"Liberal" has meant a lot of different things. I'm never sure what's meant by it anymore. The Wikipedia article on liberalism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal) looks like it is really interesting! but I don't have time to read it all. But it gets across the point, which is that "liberal" is ambiguous when you're talking about economic issues.
I suspect, tiurin, that one of the obstacles is that the people making the decisions are all relatively wealthy. It seems to me like this gives them a different set of incentives than those that impel the typical taxpayer.
OTOH, principles aside, I've been told that the point of corporate welfare is that things will suck even more for Average Joe if many major corporations fail. It's the ugly flip side of trickle-down economics: suckiness trickles down too, maybe more effectively than wealth does. I'm not an economist, but I find the argument plausible, at least. Not that I don't see the problem with, effectively, providing insurance against Really Stupid Decisions, i.e. that we will encourage more of them, perhaps to the point where the government is no longer *able* to insure against them because it's gone broke.
...but then if we don't bail out the corporations, and a bunch of the big ones fail, who're we gonna tax to get the revenue that keeps the huge machine running? This seems like a pretty big can of "aw, shit" no matter how you slice it.
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2008-04-14 02:36 pm (UTC)I suspect,
OTOH, principles aside, I've been told that the point of corporate welfare is that things will suck even more for Average Joe if many major corporations fail. It's the ugly flip side of trickle-down economics: suckiness trickles down too, maybe more effectively than wealth does. I'm not an economist, but I find the argument plausible, at least. Not that I don't see the problem with, effectively, providing insurance against Really Stupid Decisions, i.e. that we will encourage more of them, perhaps to the point where the government is no longer *able* to insure against them because it's gone broke.
...but then if we don't bail out the corporations, and a bunch of the big ones fail, who're we gonna tax to get the revenue that keeps the huge machine running? This seems like a pretty big can of "aw, shit" no matter how you slice it.