What Really Brought GM Down?

Iain Murray has some thoughts:

I've heard time and again this morning that GM is paying the price for bad management decisions. Up to a point, Lord Copper. The really bad management decision they took had nothing to do with cars, but with striking a deal with the unions that led them to a $20 billion liability that they probably would have survived without. As for making cars Americans wouldn't buy, what they did was build cars that Americans would buy, but were forced by government to make other cars as well that Americans did not prefer to those of their competitors. Cut out the union liability and the requirement to build small cars and you have a profitable company. Add them in and you have an industrial disaster.

Government intervention in private business rarely results in a better business.