They say that death and taxes are inevitable but in the US, we must add Corporate Welfare to the mix.
The popular belief sponsored by right-wing media is that lazy and undeserving poor people and immigrants are taking all the tax money that should go to hard working citizens.
Stories about how much money big corporations take in grants and subsidies annually from the US government are nowhere to be found in the corporate media.
But recently, a shocking story has broken through this wall of absent information and denial.
As US News reports, Intel agreed to what is “… arguably the most remarkable federal intervention in the private sector since the 2008-2009 auto bailouts ...”
The government is now the single largest investor in Intel and is therefore capable of exercising enormous control of this tech titan.
Now I suspect that this one move by the President is enough to give corporate CEOs, board members, and investors a serious case of indigestion if not a full blown heart attack.
The President was considered a corporate deal-maker, and businesses expected him to pay by the rules and do business as usual.
But business leaders are not allowed to give things away like grants, healthcare, increased salaries unless it is absolutely necessary. Here, the President is acting like a businessman rather than like the head of the government. If corporations want government money, they must give stock in return.
This government as investor approach is different from existing federal programs, including former President Joe Biden’s CHIPS legislation, designed to support high-tech investment in the United States. These were gifts from the government.
This will be a seismic shock to large corporations if it continues. It is no longer “business as usual” and the government free money spigot has been partially shut and may eventually be turned off completely.
Imagine if the too-big-to-fail banks in 2008 were required to give 20% of their stock to get government loans to remain solvent or if GM and Chrysler were required to do the same to get unsecured government loans for tens of billions of dollars. Bush provided a 17.4 billion dollar bailout to GM and Chrysler in 2008 but the government never even considered asking for stock in return.
If the US had received stock,, these corporations would be paying enormous dividends into the US treasury and stock market increases would also provide the US Treasury tens of billions from this new form of taxation based on partial corporate ownership.
The claim that the President is a free-market capitalist is long gone. He now declares he has “total control” over Intel despite the claim that the government will not have a representative on the company’s board.
Now the amusing (and perhaps tragic) thing about all this is that Republicans accuse Democrats of being “Marxists.” But there is nothing more communist than government owning and controlling the “means of production.”
It was only a matter of time before Republican leaders became the thing they hate most: communists. Hypocrisy is in their DNA. Perhaps we are on the verge of a communist takeover of business by the US government.
CEOs are justified in running scared and hiding their heads under the covers. They are getting the absolute opposite of what they wanted from their beloved Republican leadership and there seems to be nothing they can do about it.
Pity the poor capitalists. Market capitalism and the “free market” (freedom for large corporations to get generous government subsidies) appears to be on the verge of being reduced to a smoldering ruin.
