This term was first coined by David Lewis to describe those companies who feed at the public trough when they could well afford to eat on their own. Though, with regret, David Lewis has passed on, the term applies today as much as it ever has.
The question is, how much is it costing the Canadian taxpayers?
The answer is that no one knows for certain. The reason being that no one has ever compiled these figures in one place. Moreover, this applies equally to the whole government grant system.
Not so in the United States (no thanks to government, you can be assured.) An organization by the name of "
Open The Books," a think-tank based in Illinois, has attempted to compile the numbers for the American hog trough, and it is utterly astonishing in both scope and scale. i.e.,
New Report: Fortune 100 Companies Have Received a Whopping $1.2 Trillion in Corporate Welfare Recently
Military contractors, oil companies and banks are the biggest 'welfare queens' around.
Most of us are aware that the government gives mountains of cash to powerful corporations in the form of tax breaks, grants, loans and subsidies--what some have called "corporate welfare." However, little has been revealed about exactly how much money Washington is forking over to mega businesses.
Until now.
A new venture called Open the Books, based in Illinois, was founded with a mission to bring transparency to how the federal budget is spent. And what they found is shocking: between 2000 and 2012, the top Fortune 100 companies received $1.2 trillion from the government. That doesn't include all the billions of dollars doled out to housing, auto and banking enterprises in 2008-2009, nor does it include ethanol subsidies to agribusiness or tax breaks for wind turbine makers.
What Open the Book's
forthcoming report does reveal is that the most valuable contracts between the government and private firms were for military procurement deals, including Lockheed Martin ($392 billion), General Dynamics ($170 billion), and United Technologies ($73 billion).
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Although these figures apply only to the United States, you can be sure the corporate welfare system is equally alive and thriving in Canada.
For example, we know that Cisco Systems received $220 million from Ontario in December of 2013, but recently committed (but not spent) $100 million in the Greater Toronto Area. Apart from the fact that this leaves taxpayers outside the GTA high and dry, it also begs the question: Will we ever see any benefit from the other $120 M?
Anyone care to make any bets?
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