Corporate Welfare (Essay‪)‬

Welfare bums and welfare queens are by no means limited to the public housing projects. They are also to be found in the corporate boardrooms of some of the most prestigious business firms in the nation, but wherever found, this system is corrupting and inefficient. Government efforts to direct capital to its most productive uses have been a dismal failure, compared to private money managers and entrepreneurs. This is because the latter, but not the former, face a "cruel" market test every day, which weeds out inefficiency. The phrase corporate welfare has been coined to portray the idea that government involvement in the economy is innately corrupting; it also imparts the information that there are welfare bums and welfare queens to be found in the boardroom and not just in the public-housing projects. This particular intervention comes in every conceivable shape and size: grants, sweetheart business deals arranged by the commerce department, cut-rate insurance, low-interest loans, a protective wall against foreign competition, exclusive contracts, and a mind-boggling maze of other special interest privileges (Moore 1997, 3). (1) The phrase conveys the debilitating effects that government subsidies impose on corporations, which parallel the dependent and self-destructive behavior bred by social programs for the poor. Instead of being subsidized with millions of taxpayers' dollars, the fate of ailing corporations should be left up to the cruel market test wherein only the efficient survive the competition.