Maybe National Socialism?
It’s pulling money from those people not in a dying industry to breath artificial life to a dying industry in order to buy votes in western Pennsylvania and West Virginia and thus entrench Republicans in power at the expense of our health and the health of our planet.
It is sort of.
The Government is subsidizing the coal industry. Their opinions/decisions matter to the coal industry. What the Government wants suddenly becomes a significant factor in running those businesses. So in effect Government subsidies introduce a modicum of socialism into that industry. A lot of subsidies means that the Government effectively owns the business. A little means that they have a little bit of control.
Of course this allows us to conclude that in the US, and in virtually every country, there is some degree of socialism. That is neither a surprise nor controversial. In fact, I can’t think of and period in any country where there wasn’t some form of state control over business.
How is propping up a bunch of fat-cat capitalist worker-exploiters socialism?
The Government isn’t subsidising the coal industry, it’s subsidising the mine owners, and any benefit to the workers is a side effect.
In this case part of the intent is to keep coal miners working, or at least have them believe they will be able to keep working. The actuality will be different from the intent, but for the purpose of political name calling it will do.
Not really. After all, just because the government uses tax money to prop up a dying industry doesn’t mean that the government (or the people) now controls the means of production.
Because these things often happen not to prop up ‘a bunch of fat-cat capitalist’ but instead to protect certain jobs (of voters). So, I wouldn’t say this is capitalism either. I’m not sure it’s really part of any economic system, and really is more of a political flaw than anything looking back at past examples of such protectionism.
Regardless, it’s really, really stupid. Which is why it’s unsurprising that Trump is all for this sort of thing, which is what he’s trying to do with a lot of his stupid trade war rhetoric.
If that were actually the case, the subsidies could be paid directly to the workers, not the coal companies.
I get that there’s political hay to be made by saying it’s for the workers, but that’s irrelevant. Who gets the *actual *money? Not the trickle-down scraps - who does the actual subsidy money get paid to?
The workers keep their jobs, so I’d say they get at least some of the money being used to prop up their industry.
Or the money is used to pay for automation, costing even more workers their jobs.
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A token payment to keep their bosses from the guillotine. What actual percentage of the subsidies ends up as workers’ salaries? Versus bosses’ salaries and shareholders’ profits?
Or the place shuts down anyway. And the bossesget their bonuses first, but are freed from any obligation to pay pensions by bankruptcy.
What do they get paid, as opposed to not getting paid at all if their industry or company is totally shut down (or fully automated)? By and large when industries that were dying have been protected in the past it was to protect the jobs (of the voters) as much or more than protect the rich fat-cats. Now, subsidies for industries that aren’t dying but are subsidized for various reasons…yeah, I’d say that the percentage going to your rich fat-cats in that case would be higher than those going to the workers (since most likely in those cases you are using higher levels of automation in any case). Almost invariably when the government tries to use protectionist methods to protect home grown industries the majority of the money goes to profit…generally at the cost of the consuming public.
Aah - so they should be happy with their gruel, eh, Mr Bumble? Can we at least agree that that’s not socialism, then? Socialism isn’t charity.
I already said it’s not socialism, so not sure what point you are trying to make. It certainly has to do with keeping the workers happy, however. You seem to be thinking in terms of the US only, but this sort of protectionism of dying industries has more of a history in Europe than the US, at least from my recollection. I was thinking specifically of the coal workers in the UK when considering the question, or the Luddite movements. The auto industry or farm industry subsidies or bailouts weren’t dying industries that the government/society tried to prop up and keep going past their expiration date to keep large numbers of people from being unemployed.
It’s corporate welfare and cronyism.
The government shouldn’t be in the business of picking winners and losers in the economic market.
Historically, I believe it was called Mercantilism. We fought a war to get away from it, and now we have it again (and it’s been around a lot longer than the current administration).