Corporate subsidies having an impact on everything
By Letter to the Editor on October 13, 2021.
Editor:
Anyone who has observed events in the business world or the economy must be aware of the major drain on everything since the 1970s, by our subsidy of major corporations. Today, business has been so spoiled by their endless lobby groups that protect and coddle them with taxpayer’s money. They have lost contact with real business operating principles like contingency funding.
Before the Reagan/Greenspan and Thatcher era business attitudes were focused on service to customers. Those were the days when “the customer was always right.” Because the whole purpose of business was to provide for the needs of the public, and customers.
Hudson’s Bay and Simpson Sears set the example, guaranteeing satisfaction with their products and service.
Television advertising began to change with the idea that the public needed to be convinced of ever-expanding economic growth. Not whether we needed products, but the economy had to be sustained.
International corporate trade deals were set up not to serve society, but to maintain annual profits. Governments are no longer allowed to interfere with corporate expectations and incomes.
We were taught to spend beyond our income with quick and ready credit. The income of workers was no longer allowed to reflect the costs of raising a family and staying solvent. All balance and limitations previously established to prevent abuse of the people was removed to allow unlimited, “sky-is-the-limit” money speculation. The “market” became the be-all and end-all of value. Oil corporations demanded annual subsidy.
The definitions of “the economy” and “capital” were left to economists. Attitudes and values became professional considerations and no longer open to the general population.
Workers no longer allowed to form unions to represent their economic interests; because they might interfere with the health of this theoretical economy. Everyone required a professional resume to qualify for economic existence.
Don Ryane
Lethbridge
-1
Agreed! Also, remember the years and years of too low corporate tax rates which were meant to create employment and new businesses? At the time of Mark Carney, the then Governor of the Bank of Canada, these low corporate tax rates were not being ‘trickled down,’ but ‘sat on’….some $600 billion at the time. No wonder Carney was chirping at them to get their money ‘out there.’
what, you mean to say the $420,000,000 given to algoma steel was maybe not a good thing? you mean the $4,500,000,000 given…er, paid…to kinder morgan for trans mtn was not a good thing? surely you do not mean the plenty of millions that wealthy corps received in handouts via the cerb programs were not a good thing? and, there is no way you mean the dodgy tax laws and convoluted system of subsidies and grants and exemptions and eternal deferments and such are not a good thing, do you?
hard enough for those folk to be able to keep every penny raked in, but even more tricky is how to end up with even more than they raked in. such a headache for them.
the world of exceptionalism, of creating dodgy tax laws and the convoluted system of subsidies and grants and exemptions and eternal deferments takes a lot of “hard work”. well, at least it takes a bit of investment in lobbyists – so often former “politicians”…and the greasing of the machine keeps the madness slithering along. from what i have seen, the vast brunt of machine grease hardly does trickle down.
so much given away, and so ridiculously much raked in by the usual, during the dire distraction of the last 1.5 years of covid: me thinks the masses have really taken it less in the arm, but elsewhere.
The hundreds of millions of subsidies and tax “dodges” raked in by the useless solar and wind corporations. Don’t forget those.
agreed. i am all for cleaner energy, and more sustainable less consumption of wants, as well. the wads and wads of public money pouring into the private hands that pretend to provide green solutions is outrageous. and, much of that outpouring is going to privately owned entities that are not even publicly traded, and include the usual greed monger oligarchs of our day, such as gates, buffett and musk. yes, they are behind such projects in canada sucking hard at the canadian teat.