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ORIGINAL: popeye1250

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ORIGINAL: luckydog1

Yes lets get back on topic.  How about naming a specific example of "Corprate Welfare", and lets look at the pros and cons of it.  Liked I asked way back.  If we are going to talk about the "Real Story" lets get real.  Not generalised rhetoric, an actuall, specific example.  For example I noted that Wallmart, takes the full credit for upgrrading thier energy efficiency/ making green improvements.

You know that guy "BONO"?
Remember a few years ago his "forgive third world dept" B.S.?
What got "forgiven" was all the bad loans that big banks made to third world countries.
And to add insult to injury those big banks are again making bad loans to third world countries that they know can't be repaid!
Think they'll be looking for another bailout from the Taxpayers a few years down the road?
Those banks stockholders should take the hit not U.S. Taxpayers!

quote:

ORIGINAL: luckydog1

Yes lets get back on topic.  How about naming a specific example of "Corprate Welfare", and lets look at the pros and cons of it.  Liked I asked way back.  If we are going to talk about the "Real Story" lets get real.  Not generalised rhetoric, an actuall, specific example.  For example I noted that Wallmart, takes the full credit for upgrrading thier energy efficiency/ making green improvements. 

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ORIGINAL: SugarMyChurro

Edit: And, of course, luckydog took part in the thread with the wiki link!

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ORIGINAL: luckydog1
I agree the sooner we can require every citizen to carry a national ID (health)card the better(or should we just have a national DNA database, or a RFID chip, those would probably be better than cards).

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ORIGINAL: thompsonx

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ORIGINAL: luckydog1

Yes lets get back on topic.  How about naming a specific example of "Corprate Welfare", and lets look at the pros and cons of it.  Liked I asked way back.  If we are going to talk about the "Real Story" lets get real.  Not generalised rhetoric, an actuall, specific example.  For example I noted that Wallmart, takes the full credit for upgrrading thier energy efficiency/ making green improvements. 

luckydog:
Lets look at the specific case of Archer Daniels Midland the largest farmer in the U.S.  ADM lobbies Congress to put a price floor on the price of corn.  Corn sells for less than the price floor and ADM collects the difference.  Not good enough?  ADM runs the largest cattle feeding enterprise in the U.S.(not the largest single one but combined) and buys corn at spot which is below the floor price and feeds it to the cows that wind up in your Big Mac.  Corporate welfare and they collect on both the production and the consumption end of the equation subsidized by the taxpayers...Nice work if you can get it.
This is not the only place that ADM has it's nose in the public trough but you asked for an example.
Then of course there is the state you live in.  More federal pork there than any state in the union.  Everyone in the state is on welfare from the Republicrat Governor,senators and congressmen all the way down to you.
thompson

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ORIGINAL: Archer

OK Lets look at AMD, and it's subsidies, where did they come from?
Anyone remember the days of "Farm Aid" when the idea of closing down family farms, farms that were not at the time part of the huge agribusiness corporations. We had to save the American Family Farmers, so subsidies were bumpped up.
Lo and behold what was the unintended consequences? AMD and other mega corp farming concerns leased those famiy farms and benefited from the subsidies anyway.

So if we cut those subsdies AMD gets less profit from our taxes, (a good thing) what else happens?How many family farms go under because they are not subleased by AMD? Is that a cost we are prepared to accept?

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ORIGINAL: Archer

OK Lets look at AMD, and it's subsidies, where did they come from?
Anyone remember the days of "Farm Aid" when the idea of closing down family farms, farms that were not at the time part of the huge agribusiness corporations. We had to save the American Family Farmers, so subsidies were bumpped up.
When in your lifetime have "family farms" (farms of less than 1000 acres) in their aggregate ever represented more than a single digit percentage of the farmed land in the U.S.?



Lo and behold what was the unintended consequences? AMD and other mega corp farming concerns leased those famiy farms and benefited from the subsidies anyway.
My point is and was that this was the intended and not the unintended consequence. 
Had you chosen to read the posted link you would have been aware of that fact.

So if we cut those subsdies AMD gets less profit from our taxes, (a good thing) what else happens?How many family farms go under because they are not subleased by AMD? Is that a cost we are prepared to accept?
We?????????
Are you actually suggesting that we continue to allow corporate gangsters to pillage the public coffers?
You are on record as being in favor of free enterprise.
You are on record as being against government handouts. 
If a business cannot succeed without government handouts then are they really a business?
If corporate gangsters like ADM did not exist do you think no one would take up farming as a business and fill the void left by these hoodlums?

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ORIGINAL: Archer
...be aware that other people beyond the intended targets will be adversely effected and we need to be willing to accept the responsibility for the damage done to them.

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ORIGINAL: luckydog1

I would say in the absense of corparate farms and a managed farm policy, that others would certainly start farming as a bussiness.  The food would cost more, the land would be depleated faster than it is currently, requiring a whole lot more fertaliser, for a lower yield.  I do not see how any of that would benefit society or be desirable.
Do you have any sort of data to substantiate any of your doom and gloom predictions?
Why would food cost more if we the taxpayer did not have to subsidize ADM?  It would seem to me that it would cost less.  Did you not read the link?
Why do you think the land would be depleted more rapidly,or more fertilizer needed?  Why do you think yields would be lower?
Jerome and Robert Rodael of "Organic Gardening and Farming" would disagree with your assessment and have decades of experience to refute your beliefs


Now I do imagine that some aspects of it could be improved, and I am all in favor of intelligent modification. But I think making sure farm land gets to lie fallow is very important,
Perhaps you should do a little research before you make any more ill informed statements like this.


as well as making sure that adequate crops are grown for the nation,
So I am very much in favor of having a Farm Policy.  Coherent water projects (dams, allocation, and irrigation) are needed also, which requires subsidy and policy.
What has this got to do with getting ADM,Cargill and a host of other parasites out of the public trough?

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ORIGINAL: Archer

Thompson did you miss or choose to ignore where I specificly and inside the quote you made said that ending the subsidies would be a good thing?????????????
I noticed that you wanted to let ADM and the other corporate gangsters continue their rape of the taxpayers until they can find a more subtle way to do it and then you would be in favor of stooping the current "give away".



Perhaps your article made a case for this being the intended consequence, however the subsidies were not sold to the taxpayer that way.
Clearly you have not read the link provided.  This was not sold to the taxpayers it was bribed out of congress...the taxpayers were not consulted.  Please do me the courtesy of reading what I posted before you disagree with me.

My point again for the I'm not sure how many times in this post is Ending corporate subsidies is a worthy cause, however ending them quickly and indiscriminately will have consequences that will hurt many more people than just the corporate officers and the stock holders.
How so?  If you have concerns for the shareholders of the gangster corporation I say fuck them...there are no guarantees when you gamble in the stock market.  If you don't like the risks then don't play.  Where is your "personal responsibility" mantra when it comes to boardroom gangsters?



This is not to say we should not proceed to end them just
(Maybe this will make sure that it isn't missed).
 
1. be aware that other people beyond the intended targets will be adversely effected and we need to be willing to accept the responsibility for the damage done to them.
Who exactly are these nebulous potential unintended victims?  Again if you are talking about the stock holders  again I say fuck them.
 
 
2. That we need to look for the solutions that will accomplish the end of subsidies with the least amount of those types of damages instead of blindly ending them and then trying to fix the problem reactively.
Please do not misunderstand me.  I am not against all subsidies.  I am against corporate gangsters like ADM.  I think their officers should be prosecuted and their assets seized and sold to the highest bidder and the proceeds returned to the treasury from which they were looted.  When I say that their assets should be seized I am not limiting it to corporate assets but also the gangsters personal assets.  Yes throw their fucking wives and kids out of their mansions and let them see what the welfare system is like for the poor.
The mild tone of this post is a direct result of a rather lengthy discussion with Mod11.

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ORIGINAL: Archer

Wow you really don't see my point at all.
You make your point abundantly clear.

I point out that a "safety net", something a self avowed socialist like yourself
I realize you are talking to SMC and not me here because I have never taken that position.

has often made the hue and cry for needing to be in place, might be a prudent thing to have already set up before taking a widespread economy wide shift in how business is done like eliminating the hge subsidies that businesses have become addicted to,
All I have advocated is putting those gangsters in jail,confiscating their ill gotten gains and closing down the subsidies that they used to rape the taxpayers with.
Do you suppose for one moment that there will be less of a demand for the goods and services that these hoodlums currently provide?  The fact is that those goods and services would then be provided at non taxpayer subsidized prices...oh my...free enterprise.

and you want to argue the point? Even after others who you don't hold the same level of political animus towards have tried to point out that I'm agreeing that they should be ended and our difference is in HOW to proceed to accomplish the same goal, you can't get past your notion that I want to keep them.
You have been quite clear in your desire to abolish them as soon as you can find another tit to suck on.





by way of example Enron and Worldcom both died (good riddance to bad apples) the result economy wide was 38-41 billion dollars the first year according to a Brookings Institute paper. http://www.brookings.edu/Views/Papers/Graham/20020722Graham.pdf
Shift that around and make it an economy wide sudden withdrawl from the addiction to subsidies and the results from my view would be even worse.
The results that the Brookings institute estimates of 2002 (remember this is your cite.) clearly have  not to have been borne out by the events that have since transpired.

I'm just advocating that insted of making it a cold turkey quit process that a weaning them off approach would have a less dramitic effect on the economy as a whole. Giving people time to adjust and during that adjustment a safety net until they can gt back on their feet.
You have used the necessarily vague terms like "cold turkey" and "weaning them off".  Would you please put some meat on the bones of that "cold turkey"?  How much time are you talking about?  If you had read the cites that have been given to you then you would recognize that the amount of money that these thugs extort from the taxpayers is far in excess of the paltry sums that the Brookings institute laments as a loss to the GDP.  How much longer would you be content for ADM and their ilk to continue their rape of the taxpayer...1 year,5 years,10 years? 
If congress shut the tap off tomorrow do you really think that ADM would go out of business overnight?  They have published cash reserves in the zillions not to mention the amount of equity that would be available to them through conventional "borrow money for a fee" systems.
Everyone who has contributed to this thread seems to have received at least a passing grade in econ 1A.  So I think it would behoove us to conduct this discussion at some level above that.

If and I don't doubt it at all, there are criminal acts as opposed to it ought to be a crime acts, then by all means a quicker more direct action is called for, but we still need to be prepared to provide a safety net much like the ones cried for forthe employees during the 2001 to 2002 Enron and Worldcom scandals.
ADM or some company that does the same thing will not cease to exist if the criminals are put in jail and the "free money tap" is turned off.  They will just be forced to do so as a "free enterprise" and not as a criminal enterprise.

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ORIGINAL: Archer

OK you want me to put forth the how to that I've been asking for from you and SMC, (I smell a trap but will compliy just for sh%&'s and giggles).
I have stated my plan clearly and often...lock the thugs up and confiscate their ill gotten gains.
Spare me the paranoia.  I am not trying to trap you or trick you I am simply fucking up fed and sick of having billionaires telling me how much they are helping the economy by making themselves rich at the taxpayers expense.  And I am double up fed and sick of middle class wanna bees making excuses for them.  It's your money too that they are stealing. 
I would rather support every fucking drug addict and loafer in America for the rest of their life than give these filthy rich sons of bitches a dime.  They have more money than they can count and still they want more....fuck me dead... when is enough enough?

Next budget cycle drop Grain subsidies meanwhile have an adjustment period of a year or less duration to get employees and those who can demonstrate adverse effect from the drop (not to include the big guys like ADM themselves but their suppliers could get some relief). Time to get them past the initial effect. 2009 continue to drop subsidies Taking the worst offenders with the least benifits out first and proceeding to other idustries/ sectors.
How about we lock the parasites up and confiscate their ill gotten gains...If you had bothered to read the link I posted it mentions that they are already under indictment and three of them are already in the slammer.

Would take a bit of sudy to determine the order of subsidies dropped that I don't care to spend at the moment so you'll have to deal with vauge in that area.
How about every asswipe piece of shit billionaire corporation that has it's nose in the public trough we indite for racketeering and use the RICO act to confiscate their shit and lock them up? 

Ideally ending them right away from a taxpayer perspective seems good, but I'm looking for workability as opposed to idealism.
Sounds to me like you want to keep letting them fuck us while we hire some more overpaid asswipes to tell us how much good they are doing by hireing "women and minorities" and we need to keep up the good work cuz it....blah blah blah
I am an old fuck and I have seen this shell game played over and over again.

So now that I started the idea off down the path of OK here's a general idea of how to do it with less collateral damage, how about some in kind return. How do you forsee the implimentation. End all at once? end them in phases?
Go back and look at the link you posted from the Brookings Institute.  In 2002 they said the same thing that you are saying now and all you have to do is look at the stock page of the local newspaper to see all their "hand wringing" was just so much more smoke and mirrors.  The stock market is up some 2000 + points since all that "hand wringing" about collateral damage.  Yeah right.
The rich get richer and the taxpayer gets it in the shorts.


You mentioned that some subsidies were actually valuable while others had been abused so badly that their benifits were eliminated entirely and then some. I agree. So how do we determine which ones are which?
I should think the best way would be to stop making excuses for the thieving bastards.  WalMart needs a hand out like a whore needs the clap.

The worst of them are easy to see ADM etc. But at some point the determination becomes more difficult. (again not saying don't do it just saying we need to go in with eyes open, with a standard of what makes a subsidy worth ending and what makes it worth keeping.)
You are one of the ones I have seen bemoan the cost of welfare on the boards.  If we just took the subsidies that go to ADM and passed it out to everyone who made less than thirty grand a year to the tune of raising them all up to the thirty grand level we would still have money left over.
If we quit subsidizing Haliburton with their no bid contracts and got the fuck out of Iraq and Afghanistan and spent that money on putting solar panels on every roof in the U.S. made plastic bags and incandescent light bulbs illegal we would have more domestic oil than we could use and it would be less than a dollar a gallon. 
You have alluded to the fact that you are a bean counter of some sort.  How about you just run the numbers.  It is not calculus it is just arithmetic.