The ratio of net profit earned by U.S. airlines since 1970 to federal subsidies given the industry since September 2001 is 1:1.
It's time to pull the plug and make these guys get real jobs.
Welfare for corporations
Started by
KoWT
, Feb 20 2003 02:26 AM
21 replies to this topic
#2
Gandu
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Posted 20 February 2003 - 03:19 AM
Oh come now, It is for the tax payers benefit to keep corporations up and running and paying dividends, somehow.
nation security or something.
After all, you would not want to fly air france now would you.
or worse, air canada.
Just how do you think the stock market scam works?
nation security or something.
After all, you would not want to fly air france now would you.
or worse, air canada.
Just how do you think the stock market scam works?
#3
Gandu
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Posted 20 February 2003 - 03:26 AM
Originally posted by azov
Just like it's for their benefit to pay off welfare queens?
I dont understand the refrence.
But in the scheme of things how much money does get paid for welfare? I am not saying people should be paid for not doing anything but if you put into the system you can get out of the system when the going gets hard.
It is why a lot of non aligned nations are militarely weak, they spend on social welfare and not the military and they thought humans had progressed far enough to not need might to defend themselves. How wrong they were.
#4
KoWT
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Posted 20 February 2003 - 02:48 PM
The federal government currently spends roughly $75 billion a year on programs that provide subsidies to private businesses.
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Corporate welfare programs are often purported to be pro-business. They are not. Such programs do nothing to promote a freer economy. They make it less free. Here are seven reasons why such policies are misguided and dangerous:
1. The federal government has a disappointing record of picking industrial winners and losers. The average delinquency rate for government loan programs (8 percent) is almost three times higher than that for commercial lenders (3 percent). The Small Business Administration delinquency rate reached over 20 percent in the 1980s, and the Farmers Home Administration delinquency rate has approached 50 percent.
2. Corporate welfare is a huge drain on the federal treasury. Every year $75 billion of taxpayer money is spent on programs that subsidize businesses. Meanwhile, politicians proclaim that we can't afford a tax cut.
3. Corporate welfare creates an uneven playing field. By giving selected businesses and industries special advantages, corporate subsidies put businesses and industries that are less politically well connected at a disadvantage.
4. Corporate welfare fosters an incestuous relationship between business and government. All too often, the firms and industries that contribute the most to political campaign coffers are the largest recipients of government handouts.
5. Corporate welfare programs are anti-consumer. For instance, the Commerce Department has estimated that the sugar subsidy program costs consumers several billion dollars a year in higher prices.
6. Corporate welfare is anti-capitalist. As Wall Street financier Theodore J. Forstmann has put it, corporate welfare has led to the creation in America of the ``statist businessman,'' who has been converted from a capitalist into a lobbyist.
7. Corporate welfare is unconstitutional. Corporate subsidy programs lie outside Congress's limited spending authority under the Constitution. Nowhere in the Constitution is Congress granted the authority to spend taxpayer dollars to subsidize the computer industry, or to enter into joint ventures with automobile companies, or to guarantee loans to favored business owners.
The central premise behind corporate welfare programs is that the best way to enhance business profitability is to do so one firm at a time. In fact, the best thing government can do to promote economic growth is to simply get out of the way and let private entrepreneurs with their own capital at risk determine how the economy's resources will be directed. That means creating a level playing field, which minimizes government interference in the marketplace, and dramatically reducing the overall cost and regulatory burden of government. Terminating the dozens of ridiculous corporate welfare programs and reforming the tax code are essential parts of bringing that about.
http://www.cato.org/...ok/hb105-9.html
....
Corporate welfare programs are often purported to be pro-business. They are not. Such programs do nothing to promote a freer economy. They make it less free. Here are seven reasons why such policies are misguided and dangerous:
1. The federal government has a disappointing record of picking industrial winners and losers. The average delinquency rate for government loan programs (8 percent) is almost three times higher than that for commercial lenders (3 percent). The Small Business Administration delinquency rate reached over 20 percent in the 1980s, and the Farmers Home Administration delinquency rate has approached 50 percent.
2. Corporate welfare is a huge drain on the federal treasury. Every year $75 billion of taxpayer money is spent on programs that subsidize businesses. Meanwhile, politicians proclaim that we can't afford a tax cut.
3. Corporate welfare creates an uneven playing field. By giving selected businesses and industries special advantages, corporate subsidies put businesses and industries that are less politically well connected at a disadvantage.
4. Corporate welfare fosters an incestuous relationship between business and government. All too often, the firms and industries that contribute the most to political campaign coffers are the largest recipients of government handouts.
5. Corporate welfare programs are anti-consumer. For instance, the Commerce Department has estimated that the sugar subsidy program costs consumers several billion dollars a year in higher prices.
6. Corporate welfare is anti-capitalist. As Wall Street financier Theodore J. Forstmann has put it, corporate welfare has led to the creation in America of the ``statist businessman,'' who has been converted from a capitalist into a lobbyist.
7. Corporate welfare is unconstitutional. Corporate subsidy programs lie outside Congress's limited spending authority under the Constitution. Nowhere in the Constitution is Congress granted the authority to spend taxpayer dollars to subsidize the computer industry, or to enter into joint ventures with automobile companies, or to guarantee loans to favored business owners.
The central premise behind corporate welfare programs is that the best way to enhance business profitability is to do so one firm at a time. In fact, the best thing government can do to promote economic growth is to simply get out of the way and let private entrepreneurs with their own capital at risk determine how the economy's resources will be directed. That means creating a level playing field, which minimizes government interference in the marketplace, and dramatically reducing the overall cost and regulatory burden of government. Terminating the dozens of ridiculous corporate welfare programs and reforming the tax code are essential parts of bringing that about.
http://www.cato.org/...ok/hb105-9.html
#6
KoWT
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Posted 13 March 2003 - 04:30 PM
You've heard the one about p.a.t.r.i.o.t. act II including a clause to allow the Attourney General to strip people of their US citizenship for anti-American activities?
I harbor a (not so) secret wish that they would succeed and, an administration or two down the road, my kind of gang will get elected (on a wicked backlash platform) and promptlyu se this phucked up law to exile a good chunk of eliteist corporate America to Mogadishu or someshit...
Maybe sell them to Cuba.
Hey Fidel, want to "buy" Microsoft?
No money down and a low yearly payment and this communist-style corporate collective could be all yours!
Hope springs eternal, eh?
I harbor a (not so) secret wish that they would succeed and, an administration or two down the road, my kind of gang will get elected (on a wicked backlash platform) and promptlyu se this phucked up law to exile a good chunk of eliteist corporate America to Mogadishu or someshit...
Maybe sell them to Cuba.
Hey Fidel, want to "buy" Microsoft?
No money down and a low yearly payment and this communist-style corporate collective could be all yours!
Hope springs eternal, eh?
#7
xexon
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Posted 13 March 2003 - 04:50 PM
Chrysler is the only company I can think of that really came back from the brink and then became strong again.
If it had not been for the government welfare bailout, they may have just faded away.
A rare case of recovery.
x
If it had not been for the government welfare bailout, they may have just faded away.
A rare case of recovery.
x
#14
KoWT
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Posted 15 November 2005 - 06:17 PM
does poorly executed sarcasm make you feel better about all the cash the taxpayer has paid to commercial airlines over the years?
I'd think that even you would be against airlines socializing their pension liabilities by handing them off to the federal government after mismanaging their companies into bankruptcy
notice there's no penalty?
folks that "made" millions get to keep their money
I'd think that even you would be against airlines socializing their pension liabilities by handing them off to the federal government after mismanaging their companies into bankruptcy
notice there's no penalty?
folks that "made" millions get to keep their money
#16
ganapati
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Posted 15 November 2005 - 06:29 PM
What would you do? Let the pensioners lose their pensions? That should be a free market supporters' response. Employees will have to understand that there is a risk associated with their pension plans and there is no guarantee about them.Originally posted by KoWT
I'd think that even you would be against airlines socializing their pension liabilities by handing them off to the federal government after mismanaging their companies into bankruptcy
Who would you penalise? And for what? Being too stupid to manage a corporation?notice there's no penalty?
folks that "made" millions get to keep their money
Isn't that how the free market is supposed to work?
#17
KoWT
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Posted 15 November 2005 - 06:35 PM
Originally posted by Rickk
I'm not for 'corperate welfare' but making the leap from there to nationalizing business is just..well, it speaks for itself.
I think you're misrepresenting the playing field
the antithesis of corporate welfare is not nationalization
quite the opposite, corporate welfare, in and of itself, is nationalization
nay, worse
privatizing profits while socializing expenses
tha means if they turn a profit, they keep it
and if they don't, the taxpayer foots the bill
not good
#20
KoWT
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Posted 16 November 2005 - 05:13 PM
it was (attempted) sarcasm
biting sarcasm at that
nationalization is an awful way of doing business, but the current system (as applied to the airlines) is worse
a system that passively encourages airline managment to chart a financial course to ruin in order to maintain a short term facade of profitability
after the jig's up, the taxpayers are left to clean up after them
it's not like their pension liabilities were a suprise or anything
I think, when we "reformed" personal bankrupty laws, we should have been reforming corporate bankruptcy laws
biting sarcasm at that
nationalization is an awful way of doing business, but the current system (as applied to the airlines) is worse
a system that passively encourages airline managment to chart a financial course to ruin in order to maintain a short term facade of profitability
after the jig's up, the taxpayers are left to clean up after them
it's not like their pension liabilities were a suprise or anything
I think, when we "reformed" personal bankrupty laws, we should have been reforming corporate bankruptcy laws
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