Corporate welfare

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Corporate welfare is a pejorative describing a government's bestowal of money grants, tax breaks, and/or other "special favorable treatment" on corporations. The term was coined by Ralph Nader in 1956.^[1]^[2] "Corporate welfare" creates a satirical association between corporate subsidies and welfare payments to the poor, and implies that corporations are much less needy of such treatment than the poor.

1 Corporate welfare as corrupt subsidies
2 Objections to the term
3 See also
4 Notes
5 References
6 External links

[edit] Corporate welfare as corrupt subsidies

Main article: Subsidy

Subsidies considered wasteful, inefficient, or bought by lobbying are often called corporate welfare. Of course, a particular subsidy considered obvious corporate welfare by some may well be thought of as a necessary support by others. Some extreme pork barrel projects given to corporations who donated campaign funds to a politician are obviously corporate welfare, but in other matters it is not as clear. An example would be tax breaks for alternative energy sources; many would consider them "good" subsidies, despite any lobbying done by corporations profiting from them, as the overall effect of promoting alternative energy is considered worth the price by supporters.

The label of corporate welfare is often used to decry projects advertised as benefiting the general welfare that spend a disproportionate amount of funds on large corporations. For instance, in the United States, agricultural subsidies are usually portrayed as helping honest, hardworking independent farmers stay afloat. However, the majority of income gained from commodity support programs actually goes to large agribusiness corporations such as Archer Daniels Midland, as they own a considerably larger percentage of production.^[3]

[edit] Objections to the term

Most forms of government subsidy fit into the general category of societal welfare in any case. Thus, some people feel the term unfairly portrays welfare as a bad thing. Others object to usage of "corporate welfare" on the grounds that the term plays on negative stereotypes about welfare payments to poor people, and may suggest that the poor are as undeserving of government "handouts" as corporations are. Of course, others actually are in favor of ending both corporate and indigent welfare as inherently inefficient, such as libertarians.

Some object to the term as inherently loaded; while some corporate subsidies may be inefficient or have corrupt origins, many positive and negative incentives (taxation and subsidies) to influence corporate decisions have legitimate public policy objectives. To the extent that an incentive was designed to induce a certain activity, the use of a biased term to describe the use of the incentive may prevent rather than encourage any meaningful analysis.

[edit] See also

[edit] Notes

[edit] References

Nader, Ralph. Cutting corporate welfare (Seven Stories Press, NY, 2001).
Jansson, Bruce S. The $16 trillion mistake: How the U.S. bungled its national priorities from the New Deal to the present (Columbia University Press, 2001)
Mandell, Nikki. The corporation as family : the gendering of corporate welfare, 1890-1930 (University of North Carolina Press, 2002).
Glasberg, Davita Silfen. Corporate welfare policy and the welfare state: Bank deregulation and the savings and loan bailout (Aldine de Gruyter, NY, 1997).
Lewish, David. Louder voices: The corporate welfare bums (Lewis & Samuel, 1972).
Whitfield, Dexter. Public services or corporate welfare: Rethinking the nation state in the global economy (Pluto Press, Sterling, Va., 2001.)
Folsom Jr, Burton W. The Myth of the Robber Barons (Young America)
Rothbard, Murray N. Making Economic Sense, Chapter 51: Making Government-Business Partnerships ISBN 0-945466-18-8 (1995)
Perkins, John. Confessions of an Economic Hit Man. ISBN 1-57675-301-8 (2004)