Politicians love subsidies – they allow them to control people’s behavior or keep favored businesses (READ: those run by their donors) in business, and a lot of times it’s both. Whatever the reason they’re done, they’re bad for consumers and taxpayers. Yet, we don’t really hear anyone talking about how they’re bad or promising to end them anymore.
We do hear about how some subsidies have to go. If one candidate is heavily funded by one industry, their opponent will condemn the concept of subsidies by making an issue of the money being sent to the industry supporting their rival. They’ll remain silent on the subsidies their friends receive because, well, it’s obvious.
You hear the word “lobbyist” an awful lot in politics, and always in a negative way. But a good way to think about them is a lobbyist is someone who advocates for a position with which the person labeling them as a lobbyist disagrees with. If you oppose fracking, anyone in the energy industry asking government to not destroy their livelihood is a lobbyist, but if you work in the energy sector they are just advocates. It’s a dime store way to smear someone without having to explain yourself.
But the American Cancer Society has lobbyists, they’re just never labeled as such because who doesn’t oppose cancer? Environmental groups are called activist because the liberal media sides with them. But they’re lobbyists, just like those “evil” bastards in the pharmaceutical industry. The only difference is the favor in which they find themselves in the eyes of the people labeling them.
Every industry lobbies. “We need to get money out of politics” vapid politicians argue without ever meaning the people who support them, only their opponent. But if you want to get money out of politics, you could easily do that by getting politics out of money.
The federal government disburses almost $7 trillion every year now. That’s a huge sum of money. Most of it on things the Constitution does not grant them the power to do. With that much cash around, industries would be insane if they didn’t try to get a slice of it.
If government weren’t spending all that cash, there’d be nothing to fight over and, more importantly, nothing to donate big money to politicians over. Of course, politicians would have a lot less power too, which is why that will never happen.
So where does that money go? Everywhere. It’s hard to pick out any specific subsidies as bad when they all are, but here are some that should go immediately.
Sugar. Why are we subsidizing “big sugar” when the country has a massive obesity problem and a diabetes problem? Mailing half the country hemlock would be cheaper.
Sugar is in everything, added sugar is in everything. If sugar cane growers can’t make a big enough profit to exist off of with that, maybe they don’t deserve to survive? And no country can survive if it subsidizes its own destruction.
Electric Vehicles. Think what you will about EVs, they are expensive. Most people can’t afford them. Knowing this, the government decided to subsidize them to the tune of up to $7,500 per car. What has the effect been? Rich people who could afford them now get a big tax break for their virtue signaling and middle-class Americans can’t afford the other $42,500 for a car.
Same goes for solar panels. Ever drive through a poor neighborhood and see solar panels on the roof? I bet you haven’t. But rich people get a nice subsidy for theirs.
Tobacco: Yes, we still subsidize tobacco. Not as much as we used to, and not in ways we used to, but where there’s a will… Why? Because our government is massive and no one cares. Tobacco companies want it and so they get it. And they get it while the government spends another small fortune trying to convince people to quit smoking. It’s insane.
All these subsidies are insane. I bet you didn’t know the government subsidizes rum, did you? And yes, rum the booze. It’s called the “Rum cover-over,” and a friend of mine recently wrote about it. In 2021, more than $700 million in subsidies for rum were sent to Caribbean governments for reasons too stupid to explain.
To make things even dumber, companies can increase the amount of subsidy cash they get from the government by producing more rum. Not selling more rum, but by producing more of it. Most people couldn’t design such a dumb system if it was their job.
All subsidies are dumb; they pervert the market and lead to overproduction, higher prices or worse. If these industries, and the literally thousands more I didn’t have time to list, were so great they wouldn’t need to be subsidized. If electric vehicles were in such demand, people would buy them. If the companies that make them were forced to deal with market forces or go out or business, they would have to find ways to make their product significantly more affordable. If types of booze were so popular it wouldn’t need our tax money to keep it afloat, what we spend voluntarily would be enough. And if sugar or tobacco can’t be grown at a profit on its own, maybe it’s time to plant something else in that dirt?
But no one is talking about subsidies, no politicians, anyway. It’s easier (and probably more fun) to spend other people’s money buying yourself things than it is to tell people it’s time they sink or swim on their own. While the money spent on subsidies is just a drop in the ocean when compared to the debt, no individual drop of water is responsible anyone drowning, it’s the water as a concept that was the problem. Remember than when the country goes belly-up.
Derek Hunter is the host of a free daily podcast (subscribe!) and author of the book, Outrage, INC., which exposes how liberals use fear and hatred to manipulate the masses, and host of the weekly “Week in F*cking Review” podcast where the news is spoken about the way it deserves to be. Follow him on Twitter at @DerekAHunter.