General Motors: An American Success Story Analysis

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General Motors is an American success story. They started at the dawn of the 20th century, with a humble origin story; Buick began with horse drawn buggies, before starting its foray into the automobile market. For years it grew and expanded gobbling up smaller companies and incorporating them into its family. Just under one hundred years later, the state of General Motors’ empire started to deteriorate (which is directly due to a criminal lack of quality control).
Then the housing bubble popped. The company was bleeding from every orifice. It decided to do the most capitalistic thing humanly possible, in the least laissez-faire way possible. It saved itself by killing the business’s struggling brands; and stacking their carcases into a stairway to fiscal flexibility… though that required accepting government money (shudders).
In 2009 GM was
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It is said that is do to the fact that Toyota lied to the government, whereas Barra presented all the facts on a silver platter. Again my inner cynic says, while that might have played a factor; I feel Jingoism played a larger role.
Cynicism aside, the most disillusioning aspect of the whole ordeal, are the systemic shortcomings. Most embittering is the fact that it is not illegal for an automaker to sell intrinsically inadequate automobiles. The reason being is far more sinister in my opinion. When money makes the rules, lobbyists (and in turn corporations) have more political power than the American public and politicians.
GM was found guilty not for knowingly putting millions of people in harm’s way, but for lying about it. General Motors Corporation killed people and new GM knew (but because there was not a paper trail it passed the bankruptcy proceedings); only the latter is criminal. Wistfully, in the organization in which it lives, that barely the tip of the sword. Avarice, empty promises, and parsimony permit profits to precede

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