Corporate Welfare from Left2Right

Left2Right is a website run by liberals trying to build concensus across the partisan divide. Its an admirable mission. Sometimes they do pretty well, sometimes not. This is a bad one.

Steve Shiffrin is talking about corporate welfare. I know of no conservative who uses that term by the way. He has the following to say:

Almost ten years ago, the Boston Globe estimated that $150 billion in the form of subsidies and tax breaks was funneled to American companies.

And...

It was greater than the program aiding families with dependent children, student aid, housing, food and nutrition, and all direct public assistance taken together (excluding Social Security and medical care).

The first thing the wise reader will note is that they are comparing apples to oranges. Their initial corporate figure is made up of "subsidies" (money paid out) and tax "breaks" (money never paid in the first place). They compare this with financial aid programs which only include subsidies and no breaks. So amazingly the second figure is smaller! To quote Homer Simpson, "If you can't tell I'm being sarcastic!"

This doesn't even touch on something more important. A lot of those tax "breaks" aren't. They are accounting practices like depreciation of capital expendatures. Similarly lots of those subsidies are things that liberals traditionally support, like keeping family farms in business or ensuring that there is always milk and bread on store shelves despite market forces favoring scarcity. The market is a pretty ruthless thing when you get down to it.

So this one was definitely a miss for Left2Right.