Either Subsidies For All Or None

Don't accept Federal cash or subsidies and you will be richer for it.

Richer in the sense you will not have to put up with their bull shit.

Once you accept their cash, you're their slaves.

I'm in that predicament at the moment. The pressure to fight for a subsidy is great. The thinking is "hey, if they're stupid enough to give "free" money out why shouldn't you get some?"

I get that. Principles in business sometimes gets challenged as I've been trying to ignore this part for a few years now. I know all too well what getting taxpayer dollars means. It means being beholden to whatever political correct fad or piece of quack code dreamed up by a bureaucrat. That's what I mean by slave.

It's like anything else in life. The person giving out the cash usually has conditions and strings attached - as they should. Would you lend $5000 to someone without signing a contract highlighting conditions and terms?

In the case of government subsidies, it's a one-way street. They will not consult with you of any changes they're mulling over largely because you don't figure into their calculations when it comes to votes and social policy.

As you know, I've taken the position that all of this is just an illusion of "social progress." I don't believe for a second we're any better off with subsidized daycare anymore any industry is enhanced with a subsidy. Usually, the companies and people getting the money are players who know how to get the money, companies in losing industries that have political connections (to save jobs! and in exchange for votes) and companies jumping on a social policy bandwagon ie "Green" products and technology.

Why should, as it's been asked, the government engage in picking winners and losers? Is saving one job 'worth' more than another? For example, they say they prop up companies like Pratt and Whitney is to preserve jobs but what about the kid who may lose theirs at the local depanneur? After all, isn't the present day narrative to help such people who can't possibly live on such wages? The living wage nonsense has been sufficiently covered on this blog. If you can't see by now why it's dopey that's your problem. If the Tea Party was astro-turfing, then the living wage hysteria is all driven by unions; the scourge of the modern economy.

All bull shit. If a capable entrepreneurial person of free and sound mind with access to capital (in whatever form) determines and calculates it's not feasible to build, say, an electric car, based on basic supply and demand as revealed by a free-market, then chances are the profit motive suggests it's not a viable project or enterprise. It doesn't mean it can never be, just that the market (including costs associated with technology etc.) is simply not ready. You can't force this stuff.

One of the most arrogant comments I've ever heard uttered from a politician (aside from L'il Hobbit Marois making the patently false claim that subsidized daycares get less complaints and are more secure) is President Obama asserting he wanted to bring insurance premiums down $2500 per family.

When I heard that, I thought to myself what an arrogant, ignorant man. That was the red flag for people considering his proposal but they failed to read it (or did and still felt it justified anyway) as they elected him again.

It's a red flag in the sense no one person can force market prices in any direction lest they, well, take it over. Which is in essence what he did. Only problem is prices shot up. When will people learn government should not intervene in the market? All it does is distort. It takes an imperfect scenario and worsens it.

A subsidy (be it to Bombardier or given to "middle-class" families for Obamacare) is a tool of financial sophistry. All it amounts to is borrowing off your line of credit to pay your Visa. But hey, $7 a day! In the case of Obamacare, I read somewhere that a family with an income of $62 000 per year does not qualify for the subsidy and must pay $4000 premium whereas a family earning $60 000 qualifies and pays mere hundreds.

How is this arbitrary decision made? How does this help the middle-class? Seems to me it succeeds in creating a middle middle-class. where arbitrary cut-offs determine if you're "rich" enough to pay (or interpreted another way redistribute your income) the increased costs forced on you.

Where's the incentive to get a raise? Suddenly, that family may want to earn less just to pay for insurance! "Honey, I can't believe I'm amount to suggest this but you think you can ask your boss to pay you less? It will save us money!"

Americans have seen the cost of insurance is going up (the fault of insurance companies no doubt) and companies are responding by cutting hours.

What of cost savings over the long-run? The plan is so rotten at this point (filled with hideous exemptions and ridiculous taxes and fines) and the initial costs increasingly impossible to calculate any figure the government will pimp should be met with skepticism if not outright hardy Friar Tuck laughs. Indeed, I've stopped linking to stories because there are simply too many negative stories leaking out - and they're not all from "right-wing" sources.

As if this is all not enough, the amount of people signed up so far is so miniscule it's almost pathetically criminal. If young people don't sign up, then the concept fails. I read last night that 44 people had signed up in uber-left-wing Oregon. 44! All this for....44 people? If there was so much pent up demand wouldn't that number be, like, 440 000 by now?

These are the unintended consequences of government hubris and folly. Of course, to them, it's collateral damage and people will eventually 'learn to love it like they did SS.'

That's how easily fooled we are. Financially illiteracy is a major problem I reckon.

Alas, I could be wrong. I may be misreading the whole thing. Doubt it though.

We should be more like Hillsdale College.

Sink or swim with private money. If you can't, you're not viable.

There are other reasons. 

Fin rant.