SUBSIDIZING THE CORPORATE ONE PERCENT ABOUT $145 BILLION PER YEAR FROM JUST STATE AND LOCAL TAXPAYER DOLLARS Subsidizing the Corporate One Percent by Eternal Hope SUN MAR 09, 2014 AT 02:18 PM PDT Koch Brothers Takes $88 Million in Corporate Welfare The Koch Brothers like to champion themselves as crusaders against the welfare state. But a new report shows that they took $88 million of your taxpayer dollars while demanding that governments stop wasting taxpayer dollars. In total, $110 billion goes out to corporate welfare projects from state and local authorities. This does not even include money coming from federal sources. Entitled “Subsidizing the Corporate One Percent,” the report from the taxpayer watchdog group Good Jobs First shows that the world’s largest companies are not models of self-sufficiency and unbridled capitalism. To the contrary, they’re propped up by billions of dollars in welfare payments from state and local governments. Such subsidies might be a bit more defensible if they were being doled out in a way that promoted upstart entrepreneurialism. But as the study also shows, a full “three-quarters of all the economic development dollars awarded and disclosed by state and local governments have gone to just 965 large corporations”—not to the small businesses and startups that politicians so often pretend to care about. In dollar figures, that’s a whopping $110 billion going to big companies. Fortune 500 firms alone receive more than 16,000 subsidies at a total cost of $63 billion. We can also for the first time identify which companies have received the most cumulative awards, both in dollar terms and number of awards. In dollar terms, the biggest recipient by far is Boeing, with a total of more than $13 billion, reflecting the giant deals it has gotten in Washington and South Carolina as well as more than 130 smaller deals around the country. The others at the top of the cumulative subsidy dollar list are: Alcoa ($5.6 billion), Intel ($3.9 billion), General Motors ($3.5 billion) and Ford Motor ($2.5 billion). And Dow Chemical has the highest number of awards. The company with the largest number of awards is Dow Chemical, with 416. Following it are Berkshire Hathaway (310), General Motors (307), Wal-Mart Stores (261), General Electric (255), Walgreen (225) and FedEx (222). Forty eight companies have received more than 100 individual awards. This shows that a lot of programs touted by politicians as economic development programs actually go to corporations who dont need the money. While some of these programs can provide jobs for the community, they also create a lot of hardships when these companies decide to leave town. And they create a lot of empty buildings that the taxpayers frequently have to clean up after. By contrast, California farm workers who are living in third world conditions get nothing. For California’s farmworkers, toiling all day in the brutal, sun-scorched fields is hard enough; the homes they return to each night are often in even worse conditions. Though the reforms won by previous generations have extended basic labor and safety protections to seasonal and immigrant farm workers, many remain shut out of the right to decent accommodations. According to a new report published by California Rural Legal Assistance (CRLA), the housing crisis in the agricultural workforce has worsened over the last generation. Despite the locavore fads and slow-food diets that have infused today’s farm-fresh produce with an air of glamour, as a workplace, the fields still echo the social marginalization and scandalous poverty that sparked the groundbreaking grape boycott of the late 1960s. Don Villarejo, the longtime farmworker advocate who authored the report, tells In These Times that growers have “systematically” reduced investment in farmworker housing over the past 25 years in order to reduce overhead costs and to avoid the trouble of meeting state and federal regulations, which were established as part of a broader overhaul of agricultural labor, health and safety standards during the 1960s and 1980s. According to Villarejo, workers’ modern material circumstances are little improved from the old days of the Bracero system. That initiative—the precursor to our modern-day guest-worker migrant program—became notorious for shunting laborers into spartan cabins, tents and other inhospitable dwellings on the farms themselves, beset with entrenched poverty and unhealthy, brutish conditions. The report itself (PDF format) goes into more detail: goodjobsfirst.org/sites/default/files/docs/pdf/subsidizingthecorporateonepercent.pdf Trickle down economics is still alive and well 25 years after Ronald Reagan left office. Unfortunately, not enough of it trickles down to the workers who have to work 12 hours a day just to make a living. *********************************************************** Consider what the total FEDERAL CORPORATE WELFARE might be and who would be sponsoring the Bills, Amendments and Clauses, that hand out our tax dollars to fabulously profitable, successful corporations. Maybe our American Corporate CEOs are just too lazy and irresponsible to manage their budgets and profits (while paid huge sums) and have become dependent on government welfare. And maybe we should be asking for an accounting of newly created (additional) jobs before handing out any more cash to these taxpayer dollar parasites. If your business model is not profitable, demand for your product or service is falling or you have run out of ideas and your competition is taking your customer/clients away from you, you should not expect taxpayers dollars to support your ventures, bonuses, private jets, tax write offs, dividends or lobbyist. Is it not the responsibility of our Legislators to wean Big Business off the government teat?
Posted on: Sun, 16 Mar 2014 07:47:47 +0000
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