Tales of Our TimesBy JOHN BARTLIT
New Mexico Citizens
for Clean Air & Water
To Govern Is To Apportion Subsidies
Do you favor government subsidies? Does the political party you support favor or oppose subsidies? Now cover a subsidy in different packaging: try the name “handout,” then try “incentive.” See how different the subsidy looks.
Lumping together the styles of regard, a large fraction of politics amounts to wrangles to get or prevent government subsidies for this interest or that one. And party labels tell us nothing about who likes or dislikes subsidies. All government subsidies produce societal benefits for all of us, by doing some good or keeping bad conditions from getting worse. All subsidies also propagate crippling expectations of more subsidies, which get colored as “rights.”
From the beginning, many subsidies granted by the US Congress dealt with the country’s natural resources: who has what “rights” to use or take land, water, timber, gold, oil, recreational jewels, the airways, the air … ? Each of the “rights” is a subsidy for someone’s interest. Call them “Subsidies of the First Kind.”
Although benefits from each subsidy (handout or incentive) accrue to all, the portions to each person differ markedly. The disparity sparks endless wrangles about who should have what resource, and what social good comes back in fair exchange. Government is how we stir the answers.
As our country matured, most Subsidies of the First Kind were given out. Subsidies today have new forms. Daily news stories report on Subsidies of the Second Kind, which deal with the legal requirements—that is to say, the coin of fair exchange—for using communal resources. These subsidies flow from regulatory struggles over clean air and water and land use. Who can put out how much waste to the air, water and land, under what terms? How much value is lost in the dirtier air, water, and land left for others and who takes the loss? Whose interests will bloom among the Subsidies of the Second Kind?
Increasingly, subsidies are Subsidies of the Third Kind, namely, tax monies. Tax allotments range far beyond the news reports of tax rates and tax breaks. The rest of the subsidy is who benefits from the tax monies. Taxes furnish the vital infrastructure that businesses rely on to expand the national economy and thus tax base. Big-ticket items include:
Lumping together the styles of regard, a large fraction of politics amounts to wrangles to get or prevent government subsidies for this interest or that one. And party labels tell us nothing about who likes or dislikes subsidies. All government subsidies produce societal benefits for all of us, by doing some good or keeping bad conditions from getting worse. All subsidies also propagate crippling expectations of more subsidies, which get colored as “rights.”
From the beginning, many subsidies granted by the US Congress dealt with the country’s natural resources: who has what “rights” to use or take land, water, timber, gold, oil, recreational jewels, the airways, the air … ? Each of the “rights” is a subsidy for someone’s interest. Call them “Subsidies of the First Kind.”
Although benefits from each subsidy (handout or incentive) accrue to all, the portions to each person differ markedly. The disparity sparks endless wrangles about who should have what resource, and what social good comes back in fair exchange. Government is how we stir the answers.
As our country matured, most Subsidies of the First Kind were given out. Subsidies today have new forms. Daily news stories report on Subsidies of the Second Kind, which deal with the legal requirements—that is to say, the coin of fair exchange—for using communal resources. These subsidies flow from regulatory struggles over clean air and water and land use. Who can put out how much waste to the air, water and land, under what terms? How much value is lost in the dirtier air, water, and land left for others and who takes the loss? Whose interests will bloom among the Subsidies of the Second Kind?
Increasingly, subsidies are Subsidies of the Third Kind, namely, tax monies. Tax allotments range far beyond the news reports of tax rates and tax breaks. The rest of the subsidy is who benefits from the tax monies. Taxes furnish the vital infrastructure that businesses rely on to expand the national economy and thus tax base. Big-ticket items include:
- Transportation links—highways, streets, bridges, fuel sources, ports and air terminals, to name a few;
- Sources of reliable employees who have vital skills in reading, writing, thinking, trade work, math and science; and
- Public safety and security—safeguards in the forefront include police, fire fighters, the military and its tools, and safe drinking water.
Like all subsidies, sound infrastructure benefits everyone, though in varying amounts.
We would all be better off, and a good deal less noisy, if lobby groups saw their work for what it is: hustling to pocket ample shares of government subsidies-handouts-incentives in exchange for the fair breadth of good they will deliver. I speak in a practical vein, not cynical. The process has carried the nation and its people a good long way forward since our nation’s thorny journey began twelve score and one years ago.
Subsidies are the fruits received from framing pleas about who deserves them, and the word-frame matters as much as the proposal. Compare the word “infrastructure” with the equivalent thought, “it takes a village to raise a child.” These two pictures of a single thought draw opposite responses from different minds and lawmakers of different parties.
The questions go on. Is it better to subsidize mature industries, who have the most workers, or fledgling industries, who have the most potential for new workers? Is it better to subsidize polluting industries, through lax cleanup requirements, or subsidize pollution control companies, through strict ones?
Is a US subsidy for a US industry more reasonable than a foreign subsidy for a foreign industry? Sure as sundown, the foreign subsidy brings cries of “unfair” and words about needing “a level playing field.” Level fields are imaginary.
Is a US subsidy for a US industry more reasonable than a foreign subsidy for a foreign industry? Sure as sundown, the foreign subsidy brings cries of “unfair” and words about needing “a level playing field.” Level fields are imaginary.
A field has many more dimensions to it than any single subsidy. The measures of “level” include an industry’s natural resource base and the subsidies of it; the industry’s access to subsidized infrastructure; and access to the pool of technology, know-how, and skilled workers that flows from subsidies, including government-funded research and even the military. Uncountable subsidies permeate a sturdy national infrastructure.
Political interests who wrestle for subsidies spend a lot of time painting subsidies (for others) as loathsome in principle. Wise governance has only one principle: to structure the nation’s endless subsidies to do the most good for the people, the economy and the environment.
Political interests who wrestle for subsidies spend a lot of time painting subsidies (for others) as loathsome in principle. Wise governance has only one principle: to structure the nation’s endless subsidies to do the most good for the people, the economy and the environment.
