Corporate Welfare

Townhall.com ^ | March 23, 2011 | John Stossel

[Wolfie]

I guess it keeps them from moving jobs overseas. Or not. Which is a good thing, or so the Free Traders tell me.

[Pecos]

Follow the money - The favors, of course, go those who are best at lobbying for them, those with connections and the means to make big campaign contributions. So the government pours billions of taxpayer dollars into wind farms that are half-owned ... by GE.

[Carley]

Stossel, an economic idiot for sure.

So he thinks businesses are greedy and corporations get welfare?

The buzz words are quite revealing.

[Daisyjane69]

and it might be about to get a little worse:

http://directorblue.blogspot.com/2011/03/crony-capitalism-digest-general.html

[Adder]

The free ride should be over for everyone. Corporations too.

Tell me again why we are subsidizing Big Oil? Big Pharma? Agriculture’s Mega Farms?

Those gimme’s too should be on the block.

Lefties have a point that we can’t balance the budget on the backs of the poor. I am sensitive to folks who truly need help. But GE isn’t one of those folks.

They say “if they could cure cancer they would have”. well Government has been throwing money at it and other diseases for a good 60 years and they haven’t done it either.
Government has been throwing money away period for damn little result.

[freedomfiter2]

He may be off on the greed, but welfare is the right term to use regarding government handouts to corporations.

[Kaslin]

Go read the article again, and if you have to, again and again. He is talking about GE and Immelt , who was the CEO of General Electric and is a big 0bama ass kisser

[SonOfDarkSkies]

Not a good idea to set strategy for a huge corporation based entirely on where one administration wants to go. Administrations come and go...and this one can't go away quickly enough.

Furthermore, this administration has shown over and over again that its judgment is not just flawed but upside down.

GE's Board needs to make plans to replaced Immelt ASAP.

[Kaslin]

Thanks, you explained it better then I could

[sergeantdave]

Government control of private property, including businesses, for the common good, as determined by government, is fascism.

I wish people would use that word more. It’s a good word and an accurate reflection of what’s been happening in this country since FDR.

[SonOfDarkSkies]

This is known as crony capitalism.

[MontaniSemperLiberi]

The recipients of the largest amount of Federal money are the elderly to the tune of $1,300 Billion for Social Security and Medicare.

[jonno]

buzz words

I would describe it as 'tough-in-check'.

IMO - Stossel is one of the good guys - so I start from there when I read his work.

[Carley]

If he was too afraid to single out GE then that’s his problem.

Businesses greedy?

Corporate welfare?

I’ve heard those buzzwords from the left for too long.

If you think businesses are ‘greedy’ and corporations get ‘welfare’ then that’s your prerogative.

[cripplecreek]

"These are large multinational corporations — Viacom, GE, Rupert Murdoch — that own these studios," said Moore at the Traverse City event. "Why do they need our money, from Michigan, from our taxpayers, when we're already broke here? I mean, they play one state against another, and so they get all this free cash when they're making billions already in profits. What's the thinking behind that?"

-Michael Moore just weeks before getting a million dollar subsidy to make "Capitalism, a love story", a movie inwhich he bashes capitalism and subsidies. LOL

[Carley]

Corporations don’t pay taxes. Their shareholders and their customers pay the tax. Less hiring too.

IMHO, Corporations should be paying little or no taxes to the federal government.

Taxes of a reasonable amount to the state or city where they are located should be something negotiated by those entities.

[SonOfDarkSkies]

The buzz words are quite revealing.

Stossel has been writing on crony capitalism for a while now. The buzz words are used to describe corporations which are seduced by government into becoming part of "creeping socialism."

[Uncle Ike]

” corporations which are seduced by government “

Just as ‘democracy can only survive until the populace discovers that it can vote itself largesse from the public coffers’, capitalism can only survive until corporations discover that they can co-opt the power of Government for competitive advantage...

If there was ‘seduction’, it was mutual and consenting....

[SonOfDarkSkies]

If there was ‘seduction’, it was mutual and consenting....

Isn't it always?