Comments on: Incentives Everywhere

By: Tony Edwards

Tony Edwards — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 14:29:55 +0000

In the British Virgin Islands, after Hugo, in which I lost my home, an old wooden boat, there was no help from FEMA, or anyone else. In the US Virgin Islands, there was. For months and years after there were blue tarpaulins visible from miles away. In the BVI, there were simply a lot of people, individuals mostly who just got down and did what was needed. As a "for instance" the local electricity company, which had much of it's distribution network destroyed, had every man jack of their staff, from the cleaners down to the managing director out in the field, clearing and replacing the network from long before dawn to long after dark. All of the female office staff spent their days organising food and drink and getting it out to the men in the field. Result, within four weeks, 90% of the houses and businesses were with power again, and within about 90 days, just bout everything was back to normal. Similarly with the many damaged or destroyed roofs, they were all replaced or repaired within months.
Not having any nanny to hold your hand proved to be a great reason to take care of yourself.

By: mostly cajun

mostly cajun — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 02:34:48 +0000

Katrina: The gift that keeps on giving.

Over here on the OTHER side of Louisiana where we were hit by the hurricane that nobody remembers, Hurricane Rita, the government is more of an impediment to recovery than any other factor. New government-mandated rules and regulations raised the cost of building new homes and repairing old ones.

There's much more positive to the story of survivors of BOTH hurricanes, but you won't read those stories because it's hard to tuck in the obligatory "Blame Bush" lines in a story about people getting out and getting on with life.

MC
Lost a house, but survived Hurricane Rita

By: John

John — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 15:37:28 +0000

“The government of the United States is a definite government, confined to specified objects. It is not like the state governments, whose powers are more general. Charity is no part of the legislative duty of the government.”
– James Madison

By: Mark

Mark — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 20:28:45 +0000

Regardless, I question the morality of those that want to raise taxes to pay for more compassion like this. The reason why these people are immoral is that they do not want to raise THEIR taxes to pay for this compassion, but rather the other persons. That such behavior is not even called into question is just a sign of the times.

By: Fay

Fay — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 18:49:15 +0000

"The Iraq war and the Afghanistan war are not part of the defense budget; they are appropriations."

Convenient, especially considering that Iraq is the greatest corporate welfare giveaway of all time.

Also convenient is lumping in Social Security and Medicare with indigent unemployment and welfare benefits.

Carry on.

By: Brad Warbiany

Brad Warbiany — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 18:28:19 +0000

GU,

Those programs aren’t welfare, they’re “entitlements”!

In all seriousness, though, we need to consider that corporate welfare can not be entirely counted by what money the government doles out of the treasury to corporations. You also need to consider the level to which they stack the playing field in favor of some corporations over others based upon regulations. Those regulations erode economic growth. While that won’t ever be counted in our taxes, we’re certainly paying for it.

By: GU

GU — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 17:16:36 +0000

Both personal and corporate welfare suck. However, if you look at the federal budget, much more is being paid for personal welfare (SS, medicare, medicaid, welfare, worker’s comp., etc.) than corporate welfare OR defense spending.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_budget%2C_2008

Yoshidad is simply wrong

By: James B.

James B. — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 17:13:39 +0000

Corporate welfare costs exponentially more taxpayer money than individual welfare fraud ever could, yet it barely gets a blip on the "libertarian" radar. Ugh.

Yeah, I never hear L(l)ibertarians complain about the Ethanol boondogle, Gov't funded sports stadiums, agricultural price supports, the Ex-Im Bank, giveways to relocating corporations. Bunch of hypocrites.

By: Jim Collins

Jim Collins — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 16:50:57 +0000

How about getting your facts straight? Star Wars wasn’t a “single” weapons system. It was a group of systems that were meant to achieve a common goal. Several of these systems worked and are in use today. If you look into the history of the Internet you will find that it came from DARPAnet, which was used for Star Wars. Technology develpoed for Star Wars is in common use today. Your so called “corporate welfare” has helped more people than welfare ever will. All of the money spent on these projects didn’t just go into somebody’s pocket, to dissappear from sight. A large amount of it went to pay the people who worked on those projects. Money that flowed into local economies. How much of it was paid back to the government in the form of corporate and personal income taxes?

By: Fay

Fay — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 15:59:21 +0000

I agree with yoshidad. There is indeed a small minority of people who commit welfare fraud types of crimes. That doesn’t mean we just leave storm victims to die in their own filth, a la Katrina. Emergency management is one of the things government is FOR. Corporate welfare costs exponentially more taxpayer money than individual welfare fraud ever could, yet it barely gets a blip on the “libertarian” radar. Ugh.