Socialist Fiat Basically Goes Under

Something about their cars being government standard (i.e., craptastic) and them not being able to pay their employees federal salaries while still turning a profit or something. Now not even the government is willing to keep supporting them and federal subsidies were the only thing keeping them afloat.

Basically, the government took over a company, slowly, through unionization - because half of Italy and the Vatican really did manage to learn absolutely nothing from their fascist era - until the company's product became all Soviet and embarrassing from everyone's perspective. This is the fate of literally everything the government does with our money: it ultimately becomes what would be a hilarious running joke if it weren't going to be the death of us. Fiat, GM, the Post Office, Social Security, Medikare, Medikaid, public education, the FDA, the TSA, higher education, etc. are cancers: they feed on us, destroy us, and take us over from within; they have no redeeming value and yet, because they are gubbmint cancer, you can't kill them. You have to feed them your time and your labor and your children's futures until they are the death of your nation.

A harbinger of things to come.

Fiat’s Sergio Marchionne looked like a pretty shrewd operator when he was able to snag a bailed-out Chrysler from the US government without paying a penny. Between that and the booming European sales on the back of government-funded scrappage schemes, Fiat pretty much spent 2009 proving that automakers should cater to governments almost as much as consumers. But as 2009 wound down, Fiat’s government affairs winning streak came to a halt as the Italian government started asking for a little quid for its quo, and it’s been going downhill from there. Now that Fiat wants to shut down its Sicilian Termini Imerese plant, and right-size Italian production, the love affair is officially over. “We are examining the possibility of renewing [consumer incentives],” Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi told reporters from Automotive News [sub]. “But Fiat does not seem interested in them.”

Of course Fiat is interested in the incentives that it has admitted its addiction to. Berlusconi’s paternal pronunciation merely indicates that Fiat isn’t ready to guarantee jobs at the money-losing Imerese plant, which is the Italian government’s political price. “We have to have the courage to say that there have been enough government handouts if they do not safeguard jobs and industrial sites,” explains Italian Senate Speaker Renato Schifani.

Read the whole thing. It's our not-too-distant future if we don't decimate the federal government with pitchforks and torches if necessary. We have to be more united than unions and the ever-growing public sector so that we don't have to be as thuggish, brutal, or unaccountable. It can't be that hard. Any idiot who isn't even trying can do just about anything better than the government and that's the truth.

In fact, I wonder if there was ever a small business which employed the mentally handicapped but was later taken over by government. I would bet my bottom dollar that the mentally handicapped kicked the government's asses at everything that hypothetical small business did.

Fiat, like GM, makes cheap, crappy cars. The key difference between cheap and crappy standards, which companies can survive through upholding for decades, centuries even, and government standards is this: a plausible reason for existence.

Oh, and Fiat owns Chrysler, in case anyone forgot.