Guardian UK: The free market preachers have long practised state welfare for the rich

[marmar]

The free market preachers have long practised state welfare for the rich
Bailing out banks seems unprecedented, but the US government's form in subsidising big business is well established

George Monbiot
The Guardian, Tuesday September 30 2008



According to Senator Jim Bunning, the proposal to purchase $700bn of dodgy debt by the US government was "financial socialism, it is un-American". The economics professor Nouriel Roubini called George Bush, Henry Paulson and Ben Bernanke "a troika of Bolsheviks who turned the USA into the United Socialist State Republic of America". Bill Perkins, the venture capitalist who took out an ad in the New York Times attacking the plan, called it "trickle-down communism".

They are wrong. Any subsidies eventually given to the monster banks of Wall Street will be as American as apple pie and obesity. The sums demanded may be unprecedented, but there is nothing new about the principle: corporate welfare is a consistent feature of advanced capitalism. Only one thing has changed: Congress has been forced to confront its contradictions.

One of the best studies of corporate welfare in the US is published by my old enemies at the Cato Institute. Its report, by Stephen Slivinski, estimates that in 2006 the federal government spent $92bn subsidising business. Much of it went to major corporations such as Boeing, IBM and General Electric.

The biggest money crop - $21bn - is harvested by Big Farmer. Slivinski shows that the richest 10% of subsidised farmers took 66% of the payouts. Every few years, Congress or the administration promises to stop this swindle, then hands even more state money to agribusiness. The farm bill passed by Congress in May guarantees farmers a minimum of 90% of the income they've received over the past two years, which happen to be among the most profitable they've ever had. The middlemen do even better, especially the companies spreading starvation by turning maize into ethanol, which are guzzling billions of dollars' worth of tax credits.

Slivinski shows how the federal government's Advanced Technology Program, which was supposed to support the development of technologies that are "pre-competitive" or "high risk", has instead been captured by big businesses flogging proven products. Since 1991, companies such as IBM, General Electric, Dow Chemical, Caterpillar, Ford, DuPont, General Motors, Chevron and Monsanto have extracted hundreds of millions from this programme. Big business is also underwritten by the Export-Import Bank: in 2006, for example, Boeing alone received $4.5bn in loan guarantees. .......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/sep/30/marketturmoil.subprimecrisis

[trthnd4jstc]

1. It is a fact that the Fed. Government has supported Big Business. n/t

[undergroundpanther]

2. and these pigs WHINE

about welfare when mothers trying to raise their kids escaping an abuser and can't afford to exist ,pay for childcare to even try to get a job.Ohh how they hate us"little people"

The feeling is mutual however,I hate the rich.The rich are not going hungry or without medical care,these pigs don't need any welfare.And according to the free market shit they spew as excuses to screw the poor, if their businesses suck let them FAIL.

Let all the rich'players' taste poverty.But the pigs are cowards they off themselves rather than face what they make billions of other face everyday.

There are people who need real help down here, where the faint noise you hear comes from.You oblivious self absorbed greedy, know this, piggies that keep on hogging it all the distant noise beyond your guarded gates it will get louder and if you porkers keep ignoring us, our anger at YOU will become stronger until we are screaming in your face for accountability and if that fails to get through your miserly petty skulls,the outraged people will be dragging your pampered asses to a guillotine by your expensive suit collars like the criminal traitorous inhumane swine swindlers you deserve to be treated as.Just as your piggy kind should have been treated like long ago.
Think on that rich assholes..before you screw the people again for the people have been too tolerant and suffered for too long.