As the new year bowed, and all across this great land of ours, governments of every political stripe continued to plan and/or to execute one of the greatest frauds ever perpetrated on taxpayers:
That would be the subsidizing of quite wealthy private corporations and businesses with taxpayer dollars in the name of “economic development.”
But as we’ve long argued, taxpayers have no business being turned into involuntary venture capitalists by legacy-seeking pols.
Or as James Hohman, director of fiscal policy at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy in Michigan, recently put it:
“Voters should understand that special favors to select companies are all show, creating few and often no jobs. Lawmakers who cite subsidy deals as evidence that the state is doing something about the economy are in the same boat as the cheater who points to his test results to show that he knows something.”
Continues Hohman, writing in The Daily Economy, a webzine of the prestigious American Institute for Economic Research (AIER):
“But there is a deeper problem with corporate welfare. America’s principles matter and are practical. They work. States don’t succeed when their lawmakers write the biggest checks. They succeed when they provide the most economic liberty to their residents.”
And that must apply to taxpayers and corporate titans equally.
How ineffective has corporate wealthfare been in Michigan?
“Corporate subsidy deals produced just 9 percent of the jobs that were promised, according to a study of all subsidy announcements that made the front page of the Detroit Free Press from 2000 to 2020,” Hohman says. “And that’s just counting jobs at subsidized plants. Most job gains and losses don’t involve state lawmakers. And Michigan is still not back to the number of jobs it had in 2000.
Sounds familiar, does it not? Pirates, Steelers, Penguins. Volkswagen, PNC Bank, FNB Bank. One Jet, British Airways, WOW Airlines. And the list goes on and on of giant corporations invited to belly up to the taxpayer trough.
Such subsidies were billed as proof-positive ways to “grow” the economy. But, of course, that was wishful thinking. Greater Pittsburgh’s economy remains as stagnant as its population is flat.
Back to Hohman:
“Governments throughout history and around the world tend to be run by the powerful for the powerful. The levers of power are used to benefit the elite, not to promote widespread prosperity. Policies are made to entrench leaders, not to ensure that everyone gets a fair shake.”
Corporate wealthfare is a bum deal for John and Jane Q. Taxpayer. It always has been. And it always will be, no matter the tsk-tsk-ing, tut-tut-ing and “Naysayer!” smear that those engaging in such public larceny spread.
And don’t you forget it. Because those “leaders” who dive into your pockets, those who continually make false claims of corporate wealthfare’s always fictitious claims of “great benefits” to the public weal are trusting that you will.
The truly American response to such public pocket diving “ought to be to say no,” Hohman concludes. “Pay your taxes like everyone else and don’t ask for special treatment. It’s the American way.”
Corporate wealthfare is a metastasizing cancer on the public purse. It’s past time to slay it, excise it, for once and for all.
Colin McNickle is communications and marketing director at the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy (cmcnickle@alleghenyinstitute.org
