USA Economy: We Pay $105,000 For Your Chevy Volt

USA taxpayers are paying 50 billion plus to bailout GM, but that does not count the specific program bailouts. For example, the award-winning Chevy Volt is a heavily subsidized program, beyond the $50 billion taxpayer bailout of GM.

USA taxpayers forked over $240 million new money to GM for new R&D to develop the Volt. And since USA R&D is so 3rd world rate, we had to fork over $150 million to Koreans to develop the all-important battery. So that is $390 million. But there is more.

The Volt suggested price is $41,000. How much does Government Motors (GM) make? Well nothing... they cost about $40,000 to make, and sell by GM at $41,000.

The Volt has not proven popular. GM cut production projections from 60,000 to ten tousand 1st year production. GM sold less than 3200. Say they get 4000, which they will not.

4000 x $41000 = $164,000,000 in sales. To help sell the car, the taxpayers offer a $7500 rebate on the first 200,000 cars sold. Well, let's stick with the 4000 above. 4000 x $7500 = $30,000,000 taxpayers subsidy. (California taxpayers also offer some rebates, but we'll leave that out.)

So take the 390 million direct subsidies for the Volt and add $30 million in direct sales subsidies, and the taxpayer are paying (390 million + 30 million = 420 million... 420 million/400 = $105,000 direct taxpayer subsidies. So every time you see a Chevy Volt, or an advertisement for one, remember you paid to bail out GM, and you pay $105,000 for a car the buyer bought for $33,500.

Or another way of putting it, A Chevy Volt costs $139,500, of which the customer pays $33,500 and you pay $105,000. This does not include the $50 billion bailout, necessary for a company with such wacky and irresponsible management.

Well, who is buying the Chevy Volt. Collectors, govt agencies, and such. Some are even paying higher than the sticker price! Curious, that. Who would do so? Usually when people pay over the sticker price, it is due to shortage. That is not the problem here, so it would be interesting to investigate. What mischief is afoot? Wikipedia says some dealers are selling the car to other dealers, keep the $7500 rebate for themselves, and then resell the Volt as a low mileage used car. Nice.

USA is broke because almost all big business needs to be subsidized to survive. We literally cannot afford this. This is just one product item in one company. The list of similar boondoggles is endless. When the USA govt nationalized GM, it should have eliminated all subsidies and open-sourced all of its patents. At that point thousands of laid off workers would have started new companies. As it is our economy continues its downward path.

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