about as much as the $15 billion bridge loan that lawmakers are preparing, and perhaps much more, according to outside analysts. The costs would come from lower tax collections by the federal, state and local governments and the payment of extra unemployment, pension and other benefits to unemployed or retired auto workers.

This is plain nonsense...

First, lost revenue to the government is not taxpayer expense. It is taxpayer cost when the government spends money. If the government doesn't get the money, it should cut back and not spend what it didn't get.

Second, why should the government take on the insurance of the pension plans? Yeah, there will be some unemployment, but not 15 billion dollars worth. These folks will find other jobs if given the incentive to, and prolonging unemployment benefits rids them of the incentive. People are going to lose out because of this recession, but government intervension socializes the losses to everyone. If the government would just get out of the way, the recession will be shorter and recover haster, and the losses will be focused to a lot fewer people.