Americans oppose automaker bailout

Hopefully the politicians will listen to the people:

A national poll suggests that six in 10 Americans oppose using taxpayer money to help the ailing major U.S. auto companies.

Sixty-one percent of those questioned in a CNN/Opinion Research Corp. survey out Wednesday are dead set against the federal government providing billions of dollars in assistance the the auto makers, with 36 percent favoring such a bailout.

The poll, conducted Monday and Tuesday, also indicates that a majority of Americans, 53 percent, don't think government assistance for the auto makers will help the U.S. economy. ...

Opposition to the bailout of the auto industry is widespread across the country, even the Midwest, where the domestic auto makers have their headquarters and many of their assembly plants.

The poll indicates that most opposition to the bailout comes from the West, where opposition reaches 67 percent. Sixty-one percent of those polled in the Northeast, 64 percent in the South and 53 percent in the Midwest oppose using federal dollars to help the auto makers.

The poll also suggests that a vast majority of Republicans, 70 percent, oppose the bailout, with 62 percent of independents and 55 percent of Democrats also opposed.

Again, Nobel Prize–winning economist Gary Becker says bankruptcy, not a bailout, is best for the American automakers in the long run.