Posted on 12/04/2016 11:05:28 AM PST by SeekAndFind
Because market freedoms create an environment for economic growth, thriving businesses and job creation, many people confuse "pro-market policies" with "pro-business" favors.
But they aren't the same thing, and President-elect Trump hurts his own agenda when he conflates the two. He did so at the Indiana Carrier plant Thursday, when he announced a deal to keep some Mexico-bound Carrier jobs in Indiana.
The deal is bad policy because it is loaded with at least $7 million in corporate welfare. It's bad politics because it rhetorically demolishes the crucial distinction between free-market policy on one hand, which benefits all businesses and thus the whole economy, and corporatism on the other, which benefits the big and well-connected.
Trump is fortunate that his vice president-elect, Mike Pence, also happens to be Indiana's governor. Carrier is lucky, too. Pence extended a $7 million tax break to the manufacturer this week. This is a subsidy. It is what Republicans spent the past eight years blasting as corporate welfare and crony capitalism.
House Speaker Paul Ryan in 2012 rightly criticized President Obama's industrial policy, which the president peddled as "investment."
Ryan objected, saying, "It's borrowing money and spending money through Washington, picking winners and losers. Spending money on favorite, you know, people like Solyndra or Fisker. Picking winners and losers in the economy through spending, through tax breaks, through regulations does not work."
Ryan was correct. A tax break for Carrier is not laissez-faire economics. Every other company and family in Indiana has to bear a greater share of the state's tax burden. Every company competing with Carrier for sales, capital and other resources, is at a disadvantage because they're paying for the favor Trump and Pence have given Carrier.
When you pick a winner, you automatically pick a thousand losers: smaller companies who lack Carrier's clout, less-connected companies not close to Pence and so on. The economy loses because corporate welfare means politicians rather than markets are deciding the allocation of money and resources. It's the opposite of free market economics.
There is also moral and political cost. Every corporation big enough to throw around some weight can threaten to leave the country and expect to get some government goodies to placate them. Trump explicitly welcomed other big companies to "negotiate good deals with the different states and all of that." This corrupts both business and government.
If we get four years of this sort of Trumponomics, we'll increasingly see companies with clout playing by one set of rules while the regular guy competes under a stricter rule book.
Pence on Thursday glossed over the $7 million subsidy. He said Carrier was persuaded to stay by Trump's "plans to make America more competitive. To reduce taxes. To roll back regulations."
"These companies aren't going to be leaving anymore," Trump said Thursday, because "we're going to do great things for businesses." He pledged to reduce the corporate income tax from 35 percent to 15 percent.
These promises are indeed great. This is the formula for economic growth: low taxes, low regulation, good schools and good infrastructure. They are "pro-business" by being "pro-market," not anti-market because by being a favor for a particular business.
Liberals will bash Trump and Pence's proposed tax cuts and regulation reform as "corporate welfare" and "crony capitalism." The Left doesn't distinguish between a reform that gets government out of the way of business and an intervention that puts government power in the service of business.
In this case, however, it seems that Trump doesn't either.
With this deal and his victory lap about it, Trump is buying into that pernicious left-liberal thinking that regards broad-based tax cuts and deregulation as special favors for business.
Trump pleasingly has promised tax and regulatory reform. He should stick to those broad, economy-wide changes that benefit everyone. Pleased though he is with his first deal to save a few hundred jobs, he needs to understand that it militates against his larger plans to help the entire economy. We urge him not to repeat this misguided process.
If this is just the leading edge of a policy change to roll back taxes and reduce regulations, I am in favor. My view on taxes is, what’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. If you have a tax, don’t let anybody off.
A boss once told me, the way to change a harmful rule is to force everybody to adhere to it. When adhering hurts more than changing, it will be changed. Not before.
Makes sense to me. Thankfully a President-elect does not have the power of the pen.
Get to work, Paul. Make it equal across the board. Here's your chance to prove your not a left-wing hack.
Free marketeers like me didn't have a candidate in this past election.
Right. This article is just so much bull and i wonder why anyone is wasting space by posting it.
It’s not corporate welfare if you reduce the tax burden for all companies. I also don’t understand by reducing taxes on a business is welfare.
It wasn’t Solyendra
Many sympathize.
States have been giving incentives to businesses to create jobs for years.
As Trump repeatedly complained while he was campaigning, a free market does not necessarily mean fair deals, particularly when you have incompetent government “leaders” negotiating a deal.
lowering corporate taxes and regulations is against free market?
Tax incentives are not welfare, a-holes. Taxes are theft, particularly when the government wastes so much of our tax money.
Idiots!
No reason to fret not having a candidate in this election.
Millions of us did and stepped up to try to save this nation.
We have tried it your way for decades and it has killed off our middle class.
Time to try something different.
I know, I know. Reagan gave Chrysler and Harley-Davidson sweetheart deals.
It’s only welfare if you think the govt has a right to every dollar you have and allows you to keep some of it. Tax breaks are not welfare...and they were coming from Indiana. They were also out there before the deal. That was not enough
Trump made the deal by cutting regulations
What free markets?
When it’s targeted to a specific company and not a sector.
Pence made the $7M tax break, not Trump. Trump had no power to do so. So this stupid cretin believes that states should not give tax breaks to industries they want to attract and hold?
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