Should America be a corporate-welfare state?

[maggrwaggr]

Here's just the latest example in today's news:

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=542&e=3&u=/ap/energy_legal_fees

And here's another of the resultant back-scratching in another:

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=512&e=18&u=/ap/mad_cow_politics

The repubs made the whole notion of "welfare" a bad one. They did it again -- making a word bad.

But our government seems to be in the business of giving huge sums of money to corporations such as Halliburton.

So which is better? Giving billions to the vice-president's company to rebuild bombed bridges in Iraq using laborers imported from Indonesia at five bucks a day?

Or letting women in the United States who have children the opportunity to actually feed and clothe their children?

[NewGuy]

1. I certainly favor letting a woman feed and clothe her children

Just don't ask me to pay for it through my taxes. It has nothing to do with our federal government process. If I know the circumstances, I might well elect to help pay for this through my charitable giving.

It is a government issue to pay for bombed out bridges. When the government contracts out work they set the wage rate that the company must pay. Generally in the US this is either the Davis-Bacon wage rate or the Service Contract Wage Rate. I do not know what they use in foreign locations.

[GreenPartyVoter]

2. Not in favor of corporate welfare

The argument that the money is used to create jobs is a false one.

[salin]

3. Which spurs the economy by getting money into circulation?

Putting a little more money into the hands of those who will spend it (mostly locally) in order to survive - driving up demand and thus production/supply?

Or putting money into large corporations engaged in off-shore outsourcing, government fraud, sheltering money (sometimes illegally) in off-shore tax havens (look Haliburton's use of subsidiaries that grew exponentially under Cheney).

[Bitchgoddes]

4. Too late

Bush has already made the US a welfare state for the corporations. To Bush the people of the US just get in the way

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

5. No. Too bad it is.

Although a "corporate controlled state" would be a better discripition.

[Selwynn]

6. No. There ARE alternatives that reflect a more healthy balance...

between the people and the institutions of society. What we see in American is a system horrible, tragically out of balance.