• This is a political forum that is non-biased/non-partisan and treats every person's position on topics equally. This debate forum is not aligned to any political party. In today's politics, many ideas are split between and even within all the political parties. Often we find ourselves agreeing on one platform but some topics break our mold. We are here to discuss them in a civil political debate. If this is your first visit to our political forums, be sure to check out the RULES. Registering for debate politics is necessary before posting. Register today to participate - it's free!

What do you think of GM's "thank you" ad?

Which statement best reflects your opinion of the GM "thank you" ad?

  • It's perfectly fine and appropriate.

    Votes: 9 36.0%
  • It's ok but inaccurate. American's didn't voluntarily bail out GM

    Votes: 5 20.0%
  • It's 100% inaccurate. The Gov. inappropriately bailed out GM.

    Votes: 3 12.0%
  • It's a joke. The Gov. overstepped its bounds using tax money to buy an auto company.

    Votes: 4 16.0%
  • Other (write in / explain)

    Votes: 3 12.0%
  • Tarter sauce.

    Votes: 1 4.0%

  • Total voters
    25

Ockham

Noblesse oblige
DP Veteran
Joined
Oct 12, 2009
Messages
23,909
Reaction score
11,003
Location
New Jersey
Gender
Male
Political Leaning
Libertarian - Right
Watch the advertisement...

take the poll...



 
I think its excellent actually. And look.... I had MAJOR doubts..... infact I was PISSED Obama tossed them a rope. Now..... Im still a bit ticked BUT VERY thankful it worked. I cant BELIEVE it freakin' WORKED!
 
I'm not terribly impressed. I seriously doubt it's meant in the spirit it's presented in. Buying goodwill with ad time doesnt really impress me.
 
I'm sorry it looks like a high school media project made up of Utube's videos
 
They better be saying thank you. And I don't see any problem with it, we gave them money, and now they've given a lot of it back, and they're a much more competitive company than before.
 
I'm sorry it looks like a high school media project made up of Utube's videos

Well the commercial isnt a high-tech video. Its just a simple representation to get the point across. Its simple. Its MEANT to be simple. Its just says we all get knocked on our ass... and then we get up again. (yes Im thinking of that song too)
Its meant as a good will commerical that is well intended. Also its advertising. Either way I appreciate it. They COULD have just taken that money and advertised their cars. Its a very good marketing move if ya ask me.
 
Well the commercial isnt a high-tech video. Its just a simple representation to get the point across. Its simple. Its MEANT to be simple. Its just says we all get knocked on our ass... and then we get up again. (yes Im thinking of that song too)
Its meant as a good will commerical that is well intended. Also its advertising. Either way I appreciate it. They COULD have just taken that money and advertised their cars. Its a very good marketing move if ya ask me.
They spent a couple thousand on the airtime for it and probably an hour making it, why is this such an awesome thing?
 
I think its excellent actually. And look.... I had MAJOR doubts..... infact I was PISSED Obama tossed them a rope. Now..... Im still a bit ticked BUT VERY thankful it worked. I cant BELIEVE it freakin' WORKED!

Gotta agree.

Although there has been some "accounting fancy footwork" which has overstated the success, all in all the GM bailaout has turned out much better than I expected. Very pleasant surprise....;)

.
 
I loved it. Very classy move by GM. I suspect some conservatives simply do not want to be reminded and are disturbed by it thinking their faces are being rubbed in the dirt.
 
Gotta agree.

Although there has been some "accounting fancy footwork" which has overstated the success, all in all the GM bailaout has turned out much better than I expected. Very pleasant surprise....;)

.

If GM's sales contiune at their current growth rates as if their Asian branch picks up as its predicted, using the timeline of projected government stock sales and likely dividend and stock appreciation, there actually is a pretty decent chance we'll get a profit on this. People are far too focused on appreciation. That's not the only venue of income.
 
They better be saying thank you. And I don't see any problem with it, we gave them money, and now they've given a lot of it back, and they're a much more competitive company than before.

Maybe the money they used to make that commercial (how much is airtime running these days?) should have been put to better use in a more effective way to 'thank' everyone.

One word - insincere.
 
I loved it. Very classy move by GM. I suspect some conservatives simply do not want to be reminded and are disturbed by it thinking their faces are being rubbed in the dirt.

Explain this please.
 
Maybe the money they used to make that commercial (how much is airtime running these days?) should have been put to better use in a more effective way to 'thank' everyone.

One word - insincere.

I have no doubt that they didn't run that ad just to say thanks, but its a great PR thing. Its the sort of thing that puts confidence in the company, and I'm sure that they were planning to run some ad. This just happened to be the best choice out of their options. Makes them look like a very humbled company, which doesn't hurt.
 
Maybe the money they used to make that commercial (how much is airtime running these days?) should have been put to better use in a more effective way to 'thank' everyone.

One word - insincere.

Commercials like this and the BP ones are not run randomly. The company expects to make their money back and more from the positive message they are getting out. Advertising has proven to be effective in increasing sales and profits.
 
good ad.

but Bush still made the wrong move; though I can respect his unwillingness to hand off a tanking auto industry to President Obama. we still should not have bailed out GM. GM going into bankruptcy no more means that it would have stopped making and selling cars; it means it would have gone into restructuring and been able to shed itself of these horrid union contracts and a failed business model.

we didn't bail out GM; we bailed out the UAW, and we bailed them out but good.

GM paid us 'back'..... with our own money after the second round of giving, and had the nerve to advertise it.

don't get me wrong; it's a good bit.

but the bailouts were still a huge error, and the American people thought so at the time and think so now.



and it suddenly occurs to me; no one is trumpeting the success of Chrysler?
 
dum de dum.... yup, i'm so glad now that i've seen this ad that we the taxpayers hooked up President Obama's political allies...


GM's union recovering after stock sale: Taxpayers and investors not as fortunate as UAW

General Motors Co.'s recent stock offering was staged to start paying back the government for its $50 billion bailout, but one group made out much better than the taxpayers or other investors: the company's union.

Thanks to a generous share of GM stock obtained in the company's 2009 bankruptcy settlement, the United Auto Workers is well on its way to recouping the billions of dollars GM owed it — putting it far ahead of taxpayers who have recouped only about 30 percent of their investment and further still ahead of investors in the old GM who have received nothing.

The boon for the union fits the pattern established when the White House pushed GM into bankruptcy and steered it through the courts in a way that consistently put the interests of the union ahead of many suppliers, dealers and investors — stakeholders that ordinarily would have fared as well or better under the bankruptcy laws.

"Priority one was serving the interests of the UAW" when the White House's auto task force engineered the bankruptcy, said Glenn Reynolds, an analyst at CreditSights. The stock offering served to show once again how the White House has handsomely rewarded its political allies, he said...

In any event, after selling one-third of its shares last week, the U.S. Treasury has agreed not to sell any more of its GM stock for another six months, while the union fund is free to keep selling its shares.

Through the offering, the Treasury recouped $13.7 billion of its $49.5 billion cash infusion in GM, with another $1.8 billion possible by the end of the year. GM is repaying another $9.5 billion in loans from the Treasury, but that still leaves taxpayers a long way from breaking even.

Union claims ordinarily do not receive such special treatment in bankruptcies.

The generous share of GM stock given to the union trust fund under the White House deal puts it not only ahead of the Treasury but on a par with secured creditors such as banks, which normally receive the most favorable treatment from bankruptcy courts...
 
Last edited:
Explain this please.

Some people opposed helping the auto companies because of right wing ideology. Now we have discovered that the aid to the companies was a positive move and helped prevent the collapse of those companies and perhaps and outright depression. This commercial is a reminder of that. And some people do not like to be reminded of their own errors in judgment.
 
Some people opposed helping the auto companies because of right wing ideology. Now we have discovered that the aid to the companies was a positive move and helped prevent the collapse of those companies and perhaps and outright depression.

say what? i would very much like to see where we have discovered any such thing.
 
say what? i would very much like to see where we have discovered any such thing.

Perhaps the opinion of the Nobel Prize winner in the field of economics means something to show you the possible Depression we faced as Obama entered office.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/05/opinion/05krugman.html

The steps we took with the auto companies saved millions of jobs that could have well pushed us into the abyss.
 
say what? i would very much like to see where we have discovered any such thing.

Perhaps the opinion of the Nobel Prize winner in the field of economics means something to show you the possible Depression we faced as Obama entered office.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/05/opinion/05krugman.html

and that aid was part of a package that contributed to the hated deficit - but that aid and the deficit it helped to grow indeed helped to save us from a Depression

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/15/deficits-saved-the-world/

The steps we took with the auto companies saved millions of jobs that could have well pushed us into the abyss.
 
Last edited:
I chose other. GM would have done much better to take the money that they spent on that ad and give it to their shareholders, which would be the tax payers. They owe us a whole lot more than that.

I love how Obama keeps saying his bailout worked because now the taxpayers are getting back 13b of their 50b investment. I don't know about you, but I haven't seen a dime yet. And we won't because Obama already spent that 13b again several times. I don't want a "thank you" from GM. I want our 50 billion dollars back.
 
Everytime I see the ads, I always wonder how much did it cost us to produce the said ads. The only news I care about in regards to GM is that when the money is actually paid back, not put into some escrow account.
 
Perhaps the opinion of the Nobel Prize winner in the field of economics means something

considering it's Paul Krugman, who long ago traded in his economic credentials for his political hack ones, then no, it doesn't really :)

but it does make for occasional entertainment for those of us who watch his acrobatics:

Krugman v Krugman: the perils of punditry

Paul Krugman takes note in his New York Times column of what he calls “the incredible gap that has opened up between the parties”: “What Democrats believe,” he says “is what textbook economics says”

Here’s what Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona, the second-ranking Republican in the Senate, had to say when defending Mr. Bunning’s position (although not joining his blockade): unemployment relief “doesn’t create new jobs. In fact, if anything, continuing to pay people unemployment compensation is a disincentive for them to seek new work.”

Krugman scoffs: “To me, that’s a bizarre point of view–but then, I don’t live in Mr. Kyl’s universe.”

What does textbook economics have to say about this question? Here is a passage from a textbook called “Macroeconomics“:

Public policy designed to help workers who lose their jobs can lead to structural unemployment as an unintended side effect. . . . In other countries, particularly in Europe, benefits are more generous and last longer. The drawback to this generosity is that it reduces a worker’s incentive to quickly find a new job. Generous unemployment benefits in some European countries are widely believed to be one of the main causes of “Eurosclerosis,” the persistent high unemployment that affects a number of European countries.​

So it turns out that what Krugman calls Sen. Kyl’s “bizarre point of view” is, in fact, textbook economics. The authors of that textbook are Paul Krugman and Robin Wells. Miss Wells is also known as Mrs. Paul Krugman…

to show you the possible Depression we faced as Obama entered office.

you do realize that Bush bailed out GM, right?

The steps we took with the auto companies saved millions of jobs that could have well pushed us into the abyss.

objectively it did not; simply because a major company like GM goes into bankruptcy procedings doesn't mean it stops producing cars, that all of it's factories shut down, or anything of the like. it is allowed to structure, and get out from these gawdawful union contracts.

in the meantime, the money that the government borrowed to bail them out came from pools of capital that otherwise would have been invested in different vehicles, which would have led to a speedier and greater recovery.

the US government, in fact, made the recession worse by bailing out GM.



incidentally, if you want some actual academic perusal of the government "stimulus" response to recessions, you might try reading this: Crises Economics

...TAXING LESS OR SPENDING MORE?

Addressing this question requires not only data about the past year or two, but also analysis of some key assumptions at the core of the administration's approach to fiscal policy. In particular, that approach seems to take for granted that the question in choosing between spending and tax cuts is which would have the greater multiplier effect, and that the answer to that question is spending rather than tax cuts.

The first assumption overlooks an important difference between spending and tax cuts in the context of economic stimulus. When the government is seeking to revive its sick patient — the economy — time is of the essence. And time must be considered in any analysis of multipliers and other economic effects of stimulus policy. Chief among these considerations is whether government can spend money both quickly and wisely.

Many of us can draw on our own experiences in addressing that question. Anyone familiar with government projects even at the municipal level knows that the process is usually prolonged and onerous. Even if the design phase is managed well, the project is built efficiently, and the end product proves to be of good use to the community — all big "ifs" — the time involved in debating project proposals, securing approval from citizens and local boards, planning the design, hiring contractors, and completing the construction often stretches to years. Cram the process into a dramatically shortened time frame, and the likelihood that the project will be an example of "wise" government spending diminishes significantly. Expand the scope of the government spending from town planning to national fiscal policy, and the likelihood shrinks even further.

This is not just a matter of government waste, but also a question of whether money spent under such circumstances actually helps the economy grow in a way that best enhances citizens' well-being. Whenever public money is involved, it is important to ask whether the spending will produce something society needs, or wants, to improve the general economic climate. Money spent on a new road that allows farmers to get their products to market faster and in better condition, for instance, creates more value than money spent building a "bridge to nowhere," even if both projects create the same number of construction jobs.

To look at it another way: If a person pays his neighbor $100 to dig a hole in his backyard and then fill it up again, and the neighbor hires him to do the same, government statisticians will report that the economy has created two jobs and that the gross domestic product has risen by $200. But it is unlikely that, having wasted all that time digging and filling, either person is better off — economically or otherwise. Each person's net financial gain is zero, and all anyone has to show for the effort is a patch of fresh dirt in the backyard, which is unlikely to improve anyone's standard of living.

Private individuals don't usually spend their money on things they don't want or need. So when money is kept in the hands of citizens, and transactions take place in the private sector, there is less cause to worry about inefficient spending. The same cannot always be said of government. This means that government spending designed to stimulate the economy must first be subjected to serious cost-benefit analysis, which is hard to do in a big rush. Not all government spending is created equal — and rushed spending is, in many important ways, likely to be less efficient and less useful than spending that is carefully planned.

The administration's second assumption, meanwhile, is a matter of academic theories about the sizes of the relevant economic multipliers. Textbook Keynesian economics tells us that government-purchases multipliers are larger than tax-cut multipliers. And, as we have seen, the Obama administration's economic team consulted these standard models in deciding that spending would be significantly more effective than tax cuts.

But a great deal of recent economic evidence calls that conclusion into question. In an ironic twist, one key piece comes from Christina Romer, who is now chair of Obama's Council of Economic Advisers. About six months before she took the job, Romer teamed up with her husband and fellow Berkeley economist David Romer to write a paper ("The Macroeconomic Effects of Tax Changes") that sought to measure the influence of tax policy on GDP. Crucial to the Romers' method was their effort to identify changes in tax policy made during times of relative economic stability, and driven by a desire to influence economic behavior or activity (to encourage growth, say, or reduce a deficit), rather than those changes made in response to a recession or crisis. By studying such "exogenous" tax-policy changes, the Romers could be more confident that they were in fact measuring the effects of taxes and not those of extraneous conditions.

The Romers' conclusion, which is at odds with most traditional Keynesian analysis, was that the tax multiplier was 3 — in other words, that every dollar spent on tax cuts would boost GDP by $3. This would mean that the tax multiplier is roughly three times larger than Obama's advisors assumed it was during their policy simulations.

Of course, it could be that all multipliers are larger than previously assumed. Perhaps fiscal policy has such a great influence over our economy that, if the tax multiplier is 3, the government-spending multiplier is 4 or 5. We don't know from the Romers' study; they did not analyze government-spending multipliers, only tax multipliers. But several studies on government-spending multipliers have been conducted using techniques similar to those used by the Romers. And none has found government-spending multipliers to be so large as to justify assumptions about the inherent superiority of government spending over tax cuts.

Some excellent work on this topic has come from Valerie Ramey of the University of California, San Diego. Ramey finds a government-spending multiplier of about 1.4 — a figure close to what the Obama administration assumed, but much smaller than the tax multiplier identified by the Romers. Similarly, in recent research, Andrew Mountford (of the University of London) and Harald Uhlig (of the University of Chicago) have used sophisticated statistical techniques that try to capture the complicated relationships among economic variables over time; they conclude that a "deficit-financed tax cut is the best fiscal policy to stimulate the economy." In particular, they report that tax cuts are about four times as potent as increases in government spending.

Perhaps the most compelling research on this subject is a very recent study by my colleagues Alberto Alesina and Silvia Ardagna at Harvard. They used data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development to identify every major fiscal stimulus adopted by the 30 OECD countries between 1970 and 2007. Alesina and Ardagna then separated those plans that were in fact followed by robust economic growth from those that were not, and compared their characteristics. They found that the stimulus packages that appeared to be successful had cut business and income taxes, while those that evidently did not succeed had increased government spending and transfer payments...
 
from cpwill

considering it's Paul Krugman, who long ago traded in his economic credentials for his political hack ones, then no, it doesn't really

His opinion seemed to matter a great deal to the Nobel Committee who awarded him the Prize for Economics. That carries a bit of weight.
 
haymarket:

Argument from Authority

Appeal to authority is a fallacy of defective induction, where it is argued that a statement is correct because the statement is made by a person or source that is commonly regarded as authoritative.

here you fail because Krugman isn't even authoritative; his academic work isn't even in this branch of economics (as i recall it's in trade); it's his punditry that specializes in the non-falsifiable argument that the answer is always more government spending.
 
Back
Top Bottom