Your Basic Rules of the Off-Road

Wouldn't you know that the same folks who insisted on Hummers for all and drove into a ditch with their company in the backseat would come up with another numbskull way to keep money away from the consumers they depend on?

Yes, GM has discovered it can pay other countries' workers with U.S. taxpayers' bailout money. Aren't they cute when they're self-destructing? Can we pour cold water over the CEO's now?

The U.S. government is pouring billions into General Motors in hopes of reviving the domestic economy, but when the automaker completes its restructuring plan, many of the company's new jobs will be filled by workers overseas.

According to an outline the company has been sharing privately with Washington legislators, the number of cars that GM sells in the United States and builds in Mexico, China and South Korea will roughly double.

The proportion of GM cars sold domestically and manufactured in those low-wage countries will rise from 15 percent to 23 percent over the next five years, according to the figures contained in a 12-page presentation offered to lawmakers in response to their questions about overseas production.

As a result, the long-simmering argument over U.S. manufacturers expanding production overseas -- normally arising between unions and private companies -- is about to engage the Obama administration.

Essentially in control of the company, the president's autos task force faces an awkward choice: It can either require General Motors to keep more jobs at home, potentially raising labor costs at a company already beset with financial woes, or it can risk political fury by allowing the automaker to expand operations at lower-cost manufacturing locations.

Try this; without dollars in their pockets, consumers disappear. They become the service industry that is now losing THEIR customers.

It's not all that hard to look at this outsourcing and see that it's killing the U.S. economy, but that seems too much Hard Work for our mogul horde.