[edited to clean up flu or whatever-related quality issues]
1. The so-called welfare queen who drives a Cadillac to the food stamp office. Assume she owns it, needs it to get around, and selling it means she has to find some other way to get around, to look for opportunities or look after her family. The benefits she gets have been exhaustively determined and are inflexible, no matter that they have not kept pace with inflation or any other real costs. The cost of getting rid of it might well outweigh the one time cash she would get.
2. The highly compensated CEOs of the Big 3 carmakers who have decided to hit up the US taxpayer for a bailout. They travelled on corporate jets to meet with Congress and had no idea how much money they wanted or what they would do with it, and had no clue how refusing to fly on commercial airlines would appear to the people whose money they want (that it, the US taxpayer). What about them selling their jets? I suspect the cost of fuel, the pilot’s salary, the landing fees, all would go a long way to helping a local family in Detroit, probably more than one. (According to this, the cost for just one of the mendicants to make an appearance was $20,000.)
Ford owns five jets, GM three, with two more leased (those may be dropped). A Gulfstream IV — commonly used by these plutocrats — costs about $36 million. The CEO of Ford lives in Seattle: his jet is part of his $28 million pay package, since he uses it to return home on weekends.
If these companies are throwing this kind of money around just to keep executives happy — I know they say it’s not about money, that’s just how they keep score at that level — why would anyone want to give them any more? Or even loan it to them?
