Rev.:

Now that I understand what your meaningless reply to my meaningless post intended, I'm better prepared to discuss our positions, which seem to start out fairly similar but end up in very different places, indeed.

I agree that "corporate welfare" is a buzz phrase, but it's one that I believe serves as a sound metaphor for spending billions of tax dollars, largely withheld from the incomes of the middle class and with the intended purpose of paying for vital government services, on keeping corporations that don't pay taxes and are "too big to fail" in business when their unsustainable, immoral business practices come back around to bite them in the butt. We'll have to agree to disagree on corporate welfare being "meaningless."

With that out of the way, let's talk about your assertions that these corporations are operating within the laws of the land and benefiting our society. I must agree that they are operating according to what the law allows. Where I suspect you and I differ on that point is in our respective assessments of how the laws that allow them to operate the way they do came into being. I'm not sure how you see it, but what I see is that our all-too-easily corrupted Parliament of Whores (that's Congress and the President) has been lobbied (paid off) much more heavily by these corporations than by any other interest group, and therefore, they feel strongly compelled to make laws that keep their wealthy benefactors happy and "contributing to their campaigns." Effectively, this means corporations are making the laws that govern their practices. Were you and I in the same position, I strongly doubt we would structure those laws in ways that would inhibit our ability to increase our profits. Why, then, should we believe they would?

As for the corporate role as benefactors to our society, beyond employing a lot of people and creating stock dividends for those willing (and able) to invest in Wall Street (both of which are, without question, meaningful contributions from the viewpoint of the beneficiaries), I don't see that they are doing much to benefit the majority of U.S. citizens. In fact, I see a lot more harm being done than good. Here are a few negative impacts of allowing companies to become "too big to fail:"

- Lack of competition
- Loss of opportunity for new, small businesses (fewer places to work)
- Lack of incentive to improve products and innovate
- Reduced quality of service
- Loss of incentive for competitive pricing
- Wage stagnation
- Laws that enable large corporations handicap small businesses
- Laws that reduce the corporate tax burden increase the tax burden for others, thereby reducing consumer spending power
- When increasing taxes on the middle class still can't fill the revenue gap, government services get cut.

The list goes on and on.

Just for a moment, let's get back to "too big to fail." Talk about a negative! When several of these corporations absolutely SHOULD have failed, our government was "forced" to dig into our pockets to bail them out. (I personally believe the consequences of allowing those corps to fail would have been significantly less dire than we were led to believe, but I guess that's beside the point.) The men and women who artificially inflated the housing market with their "questionable" lending practices should be in prison, but instead, they got paid bonuses out of our tax dollars. Doesn't that piss you off just a little? Whatever you want to argue about how important these companies might be to our economy, don't you have to agree that it puts us in a bad position? When the inevitable consequences of increasing our debt limit to keep their stocks healthy come around, won't we be forced to bail them out again?

Anyway, I'm tired, so it must be time to stop. I'm sure there are some other benefits associated with being ruled by corporate overlords, but there are also many more negatives. When something does more harm than good, shouldn't we seek to change it?