The justification for bailing out GM, according to President Obama, was to save a company that employed so very many people. Laying off tens of thousands of workers in a short span of time would have supposedly caused another sudden, violent lurch in the American economy, which sounds quite similar to the experience of driving a car built by said workers. So the Treasury gave, and gave, and gave. In fact, it "donated" enough money to pay every GM employee in the country over one million dollars this year:
Beyond all of this, the related FinancialStability.gov page lists $12.5 billion disbursed to GMAC, and $3.5 billion to an entity called “GM Supplier Receivables, LLC.” The latter is meant to make GM suppliers whole for unpaid amounts the “old GM” never paid. All of the disbursements identified add up to $86 billion (GM’s real total of $70 billion plus the two amounts in the previous paragraph).
Even assuming the ludicrous possibility of permanent unemployment for the roughly 68,000 workers "new" GM will keep on its payroll, that's still more than a million per job without counting bondholders and contractual partners who were screwed over.
Think you could find a few people who'd be willing to work some other job for less?
