I don't care about "could haves". These industries were all bailed out; some returned a profit to the taxpayers, some are still in the red without a chance of paying any of it back. Yet we continuously denigrate the industry that paid the money back as the "criminals".
>"From what I have seen, the average folks still buy into the opposite extreme"
Really? You must be living in a different world than I am. Just skim this thread, or any thread on Reddit...
>"Also, I do not think the auto industry runs Stasi-like intelligence operations where they constantly collect and pool your most private and financial information and credit ratings and use all that to evaluate how they are going to deal with and sell to you - or potentially put you out on the street."
Banks aren't planning to put you on the street. Where does this come from? Banks want to lend money and be paid back, with interest. This whole debacle worked out really well for them. They only had something like 3 trillion wiped from their collective balance sheets.
By the way, the auto-industry parents run huge financial companies.
>"it cannot be a coincident that they pay much more than a lot of other industries"
Sort of like IT? Or medicine?