After reading about how Wal-Mart tried to fleece a county in Florida to get money for its distribution center, a damn spiffy question came to mind.
In 7th grade I had to take civics. We learned about neat things like the Constitution, separation of powers, and how the government taxes its citizens and spends money.
For most of my adult life, I've had a job, you know. To get my first job, I had to at least not quit school. For what I do now, I have to have at least some understanding of how the government works. I have to know a lot more than what I learned in middle school, you see, and that's one of the reasons I took political science in college.
In short, I work, I get paid, I pay taxes, then the government decides how to spend this dough. To get paid, my work has to be up to par, and that only happens with a good civics education. This fact suits me niftily. But (as Earl Pitts would say) you know what makes me sick? My hard-earned tax dollars get redistributed to wealthy corporations in the form of corporate welfare.
I'm starting to think that maybe the boards of directors of corporations who receive these handouts should be required to pass a college-level political science class in order to keep getting assistance. I had to pass such a course to earn all this money for them, so shouldn't they be doing their part too?
The government would probably save oodles of money if they instituted this requirement. That's cuz there's obviously a lot of powerful people making decisions in Corporate America who clearly have never studied civics or political science in their lives - or else they wouldn't expect to get entitlements like corporate welfare. Or maybe they did take these classes but they just don't care about what they learned.
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
Civics classes for corporate welfare?
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Tim, what grade did you get in that civics class?
ReplyDeleteYou don't seem to understand how what you call "corporate welfare" works at all. States, counties and local governments offer large employers tax breaks, loans and (rarely) construction subsidies in order to get them to build factories, distribution centers in their areas. In return jobs are created along with new payroll and other tax revenues that should more than pay for this "corporate welfare."
You see, several cities are typically competing to lure the company to their town. Therefore, the sweeter the deal you offer the better chance you have of getting the factory and the jobs and tax revenue that come with it. Such arrangements come with stipulations on how many jobs must be created and for how long the company must keep those jobs in the area.
There is nothing unethical about this, in fact it's smart and necessary way of growing your economic base.
Sometimes it's also necessary to offer similar incentives to keep an employer from leaving town for somewhere more attractive.
So scheffy old pal, I'm assuming you support giving just as much welfare to poor people, right?
ReplyDeleteThen the poor have more money to buy stuff and boost the economy.
If you consider investing in education and job-training to be welfare, then yes. I think a good way cities can attract high-paying skilled jobs is to tell the employers we'll invest X amount of dollars training our people to fill your jobs.
ReplyDeleteSimply writing checks to the poor never solves poverty. You've heard the proverb, "Give a man a fish and you've fed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you've fed him for a lifetime."
So you're saying we should just write checks to the rich instead.
ReplyDeleteThe proverb also applies to corporations you know.
Look, it's a very simple concept.
ReplyDelete1.) Corporations are getting getting tax breaks, not a "check." If the company doesn't relocate to your town, it wouldn't be getting that tax money anyway.
2.) Those tax breaks are designed to attract businesses in order to CREATE JOBS. Jobs are the only way out of poverty. This benefits the poor, unless you think people shouldn't have to work for a living.
3.) If your town doesn't offer The Corporation these tax breaks, someone else will and they will get the factory and the jobs.
What really is the difference between a tax break and a check??
ReplyDeleteEither way the corporation gets free money (which they didn't earn).