Sure, I’ve complained about the over-the-top anti-Trump bias of much of the mainstream media (which may actually have improved Trump’s public standing). But, today, I enthusiastically celebrate that supercilious slant.
Why? Because it means much of the media amazingly finds itself on the right side, panning the recent deal to save 1,000 jobs at the Carrier Corporation.
Saving jobs is good per se. We want jobs to stay here in America. But, at what price?
Thus far, the deal remains secret, but according to Politico, “The agreement reportedly includes $7 million in state tax breaks over ten years offered by the Indiana Economic Development Corporation, a quasi-public entity that doesn’t require legislative approval for its deals.”
“Quasi-public entities” always make me queasy.
“Can American companies now merely threaten to go to Mexico,” asks Chris Rossini in the Ron Paul Liberty Letter, “in order to get a sweetheart deal for themselves?”
This special arrangement’s costs are not merely monetary: Special deals for some companies at the expense of others undermine the whole concept of equality under the law.
File under: crony capitalism.
Even the socialists at The Nation say the agreement “epitomizes corporate socialism at the expense of American taxpayers.”
“I certainly think that, if President Obama had done something like this, conservatives would have been freaking out,” argues Reason’s Peter Suderman.
Many are. Well, maybe not exactly “freaking out” — but vocally opposing the idea of the not-quite-yet-president picking winners and losers in the marketplace.
Crony capitalism didn’t make America great. Our revolution’s justification prompts the antithesis.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
5 replies on “Crony Carrier”
I don’t like the term “crony capitalism.”
Why? Because it isn’t capitalism at all. It isn’t even a FORM of capitalism.
In fact, it’s something even worse than socialism. It is the very thing American colonists fought against Historians, such as Murray Rothbard, called things like the Carrier deal “mercantilism”. Rothbard wrote about it in his huge history of America called “Conceived in Liberty.” Read some excerpts about mercantilism here: http://www.mofirst.org/audio/Rothbard/Conceived-In-Liberty/Conceived-in-Liberty-Mercantilism.pdf
I stopped using capitalism as a concept about 20 years ago — it’s free market or it’s not. This I call at various times crony corporatism, mercantilism, or my personal fave of late, “neofeudalism.” It is a matter of the time-immemorial practice of royalty conveying favors on close friends and supporters, and all that has changed is the titles conferred, from lords and barons, to CEOs and other corporati. In the USSR it was called the “commissariat”; in any society run by strong centralized govt, some get special treatment at the expense of all others. Only a decentralized, verging on anarchist, system can ever promote liberty. Our task is to insulate ourselves from the effects of this hegemony, and let it support itself not at our expense.
Paul,
Could it be that ‘onerous’ taxes were set aside instead of a tax ‘break’? Why is this much different that if the terribly high US corporate tax burden were relieved significantly to once again make us competitive with counties such as Ireland?
http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2015/10/15/ireland-reduces-corporate-income-tax-rate-to‑6 – 5‑good-but-correct-rate-is‑0/#6beab52836d8
Considering the fact that corporations do not pay a dime of taxes and that corporate taxation does not actually exist, I think you may be onto something. Corporations pass every penny of taxation on to consumers, as higher prices, or to stockholders, as lower dividends. They only act as stealth tax collectors for the government. Individuals pay every penny of corporate taxation and above that they pay for the administration of the system…
That “tax relief” is required to preserve jobs here by subsidizing a limited few with the taxes of all is indeed an abomination.
It is however the symptom of the greater problem which is the tax structure of the US and states is not competitive as to corporations which must deal in the competitive world market. That is the real problem.
We must insist the governmental powers cease treating the symptoms with bandaids and address, and cure the deadly disease itself.
Everyone knows you cannot actually tax corporations, is the new administration willing to act on that reality?