Corporate Welfare Confirmed - new study

[Lainey]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/govbeat/wp/2015/03/17/the-united-states-of-subsidies-the-biggest-corporate-winners-in-each-state/

The United States of Subsidies continues. Confirming we have left capitalism behind for this new corporate socialism.

[jp1]

So, the top corporate welfare receivers (not counting the banks of course since their welfare money comes directly from the source of all money, so it isn't included here) received almost as much as everyone who received foodstamps last year. $60B for corporations, $69B for foodstamp recipients. Sadly I can't say that I find this shocking or even a surprise at all.

[Packy]

Well, I just read that the Hunting/gunning lobby got a nice handout--a program to restore bison to the wilds of Alaska. This will give them more animals to kill just for fun. It seems to me that gunners and hunters(point-and-shooters is more like it) make the very best, most fanatical Tea Partiers, who in turn love to complain about entitlements and welfare. The reality is, they rail against welfare and government programs, unless they are the direct recipients! See? But, about what the OP said: Corporate Socialism has other names, and that is National Socialism, or Fascism. The hunter/gunners are getting the animals-to-kill-for-fun deal, as a kickback, rewarding them for their support of the national socialist movement. S'why they got Pailin on board to round up votes from "real People"--Ak is the nation's largest game preserve for hunters.

[Gregg]

The tax breaks from state and local entities to keep jobs in the area have a shot at being self-sustaining to those entities through gains in other taxation. The burden just gets shifted from the corporate office to the workers. Regardless of the ethics of that, in the world of subsidies those are small potatoes. How much do you suppose it has cost to provide a guaranteed price for a bushel of wheat for the last 80 years? Or the flip side, how can anyone make money selling oil for $46/barrel?

Alot of subsidies amount to our kids picking up the difference between the real cost of _______ and what we actually pay for it. Our artificially cheap $2.39 gallon of gas includes discounted leases on federal lands, military protection of assets here and abroad, diplomatic protection of price floors, use of eminent domain to complete infrastructure expansions and on and on. In the US we live the lifestyle we do in large part thanks to such a highly subsidized industry and its the same with food (such as it is), transportation, etc. A lot of those costs are financed using future dollars from treasury sales to make up the difference between what we bring in and what we spend, aka, the deficit.

We can demand the end of subsidies, but it comes with a different kind of price. Politically speaking its a death sentence to tell your constituents that gas is going to be $9.00/gallon or that corn will be $.75/bbl this year, but may be $14.00 next year or that the price of basically everything is going up 20% because we are going to assess big rigs for the actual damage they do to our highway system through "fair" taxation. IMO its a given that we are not going to change our habits until the real costs become painfully obvious. Unfortunately that real cost is probably going to show itself environmentally before it will economically. It would be prudent to start weaning the first world off government teets, but the odds of that happening without some sort of dramatic event are not good.

[creaker]

So, the top corporate welfare receivers (not counting the banks of course since their welfare money comes directly from the source of all money, so it isn't included here) received almost as much as everyone who received foodstamps last year. $60B for corporations, $69B for foodstamp recipients. Sadly I can't say that I find this shocking or even a surprise at all.

You left out that foodstamps help subsidize what would otherwise be unlivable wages - and that those foodstamps largely all end up in corporate cash registers. So they get a piece of that as well.

[jp1]

I also didn't mention all the people who work full time but get paid so poorly that they still qualify for food stamps and other benefits, essentially subsidizing companies like Walmart.

[Lainey]

We had a brief discussion about this at work around the lunchtable. One of my co-workers said he didn't have a problem with subsidizing companies who provide jobs. My answer is: Where does it end? If Boeing, Intel, etc. get to forgo paying taxes and get tax monies on top of that for providing jobs, then doesn't the next employer march down to the state legislature to ask "Where's my check?" and the next and the next. Pretty soon the local Dairy Queen owner can say they also provide jobs so where's their check?

And that's why the only people actually paying taxes are those on company payrolls whose taxes are automatically deducted. And we wonder why our national parks, schools, infrastructure, etc. are falling apart.