OMG. Ppl are upset about Hostess shutting down. Like, for real?

C’mon. You cannot be surprised? First of all, let’s talk simple economics:

– Little Debbie makes comparable products to Hostess (swiss cake rolls are ho-ho’s, for example), for less than 1/3 of the price.

– most ppl who would regularly buy these products are going to be lower income folks (not to judge, but just an empirical observation). So, would prob opt for the Little Debbie brand in lieu of the overpriced Hostess brand. Esp in this economy*.

*by “this economy”, I mean that the middle class is making less money, while paying a higher percentage of taxes than a decade or so ago.

I’m seeing posts on fb where folks are asking why Obama is not bailing out Hostess. What? You want to bailout a stupid company that lives in the 80s?

They are comparing the auto bailout to the Hostess situation? The auto union & the big 3 auto CEOs worked together & approached the govt for assistance.

The Hostess situation was a stalemate b/t their union & the administration.

Also, when the 3 CEOs did ask the govt for the money, there were a series of Congressional hearings. At the 1st of which, Pres Obama chastised them for obviously not being serious about getting back on track b/c they each flew to DC separately in 3 private jets; so wasteful. The 2 situations aren’t comparable.

Forget that it was really Bush that started the auto bailout. Obama did go along with it, but was very clear about being tough on them & only when they showed that they were prepared to take serious steps to save money & improve their product (that is, evolve their product for the new age – fuel economy & pricing), did he facilitate the process. The congressional hearings. B/c a president can’t really (technically) “bail out” a company – it’s Congress that does it.

And the auto industry employed almost a million US workers. Not 18,000. And Hostess already went bankrupt twice, once in 2004, and again in January of this year. This was inevitable. Ppl that are even bringing up President Obama in any of this just want a reason to blame Obama. If he did bailout the company (which again, would never happen b/c the company didn’t even want a bailout), those ppl would have a problem with THAT too!

And Hostess? I don’t think I’ve had any Hostess snack cake in over 20 yrs. It was a matter of time… capitalism… supply & demand. I hope that Americans are becoming more health conscious that Hostess (unless they changed their product), would become defunct. We deserve better than what they produced, I think…