They are all being subsidized. The short term part is purchased at the expense of the long term whole. The primary subsidy is for low priced fossil fuel. Who pays the price? Mother Nature who we have inflicted a Faustian bargain on. Buy now, pay the biggest installment later.
That depends. There is a big demand for machinists, welders, and other skilled trades. The problem is that you have to get dirty.
All are being subsidized to different degrees depending upon their political needs. What's ironic is that the $$$$ come from all of them as well. It's called Big Government redistribution of wealth.
Well, when a government takes your money and gives it to others that is called redistribution of wealth. Government doesn't support capitalistic endeavors, it passes legislation that affects the free market and that needs to stop.
There's very little redistribution from income class to income class. But from individual to individual, 40% of GDP goes to federal, state or local government. Pick any metric you like.
The US doesn't redistribute as much, in percentage, as Europe - yet. If we wanted to do that, we would move to the UK. I do find redistributing $3+T, on the federal level, more than "pretending".
Why the churlish comment about Britain? Britain does have a slightly more effective welfare state, but it has much greater pre-welfare inequalities. Essentially welfare is part of capitalism, using it to maintain the physical efficiency of the reserve army and enabling greater underpayment. Calling it redistribution is laughable
Indeed, governments pay the same amount on interest on their debt as they collect in taxes from the wealthy, who are the debt holders. The amount of taxes paid by business is the same as the amount the government spends on the military and state department to support their overseas interests. The amount that they collect from middle class is the same that is spent on social welfare programs. At least that was the long term historical averages before all the tax cuts and loopholes since the 1990s which allowed businesses and the wealthy to avoid paying taxes. The result is that the middle class is still paying for social welfare but the things that have been historically financed by tax revenue from business and the wealthy are now being financed through increased borrowing. The ballooning national debt is not an unexpected result. It is in fact the reason for these tax cuts because the wealthy and business interests are determined to move their historical funding of government onto the middle class and the only way to do that is to create such a fiscal crises that social welfare spending has to be abandoned in the name of fiscal responsibility. The populace appears extremely resistant to this anti-social welfare platform so the US has a ballooning national debt and rapidly increasing social welfare spending. The end result of this gambit by the right will be the imposition of draconian taxes on those with the money to pay down the debt. Once again the failure of the right to see beyond their own bank balances will be their undoing.
Reducing restrictions on union organizing would reduce the coercion factor, increase wages, and in the end, reduce the subsidizing of people and companies via welfare payments. Walmart just happens to be one of the most subsidized businesses in the world.
