Bailout

I don't understand the bailout.

We're going to tax businesses and people that have turned a profit to prop up a company that is losing money.

I understand that people say the collapse of the 3 large automakers would hurt the rest of the economy. Is that really a sufficiently pressing reason to do this?

If you're going to do something unnatural shouldn't there be a reason for it? If you are going to stop the natural process of the market shouldn't there be at least some kind of solid prediction that it will have positive benefits?

"We'll lose a lot of jobs" sounds very fuzzy. Now admittedly some of this may be the fault of the media. They probably leave out a lot of technical stuff so that people don't get confused.

However in the name of cost-benefit ratio analysis I'd like to see some hard numbers on the cost of not doing the bailout versus the cost of the bailout. None of this fuzzy math garbage. Give me an economist with no vested interest in the success of the company who can explain (in very concrete numbers) the cost of not bailing out the big 3. Then I can make an accurate judgment of whether or not this is a good idea.

Without data you can't make judgments. Without good data you can't make good judgments. Give us what we need to make good judgments.