7 Ways Corporations Cheat the People

[KeithE]

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1. Corporations Profit from Food Stamps

2. Crash the Economy, Get Your Money Back. Die with a Student Loan, Stay in Debt.

3. Almost 70% of Corporations Are Not Required to Pay ANY Federal Taxes

4. Lotteries Pay for Corporate Tax Avoidance

5. The National Football League Pays No Federal Taxes

6. Live on Park Avenue, Get a Farm Subsidy

7. Profit Margin Magic: Turning a dollar into $100,000

Details given in link. The only outrage I do not understand is number 7.

Lest you think I only look for outrages among the private sector, it exists in the public sector as well.

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[Dave Roberts]

Number 4 is one of my favorites. Lotteries ride on the backs of the poor and hopeless and are one of the most regressive tax schemes that anyone has ever devised. They also require more and more of their generated funds to pump up the advertising to keep people playing and to offer bigger prizes so they will continue to generate revenue, usually touted for education. It's one of the worst jokes that Americans have swallowed, promoted by the corporations who print the tickets and supply the equipment, and it is totally wasteful of the revenue generated.

[ET]

[Dave Roberts]

ET, I couldn't agree more on the absurdity of farm subsidies. They were created in the 1930's to help farmers to stay on the land when so many Okies were on the way to California. Now, they have passed with the lands to the current owners who may never set foot on that land. It's a great way for Congress to buy votes.

[KeithE]

[Ed Pettibone]

[Ed Pettibone]

[KeithE]

[KeithE]

[ET]

Why should government be in the business of subsidizing ANY business? What knowledge do politicians or government bureaucrats possess that enables them to pick winners and losers in the business?

It is because government decides that it will "invest" in this or that many lobbyists have jobs. It is because government decides it will subsidize one business over another that so much of the corporate money you so despise is in politics. It is your philosophy of "government is good" that creates a couple of the very issues that lead to regular posts on the topics of lobbyists and/or corporate money in politics.

The governing philosophy I favor is to remove from government the power to pick winners and losers. My solution involves not subsidizing gas, oil, coal, wind, nuclear or solar. Then there will be no need for lobbyists because there will be no favors to grant. There will be no need for a lot of the money now flowing into political coffers because the idea that "government knows best" is abandoned.

But going back to government picking winners and choosers:
One of your positions for "government is good" (as opposed to the view that it is a "necessary evil" and should therefore be constrained and limited) is Eisenhower and the interstate highway system. I suppose Eisenhower's name gets thrown in there because he was a Republican, as if there cannot be Republicans who pursue Big Government solutions. Before the highway system came along, most folks traveled long distances on trains or buses. Setting aside the issue of whether there was a need for such a highway system for defense issues, what if Eisenhower hadn't pushed government to build the highway system? What if he had left the market to decide whether people had a greater demand to travel by car or by bus or train? What if the money put into an interstate system had been put into rail travel instead?

The problem is that we cannot know most of the alternatives for the money spent on an interstate highway system and compare that "good" to the "government imposed 'good'", so we are left to either choose between letting the blind squirrel of government find a nut every now and then with the choices a handful of people can propose and sell to a majority voting block or leave it to our fellow citizens to enter into voluntary arrangements of how to best use our resources.

Of course, much of this argument is largely academic. Most folks are content to just mindlessly listen to the grand plans of politicians as their ears are tickled without asking why gov'mint has any business making such promises or engaging in the activity in the first place.

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One bit about HSR: , Business Insider, May 2012
Good article here containing some of the economically unrealistic shenanigans that politicians use to sell these fantasyland HSR projects. The great problem with HSR is folks are enamored by it without any true digging into the costs and assumptions made to sell them.