Corporate Welfare: Corporate Welfare

[natina]

How would you like to pay only a quarter of the real estate taxes you owe on your home? And buy everything for the next 10 years without spending a single penny in sales tax? Keep a chunk of your paycheck free of income taxes? Have the city in which you live lend you money at rates cheaper than any bank charges? Then have the same city install free water and sewer lines to your house, offer you a perpetual discount on utility bills--and top it all off by landscaping your front yard at no charge?
Fat chance. You can't get any of that, of course. But if you live almost anywhere in America, all around you are taxpayers getting deals like this. These taxpayers are called corporations, and their deals are usually trumpeted as "economic development" or "public-private partnerships." But a better name is corporate welfare. It's a game in which governments large and small subsidize corporations large and small, usually at the expense of another state or town and almost always at the expense of individual and other corporate taxpayers.
Two years after Congress reduced welfare for individuals and families, this other kind of welfare continues to expand, penetrating every corner of the American economy. It has turned politicians into bribery specialists, and smart business people into con artists. And most surprising of all, it has rarely created any new jobs.
While corporate welfare has attracted critics from both the left and the right, there is no uniform definition. By TIME's definition, it is this: any action by local, state or federal government that gives a corporation or an entire industry a benefit not offered to others. It can be an outright subsidy, a grant, real estate, a low-interest loan or a government service. It can also be a tax break--a credit, exemption, deferral or deduction, or a tax rate lower than the one others pay.
The rationale to curtail traditional welfare programs, such as Aid to Families with Dependent Children and food stamps, and to impose a lifetime limit on the amount of aid received, was compelling: the old system didn't work. It was unfair, destroyed incentive, perpetuated dependence and distorted the economy. An 18-month TIME investigation has found that the same indictment, almost to the word, applies to corporate welfare. In some ways, it represents pork-barrel legislation of the worst order. The difference, of course, is that instead of rewarding the poor, it rewards the powerful.
And it rewards them handsomely. The Federal Government alone shells out $125 billion a year in corporate welfare, this in the midst of one of the more robust economic periods in the nation's history. Indeed, thus far in the 1990s, corporate profits have totaled $4.5 trillion--a sum equal to the cumulative paychecks of 50 million working Americans who earned less than $25,000 a year, for those eight years.


Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/ar...#ixzz1R6ujzwT7




http://www.time.com/time/magazine/ar...989508,00.html

[natina]

corporate WELFARE IS FAR MORE ADDICTIVE then individual welfare


government subsidizes
tax breaks
bailouts
grants
low interest loans
no interest loans


Corporate welfare - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Free Lunch: How the Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves at Government Expense (and Stick You with the Bill)


NEOCons on Welfare than Liberals. You have to include Corporate Welfare, Pentegon Contracts,

Agriculture, and Oil industries when talking about Welfare. And the blood sucking Welfare winners are:

neocons .



ORANGE COUNTY WAS PRIMARILY WHITE MIDDLE CLASS

and now because of the BUSH ERA,

the housing market scam,the stock market scandal,the pyramid schemers has become a place where............

take note people are driving around with NO CAR INSURANCE because they have to choose between eating,shelter and other basic

OR
paying for insurance

MANY insurance company warned me about orange county and not having full coverage/gap coverage etc......yada yada yada

once middle class people or going to get free groceries and other items because they are financial in trouble/have hit a low ect.....


THE OC WAS HIT HARD BY THE REAL ESTATE BUBBLE I.E.
OVER EVALUATION OF PROPERTY VALUES,upside down mortgages,variable interest rate loans/high interest rate loans .


Bird and Fortune - Subprime Banking Mess



Bird and Fortune - Subprime Crisis






John Bird and John Fortune (the Long Johns) brilliantly, and accurately, describing the mindset of the investment banking community in this satirical interview.

[natina]

Amazon.com: Free Lunch: How the Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves at Government Expense (and Stick You with the Bill) (9781591841913): David Cay Johnston: Books@@AMEPARAM@@http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51lanA6RJSL.@@AMEPARAM@@51lanA6RJSL





http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/...SH20_OU01_.jpg



More NEOCons on Welfare than Liberals. You have to


include Corporate Welfare, Pentegon Contracts, Agriculture, and Oil industries when talking about Welfare.

And the blood sucking Welfare winners are:


neocons

Amazon.com: Free Lunch: How the Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves at Government Expense (and Stick You with the Bill) (9781591841913): David Cay Johnston: Books@@AMEPARAM@@http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51lanA6RJSL.@@AMEPARAM@@51lanA6RJSL

http://www.theeroticreview.com/discu...earch=1#130426


neocons do not have to do this!;they just get free money

http://www.theeroticreview.com/discu...earch=1#130833


Amazon.com: Free Lunch: How the Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves at Government Expense (and Stick You with the Bill) (9781591841913): David Cay Johnston: Books@@AMEPARAM@@http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51lanA6RJSL.@@AMEPARAM@@51lanA6RJSL

[natina]

Capitalism for the middle class, socialism for the rich, indeed

The middle class and poor get crumbs from measly "bailouts" such as the lackluster sub-prime mortgage assistance program and a tax rebate check for $600; while the rich get more tangible bailouts to the tune of billions. Capitalism for the middle class, socialism for the rich, indeed! This is what you get when corrupt Republicans and the Corporate sociopathic personality rule the economy. One of the ways to change this dynamic is to remove corporation's status as a separate entity unbound by individual consequences and place more responsibility on the executives that direct corporate actions.

We need to end the the welfare era for the rich via tax cuts, Halliburton / war "no bid" handouts, oil company gouging and corporate bailouts. Instead, the American government needs to lift the middle class with investments in education, job training, energy independence (from domestic oil companies too!), health care and economic programs such as small business development and tangible mortgage assistance.

The only choice for fiscal conservatives in this election is Obama. By electing Obama POTUS and other fiscally sympathetic representatives, the middle class can then exercise its newfound power over insurance companies, corporations and bankers. You want us to bail you out? Here are some of our demands:

Will the tide finally turn during an Obama Presidency? After analyzing Obama's economic positions (including health care, tax policies and budgeting), most economists say "yes!"

After eight years of the Bush Presidency, McCain style deregulation and tax policy that favors the rich, the American middle class has been taken hostage and told they will lose everything (trickle down financial ruin) if they do not bailout the big banks, investment firms and insurance companies. Bush & Cheney have perfected the panic mode wealth transfer that Naomi Klein describes so well in "The Shock Doctrine." This multi-trillion-dollar parting gift is their payback to the upper class that helped orchestrate their election

The middle class and poor get crumbs from measly "bailouts" such as the lackluster sub-prime mortgage assistance program and a tax rebate check for $600; while the rich get more tangible bailouts to the tune of billions. Capitalism for the middle class, socialism for the rich, indeed! This is what you get when corrupt Republicans and the Corporate sociopathic personality rule the economy. One of the ways to change this dynamic is to remove corporation's status as a separate entity unbound by individual consequences and place more responsibility on the executives that direct corporate actions.

We need to end the the welfare era for the rich via tax cuts, Halliburton / war "no bid" handouts, oil company gouging and corporate bailouts. Instead, the American government needs to lift the middle class with investments in education, job training, energy independence (from domestic oil companies too!), health care and economic programs such as small business development and tangible mortgage assistance.

The only choice for fiscal conservatives in this election is Obama. By electing Obama POTUS and other fiscally sympathetic representatives, the middle class can then exercise its newfound power over insurance companies, corporations and bankers. You want us to bail you out? Here are some of our demands:



http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mike-g..._b_135892.html

[yodajazz]

There's some good stuff here. But dont they always claim, that corporate tax breaks, and other incentives create jobs? There was a big controversy here, years ago, when a owner mover a favorite sport franchise to another city. Thanks for the post, Natina.

I thought this was an interesting quote from the Times article:

The justification for much of this welfare is that the U.S. government is creating jobs. Over the past six years, Congress appropriated $5 billion to run the Export-Import Bank of the United States, which subsidizes companies that sell goods abroad. James A. Harmon, president and chairman, puts it this way: "American workers...have higher-quality, better-paying jobs, thanks to Eximbank's financing." But the numbers at the bank's five biggest beneficiaries--AT&T, Bechtel, Boeing, General Electric and McDonnell Douglas (now a part of Boeing)--tell another story. At these companies, which have accounted for about 40% of all loans, grants and long-term guarantees in this decade, overall employment has fallen 38%, as more than a third of a million jobs have disappeared

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/ar...#ixzz1SpsNmeMh

[trish]

Yes, luring a corporation to open a store or a factory in your town by offering it economic incentives (I.e.,corporate welfare) will create jobs. But being a larger entity with more capital and having the extra economic advantages afforded by the public-private icentives, the cororation will undersell and drive to ruin all of the smaller businesses in your town. So jobs will also be lost. This scenario has been playing out all over the U.S. as it witnessed by empty squares all over rur America. This isn't a new phenomena either. It's been going on for more than two decades.

[Stavros]

Would it help if large corporations were restricted in the regions in which they operate, allowing more small and medium sized enterprises to step in? There could be like an exclusion zone around small towns outside the large cities like LA and San Francisco, because the capital and marginal costs favour large corporations rather than smaller start-ups. But then you have the problem that larger corporations particularly supermarkets, can undercut the costs of smaller providers. The trend in the UK, as far as I can see it, is that niche marketing advantages, for example, farmers markets and independent butchers and fishmongers if they can sell at competitive prices better quality produce than Tesco, they do develop a loyal customer base; and outside food, the UK is doing ok in small-scale niche engineering products which nobody else makes. It doesn't solve the problem of high unemployment in young people who don't have the skills to do even light engineering, but its all we seem to have. Large corporations pay substantial sums in tax revenue, and hire tax lawyers to reduce even that, so there is plenty of fat at the top end (Exxon, IBM, Microsoft) -apaprently governments like their meat lean...

[robertlouis]

Large corporations pay substantial sums in tax revenue, and hire tax lawyers to reduce even that, so there is plenty of fat at the top end (Exxon, IBM, Microsoft) -apaprently governments like their meat lean...

But just because large businesses use creative and innovative accounting methods to avoid paying corporation tax shouldn't mean that governments should give up on finding increasingly inventive ways of their own to catch the bastards.

[Faldur]

Its laughable to look at the Progressives on this board continue to wail about how everyone else needs to pay more so there out of control spending can continue.

[robertlouis]

Its laughable to look at the Progressives on this board continue to wail about how everyone else needs to pay more so there out of control spending can continue.

If that's a dig at me amongst others I presume you think it's ok for large corporations to make no contributions to the national economies that host them?

And for the record I fully accept that current levels of government spending can't be sustained without a radical restructuring of national and global finances and a significant increase in economic activity.