Free Enterprise?

I don't get it. This is supposed to be a free enterprise system, yet it seems that if you are big enough and get into trouble the government will bail you out. Doesn't free enterprise mean you go into business and take your chances?
In taking over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac - who coined such childish names? - one of the things mentioned is that otherwise stockholders might lose everything. Isn't that what investing in stocks is supposed to be all about? When things go up you profit, when they go down you lose, or so I thought. If I buy a lottery ticket and it isn't the winning number, will the government step in to see I don't lose my money? Fat chance.
The entire mortgage loan business is a fiasco. That's OK, the taxpayers will fix things up. Otherwise they couldn't continue business as usual.
Now the auto manufacturers want $50 billion in loans from the feds. Only the American companies because the foreign ones won't need it. They've been doing things the right way all along. So who bailed out Packard and Studebaker and Auburn and Stutz and all the other fine car makers that went under? Nobody - but Ford and General Motors and Chrysler, the ones now asking for $50 billion, did everything they could to hurry them into the grave.
The economists would say I just don't understand. They're right, I don't.
Or maybe I do get it. If you're a little guy, you're out there on your own. If you're big enough, Uncle Sam is always standing by to take care of you. Is that what they mean by a free enterprise system? Maybe someone should explain to me the difference between capitalism, socialism, communism and all the other isms. When things get tough they seem to be remarkably similar.

It's not the government's fault their vehicles aren't selling. The American tax payers should owe no obligation whatsoever to any corporation or priviate company. I think the auto manufactures should start manufacturing more fuel efficient easier to afford vehicles and stop making gas guzzling pigs. They need to realize that with $4.00 a gallon gasoline, most people don't want vehicles that get only 15 or 20 miles per gallon. Furthermore, if these companies and corporations cannot react appropriately to market forces, they deserve to go out of business. There should be no government bail-out for the auto manufactures or any other corporate entity.

There's a broader picture. If the mega car companies go under or cut back drastically, workers are laid off. With no wages, they can't buy groceries, clothes, cars or anything else. And the little suppliers to the big auto companies in turn have to cut back, and lay off more workers. Then the retailers, suffering loss of business because the traditional consumers can't buy products, suffer additional personnel layoffs. None of the laid-off workers can pay into the income and sales tax tax systems, but will drain the welfare programs. The economy is a house of cards; one errant breeze and it all collapses. So the solution is to keep the big employers in business and hope for the trickle-down glue to hold the free enterprise, free market system in place.

Jim Woods
www.ultrasw.com/jwoods

In other words it isn't a free enterprise system. What's fair for one should be fair for all and if it truly is what it claims to be it wouldn't depend on trickle down. Those farther down shouldn't have to take the scraps left over from the big players. No one bails out the mom and pop store when a mega chain moves in. If Ford, General Motors and Chrysler can't build cars that people want they should get the same amount of help Packard and Studebaker got - nothing. Otherwise let's quit calling it a free enterprise system and call it a trickle down system. As long as the fat cats at GM and Ford know the government, meaning the taxpayers, will bail them out the Japanese will continue to beat them into the ground. At least they know how to build cars.

Dick,
Amen! You hit the nail on the head. "Free Enterprise" is another word that has changed its meaning over the years.

Jim, your analysis is true, however it doesn't change the facts expressed by Dick. If we're going to deal in exceptions, then those exceptions should be available to everyone, not just the rich and powerful. That is not equal opportunity.

What the government creates, it can take back. Apparently. Maybe they should have just kept those companies federal all along.

Malcolm