A discussion similar to this took place on DailyKos a few days ago, so I'll simply paste in what I wrote for that thread, because I'm sitting in my office, which has been taken over by the Obama campaign, waiting for the first poll watching reports to be brought in by the runner.

. . . there is a fundamental difference between a manufacturing company and a financial company. No matter what it produces, a manufacturing company is a depository of physical machine assets, and labor, technical, and engineering skills, that can, and must, be used to begin producing our way out of this new economic depression.

Think of the industrial mobilization for World War II. Factories that made toasters or Victrolas - arguably consumer goods that did not serve a vital purpose - were converted to producing vital war material such as radio tubes or radios or radar sets or whatever. What bank or financial company could be converted to produce vital war material? Therein lies the essential difference between a manufacturing company and a financial company, and why, no matter how wrong-headed the recent management history of a manufacturing company may be (and I absolutely agree that the past few decades U.S. automakers were very, very wrong-headed), we cannot afford to allow any of our manufacturing companies to fail and their valuable physical machine assets, and labor, technical, and engineering skills dispersed.

Why? Think of almost all the recent commentary about the financial crises that is now dragging the real economy into depression. "The U.S., and U.S. consumers, have been living beyond their means. They have been consuming more than they produce." The standard prescription to this observed problem is that Americans have to be forced to stop consuming so much. Which is going to cause an even worse depression. The reason for why this apparently obvious solution – the curtailment of consumption – leads inexorably to this abysmal outcome, were ably explained by Marriner S. Eccles, who served as Franklin D. Roosevelt's Chairman of the Federal Reserve from November 1934 to February 1948, in his memoirs, Beckoning Frontiers (New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1951):

"As mass production has to be accompanied by mass consumption, mass consumption, in turn, implies a distribution of wealth -- not of existing wealth, but of wealth as it is currently produced -- to provide men with buying power equal to the amount of goods and services offered by the nation's economic machinery." [Emphasis in original.]

The full quote from Eccles, which explains how the income inequality created by the financial speculation of the 1920s led to the disastrous weakening of mass consumption, can be read on the Wikipedia page Great Depression
http://en.wikipedia.org/... - scroll down about one third of the page to the section, "Inequality of wealth and income."

Many of the commenters above evince a hostility toward the idea of manufacturing industries, and many probably share the unfortunately common belief that "mass consumption" is an unsustainable model of economic organization. There are two problems that need to be addressed here.

First, is what I call the idea of the flying monkey butt economy - these people must think that all the things they take for granted in their everyday life: the computer monitor in front of them, the wood paneling and plasterboard on the walls surrounding them, the concrete and re-bar in the sidewalks and streets they walk and drive on, the simple ceramic cup they sip their coffee or tea from -- they must think that all these things come from some flying monkey that squats in front of their abode and shits these things out just for their own personal use. Or maybe they think these things are made in the back rooms of the stores they buy these things at. It really is a massive mental disconnect to think that we can get along without industry. You want wind power generation? You want urban rail mass transit? Fine. But just where do you think the steel and the aluminum and the plastic and so on for the windmills and the rails and the passenger rail cars is going to come from? the butt of a flying monkey?

Look, we need manufacturing. It’s as simple as that. We’ve allowed much of our manufacturing base to be moved overseas to take advantage of cheap labor and lax environmental and safety regulations. That was not just immoral, but now we see that it has fatally weakened our national financial position as well. Thirty years ago, the U.S. was the leading manufacturing nation in the world, and the largest creditor nation as well. Now that we’ve allowed so much of our manufacturing to slip away, we’ve become the largest debtor nation, and China, whence much of our manufacturing base was relocated, has become our largest creditor. Don’t you see a connection there?

Second is the bias against a mass consumption economy. Now, this is tricky, because I do not wish to deny that much of the U.S. economy today is based on useless and dangerous consumption which imposes an unacceptable burden on the environment and on finite natural resources. Perhaps the best way to make the point that needs to be made is to remind you of the point often made, in commentaries on the Wall Street collapse, about "robbing the future." What exactly does that term, "robbing the future," mean? It has to do with investment, or, to be accurate, the misdirection of investment these past few decades. For example, an obvious one in the context of a discussion over whether or not to "save" the auto industry is that our society has invested way too much in the development of a transport system based on the personal automobile, while nearly starving for investment alternatives such as urban rail transit and passenger rail between urban areas. That misdirection of investment is the real problem – not the fact that the U.S. auto industry did not create and market more fuel efficient cars.

So, you can punish the auto industry by letting it fail – but would you have accomplished? The real problem would still remain – the misdirection of investment into a transport system based on the personal automobile, rather than urban rail transit and passenger rail between urban areas, and you will have destroyed part of the nation’s physical capacity for meeting the challenge of building a future alternative to a transport system based on the personal automobile.

Yes, the auto companies were stupid. But if you don’t see that we need the manufacturing capacity those companies have, then you are just as stupid.

I want to make a final point here, that I fear may divert your focus on these important questions. If you look at the boards of directors of the auto companies, you will notice that very few of the directors actually come from an industrial background. The overwhelming majority, something like 90 percent, of the directors are affiliated with financial institutions of one sort or another – banks, investment funds, money management companies, or so on. This is a problem you will find in every industrial sector of the U.S., and it is largely the result of the corporate raiding and mergers and acquisitions of the past that began in the 1970s. Think Michael Milkin, Kohlberg Kravis and Roberts, and T. Boone Pickens. Getting the U.S. auto industry, and the rest of U.S. industry, back on track to begin meeting the need for changing our future for the better, is going to require removing these financiers and usurers from the control of manufacturing companies.

So -- Rotwang! If you veel dat way, vots vith de hysterical headline?

Lack of writerly self-discipline? That old image has colonized your brain and you just couldn't leave it alone?

Some pay no tax because they don't make any money, others pay no tax even though they make a ton.

Here's a piece on no-tax corporations:

http://www.ctj.org/corpfed04pr.pdf

I suppose I should also mention that fuel efficient vehicles use less gas than trains. So if you can convince your employer to loosen up on the amount of time it takes you to go to the conference -- drive it in a hybrid. Although wine tasting in California along the way doesn't work unless you have an associate who will be your designated driver...

Can you say communicable disease?

I can think of many reasons to avoid large congregations of the population. OOPS

What was that fluid on the seat or why is that railing wet?

"Damn, cover your mouth mister, when you sneeze?
You talkin to me?"

As for the 10 dollar a gallon gas?

Ask for a raise?