The Immorality of Government Bailouts

How would you like to give part of your income up so that someone else can continue earning $120,000 a year at a job that requires no skills? Does this sound fair to you? Or how would you like help pay $400 million over ten years for the naming rights of the new Yankee Stadium? Actually, you have already helped pay for those naming rights and you are about to help that unskilled laborer keep his $120,000 per year job. You purchased those naming rights when Citibank was bailed out by the U.S. government. It will be called Citi stadium. When the government bails out the automakers you will help those employees to keep jobs which, when benefits are included, average $75.00 per hour.

This is the great immortality of government bailouts. In a country where the median income per family, which usually includes two working adults, is just over $50,000 per year; how can we tax these families so that someone else can keep their $120,000 or more individual income? The fact is that the United Auto Workers have priced themselves right out of a job. If we subsidize the auto companies, we only put off that time when management and labor have to face the fact that costs have to come down. Private jets for management and millionaire laborers may not be in that industry’s future, if it is to have one.

Citibank and others are able to go on buying their high prestige products with their expensive perks such as private luxury boxes, since we are standing by to bail them out from past errors and overabundances. Where is the restructuring, change of management and refocusing on core businesses that usually come with an economic downturn? These hard choices are able to be put off because the people who have the least to gain, the American taxpayer, are being forced pay up so that those who have received the most benefits and made the most mistakes, can continue on without making the hard changes that are required for economic health.

This really amounts to perpetuating the economic advantage held by a few at the cost of the many. It is a reverse socialism where the poor are made to pay so the rich can remain wealthy and not have to face the economic fallout from their bad decisions. It is not a matter of need but of political power. Our government has lost what little economic sense it had and is now throwing money in all directions at those with political clout, in the hope of fixing a problem they don’t really understand. They won’t fix anything but many will benefit from their largess and all of us will suffer the consequences.

Father Steven Foppiano