General Motors

Thomas Midgley Jr. discovered tetraethyl lead in December 1921, silencing his engine's knock, and was bedridden with lead poisoning before the first tank of it sold in 1923. A year later, five refinery workers making the stuff for Standard Oil were dead.

The government cleared the fuel anyway in 1926. The only scientist researching lead safety for the next fifty years was a doctor General Motors itself paid, and the thread's sharpest reply asks what a modern equivalent of that arrangement would look like.

Eight marquee Michigan subsidy deals promised 20,595 jobs for $2.7B in incentives. Actual spend: $1.8B. Actual jobs: 602 — roughly $3 million apiece. Ford's $210M deal has created zero so far; a $261M SanDisk site is 'a big empty field.'

A Xoogler argued the headline cheats: tax abatements aren't 'spending,' since no business means no revenue either way. A VC fired back that this case was actual cash transfers — which makes it worse, not better.