This Piece of Orange Shit Belongs In Jail

[Pat Mustard]

Both major parties advocate subsidizing big business, and big agriculture, in the form of subsidies and tax breaks. Cutting off that fundng, is it really that bad?

Assuming you're not up for re-election, of course.

It depends, for agriculture cutting subsidies will massively drive up the cost of the food you buy in the store. It's one of the two main reasons for the EU's long standing CAP policy, the other being that German and French agriculture has been historically dominated by smaller farmers, and they wanted to keep it that way (it's much the same situation in Ireland, the Benelux, the Nordics and northern Italy as well) so as to ensure that the rural communities in those countries had an actual economic base.

As regards subsidising big business, there are arguments for the right subsidies, e.g. a country like S Korea bringing in US companies to develop it's industrial base and stimulate its native industries, but all too often subsidies are given out indiscriminately and for the wrong reasons, e.g Gilette being allowed to write off $2bn profit from taxable income due to "R&D costs" associated with creating a three blade disposable razor. Pharma companies also have huge write offs due to "R&D" despite most pharmaceutical research being either small companies patenting thousands of chemical combinations or state funded university (or state department) research.

But then again, the problem isn't subsidies per se, but regulatory capture.