The Republican Party has always been in favor of business subsidies.

 

Your Democratic propaganda spew ignores the facts ....... again.
Democratic ruled governments like San Francisco, California and Oregon pass laws to violate existing laws that result in the death of innocent American citizens at the hands of known felons, then rage when Republican legislation threatens the funding of illegal actions.
Democrats cannot admit their policies are destroying this country; they can only froth the same tired old slogans of hate and divisiveness.

 

Most business subsidies are foils for bad regulation, and much of that regulation is imposed by leftist nutjobs. The oil industry subsidies are a prime example. Even with the huge subsidies that oil companies get for exploration, just last month a company (Shell, if memory serves) abandoned seven years of investment in the Alaskan north-Arctic, because the oil they found there couldn't be pumped with enough profit to make up for the billions lost.

The fishing industry is also begging for relief now, and thousands of fisheries are going out of business, because leftist nuts in Washington are making fishing crews hire on-boat environmental compliance monitors. No one can afford it, and the fishing industries are dying. But a year from now, you won't be aware of any of the backstory. All you'll do is bitch about the unfair business subsidies that the fishing companies will have to receive, to cover the cost of the monitors.

As usual you skew "facts" to fit your prejudices.

 

Everything that you have said, is a fucking bold fact, in my business, environmentalists and their illicit regulations are becoming very overbearing, and it costs alot of money.

Everything that comes out that is in accordance with the regulations, are just as costly, and I'm not even mentioning the maintenance of this bullshit.

 

He is a socialist.

 

CATO Institute By Tad DeHaven July 25, 2012

Risng federal spending and huge deficits are pushing the nation toward a financial and economic crisis. Policymakers should find and eliminate wasteful, damaging, and unneeded programs in the federal budget. One good way to save money would be to cut subsidies to businesses. Corporate welfare in the federal budget costs taxpayers almost $100 billion a year.

Policymakers claim that business subsidies are needed to fix alleged market failures or to help American companies better compete in the global economy. However, corporate welfare often subsidizes failing and mismanaged businesses and induces firms to spend more time on lobbying rather than on making better products.
*not_secure_link*www.cato.org/publications/policy-analysis/corporate-welfare-federal-budget

National Review
by Michael Tanner February 9, 2011 Republicans Are Weak on Farm Subsidies

Last month, when the conservative Republican Study Committee released its plan for $2.5 trillion in budget cuts over the next ten years, one enormous item of wasteful government spending was conspicuously missing — farm subsidies. Perhaps that reflects the fact that 24 of the RSC’s 165 members sit on the House Agriculture Committee, the notorious overseer of farm-welfare programs. Total direct government farm payments to the districts of those 24 representatives alone costs taxpayers more than $1 billion per year. Numerous other RSC members hail from farm states, and therefore have a vested interest in protecting payments to their constituents. For example, RSC chairman Rep. Jim Jordan is not a member of the Agriculture Committee but represents an Ohio district that receives $30 million in direct payments annually...

While conservatives often mythologize small farms, most farm subsidies go to large and corporate farms. In fact, the largest 10 percent of recipients receive 73 percent of all subsidy payments...

some of the most deeply “red” states are among the biggest collectors of federal largess. In 2010, solidly Republican states such as Alaska, Kansas, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Virginia were among the largest recipients of per capita federal spending.
*not_secure_link*www.nationalreview...licans-are-weak-farm-subsidies-michael-tanner

 

Actually, you are the one who does that, you and your allies on the right.

--------

Council on Foreign Relations Press May 2014
Authors: Edward Alden, Bernard L. Schwartz Senior Fellow, and Rebecca Strauss, Associate Director, Renewing America Publications

Each year, U.S. state and local governments spend tens of billions of dollars to lure or retain business investment. The subsidies waste scarce taxpayer dollars that could better be used to strengthen public services such as education and infrastructure, or to lower overall tax burdens to create a more favorable investment climate...

The best data so far, compiled by the New York Times, puts the national total at more than $80 billion annually, which is equal to 7 percent of state and local tax revenues...

Rarely do the benefits of these subsidies exceed the costs. In highly mobile industries, like film production, the subsidies do lure business from other states, but any job creation is short-term and film crews are usually imported. In many other industries, subsidies have less influence on location decisions; manufacturers, in particular, require local networks of suppliers and employees with specialized training. Local governments usually lack the sophistication to negotiate successfully with big companies, so they end up subsidizing businesses that would have invested in the state regardless. Public money is wasted that could have gone to lower the overall corporate tax rate or to more productive investments like education and infrastructure—assets that matter more for most business location decisions than one-off tax breaks.
*not_secure_link*www.cfr.org/united-states/curtailing-subsidy-war-within-united-states/p32762

 

So. What are you saying, that
$18 TRILLION
and counting is acceptable,
OR
that we should steal from our most successful and productive citizens to pay off the failed programs of the left?

 

Business subsidies are either payoffs for campaign contributions, or they are efforts to attract and keep businesses. Efforts to attract and keep businesses are zero sum games, because what one state or locale gains another state or locale loses.

Are you in favor of business subsidies, or aren't you?

If the "programs of the left" really have failed, there would be a popular demand to end them. As I have pointed out on many occasions, there is not.

 

Try answering my question
Do you think
$18 TRILLION
and counting is acceptable,
OR
that we should steal from our most successful and productive citizens to pay off the failed programs of the left?

 

No. Yes.

The national debt only became a problem with the failure of Reagan's tax cuts for the rich to balance the budget, as he claimed they would in his debate with Jimmy Carter.

As long as the top tax rate was at least 70% the national debt declined as a percentage of gross domestic product. It declined during the Korean War and the War in Vietnam. For most Americans tax cuts for the rich mean tax increases for them, cuts in "programs of the left" they most assuredly support, because they know that they have not failed, and or more national debt.

Once again, if the "programs of the left" failed, they would be unpopular with the voters. Whenever Republican politicians try to cut them, they learn otherwise.

The reason I frequently ignore your posts is because they are lacking in content. You are unwilling or unable to engage in an intelligent discussion of serious problems that lack obvious or easy solutions.

An example of this is your assumption that the one percent is made up of "our most successful and productive citizens."

------

Economic Policy Institute June 12, 2014

From 1978 to 2013, CEO compensation, inflation-adjusted, increased 937 percent, a rise more than double stock market growth and substantially greater than the painfully slow 10.2 percent growth in a typical worker’s compensation over the same period.

The CEO-to-worker compensation ratio was 20-to-1 in 1965 and 29.9-to-1 in 1978, grew to 122.6-to-1 in 1995, peaked at 383.4-to-1 in 2000, and was 295.9-to-1 in 2013, far higher than it was in the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, or 1990s.
*not_secure_link*www.epi.org/publication/ceo-pay-continues-to-rise/

------

What are CEO's doing that makes them so much more valuable than they were in 1965? Are they producing goods and services that compete on the international market place? No. In 1965 American industry had a balance of trade advantage of $4,664 million. Since 1971 the United States has usually had a balance of trade deficit. It reached $708,726 million in 2008.

https://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/statistics/historical/gands.pdf

Are they providing most of the rest of us with secure, well paying jobs? No. Median income adjusted for inflation has declined since the Clinton administration.

*not_secure_link*www.newyorker.com/news/john-cassidy/chart-explains-american-politics

 

I do not assume that CEO's are our most productive citizens. I assume that one gets into the 1% club most often by earning it. The Paris Hiltons of the world excepted.

Chew on this a bit ..............
*not_secure_link*fortune.com/2015/03/02/economic-inequality-myth-1-percent-wealth/

data show that by age 60:

– 70% of the population will have experienced at least one year within the top 20th percentile of income;

– 53% of the population will have experienced at least one year within the top 10th percentile of income; and

– 11.1% of the population will have found themselves in the much-maligned 1% of earners for at least one year of their lives.

At the same time, it’s much more rare for a person to reach the top 1% and stay there. According to PSID data, only 0.6% of the population will experience 10 consecutive years in the top 1% of earners.

The fluidity cuts both ways. Rank and Hirschl pointed out in their 2014 book Chasing the American Dream that some 45% of Americans will take advantage of a need-based welfare program, like Medicaid or food stamps, by age 60. And 54% of Americans will experience at least one year of poverty by the same age.

This insight is also useful in politics. Liberals often marvel at the phenomenon of citizens in conservative states who vote “against their own economic interests.” But many of these people may very well have been in the top tiers of earners at some point in their lives, and they may expect to get back to that lofty perch again.

 

shootersa,

That is an interesting article. Thank you for posting it. I will respond to this part:

"poll numbers suggest Americans believe the government spends too much on the poor or is otherwise too involved in the economy."
*not_secure_link*fortune.com/2015/03/02/economic-inequality-myth-1-percent-wealth/

Neither of those polls indicate contentment with the distribution of wealth. When asked about "the poor" it is common for whites to think of the Welfare Queen of Chicago," (who never really existed) or "strapping young bucks" buying t bone steak with food stamps.

Here is a poll by Gallup that specifically deals with attitudes about economic inequality:

MAY 4, 2015

63% of Americans say money and wealth distribution is unfair.

Slight majority of 52% favor heavy taxes on rich as fix...

More than 75 years ago, at the tail end of the Great Depression, the Roper research organization and Fortune magazine asked Americans about "heavy taxes on the rich" as one method of redistributing wealth, and found one-third (35%) agreeing that the government should do this. Gallup began asking this question again in 1998, and found Americans' agreement at 45%. Since then, Americans' support for this idea has fluctuated, but has reached a high point of 52% in Gallup's most recent two surveys, conducted in April 2013 and April of this year.
*not_secure_link*www.gallup.com/poll/182987/americans-continue-say-wealth-distribution-unfair.aspx

It is interesting that in 1940, when the top tax rate was 81%, only 35% favored that.

https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-soi/02inpetr.pdf

In 2015, when the top tax rate is 39.6%

*not_secure_link*www.bankrate.com/finance/taxes/tax-brackets.aspx

there is considerably more support for raising taxes on the rich. What this means is that Bernie Sanders is tapping into a popular issue.

 

But again, the problem is two-fold;
1) Of course people will always agree to "free"; its easy to say "Lets take his stuff and give it to me"
2) As noted in the article, most people will be economically mobile during their working lives; this puts a whole new spin on "economic inequality".

Economic inequality is a political concept cooked up by the power brokers to foment unrest with the low information masses.

 

Americans have usually been more tolerant of high degrees of economic inequality than Europeans. This is probably because the United States never had a hereditary, titled aristocracy, that owed its wealth to land rent.

The gini index is a measure of economic inequality. The higher the gini index is, the more economic inequality there is. The gini index for the United States is 45. It is lower in every European country.

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2172rank.html#us

Americans usually associate hard work with wealth. Nevertheless, the terms "working class" and "idle rich" reveal a different attitude about the relationship. I do not know this for a fact, but I suspect those terms are used more frequently in the UK, than the USA.

One of the reasons most Americans are more tolerant of economic inequality, as the article you posted suggests, is because most Americans are in the upper 20%, were there, or expect to get there.

However, as I have pointed out earlier, median income adjusted for inflation has declined since 2000. During previous periods of great inequality - I am thinking partidularly of the last quarter of the nineteenth century, and the 1920's, most Americans advanced somewhat.

In the past statistics were not kept as carefully. Nevertheless, I doubt that there has ever before been a time when the richer got richer, while most Americans got poorer. This explains the popularity both of Donald Trump, and Bernie Sanders.

As far as "low information voters" are concerned, this is what a Gallup survey released APRIL 7, 2015 has to say about that, "Democrats lead by 22 points (57%-35%) in leaned party identification among adults with post-graduate degrees. The Democrats’ edge is narrower among those with college degrees or some post-graduate experience (49%-42%)."
*not_secure_link*www.people-press.org/2015/04/07/a-deep-dive-into-party-affiliation/

 

Exactly what democrat programs are successful?

 

Bernie-is-a-Commie is running about a third, three weeks in. Better than I expected.

Here's a hilarious irony concerning Communism. (From WSJ Oct. 26, Page One.)

The gravesite of Karl Marx, at Highgate Cemetery in London, gets about 200 visits per day on average. Recently there's been an uptick due to the recent victory of the Labor Party. (Yes, Labor = Collectivism = Communism, in the UK as well as the US.)

Commies making their pilgrimmages are met with a shock: Highgate Cemetery charges for admission, to see Marx's grave! Four pounds, or about $6 US!!!!

Ben Gliniecki, a Marxist interviewed at the site, said, "Personally I think it is disgusting. There are no depths of irony, or bad taste, to which capitalists won't sink if they think they can make money out of it!"

But the greater irony is lost on Mr. Gliniecki: Back in the late 19th century, when Karl Marx was settling his affairs, he had many options for burial. He could have gone the way of the typical London proletariat and opted to have himself tossed into the sewers. Then again, that 18th century convention was already passe, so London had several fine public cemeteries that Marx could have chosen. He would have been buried for free, quietly and ignominiously, in a cozy yet crowded spot.

Instead, Karl Marx, the Hero of the Worker, the man who condemned private property for the rest of us, tapped into his considerable personal wealth and BOUGHT A PRIVATE PLOT FOR HIMSELF AT HIGHGATE. Not only that, but he endowed a bronze-busted memorial stone nearly as large as a modern mausoleum!

Apparently the rest of us are supposed to disavow our land and chattels, and take up ploughshares for the collective. But Karl Marx bought himself a piece of land that would last into perpetuity.

 

Dont expect an answer.

 

Now if this isn't a double edged sword, they'll take the free, but they never want to be free.

 

Total leftist horseshit.

The Clinton Regime placed the U.S. into ''2 expensive wars that we could not win'', while they claimed that Iraq had WMD's, voting to go to war, then all of a sudden, ''the war is lost'' the very war that they fully endorsed and voted for.

The Clinton Regime is also the key to the Subprime toxic loans that cost this country over a $1 trillion, while also chiming is Barney ''I dont see a problem'' Frank and his cohort Chris Dodd.

Now this country has OBAMACARE.

When major tax cut reform happens, federal fucking government revenues go on the uptick.