Socialism & Welfare For The Rich

Got the inspiration for this from the Lunatic Fringe thread.

Ten Examples of Welfare for the Rich and Corporations​

Here are the top 10 examples of corporate welfare and welfare for the rich. There are actually thousands of tax breaks and subsidies for the rich and corporations provided by federal, state and local governments, but these 10 will give a taste.

Full article here:

​

From the link:

“America will never be a socialist country,” Donald Trump declared in his State of the Union address. Someone should alert Trump that America is now a hotbed of socialism. But it is socialism for the rich. Everyone else is treated to harsh capitalism.

In the conservative mind, socialism means getting something for doing nothing. That pretty much describes the $21bn saved by the nation’s largest banks last year thanks to Trump’s tax cuts, some of which went into massive bonuses for bank executives. On the other hand, more than 4,000 lower-level bank employees got a big dose of harsh capitalism. They lost their jobs.

Read the rest here:

Crony rentiers are a problem. No argument.

But if the Huffingandpuffington Post tells me the time, I want to verify it with a watch.

What they are, is just one more class-envy and Communism propaganda site. I'm not gonna sit down for a Ten-Minute Hate because the Huffing ComPost tells me to.

Casey Jones said:

I want to verify it with a watch.

Click to expand...

Used the posts above to get the thread started. Going to post gov facts / figures later on.

Make sure you stand close enough to the table to be able to pick up some crumbs.

Do We Have to Bribe Corporations to Do What’s Right? | Robert Reich​

Robert Reich
Jan 10, 2023

4:38

Who else is sick of our government subsidizing the health care industry when millions can’t afford insurance, subsidizing Big Oil while they destroy the planet, and bailing out Wall Street when they crater our economy? Watch more: The Little Secret About Corporate Profits ►► https://youtu.be/Dot9hzcA9qs

The operating term is "regulatory capture."

Populists and tyrant wannabees advocate for, and create, vast regulatory labyrinths to supposedly block and control corporate interests. Who then find ways to channel covert graft to these regulators and to the politicians who control them (PACs for pols; more-open graft for regulatory functionaries).

Who then turn on the people.

It's self-evident, if you look. I have lived in both New York and Ohio. I was paying THREE TIMES as much for electric power in Buffalo as I was in Cleveland. New York has elaborate regulations to "control" utilities. Ohio had a down-home podunk functionary structure. But CEI, the power company, was profitable, in a way that Niagara Mohawk, the Buffalo utility, could not match.

Bottom line is, the consumers in NY paid for the power, and the graft, and the army of captured regulators, and in the end, profitability went out of the sale of electricity.

And none of it needed to happen. And beating up on regulated corporations, be they Niagara Mohawk, or CSX Transportation, or Ford Motor...when they respond to regulators who have the power to destroy; and once they capture the regulatory structure, use their gains unethically...this is just a second-order result.

And they do and they will, because leaders of integrity, LEAVE such regulated industries. Those of zero ethics, take their place. As with all things "liberal," the actual result is the opposite of the stated intent.

Don’t Worry, It’s Not Foreign Aid…It’s Corporate Welfare!​

Faced with growing American frustration over more than $100 billion spent on a failed proxy war in Ukraine, President Biden’s handlers have hit on a gimmick to convince us that this foreign aid is actually an investment in our own economy! In his recent television address, Biden explained that as we transfer more weapons to Ukraine we then will build new weapons at home to replace them. That, explained Biden, means more American jobs and a stronger American economy.

So “Project Ukraine” is not really about foreign welfare, but rather domestic corporate welfare for the military-industrial complex. Should that make us feel any better?

The rest: