My Two Cents

You know what? I'm really starting to get sick of all these blog posts, editorial cartoons and other things that any asshole with access to the internet is using to go on about how terrible this whole 'bailout' thing is. If you listen to these ridiculous, oversimplified and downright uninformed comments, the bailout is nothing more than the government giving our hard-earned taxes directly to big business 'fat cats'.

Yeah, that's what's happening. The government is stealing our hard-earned money so Mr. CEO can keep his mansion. That's exactly what's going on. It's all about the rich staying rich off the sweat of the average citizen's brow.

In case you can't tell, I'm being sarcastic.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not happy with the situation, and I think this whole thing has highlighted just how cut off from reality some of these CEOs are (such as the asshats who got their bailout money then immediately spent almost half a million on a 'retreat' for themselves), but here's the part everyone is missing…the alternative to this bailout is much, much worse.

The problem is that we're choosing to view these corporations as a handful of over-paid, selfish, greedy, mansion-dwelling fat-cats, when the reality is that these corporations are made up of millions of normal 'average joe' Americans. People talk about 'evil corporations' like Wal-Mart, but forget that the vast majority of the people who make up those those corporations are people working nine to five on eight dollars an hour.

The whole point of the bailout isn't so these fat-cats can buy a new Bentley, it's so these corporations stay in business and millions of Americans can keep their jobs. Think of it. How many people to Ford or Chrysler employ world-wide? Hell, if the car companies go out of business 99% of Detroit would be out of work overnight.

In simplest terms we 'bail out' these companies, they stay in business, continue to employ millions of people who spend their wages at other businesses and the economy chugs along.

If we 'teach the fat-cats a lesson' and watch as these businesses go under, suddenly there are millions of people out of work, the amount of disposable income plummets, driving other companies out of business, which puts more people out of work which sends us straight into another Great Depression…with the kicker being that it takes much more of our tax money to pay welfare to all the unemployed than it takes to 'bail out' the big corporations and keep those people in work in the first place.