"This is paradoxical, since the reason Congress is considering bailing them out in the first place is to preserve jobs "

Robert Reich sees a paradox in the Automaker's Bailout. So, what's a Paradox?

"A statement that seems contradictory or absurd but is actually valid or true. According to one proverbial paradox, we must sometimes be cruel in order to be kind. Another form of paradox is a statement that truly is contradictory and yet follows logically from other statements that do not seem open to objection. If someone says, “I am lying,” for example, and we assume that his statement is true, it must be false. The paradox is that the statement “I am lying” is false if it is true.'

If you studied Ancient Greek, you'll immediately recognize the word "para". It's a preposition meaning generally "at the side of". In the accusative, it can mean "to the side of, contrary to". The Greek cases imply motion or direction. The Genitive is away from, the Dative is at, the accusative is towards or to. So, "paradox":

"1540, from L. paradoxum "paradox, statement seemingly absurd yet really true," from Gk. paradoxon, from neut. of adj. paradoxos "contrary to expectation, incredible," from para- "contrary to" + doxa "opinion."

What's the Paradox that Reich sees:

"As a condition of getting a federal bailout, the Big Three are promising, among other things, to cut costs. Among the costs to be cut will be jobs. This is paradoxical, since the reason Congress is considering bailing them out in the first place is to preserve jobs and avoid the social costs of large-scale job loss (unemployment insurance, lost tax revenues, pension payments that have to be picked up by the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation, and so forth) ."

The Paradox is like being cruel in order to be kind. You've got to lose some jobs in order to save some jobs. In a recession, this paradox is often encountered. The Automaker's Bailout is hardly unique in exhibiting this paradox.

"We should take a lesson from the Chrysler bailout of the early 1980s. The ostensible reason Congress voted for it was to preserve Chrysler jobs. Yet once the bailout was underway, in order to generate the money it needed to restructure itself, Chrysler laid off more than a third of its workforce. Most of these jobs never came back."

There's a good reason to believe that will happen here as well.

"And it's much the same with the mammoth bailout of Wall Street. Absent an explicit understanding of why public money is needed and what it's to be used for, taxpayer dollars end up bolstering executives, creditors, and shareholders rather than the workers and communities that need the most help."

First of all, like Roubini, that scenario would violate the conditions I would need in order to support this deal in the case of the Automaker's Bailout. But, in the case of the Financial Bailout, it is certainly true that a number of the people we're aiding are wealthy. Sometimes, they are very wealthy. And that's one of the main reasons to try and help the Auto Workers. If you are perceived to be helping Wealthy Financial People and not Average Workers ( The argument over their exact wages is preposterous. They are perceived to be middle class workers, which they are. To argue that these Auto Workers are wealthy won't go anywhere. It's a kind of willful misunderstanding of the issue. Rather like G.E. Moore's willful misunderstanding of the Skeptic's Arguments. Philosophy is full of such willful misunderstandings, and studying it helps you appreciate and defuse them. ), then you are setting yourself up for some very serious political problems and conflicts going forward. These kinds of conflicts we have largely managed to avoid in the US, and we certainly shouldn't let this financial crisis undo that precedent.

So, that's a paradox, as well:
1) We need to use government intervention here in order to defuse a social and political condition which would lead to a very much larger and permanent influence of government over our lives in the future.
Here are a few more:
2) If we had nationalized the banks, etc., using more government intervention in the beginning, it would have ended up costing us less, and being easier and quicker to return the banks, etc., to private ownership.
3) If we print money now and cause inflation, this will be good, even though, going forward, we will be facing inflation, which is very bad.
4) We need to add to our debt now, in order to be able to be in a position to effectively deal with it in the future
5) Although Reason is used to answer the Skeptic, and its advance leads to more and more useful science, Reason also makes the Skeptic's case and argument much more powerful, as does modern science.
6) In Tractate Sanhedrin, the more heinous a crime, the harder it is to convict someone of it.
Now, I love Paradoxes. They are part of human existence. And now you know why Raymond Smullyan was needed to fashion the glass that a libertarian Democrat needs to be poured into.