Also:
General Motors, the most important industrial company
What the hell, Forbes? Good god, if GM hadn't existed, nothing would have changed. Ford or Chrysler or AMC or whoever would have filled their shoes. Big deal.
That's a very ignorant statement.
General Motors and Alfred Sloan had a massive impact on the way that organizations were designed and managed for over 50 years - they were the first to ever systematically design and execute a managed, decentralized organization of that magnitude.
Peter Drucker's 1946 classic "Concept of the Corporation" was the first major study of a large corporation (GM) and a deep analysis of the implications that the new "society of organizations" would have on our culture, politics, and lives. Sloan's "My Years at General Motors" in 1964 was a management treatise that was blueprint through at least the early 80s.
Others would have filled their shoes, but history would be tremendously different.
I'm genuinely confused as to how this went unchallenged. Even if the bankruptcy of G.M. resulted in pennies on the dollar, those pennies still belonged to the share and debt holders, rather than their being arbitrarily wiped out by the government in order to benefit the union.
Were there/Are there any lawsuits to address this?
(But in any case, the union is hardly the only beneficiary of keeping GM afloat; it's not zero-sum.)
Regarding societal benefit of the bailout, even with imminent domain, the government has to give the owners fair compensation. It can't simply step in and disregard rule of law and pick and choose its preferred winners.
Keeping GM afloat in no way excuses the preferential treatment. The unions hardly took a haircut at all compared to the bondholders:
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB1000142405270230376810...
It's not Forbes, at least not the Forbes anyone would have expected anything decent from.
Whenever you see a Forbes url like forbes.com/sites/USERNAME/blah... you are just reading some guys blog on forbes.com
I don't know that there is really any resembling research and an editor at Forbes any more.