Sunday, April 26, 2015

We don't have free trade WITHIN the United States: Companies in just 13 states get over 90% of $110 billion in government subsidies since the 1970s

We're talking over $100 billion of taxpayer money favoring companies, in descending order, in New York way ahead in first, then Washington, Louisiana, and Michigan rounding out the top four, Kentucky, Oregon, Indiana, Texas, New Jersey, Missouri, Pennsylvania, Ohio and New Mexico over every other company in those states and throughout the states.

View the report here, and the state by state map here. For a shorter period involving additional federal subsidies adding another $68 billion to the above total see this report at the same site.

Forbes Magazine is not amused, here:

According to Good Jobs First, there are 514 economic development programs in the 50 states and the District of Columbia. More than 245,000 awards have been granted under those programs. I ask again, where is the outrage? The system is antithetical to the idea of free markets. A quarter of a million times, state governments decided what is best for producers and consumers. That should make us cringe. First, the government is inefficient at providing public goods, and it is terrible at manipulating the markets for private goods. But more importantly, those 514 economic development programs are almost all the result of insidious cronyism. Narrow business interests manipulate government policymakers, and those interests prosper to the detriment of everyone else. Free markets be damned.

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For the top four, think Wall Street, aircraft, oil and autos.

Highly secretive trade deal negotiations with Pacific "partners" no doubt reproduce sweeteners all around no different from what has been going on within our own country for a long time right underneath our noses.

The first step to curtailing this cronyism is to stop calling the one free trade and the other free-market capitalism. We have neither.