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The greatest myth of modern times is the suggestion that capitalism and corporations do better with less government. The global economic crisis has certainly put paid to this idea. But the massive emergency state bailouts and interventions put in place from 2008 were unique only in their size and scale. Government programmes, designed to meet the needs of business, are not just everyday, they are everywhere and they are essential. Just as social welfare protects citizens from the cradle to the grave, corporate welfare protects and benefits corporations throughout their life course. And yet, in most countries, corporate welfare is hidden and underresearched. Drawing on comparative data from OECD states, this book seeks to shed light on the size, uses and importance of corporate welfareacross variouswelfare regimes.
From the time of Alexander Hamilton's "Report on Manufactures" through the Great Depression, American towns and cities sought to lure footloose companies by offering lavish benefits. These ranged from taxpayer-financed factories, to tax exemptions, to outright gifts of money. This kind of government aid, known as "corporate welfare," is still around today. After establishing its historical foundations, James T. Bennett reveals four modern manifestations.His first case is the epochal debate over government subsidy of a supersonic transport aircraft. The second case has its origins in Southern factory relocation programs of the 1930s the practice of state and local governments granting companies taxpayer financed incentives. The third is the taking of private property for the enrichment of business interests. The fourth export subsidies has its genesis in the New Deal but matured with the growth of the Export-Import Bank, which subsidizes international business exchanges of America's largest corporate entities.Bennett examines the prospects for a successful anti-corporate welfare coalition of libertarians, free market conservatives, Greens, and populists. The potential for a coalition is out there, he argues. Whether a canny politician can assemble and maintain it long enough to mount a taxpayer counterattack upon corporate welfare is an intriguing question.
In this groundbreaking pamphlet, based on testimony he delivered before Congress, Ralph Nader describes how corporations are picking our pockets, and what we can do to stop them. While the United States continues to experience unprecedented cuts in social service programs and millions of Americans go without health insurance, massive corporations continue to reap huge sums of taxpayer money through "corporate welfare"—corporate subsidies, bailouts, giveaways, and tax escapes. Cutting Corporate Welfare details numerous appalling examples of corporate welfare, including: the giveaway of the public airwaves, which by definition belong to the people, to private radio and television stations (including the latest $70 billion gift of the digital spectrum); taxpayer subsidies for giant defense corporation mergers and commercial weapons exports to governments overseas; and the practice of making patients pay twice for drugs—first, as taxpayers subsidize the drugs’ development, and again, as patients, after the federal government gives monopolistic control over the chemical’s manufacture to a price-gouging drug company. Cutting Corporate Welfare sounds a wake-up call for those concerned about how we are being pick-pocketed by big business, and what we can do to stop it.
An analysis of the welfare state from a political economy perspective that examines the effects of aging populations, migration, and globalization on industrialized economies. In The Decline of the Welfare State, Assaf Razin and Efraim Sadka use a political economy framework to analyze the effects of aging populations, migration, and globalization on the deteriorating system of financing welfare state benefits as we know them. Their timely analysis, supported by a unified theoretical framework and empirical findings, demonstrates how the combined forces of demographic change and globalization will make it impossible for the welfare state to maintain itself on its present scale. In much of the developed world, the proportion of the population aged 60 and over is expected to rise dramatically over the coming years—from 35 percent in 2000 to a projected 66 percent in 2050 in the European Union and from 27 percent to 47 percent in the United States—which may necessitate higher tax burdens and greater public debt to maintain national pension systems at current levels. Low-skill migration produces additional strains on welfare-state financing because such migrants typically receive benefits that exceed what they pay in taxes. Higher capital taxation, which could potentially be used to finance welfare benefits, is made unlikely by international tax competition brought about by globalization of the capital market. Applying a political economy model and drawing on empirical data from the EU and the United States, the authors draw an unconventional and provocative conclusion from these developments. They argue that the political pressure from both aging and migrant populations indirectly generates political processes that favor trimming rather than expanding the welfare state. The combined pressures of aging, migration, and globalization will shift the balance of political power and generate public support from the majority of the voting population for cutting back traditional welfare state benefits.
Over the past four decades many European welfare states have seen an increasing involvement of the commercial sector in their mixed economies of welfare. One aspect of this development that has yet to be fully understood in social policy analysis is the engagement of businesses to address social problems, such as social exclusion, through activities labelled as 'corporate social responsibility' ('CSR'). Although CSR has gained increasing currency on both national and international policy agendas since the 1990s, it remains a topic which is predominantly researched in business schools and from a business perspective. This book aims to redress this imbalance by focusing on the social aspect of CSR. Based on interviews with a wide spectrum of people who work with CSR professionally in England, Denmark and in the EU Commission, the book argues that when CSR is linked to social exclusion it is a way of renegotiating responsibilities in mixed economies of welfare. The book also offers a comprehensive historical understanding of CSR as it traces the emergence and development of CSR in West European welfare economies as diverse as England, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Germany and France. By situating CSR within the conceptual framework of the mixed economy of welfare and using Historical Institutionalism as a theoretical perspective to explore and explain the relationship between the welfare state and CSR, this book makes an innovative contribution to critical debates in comparative social policy.
Although political rhetoric and public perception continue to assume that the United States is the very definition of a free market economy, a different system entirely has in actuality come to prominence over the past half century. James Angresano examines the characteristics of this Corporate Welfare Economy, both from the theoretical point of view but also with key reference to the different sectors of the economy - trade, manufacturing, industry and defense among them.
Including education has profound consequences, undergirding the case for the productivity of welfare state programs and the explanation for why all rich nations have large welfare states, and identifying US welfare state leadership. From 1968 through 2006, the United States swung right politically and lost its lead in education and opportunity, failed to adopt universal health insurance and experienced the most rapid explosion of health care costs and economic inequality in the rich world. The American welfare state faces large challenges. Restoring its historical lead in education is the most important but requires investing large sums in education, beginning with universal pre-school and in complementary programs that aid children's development.
Spanning the complete era of the Conservative governments and the first term of New Labour, this book looks at mechanisms of corporate power and influence; corporate opinion and influence in a range of social policy areas including: education, training, health and social security; changing business influence on social policy in recent years in an international context and business involvement in social policy initiatives and welfare delivery. By exploring business views and opinions, power, influence and involvement in social provision, this book helps to address important questions in social policy and, in so doing, goes some way towards closing a gaping hole in the current literature. The book's breadth and multidisciplinary approach will appeal not only to students of social policy, but also to students of business, public sector management and politics, their teachers and policy makers in the field.
Policies targeting individual companies for economic development incentives, such as tax holidays and abatements, are generally seen as inefficient, economically costly, and distortionary. Despite this evidence, politicians still choose to use these policies to claim credit for attracting investment. Thus, while fiscal incentives are economically inefficient, they pose an effective pandering strategy for politicians. Using original surveys of voters in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom, as well as data on incentive use by politicians in the US, Vietnam and Russia, this book provides compelling evidence for the use of fiscal incentives for political gain and shows how such pandering appears to be associated with growing economic inequality. As national and subnational governments surrender valuable tax revenue to attract businesses in the vain hope of long-term economic growth, they are left with fiscal shortfalls that have been filled through regressive sales taxes, police fines and penalties, and cuts to public education.
Mandell examines the growth of corporate welfare programs around the turn of the 20th century. She argues that businessmen hoped such programs would transform conflict-ridden relations between management and labor into a harmonious partnership modeled after the Victorian family.