Car Problems

Well it looks like it's all but done....... the government is taking over GM. What is this country coming to? We will not be seeing much in the way of exciting new cars for the forseable future. Government and labor will never stimulate innovation, never has in the past, won't in the future, it will only stifle creativity because it will take away the incentives. Why would anyone want to work extra hard to make more money only to have it taken it away.

common sense

Am I just missing something? Are people actually as clueless as the politicians seem to think they are? 

We've got the president on TV with the rest of his puppets touting the benefits of these high mileage overpriced tin cans they wish to foist on the American public. 

If you throw out the fact that in order to meet these standards cars will have to be made lighter and thereby less safe in a collision,(F=mv) for people who didn't take high school physics that means force is equal to mass(weight) times velocity(speed). In other words if a 4000 pound SUV traveling at 50 mph collides with a 2000 pound tin can traveling at the same 50 mph (of course it will take it a while to get there) guess who will get the short end of the straw. 20,000 pounds of force will always win out over 10,000 pounds of force. You still have cost issues.

When you can buy an 8-10 year old SUV for $4,000 that gets 20mpg and if you drive 12,000 miles per year which would cost you about $600 per year for gasoline you would have a 5 year cost of $5,800 and if you were to buy a close to comparable new standard SUV for $35,000 and got 30mpg you would have a 5 year cost of $36,200.

Does any of these make sense? No safety advantage and definately no cost advantage that I can see here. Where do we go from here?