In America today, the biggest recipients of handouts are not poor people. They're corporations.
General Electric CEO Jeffrey R. Immelt is super-close to President Obama. The president named Immelt chairman of his Council on Jobs and Competitiveness. Before that, Immelt was on Obama's Economic Recovery Advisory Board. He's a regular companion when Obama travels abroad to hawk American exports. (Why does business need government to do that?)
"Jeff Immelt is perhaps the CEO who is most cozy with President Obama," says journalist Tim Carney. "General Electric is structuring their business around where government is going ... high-speed rail, solar, wind. GE is lining up to get what government is handing out."
Businesses love to have government as their partner. There's safety in it. Why take chances in a marketplace full of fickle consumers and investors, when you can get secure money and favors from the taxpayers? It's an old story, and free-market advocates as far back as Adam Smith warned against it. Unfortunately, too many people think "free market" means pro-business. It doesn't. Free market means laissez faire"”prohibit force and fraud, but otherwise leave the marketplace alone. No subsidies, no privileges, no arbitrary regulations. Competition is the most effective regulator.
[On March 17, 2010 Reason's Nick Gillespie discussed government waste and redundancy on Fox Business' Stossel, which airs on Thursdays at 10pm ET. Click to watch. Article continues below video]
Left-wingers criticize corporate welfare until it's for something they like"”for example, "green technology."
"The government's going to invest in certain companies to pioneer new technologies. That, I think, is not corporate welfare," says Tamara Draut of the Progressive think-tank Demos.
I asked her if business is too dumb to pioneer without government direction.
"The private sector will only invest if they know for sure that there is a commercial marketplace."
But if everyone wants these products, that should be an incentive for greedy businesses to make them.
"Not always," she replied. "But the free market does not know anything unless we all collect our interests and say: This is of national import to us."
This is nonsense. How did Apple know we would want iPods, iPhones, and iPads? It didn't know with certainty. It took a risk with its own and investors' money.
But for some reason, other products and services are different, according to people like Obama and Draut.
"We desperately need high-speed rail in this country," she says, meaning the taxpayers must be forced to finance it.
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But [wind farm technology] should be one thing that we, as a nation, are investing in so that we aren't left behind.
No one wants to be left behind. During the Rapture we can use GE's windmills to lift ourselves up to meet Christ, leaving all the sinners (i.e. fossil fuel users) on the ground to suck it.
With GE running the Commerce department, shouldn't we be buying someone else's turbines? Halliburton wasn't a big enough object lesson in government/megacorp love affairs?
Oh yeah, my bad, the right people are now in charge. I thought religion was on the decline.
Problem is that all of the manufacturers of turbines are attached to the teat of one government or another. (Rolls Royce is the only one I can think of. Does Dassault?)
and that's diff fm the oil & nuclear industries how?
Get back to work Orrin.
HAHA hi nicho! heading to NYC this weekend. Vball tourny. hope u guys r all good.
Wow! Does this scream gay or what?
volleyball? seriously? Nice short shorts, pal.
Two wrongs make a right.
No, but three lefts do.
They are different in that they can be economically feasible without subsidies.
Particularly petroleum. But you know that.
Most people here don't want them to get subsidies either. But you know that already too. Or should if you had half a brain.
Oil gets tax breaks just like 1,000's of other businesses. But we would like a much simpler tax code so we can't get rid of most tax breaks which often distort the flow of capital.
With both, but particularly nuclear, fewer regulations would decrease costs, and increase efficiency while not affecting safety. Nuclear has been hamstrung by ridiculous regulations by federal and 50 different state govt.'s for 50 years.
Now go ahead and make the completely predictable statements about safety.
"...particularly nuclear,fewer regulations would decrease costs, and increase efficiency while not affecting safety." _
dat good one stupid-san.
Yep. Kinda makes you wonder if there's no profitable way to make wind turbines.
"But [wind farm technology] should be one thing that we, as a nation, are investing in so that we aren't left behind."
We don't want to be left behind in the race to bankruptcy, is that it?
bankruptcy's only for the little people
For the rest of us, there's always inflation to save our sorry asses.
If Democrats actually cared about inequality and evil corporations like they claim, you might think that they'd propose cutting corporate welfare as a response to the GOP's proposed cuts. But no, Obama preferred to cut Pell Grants and heating oil subsidies for the poor.
Granted, the Democrats like proposing new subsidies for favored groups to balance out the "evil" groups getting other subsidies, but they never, never propose cutting spending. The only cure is more spending on the "right" people.
It's as if the primary goal is a bigger government with more government control rather than addressing inequality or corporate power or subsidies.
There will always be rationalizations for corporate welfare, usually some form of mercantalism or other special pleading.
For Team Blue, the rationalizations tend towards 'protecting/creating jobs'.
What is never addressed is the fact that the burden of protecting those jobs falls on other workers both in terms of taxes and the jobs lost as opportunity costs.
Opportunity WHAT!?
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