Posts Tagged crony capitalism

Perverse Incentives

I know this chart has probably been floating around the Internet for a while, but I recently came across it, and it really made me think. The chart lists 30 major corporations, their profits for 2011, the amount of taxes each paid that year, and the amounts they paid lobbyists. A majority of those listed [...]

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Champions of Free Enterprise…Not

The phrase that sums up so many of the sweetheart deals our elected officials seem to favor is “socialization of risk, privatization of profit.” It’s a phrase that perfectly describes the boondoggle that is the Rockport Coal Gasification project in Southern Indiana. I first heard about Rockport when the plant was being built, from a [...]

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Welfare Dependent

Since the Romney campaign is making welfare recipients a central focus of their advertising barrage, maybe it’s time to take a closer look at the identity of those who are–pardon the vulgarity–”sucking at the public tit.” Common Dreams has published a list of entitlements, and who gets what. According to their analysis, social welfare programs [...]

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TIFS as Crony Capitalism?

I’m on the mailing list of the libertarian Cato Institute (and the Republican and Democratic parties, among other strange bedfellows). I am fond of Cato–not because I agree with them on very many issues, but because–unlike the Republican Party–they are intellectually consistent. So I was very interested to receive a (snail mail–no link) report titled [...]

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Wealth and Power

For the last few years, there’s been a good deal of debate over the growing gap between the rich and everyone else. We’ve all seen the numbers: the top 1% of Americans own 43% of all the nation’s wealth, and the next 4% owns another 29%. Meanwhile, 80% of Americans share only 7% of the [...]

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