Why do _you_ think corporate welfare is not brought up that often in political discourse? Also, don't forget to check out Joe's Common Sense substack: commonsensepapers.substack.com/p/political-economy-part-2-corporate-welfare
Lobbying definitely is under mentioned and should be outlawed all together. Both parties specially republicans are overly dependant on these "non bribes"
Monopolist manipulations are why the issue is not brought up, we must use anon forums to form urban militias of entrepreneur and laborers and unite to protect the American republic and its free market from the Dixie Elite Parasites within.
Blame Nixon, Reagon, and Clinton for this Neoliberal Trickledown poison. Also blame them for the erosion of the 2nd amendment. Blame them as well for Prohibition 2.0.
We do, and from government websites no less. You just have to google it www.cbo.gov/publication/58888 fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/federal-spending/
I never understood why the idea of a family with nothing being given a thousand dollars is outrageous, while the cruelest and laziest and wealthiest of us all being given a billion dollars is somehow a good thing.
I assume that it stems from a _misconception_ that trickle-down economics actually works. It is assumed that a corporation being given money indirectly benefits the taxpayer, while giving money directly to another family doesn't give the taxpayer anything in return. But what they don't realize is that this assumption is based on a FLAWED perception of how the system works. They think it's like taxes paying for roads, when that's not actually where the money goes. Basically, It goes something like this: "Giving my tax money to corporations helps them innovate new conveniences for us. You WANT to have Amazon, right?" "But helping my neighbor doesn't help ME. Why should I have to pay for THEIR ." And then "taxpayer" often justifies this viewpoint by assuming that "neighbor's" poor financial situation was the consequence of something neighbor had agency in. If taxpayer can convince themselves that it isn't mere LUCK that they aren't in the same situation as neighbor, but rather that they avoided it because they were more financially responsible... Well, you get the idea. 😕
@@leyrua Absolutely correct. The other big talking point is to give corporations tax cuts so they can "create jobs" and "lower prices for working families" They then take those earnings and buy back a bunch of stock to inflate the share price, layoff a bunch of people so they can overwork the poor souls left over and look profitable on paper, borrow against the value of their now-overvalued company to acquire their next biggest competitor, and repeat; until they have enough of a monopoly to _increase_ prices for working families. Who, incidentally, were forced to take lower wage jobs when they were laid off by the corporations above. I believe this is the ??? step of the _Underpants Gnomes Guide to Capitalism_
@@c.m.81 yeah problably they do but if thats the case it does not give them any more right to the taxpayers money than someone who needs help eith paying off medical fees.
Any time I hear a corporation described as "too big to fail", I think it might be time for that corporation to be broken into smaller pieces that can fail.
Makes perfect sense since both political parties are corporate owned. Corporate lobbyists write the bills that often later becomes laws. We are no longer a Republic, but an corporatocracy led by a super rich oligarchy.
@@sominboy2757 oh yeah, Xer here I was laid off and watching news about the private hotel in Hawaii that AIG executives were going to for a conference. I'll never forget that.
Ehhhh. Lobbying isn’t inherently bad. A lot of otherwise ignored people get heard because they send someone to DC. No monetary transaction has to ever happen in fact. I think what people are actually mad about is Super PACs and the likes.
Here me out... How about Congress passes a law called the Equal Access Act, in which every citizen should have equal access to their representative? Eh? Eh?
@@SERGEYTIMOFEYOVICHInstitute a wealth cap on lobbying then, if you have over 500 million USD in personal value or your company has over 10 billion USD it is illegal to lobby or make deals with Public Servants. If it is discovered you did so you will suffer non-lethal capital punishment for a set standard of 30 years.
@@SERGEYTIMOFEYOVICH Well when they are having a wine and dine with Senators to push or halt legislation, that's just bribery without money changing hands.
Because we live in a corpratocracy, not a democracy. There is no connection between how you vote and what happens, unless you are a 1%or. For the rest of us, you are better off not voting and instead organizing and protesting.
its incredibly important that voters find politicians who will bring actual change. We often vote for politicians we just feel "safe" with rather than on issues.
One of Bernie Sanders main talking points was against big business. Both them not paying taxes, them being monopolies, etc. And he was popular, even doing well on his Fox News appearances. But the Democratic party conspired both times to make Bernie look super radical and unelecetable because they're in the pocket of big businesses. So yeah...
My greatest concern is how to recover from all these economic and global troubles and stay afloat especially with the political power tussle going on in US.
Inflation can have a significant impact on individuals and their cost of living. As a result, it can cause negative market sentiment. It is important for individuals and businesses to find ways to navigate and potentially mitigate the effects of inflation on their finances. The current economic climate, including underperformance of financial markets due to fear of inflation, has led to a decrease in the value of my portfolio. I would appreciate any recommendations on how to potentially increase returns during this market downturn.
Such market uncertainties are the reason I don’t base my market judgements and decisions on rumours and here-says, got the best of me 2020 and had me holding worthless position in the market, I had to revamp my entire portfolio through the aid of an advisor, before I started seeing any significant results happens in my portfolio, been using the same advisor and I’ve scaled up $250k within 2 years, whether a bullish or down market, both makes for good profit, it all depends on where you’re looking.
@lowcostfresh2266 There are many financial coaches who excel in their profession, but for the time being, I employ Laurel Dell Sroufe because I adore her methods. You can make research and find out more.
Polititians have the audacity to give out money to big businesses, especially those failing, and then scream on the media that "the free market has failed us".
@@iammrbeat I agree completely. This is what separates the populists from the corrupt establishment. I disagree with you on many issues since I am more on the right politically and socially, but I am glad that we can come together as one to call out this corrupt Crony Capitalism. Personally I call it Conglomeratism since these companies control and influence so much (kinda scary how close it is to the textbook definition of Fascism). Anyway Mr. Beat, just wanted to say thank you for these videos and keep up the good work.
"And the rest of us? We're not on that team" This concept needs to be understood by more people, the primary goal of corporations will always be to enrich themselves and expand their power and influence, and when corporations are (now legally) allowed to influence politics, the government will inevitably neglect anybody who isn't "on that team"
IDK man, clearly there is a massive divide between the rich and the poor, but using US VS THEM mentality reeks of manipulation. I think nuance and skepticism need to be embraced.
"Now legally"? You vastly underestimate for how long the people with wealth or control over production controlled the government, or became the government itself... We historically got better at defining what the "state" is, but reality isn't bound to dictionaries... Edit: the "us vs them" discussion goes deeper. In fact, it is everywhere. "Capitalists" keep saying "government bad, corporations good", but that is all propaganda. The overlaps in powers are so grey and foggy that it is naivety to think giving power and freedom to corporations will solve anything, and same goes to the left; power to the state will not work either because "the ploretariat" (or... humans in general) is historically really adaptive to worsening conditions of life in general! ...am I turning anarchist? am i turning monarchist? oligarchist? idk anymore, why are humans so trash at ruling itself...
@@JonesCrimson the first step to winning a class war is recognizing when its happening. And the billionaire class is not only winning but running the board at this point.
The government also subsidizes green energy immensely. There is actually a trade war going on right now between the US, EU, and UK over who can offer the best subsidies to green energy research companies. It goes both ways. And frankly, that isn't even a good thing. It props up "green" companies that make no progress while real ones with less lobbying and advertisement power lose public interest and backing.
Some states are subsidizing solar and wind (S&W) to the point that natural gas and nuclear power plants are uneconomical. S&W are very weather dependent which leads to blackouts. In order to maintain grid reliability states have now added subsidies for gas and nuclear power plants. Hence all forms of electric generation are subsidized. Electric utility customers pay for all this through higher prices.
@@t23001That’s not true. They subsidize those things in addition to providing road blocks to other forms of energy. It’s not just that wind and solar are heavily subsidized. Natural gas will always be the most economical option without any government influence, and nuclear will always be the cleanest in any scenario. If the government literally did nothing at all in terms of privatized energy, solar and wind would be leagues behind oil and gas, _and_ nuclear.
As a UAW member on the edge of a strike due to corporate greed, and the fact they consume our tax dollars and tell us that its our fault they might go bankrupt while making 21 billion combined in the first 6 months of this year really makes this video hit home.
I like how you said near the end, “the left tends to criticize the businesses, the right the government, but what some don’t realize is those groups are often on the same team; a team which none of US are on” This is so true. Looking at politics itself, both political parties even have things they do to play for this super-team of the government and big businesses, which lends some credibility to the phrase “2 wings, 1 albatross.” The albatross preys upon the people and keeps us divided under each of its wings, and obscures its true intentions with partisan garbage that in the end is relatively trivial. I wish the general populace could see this and understand we all have a common enemy to wrangle. The combined force of Big Corp & the federal government is extremely powerful and oppressive and needs to be culled, from both halves of the whole.
@@kingace6186 I mean, yeah, level of access to education is one of the consistently greatest indicators of standard of living. Moreover, education is responsible for bringing millions out of poverty
Oh, boy! After a long, stressful week, there’s nothing like raising my blood pressure through the roof about important issues I can’t control by with my favorite UA-camr, Mr. Beat ❤ God bless my man
I don’t remember where I heard this joke but it was something along the lines of “Make politicians wear patches on their suits with whoever’s bribing them like NASCAR drivers! Shell, ExonMobile, Monsanto, Lockheed Martin- then take a guess at why they voted the way they did!
Mr. beat back at it again with another eye opening video. I’m someone who leans left on the political spectrum and I can easily say this video can easily appeal to my fellow Americans on the left and right. Please keep making these. They are very important
But it doesn’t 🤷♂️ most of us can think for ourselves. White people thought race meant everything until they found out they were poor now they want us to unite 🤦♂️🤣
I live in Wisconsin, where the state, Racine county, and the community of Mount Pleasant shamelessly put together an enormous package to lure Foxconn into the area. Guess what? After driving homeowners out of their homes, tearing down the houses, putting in millions of dollars in electric, water & sewage, and road infrastructure, and negotiating a huge water agreement for millions of gallons a day of water from Lake Michigan, Foxconn changed their minds. Instead of 16, 000 jobs, less than 150 have been created. No need for the planned ramp up in education and housing infrastructure. It was all a money grab.
Mr. Beat, this video really shows your qualities as a teacher. No bias, no controversial statements or language, and reaching as wide as an audience as possible. Keep up the good work!
there’s not such thing as “no bias” everyone has their biases having biases in itself is not wrong, what is wrong is trying to hide them, and not be forward with them
Sticking to only non-controversial statements only works until you need to say something controversial; i.e., something that someone with enough numbers and/or power disagrees with. Mr. Beat didn't actually go into any depth on how this topic is deliberately obscured from public view, how ads with scary phrases like "corporate welfare" are replaced by friendly slogans like stimulating the economy and driving job creation. It's limiting, to say you're going to always argue "both sides" or "the middle" and remain "uncontroversial". That just means that you're letting whoever has the most pull and the loudest extremists dictate what you're allowed to say and believe, because the moment someone shows up on the far end of any scale, the metaphorical center of gravity shifts towards them.
@@Amanda-C. Exactly this. Mr Beat is trying to run an education channel, not an advocacy one. It is important to the core ethos of this channel to remain as "even-handed" as possible. Large parts of this story remain untold for the sake of the illusion of neutrality. (Well, that plus the algorithm doesn't reward 4-hour videos) Unfortunately, for those who watch this video but aren't inspired to do any further research, they are led to equate "bipartisan" with "both sides are equally part of the problem" and "neither side really tries to fix it" I've got 4 takeaways from the comment section to this video: 1) it definitely _did_ need to be made, because 2) there is a vacuum of knowledge about the problem. But it also needs an "honest" follow-up video, because 3) there is an even stronger vacuum of knowledge about who is fighting for the solutions. And I wish he would've been a little more faithful to reality than to the imaginary centerline, because 4) he's gonna get accused of being a "lefty" regardless of how hard he tries to avoid it. He won't advocate. I will. Support Justice Democrats!! (Sorry about being one of the voices on the extreme, except also sorrynotsorry 🤷🏼♂️)
@@OdyTypeRJustice Democrats aren't the extreme. The extreme is people like me who want a full nationalization of any and all companies which take such extreme subsidies.
@@doomsdayrabbit4398 @doomsdayrabbit4398 Oh, I'm not trying to imply they are; I just think the commitment to not taking corporate donations or allowing corporate pac influence is a good model to follow. I'm way left of almost everybody in professional politics. And I'm an idealist but also a realist. I fully understand that _my_ ideal candidate would get like, 5% of the vote. So I vote as left as I can, holding my nose when I have to vote for a centrist to win a general election.
Being a guy that runs a small to medium-size Corporation the issue or problem that I regularly see is the people that are writing these laws have never run a business before. So when a company gives these politicians a decent song-and-dance as to how it benefits society and prove jobs or does things of that nature they really have no clue whether that's true or not. I see the desire to bring more jobs and to help the economy but I definitely feel that oftentimes it always ends up very inefficiently spent with little to nothing to show.
This has been a very persistent problem in any large organization on the planet, unfortunately. Bureaucrats, middle managers etc. need to make decisions based on limited, maybe even biased information spoonfed to them by someone else, since it's impossible to be an expert on every topic at once. This is why lobbyists hold so much power, even though most people on the street wouldn't even know a single one by name.
The "song and dance" simply provides them with public cover. They couldn't care less about substance, it's irrelevant to their needs/objectives. Surely you realize that. If not, rather than running an honest corporation, perhaps you should spend a little time interacting with K Street.
Yes. Crony Capitalism is the biggest problem with government. The crazy part is politicians are not smart enough to know what the country needs. They actually need lobbyists to lead them in a direction on things they do not understand. But these obviously have personal motives by these lobbyists. I think the only way to do away with this problem is to elect intelligent people as in scientists and engineers. The problem there is we don't have enough of those people and they need to focus on their own profession to continue serving the economy. Maybe, it's possible to elect righteous people who can be advised by intelligent people on what to do but it's difficult to Achieve with all the money flying around. This is why i think small government with little power is far better than a massive government that can do too many things with corruption.
Love to see you using your platform to talk about this. I feel like Americans can agree on a lot of the problems that were facing but not on solutions. Add in culture war stuff and all of a sudden we can’t agree on anything at all unfortunately.
It’s expensive to be poor. The poorer you are, the more fees you will likely incur. Things like minimum balance in checking/savings accounts, PMI fees on home loans under 20% down payment, etc.
When AOC opposed corporate welfare for Amazon in NYC, John Stossel and Fox said she was talking like a socialist and didn't understand free markets. The problem is that while everyone opposes corporate welfare in theory, most people make exceptions for their pet projects.
This is a great argument against the people defending corporations and the rich because high risk high reward. It’s frustrating to hear people defend the wealth gap
If a corporation is too big to fail, it's too big to exist. Regulators need to break them up into smaller corporations which can be allowed to compete freely in an open market
Isn't that what ended up happening to the Standard Oil? Breaking it up actually ended up HELPING the economy, like you say, and it didn't even hurt the owner, it actually made him even richer
In the past when I heard that line about businesses being ‘too big to fail’… I was confused… if it’s too big to fail, then why are you sending it money. You just said it can’t fail. (As in, I interpreted it as “it’s incapable of failing” instead of “it’d be catastrophic if it failed”)
A majority of American voters across the isle agree that corporations have gained too much power, the cause of the issue & what to do to address it is where people are split on
Actually, the split is between people and corporations. Most people agree that enacting left-wing policies would be beneficial, but corporations stuff those initiatives woth lobbying.
@@arkadiosvotessocialist8436 I mean I tend to lean pro-labor and pro-regulation, which people usually define as left-wing, I think a lot of conservatives think that government regulation somehow makes corporations even stronger or something like that
Ever since the military industrial complex, I was wondering whether you would talk about corporate welfare. I guess it was a matter of time haha... Thanks for the video. I feel like it will help me settle my views for the time being.
@@iammrbeatpharmaceuticals receiving public funds and smacking consumers on hyper high prices Elon running starlink 85% on public money and still trying to offload the functioning of it amongst other issues
The biggest problem with corporate welfare is the breach of faith committed by some companies/CEOs by misusing bailout funds for very unnecessary expenditures with impunity.
Thank you Matt! We would not be talking about this, if corporations would pay their fair share in taxes. They would never miss that money. They are just greedy!
I mean, we're all greedy to a certain extent. It's part of the grease that keeps the wheels of economies going. However, not controlling greed can have significant repercussions on everyone, and corporate personhood makes it extremely difficult to control greed.
I mean if I was given a legal reason to not pay taxes, I wouldn't pay taxes. Not only because it benefits me, but I also feel my tax dollars are often wasted. I'm also a hard right libertarian who believes taxation is theft so there is also that bias I have
@@timschultz1928 that isnt true. Civilization has always prospered from free market enterprise and innovations. Government didn't create any of the luxurious that we have as a country, private businesses did and they did it as a profit. I'm not saying that taxation is completely useless, we need it for defense most obviously. But most of our tax money is taken from us and used on useless programs and big bureaucrats such as the federal reserve, the department of education, department of transportation, department of commerce, department of homeland security to name a few. Not to also mention that they fail audits every year and lose 10s of millions of dollars every year and nobody seems to be outraged by that. In my opinion, taxes are better on a local level which is significantly less money I pay in taxes compared to the federal government and even the state government in some examples. Taxes should be as low as possible and let people do things with their money that they rightfully earned
Corporations are business entities for their shareholders. Denouncing corporate personhood and taxing them separately from their shareholders is a bit inconsistent.
Thank you for talking about this Mr. Beat, I’m currently in law school and I hate how obvious this issue is, it feels like we are being pushed to talk about and worry about other issues to be distracted from this issue
I'm pretty sure that's exactly what's happening. These media conglomerates have a vested interest in keeping us, the American people, divided against each other instead of realizing how we are united in this issue against the true enemy, the corporations like them. Also super glad for Mr. Beat making a video about it; I've been trying to explain this for quite some time now and I feel like I finally have some power in my corner.
Thanks for making this video Mr. Beat! Hopefully more Americans see this, we need to realize what's actually the problem in this country, not each other.
I really appreciate the way you directly define words and display them. It makes your videos concise, direct, and very understandable. You're a wonderful teacher ❤
I'd pull from Aristotle that that is inherent to representative democracy (and why the Athenians practiced demarchy). Even little things like READING every bill before a vote before the public and having a citizen veto prior to any legislation being passed would have the most effect in curbing corporate power.
Social Security also universally unites almost all Americans. Being labeled as opposed to Social Security is the fastest way anyone can kill a campaign.
Unfortunately. Social security needs to be privatized. The return on investment for stocks is greater than on social security, and so people will become richer if they were allowed to privately invest their social security taxes.
No, that's an extremely inefficient way to run an economy. If the government needs to bail out an important company, they should just replace the management and take partial ownership of it selling its share when the company has recovered. It worked out great when the government bailed out the banks in 2008, the banks recovered quite quickly and the state even made a slight profit by doing so.
It's not to be owned democratically; it is too big to exist. The problem isn't that a company is oligarchic, democratic, or autocratic, the problem is that no private entity should have so much power. Soviet countries don't 'work because they have workers at their heads' they sucked too. There is no model of megacorporations that can be made to work.
@@aaa232ds21 I don't think you understand what you're saying. You can't 'capitalise the gains'; when a disaster occurs due to corruption and malfunction, like Chernobyl or Wuhan, the loses are incurred communally. If Amazon collapsed over night you and I would feel it for years, despite not having a monetary tie to the corporation. That is too big to exist, and it's a threat to our security. The right size for a company is small enough that it could vanish off the face of the Earth, and nothing changes.
A really important video, Mr Beat! Personally I think ending corporate personhood is something that would dramatically reduce the power of big business.
There is a Swedish song called ”Staten och kapitalet” by punk band Ebba Grön, translating roughly to ”The government and the corporations”. Its about the huge corporate welfare problem in Sweden that has existed since the war. Basically one of the most persistent policies in Sweden has been the favoritism and financial support by the social democratic goverment of certain companies or wealthy families. It’s a good song that I would really recomend!
Thank you for this. The American consciousness and people are probably much more on each other's sides than the current culture war that those corporate owned media outlets love to push. It isn't as though we've solved racism, xenophobia, or any other social issue per se but those issues would not be nearly as difficult to breach if everyone had generally better lives, could afford homes, and were under less financial pressure.
You need to get out more and talk to those who proudly label themselves MAGA. You seem to have no idea how truly far apart we are in economic philosophy and on the social issues of gender, women's rights, racism. Just go talk to them. Try to have a reasonable conversation......then come back and tell us what happened.
I really like it that you want to reach out to as many people as possible, its important to understate that we're all on the same boat dealing with the same things. Its nice and refreshing to see that in the current political climate.
“ the alternative would be much much worse.” well, I agree that letting some of these companies fail and go down would lead to a worse outcome. Initially, I think by artificially propping them up with taxpayer dollars just kind of makes the problem worse. Sometimes you need to take one step back so you can take two steps forward. sometimes you need the top trees to fall so that the other trees can grow.
I agree I think. If you just treat the symptoms without addressing the root of the problem then it will inevitably not improve or get worse. And yeah, your point about trees falling for others to take their place, I mean, yeah. Why is it that the small few largest and most profitable corporations 'cannot be allowed to fail ?' Many of them have slowly burned away all competitors and white whaled their way to first place..maybe if they weren't so powerful and monopolized the industries they were in would be doing better lol
I think what we need to do is do tax exemptions for small businesses and drastically limit lobbying. If the economy belongs to the people, then small businesses should be preferred over big corporations.
@@iammrbeatI wouldn’t exactly consider it corporate welfare as money isn’t given, just that less money is taken. But I do think it is corporate-welfare adjacent, so I see your point.
This is great in theory, but unfortunately very difficult to put into practice. If we limit lobbying in the traditional sense, those that have profited and become so powerful, in terms of the money they have, will find other ways to pay-off those that will further their ends. Instead of millions being put into their bank accounts, the same money will be given to their 'charity' foundations, given to them in the form of business transfers, land transfers, or just 'gifted'. The problem, as I see it, is that too much money necessarily = too much power. I could go on, but for the sake of not writing a book in the comments, I'll end my digression here.
As a Social Worker, whenever people complain about any kind of people "getting over" on their fellow American. This is is always my response. Why are we giving money to the rich instead of literally any other kind of investment. If capitalists want a free market then they should have a free market. While our neighbors are on the street, the money to build housing or schools or rent control isn't finically viable. Thanks for this one.
A decade ago when I was at occupy Wall Street there were college communists and tea-party republicans (the MAGA of their day, for those too young) standing side by side. The slogan of “We are the 99%” was almost universally true - everyone supported OWS, at least in premise. I didn’t notice at the time but shortly thereafter the media started fueling every possible grievance aside from those aimed at the 1%. Especially today, barring some token words about “income inequality,” the spotlight is very much cast on anything but corporate politics.
You mentioned our economy relying too heavily on just a few large corporations, and I totally agree. This is due to the fact that in recent decades, as a nation, we have been sliding ever closer to Italian-style fascism, right out of the playbook of Giovanni Gentile, who was to Italian Fascism what Marx was to communism. You see, people like the Bolsheviks saw the end goal as communism, and believed the way to get there was to overthrow existing societies and set up socialist societies that would eventually morph into communist ones. Italian Fascists like Gentile and Mussolini, in contrast, did not see socialism as a transitional state, but as an end goal. The way to reach that goal, according to the Italian Fascists, was to use corporate welfare to encourage monopolies and over time crush all business that wasn't controlled by a very few companies. At the same time, these companies would be brought under greater and greater government control, to the point where they were essentially arms of the government. At this point, all means of production would be under control of the state and they would achieve full socialism. Italy never reached that point fully before Mussolini was overthrown, and neither did Germany before Hitler fell, but this is essentially the system the People's Republic of China has now, and many Western nations are moving rapidly in that direction, including the United States. These fascist policies actually cross party lines, with a majority of both Democrats and Republicans falling in line. The main opposition comes from some outliers among the Democrats, from the Libertarian Party, and from the small libertarian wing of the Republican Party.
Yeah also in my opinion, a lot of it is good, supporting pilot industries, new businesses and beneficial products like green energy. I don’t understand why bailing out banks is a ‘necessary evil’, maybe it feels unfair but it was to our benefit. Subsidising companies that don’t do consumers or the economy any good is an evil and so is bribery but I didn’t get the sense that Mr Beat saw any subsidies to corporations as good. Also he didn’t even talk about the massive subsidies agriculture gets in the US.
I just have to say how much I appreciate your videos, you understand politics incredibly well and are great and exploring it in an informative and unbiased way and making things easy to understand, all of which is a rarity on UA-cam. Keep up the great work!
It’s hard to get the lawmakers who receive money from corporations to not write legislation that benefits the corporations giving them money at the same fricken time! There’s gonna have to be a new set of legislators that write laws that reverse corporate welfare policies. My concern is that as long as lobbying is constitutionally justifiable, it’s hard to see corporate welfare being reduced substantially in our lifetime.
The problem is there are too few legislators, many of which are well beyond retirement age and are losing their marbles, to effectively govern a nation as large as the US.
Mr Based. This happens a lot in Australia, especially due to the impacts of COVID … Qantas especially is getting a bit of (well deserved) flack with regards to this. You’re not wrong, this issue unites us all. 🤝🏻
2 words Trust Bust. One of the reasons the majority of our industries failed so catastrophicly during the pandemic was because corporations have centralized everything, wich lead to logistical break downs in the supply chains. If our economy had been disitralized we would have been more able to pivot during large scale and small scale disasters. That is just one out of a few hundred reasons that monopolies are bad for the majority of of Americans.
Trust busts never work because there are no monopolies except for those the state creates. You should look into the breakup of Standard Oil and what a failure it was and how Standard Oil never actually operated as a monopoly.
I remember learning about subsidies for things like farming and thinking it was a pretty neat thing for areas that typically are the poor areas of a country. The issue i see is when companies are being reckless and the government helps them anyways. Its one thing to help jog the economy even at the vaunted ideal of the "free market", its another to just let these companies get off scot-free.
Subsidies for farmers is a joke. The fruit and vegetable sector get no such subsidies and yet they are as competitive and efficient as any other industry that competes worldwide.
Conservative slogan "axe the tax" here in Canada has a ton of traction, with most people (presumably?) not realizing this is almost entirely tied to corporate taxes.
You earned my subscription with this one Mr. Beat. As far as I’m concerned, corporate welfare is anti-consumer and anti-citizen. If there’s one thing I dislike as a Libertarian, it’s when corporations and businesses get bailouts from the government that the citizens pay for. Not only is the government directly interfering in the economy and picking who controls the market, they’re using our money to pay for it!
That's... exactly what you already do. When the government bailed out the banks in 2008, they replaced the management and got partial ownership in them. The banks recovered quite quickly and the government made a slight profit of it. What exactly is it you're criticizing here?
@@GynxShinx The government has no business owning private companies if that is what you mean. The government sold its shares once the banks had recovered and the crisis had been averted (job done). And the state even made a slight profit of the whole ordeal, what's your problem?
@@8is Crisis was not averted. It was mitigated. Many were hurt and its repetition was not prevented. It will happen again since we did nothing to fundamnetally change anything. You can say that's not the business of the government, but you provide no reason. And ownership at the will of the state is not the only alternative. I said it belongs to the people. There are different business structures in which the consumer and/or worker are given democratic ownership.
Subsidies for big projects could also just have been government capital investment instead. Meaning the government didn't just give it to them but also actually owns equity in the project. Meaning the project can still happen but it doesn't have to be corporate charity
Corporate welfare will even affect what we end up purchasing at the grocery store, such as with the agriculture industry, as mentioned in the video. For example, animal ag is so highly subsidized to the point where it's literally cheaper to feed a bunch of crops to cows and take their milk than it is to just make milk from plants directly. It really obscures the true cost of what we buy and props up products we wouldn't otherwise buy as often.
Thank you for covering all points of view. Adulting is hard, and childish discussion does not help us move forward. Grey areas are where responsible adults must navigate.
I feel like the struggle is how a politician can lens the corporate welfare. A politician wont say, "Lets give big oil more subsidies." But they will say, "The opposition party has let gas prices spiral out of control!" Similarly a politician wont say "I spent tax dollars to buy a mega-corp a new building." but they will say, "I helped mega-corp bring 3,000 new jobs to our state."
One major problem with corporate welfare is that it hurts most businesses. The biggest corporations have teams of lawyers accountants, and lobbyists, so they can have regulations changed to suit them, find the easiest ways to comply, and get every possible subsidy or deduction, but most businesses can't focus enough on compliance and lobbying to benefit. Little start ups that make a better product cheaper end up paying more taxes and getting fewer subsidies than the juggernauts. If you and a few friends start up a courier service in your home town, you will pay higher taxes than FedEx, and mom and pop stores pay higher taxes than Amazon.
Seems like a lot of our legal systems on businesses are like that unfortunately huh. Copyright law certainly seems to be one. If you are a small business and another entity starts selling something they stole from you, most people seem to have little options. Meanwhile, Disney paid out enough to keep Mickey Mouse from entering the public domain through a full law change...
The two items right next to each other - *term limits* and *reducing the influence of lobbyists* - are contradictory. We've had term limits in California for decades - it's why Willie Brown isn't _still_ Speaker of the Assembly. The idea is that there shouldn't be a permanent political class, in which every politician is constantly working to hang onto their job; and that's a valid concern. The problem is that term limits don't solve that problem. Instead, what happens is, we get a game of political "musical chairs" in which every politician needs to constantly be working towards their _next_ job (taking their focus even further away from doing their current job), and in which the only permanent presence in the legislature _are the lobbyists and staffers_ who, every two years, get to school a new freshman class of legislators on how things work in Sacramento. I think term limits in the executive branch, where power is focused on one individual, are a good thing; the most revolutionary-democratic thing George Washington did was to quit after two terms & set that precedent. But term limits in the legislative branch do more harm than good, and I'm not sure they do any good at all. *Proportional representation* in the legislature - *ending the duopoly* - would go a lot further to solving these problems. But of course, those who have the power to do that, are unlikely to do so precisely because _they're in power._
i really appreciate you including your annotated google doc script for the video with sources linked in the description. i think you should mention that in your videos more often as its very handy for doing research
How come corporations are not punished like a person when it comes to gross violations and crimes? Business that infringe on the rights of people should be nationalized and taken away from shareholders if convicted just like how people are incarcerated/imprisoned.
Yeah... "Corporate personhood" as a legal status seems inherently corrupt to me. A corporate entity being a person when it is convenient and a corporation when it is not is not just
Corporate welfare unites us all, yet the vast majority still vote for the unabashedly pro-corporate party or the reluctantly pro-corporate party every 4 years….
People who decry socialism don't seem to understand that we live in a socialist country. Our socialism just pushes money upward to fewer people rather than downward to many people.
There’s a great clip of Bernie Sanders unmasking corporate media on Face The Nation back in February. The anchor gets all defensive and protective real quick. One of the best things I’ve ever seen.
The more influence the government asserts on the economy, the larger is the interest and ability of corporations for lobbying. It is not a one way street.
The role of the government in the economy ought to be in the interests of the common people, not the corporations. When you favor big business you’re inherently screwing We The People.
I don't think the argument unites everyone. It's only a uniting issue on the left of politics whereas the right is relatively supportive of this. I don't like using the term "welfare" for it as welfare to me is meant to redistribute wealth in society towards the working class and vulnerable since the wealth that's distributed in capitalism is distributed based on share of capital rather than labor/merit thus creating massive unjust inequality. "Corporate welfare" is just wealth redistribution aimed at the benefit of the well-off rather than the social or communal and it's best shown with tax cuts (especially Trump's $1.9t that the Republicans want to expand) for the wealthy.
Instead of bail-outs the government should do seizure instead. Don't let the company actually fall over just take ownership of it, hold the board of directors accountable for the missmanagement and get the company on it's legs asap to sell it back to the market. This would mostly just hurt the shareholders, but that's their risk of being an investor.
In law school, one of my professors was a top executives at a large corporation. He taught us that the idea that corporations needs tax breaks or incentives to take on the investments to expand their business in a fiction. They bid cities and municipalities against each other to extract further concessions from the place they were going to build in anyway.
![Lp. Сердце Вселенной #60 РОЖДЕНИЕ ЛОЛОЛОШКИ [Финал] • Майнкрафт](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/YoR0pAV9FVQ/mqdefault.jpg)
Why do _you_ think corporate welfare is not brought up that often in political discourse?
Also, don't forget to check out Joe's Common Sense substack: commonsensepapers.substack.com/p/political-economy-part-2-corporate-welfare
Lobbying definitely is under mentioned and should be outlawed all together. Both parties specially republicans are overly dependant on these "non bribes"
@@franciscoacevedo3036not specifically republicans. It is roughly equal among the two parties.
Stop making this a partisan issue dude.
I'd imagine it was Reagan and his trickle down bullshit.
Monopolist manipulations are why the issue is not brought up, we must use anon forums to form urban militias of entrepreneur and laborers and unite to protect the American republic and its free market from the Dixie Elite Parasites within.
Blame Nixon, Reagon, and Clinton for this Neoliberal Trickledown poison. Also blame them for the erosion of the 2nd amendment. Blame them as well for Prohibition 2.0.
"Privatize profits and socialize losses"
I wish every American got a pie chart each year showing them how their tax dollars were spent.
USA! USA!
@@Heynmffc HOORAH
And a piece of the pie to go with it. 😊
@@ICHope1 and a firearm
We do, and from government websites no less. You just have to google it
www.cbo.gov/publication/58888
fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/federal-spending/
Theodore Roosevelt would be so disappointed if he knew big corporations got power again.
You’re so right since he was all about trust busting
ikr
At least Biden is starting to (attempt) to trust bust again a bit. That's a big change from the last several administrations.
@@ADRgman not to mention Taft went just as hard in his trust-busting (if not more!), we really need to get back to that
@@iammrbeat that's true, but it's still baby steps of what needs to be done.
I never understood why the idea of a family with nothing being given a thousand dollars is outrageous, while the cruelest and laziest and wealthiest of us all being given a billion dollars is somehow a good thing.
I assume that it stems from a _misconception_ that trickle-down economics actually works. It is assumed that a corporation being given money indirectly benefits the taxpayer, while giving money directly to another family doesn't give the taxpayer anything in return.
But what they don't realize is that this assumption is based on a FLAWED perception of how the system works. They think it's like taxes paying for roads, when that's not actually where the money goes.
Basically, It goes something like this:
"Giving my tax money to corporations helps them innovate new conveniences for us. You WANT to have Amazon, right?"
"But helping my neighbor doesn't help ME. Why should I have to pay for THEIR ."
And then "taxpayer" often justifies this viewpoint by assuming that "neighbor's" poor financial situation was the consequence of something neighbor had agency in. If taxpayer can convince themselves that it isn't mere LUCK that they aren't in the same situation as neighbor, but rather that they avoided it because they were more financially responsible...
Well, you get the idea. 😕
@@leyrua
Absolutely correct. The other big talking point is to give corporations tax cuts so they can "create jobs" and "lower prices for working families"
They then take those earnings and buy back a bunch of stock to inflate the share price, layoff a bunch of people so they can overwork the poor souls left over and look profitable on paper, borrow against the value of their now-overvalued company to acquire their next biggest competitor, and repeat; until they have enough of a monopoly to _increase_ prices for working families.
Who, incidentally, were forced to take lower wage jobs when they were laid off by the corporations above.
I believe this is the ??? step of the _Underpants Gnomes Guide to Capitalism_
You really think you work harder than someone who runs a business ?
@@c.m.81 Easily
@@c.m.81 yeah problably they do but if thats the case it does not give them any more right to the taxpayers money than someone who needs help eith paying off medical fees.
Any time I hear a corporation described as "too big to fail", I think it might be time for that corporation to be broken into smaller pieces that can fail.
Too big to fail is quite literally the same as being able to get away with anything.
To big to fail = too big to be privately owned.
@@thesenate1844 Too big too fail = to big
Makes perfect sense since both political parties are corporate owned. Corporate lobbyists write the bills that often later becomes laws. We are no longer a Republic, but an corporatocracy led by a super rich oligarchy.
100%
How much does a lobbyist make? Just curious…
This is the reality of all politics in capitalism - the predominance of capital
Both parties giving a standing ovation to Isaac " Herzog in his capitol speech is all you need to know.
@@McHobotheBobo Corporations are not capitalist.
The nerve to pay out bonuses by using bailout money from the taxpayer is a level of evil that is almost impressive.
thats what either JPMorgan or AIG did in 2008 i think
honestly the use of that be punished by public execution, id argue bonuses for upper level management should be banned for any company with ANY DEBT
@@sominboy2757 AIG was the biggest offender. Criminal.
@@sominboy2757 oh yeah, Xer here I was laid off and watching news about the private hotel in Hawaii that AIG executives were going to for a conference. I'll never forget that.
well said, we need to eat the rich, it is the only way
End lobbying. Bring back democracy without private financing of campaigns
Ehhhh. Lobbying isn’t inherently bad. A lot of otherwise ignored people get heard because they send someone to DC. No monetary transaction has to ever happen in fact. I think what people are actually mad about is Super PACs and the likes.
Here me out... How about Congress passes a law called the Equal Access Act, in which every citizen should have equal access to their representative? Eh? Eh?
@@SERGEYTIMOFEYOVICHInstitute a wealth cap on lobbying then, if you have over 500 million USD in personal value or your company has over 10 billion USD it is illegal to lobby or make deals with Public Servants. If it is discovered you did so you will suffer non-lethal capital punishment for a set standard of 30 years.
@@iammrbeatcorporation are people and money is equal so Mr Walmart can speak equal to you, but more equal with more money.
@@SERGEYTIMOFEYOVICH Well when they are having a wine and dine with Senators to push or halt legislation, that's just bribery without money changing hands.
Corporate welfare is the one issue that unites us, Yet little is ever done about it
Let's change that. Bring it up to everyone you know.
Corporate welfare is a bipartisan issue, politicians are all in favour of it.
Unity is always an illusion. We prefer to dwell on those things that divide us. Social media will continue to stoke those flames until the end.
Because we live in a corpratocracy, not a democracy. There is no connection between how you vote and what happens, unless you are a 1%or. For the rest of us, you are better off not voting and instead organizing and protesting.
its incredibly important that voters find politicians who will bring actual change. We often vote for politicians we just feel "safe" with rather than on issues.
One of Bernie Sanders main talking points was against big business. Both them not paying taxes, them being monopolies, etc. And he was popular, even doing well on his Fox News appearances. But the Democratic party conspired both times to make Bernie look super radical and unelecetable because they're in the pocket of big businesses. So yeah...
My greatest concern is how to recover from all these economic and global troubles and stay afloat especially with the political power tussle going on in US.
Inflation can have a significant impact on individuals and their cost of living. As a result, it can cause negative market sentiment. It is important for individuals and businesses to find ways to navigate and potentially mitigate the effects of inflation on their finances. The current economic climate, including underperformance of financial markets due to fear of inflation, has led to a decrease in the value of my portfolio. I would appreciate any recommendations on how to potentially increase returns during this market downturn.
Such market uncertainties are the reason I don’t base my market judgements and decisions on rumours and here-says, got the best of me 2020 and had me holding worthless position in the market, I had to revamp my entire portfolio through the aid of an advisor, before I started seeing any significant results happens in my portfolio, been using the same advisor and I’ve scaled up $250k within 2 years, whether a bullish or down market, both makes for good profit, it all depends on where you’re looking.
@@TomD226 Impressive can you share more info?
@lowcostfresh2266 There are many financial coaches who excel in their profession, but for the time being, I employ Laurel Dell Sroufe because I adore her methods. You can make research and find out more.
Polititians have the audacity to give out money to big businesses, especially those failing, and then scream on the media that "the free market has failed us".
lol true. There often isn't much of a "free" market.
"The Monopoly market has failed us!" Is what they should be saying
@@iammrbeat I agree completely. This is what separates the populists from the corrupt establishment. I disagree with you on many issues since I am more on the right politically and socially, but I am glad that we can come together as one to call out this corrupt Crony Capitalism. Personally I call it Conglomeratism since these companies control and influence so much (kinda scary how close it is to the textbook definition of Fascism). Anyway Mr. Beat, just wanted to say thank you for these videos and keep up the good work.
I mean, of course they’re narcissists. What do you expect?
I don't know what kind of free market wouldn't lobby/bribe politicians with money so that they would get a handout when they fail
"And the rest of us? We're not on that team"
This concept needs to be understood by more people, the primary goal of corporations will always be to enrich themselves and expand their power and influence, and when corporations are (now legally) allowed to influence politics, the government will inevitably neglect anybody who isn't "on that team"
IDK man, clearly there is a massive divide between the rich and the poor, but using US VS THEM mentality reeks of manipulation. I think nuance and skepticism need to be embraced.
"Now legally"? You vastly underestimate for how long the people with wealth or control over production controlled the government, or became the government itself...
We historically got better at defining what the "state" is, but reality isn't bound to dictionaries...
Edit: the "us vs them" discussion goes deeper. In fact, it is everywhere. "Capitalists" keep saying "government bad, corporations good", but that is all propaganda. The overlaps in powers are so grey and foggy that it is naivety to think giving power and freedom to corporations will solve anything, and same goes to the left; power to the state will not work either because "the ploretariat" (or... humans in general) is historically really adaptive to worsening conditions of life in general!
...am I turning anarchist? am i turning monarchist? oligarchist? idk anymore, why are humans so trash at ruling itself...
@@JonesCrimson the first step to winning a class war is recognizing when its happening. And the billionaire class is not only winning but running the board at this point.
@@JonesCrimson sure thing , Jeff Bezos
@@JonesCrimson alright bootlicker
the fact that the government still gives the fossil fuel industry free money despite everything is absolutely insane to me
if only we had a system where the interests of people were represented :(
The government also subsidizes green energy immensely. There is actually a trade war going on right now between the US, EU, and UK over who can offer the best subsidies to green energy research companies. It goes both ways. And frankly, that isn't even a good thing. It props up "green" companies that make no progress while real ones with less lobbying and advertisement power lose public interest and backing.
Some states are subsidizing solar and wind (S&W) to the point that natural gas and nuclear power plants are uneconomical. S&W are very weather dependent which leads to blackouts. In order to maintain grid reliability states have now added subsidies for gas and nuclear power plants. Hence all forms of electric generation are subsidized. Electric utility customers pay for all this through higher prices.
@@t23001That’s not true. They subsidize those things in addition to providing road blocks to other forms of energy. It’s not just that wind and solar are heavily subsidized. Natural gas will always be the most economical option without any government influence, and nuclear will always be the cleanest in any scenario.
If the government literally did nothing at all in terms of privatized energy, solar and wind would be leagues behind oil and gas, _and_ nuclear.
@@crescendo5594 You absolutely nailed it.
As a UAW member on the edge of a strike due to corporate greed, and the fact they consume our tax dollars and tell us that its our fault they might go bankrupt while making 21 billion combined in the first 6 months of this year really makes this video hit home.
Best of luck with the strike!
is there a place that we can donate to the strike fund?
Whats UAW?
@@shuenshuen United Auto Workers
If they are being given your money, that would make you a shareholder in the company.
I like how you said near the end, “the left tends to criticize the businesses, the right the government, but what some don’t realize is those groups are often on the same team; a team which none of US are on”
This is so true. Looking at politics itself, both political parties even have things they do to play for this super-team of the government and big businesses, which lends some credibility to the phrase “2 wings, 1 albatross.” The albatross preys upon the people and keeps us divided under each of its wings, and obscures its true intentions with partisan garbage that in the end is relatively trivial.
I wish the general populace could see this and understand we all have a common enemy to wrangle. The combined force of Big Corp & the federal government is extremely powerful and oppressive and needs to be culled, from both halves of the whole.
Mr.Beat really is the type of person to lead a revolution with glasses and checked shirts
The virgin Marxist-Leninist with their faux proletariat aesthetics
Vs.
The CHAD history teacher
And I’m here for it
Education > Hammer & Sickle. Sorry, Marx.
@@kingace6186 I mean, yeah, level of access to education is one of the consistently greatest indicators of standard of living. Moreover, education is responsible for bringing millions out of poverty
Like Benny from fnv?
Oh, boy! After a long, stressful week, there’s nothing like raising my blood pressure through the roof about important issues I can’t control by with my favorite UA-camr, Mr. Beat ❤ God bless my man
😄😳 well sorry to raise your blood pressure!
This comment do be hitting home with me haha
@@iammrbeat lol sorry, I was just playing! You’re all good 😊
Do what I'm about to do, and disappear into the mountains for a week. It's great for the body and soul.
Issues like this is one of the reasons why I hate mainstream news. I’m tired of people arguing over non issues.
I don’t remember where I heard this joke but it was something along the lines of “Make politicians wear patches on their suits with whoever’s bribing them like NASCAR drivers! Shell, ExonMobile, Monsanto, Lockheed Martin- then take a guess at why they voted the way they did!
@@w5527 typo, did you mean voted?
@@averagejoey2000 Yes, thank you lol
I fixed it
Mr. beat back at it again with another eye opening video.
I’m someone who leans left on the political spectrum and I can easily say this video can easily appeal to my fellow Americans on the left and right. Please keep making these. They are very important
But it doesn’t 🤷♂️ most of us can think for ourselves. White people thought race meant everything until they found out they were poor now they want us to unite 🤦♂️🤣
I live in Wisconsin, where the state, Racine county, and the community of Mount Pleasant shamelessly put together an enormous package to lure Foxconn into the area. Guess what? After driving homeowners out of their homes, tearing down the houses, putting in millions of dollars in electric, water & sewage, and road infrastructure, and negotiating a huge water agreement for millions of gallons a day of water from Lake Michigan, Foxconn changed their minds. Instead of 16, 000 jobs, less than 150 have been created. No need for the planned ramp up in education and housing infrastructure. It was all a money grab.
im right across the river in minnesota. it pains me to see you guys are still paying for the hatchet job Scott Walker did to Wisconsin.
The problem is that south Wisconsin and north Illinois haven't united to be the great state of Assenisipia yet.
Wow. That’s sickening
Mr. Beat, this video really shows your qualities as a teacher. No bias, no controversial statements or language, and reaching as wide as an audience as possible. Keep up the good work!
there’s not such thing as “no bias” everyone has their biases
having biases in itself is not wrong, what is wrong is trying to hide them, and not be forward with them
Sticking to only non-controversial statements only works until you need to say something controversial; i.e., something that someone with enough numbers and/or power disagrees with. Mr. Beat didn't actually go into any depth on how this topic is deliberately obscured from public view, how ads with scary phrases like "corporate welfare" are replaced by friendly slogans like stimulating the economy and driving job creation. It's limiting, to say you're going to always argue "both sides" or "the middle" and remain "uncontroversial". That just means that you're letting whoever has the most pull and the loudest extremists dictate what you're allowed to say and believe, because the moment someone shows up on the far end of any scale, the metaphorical center of gravity shifts towards them.
@@Amanda-C. Exactly this.
Mr Beat is trying to run an education channel, not an advocacy one. It is important to the core ethos of this channel to remain as "even-handed" as possible. Large parts of this story remain untold for the sake of the illusion of neutrality. (Well, that plus the algorithm doesn't reward 4-hour videos)
Unfortunately, for those who watch this video but aren't inspired to do any further research, they are led to equate "bipartisan" with "both sides are equally part of the problem" and "neither side really tries to fix it"
I've got 4 takeaways from the comment section to this video:
1) it definitely _did_ need to be made, because
2) there is a vacuum of knowledge about the problem.
But it also needs an "honest" follow-up video, because
3) there is an even stronger vacuum of knowledge about who is fighting for the solutions.
And I wish he would've been a little more faithful to reality than to the imaginary centerline, because
4) he's gonna get accused of being a "lefty" regardless of how hard he tries to avoid it.
He won't advocate. I will.
Support Justice Democrats!!
(Sorry about being one of the voices on the extreme, except also sorrynotsorry 🤷🏼♂️)
@@OdyTypeRJustice Democrats aren't the extreme. The extreme is people like me who want a full nationalization of any and all companies which take such extreme subsidies.
@@doomsdayrabbit4398 @doomsdayrabbit4398
Oh, I'm not trying to imply they are; I just think the commitment to not taking corporate donations or allowing corporate pac influence is a good model to follow.
I'm way left of almost everybody in professional politics. And I'm an idealist but also a realist. I fully understand that _my_ ideal candidate would get like, 5% of the vote. So I vote as left as I can, holding my nose when I have to vote for a centrist to win a general election.
Being a guy that runs a small to medium-size Corporation the issue or problem that I regularly see is the people that are writing these laws have never run a business before. So when a company gives these politicians a decent song-and-dance as to how it benefits society and prove jobs or does things of that nature they really have no clue whether that's true or not.
I see the desire to bring more jobs and to help the economy but I definitely feel that oftentimes it always ends up very inefficiently spent with little to nothing to show.
It also creates monopolies, or deals that function like monopolies, which puts other businesses at risk and ruins the free market.
This has been a very persistent problem in any large organization on the planet, unfortunately. Bureaucrats, middle managers etc. need to make decisions based on limited, maybe even biased information spoonfed to them by someone else, since it's impossible to be an expert on every topic at once. This is why lobbyists hold so much power, even though most people on the street wouldn't even know a single one by name.
The "song and dance" simply provides them with public cover. They couldn't care less about substance, it's irrelevant to their needs/objectives. Surely you realize that. If not, rather than running an honest corporation, perhaps you should spend a little time interacting with K Street.
why do all rich people use coke
Are you rich and if so can I eat you? (Pls)
Yes. Crony Capitalism is the biggest problem with government. The crazy part is politicians are not smart enough to know what the country needs. They actually need lobbyists to lead them in a direction on things they do not understand. But these obviously have personal motives by these lobbyists. I think the only way to do away with this problem is to elect intelligent people as in scientists and engineers. The problem there is we don't have enough of those people and they need to focus on their own profession to continue serving the economy. Maybe, it's possible to elect righteous people who can be advised by intelligent people on what to do but it's difficult to Achieve with all the money flying around. This is why i think small government with little power is far better than a massive government that can do too many things with corruption.
Love to see you using your platform to talk about this. I feel like Americans can agree on a lot of the problems that were facing but not on solutions. Add in culture war stuff and all of a sudden we can’t agree on anything at all unfortunately.
The wealthier you are the more free benefits you get
Absolutely
Like food stamps, section 8 housing, pell grants, child tax deductions?
@@JF-vw9lv Go downtown LA and talk to all the homeless people about their "benefits".
No one ever got rich spending their own money
It’s expensive to be poor. The poorer you are, the more fees you will likely incur. Things like minimum balance in checking/savings accounts, PMI fees on home loans under 20% down payment, etc.
Corporations receive financial aid from the government and still ship jobs overseas. We are subsidizing our own job outsourcing.
Don't forget the supreme court justices selling "justice" and making a mockery of any notion of justice in the process.
When AOC opposed corporate welfare for Amazon in NYC, John Stossel and Fox said she was talking like a socialist and didn't understand free markets. The problem is that while everyone opposes corporate welfare in theory, most people make exceptions for their pet projects.
This is a great argument against the people defending corporations and the rich because high risk high reward. It’s frustrating to hear people defend the wealth gap
If a corporation is too big to fail, it's too big to exist. Regulators need to break them up into smaller corporations which can be allowed to compete freely in an open market
I've heard this line before. It's a great line.
Isn't that what ended up happening to the Standard Oil? Breaking it up actually ended up HELPING the economy, like you say, and it didn't even hurt the owner, it actually made him even richer
In the past when I heard that line about businesses being ‘too big to fail’… I was confused… if it’s too big to fail, then why are you sending it money. You just said it can’t fail. (As in, I interpreted it as “it’s incapable of failing” instead of “it’d be catastrophic if it failed”)
So basically scrap our current banking system? Lol. Even small banks are too big to fail with how we use banks as investment vehicles.
@@nickthompson1812 I mean, if that’s what it takes, personally.
A majority of American voters across the isle agree that corporations have gained too much power, the cause of the issue & what to do to address it is where people are split on
Corporate corruption in government is like rust on a tool. One side says let's remove the rust, the other side says let's remove the tool.
Actually, the split is between people and corporations. Most people agree that enacting left-wing policies would be beneficial, but corporations stuff those initiatives woth lobbying.
@@AmianteTarvoke *replace it with a better tool that benefits more people
Burn it all down
@@arkadiosvotessocialist8436 I mean I tend to lean pro-labor and pro-regulation, which people usually define as left-wing, I think a lot of conservatives think that government regulation somehow makes corporations even stronger or something like that
Ever since the military industrial complex, I was wondering whether you would talk about corporate welfare. I guess it was a matter of time haha...
Thanks for the video. I feel like it will help me settle my views for the time being.
Thanks Alon!
@@iammrbeatpharmaceuticals receiving public funds and smacking consumers on hyper high prices Elon running starlink 85% on public money and still trying to offload the functioning of it amongst other issues
"There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning." - Warren Buffett
The biggest problem with corporate welfare is the breach of faith committed by some companies/CEOs by misusing bailout funds for very unnecessary expenditures with impunity.
Thank you Matt! We would not be talking about this, if corporations would pay their fair share in taxes. They would never miss that money. They are just greedy!
I mean, we're all greedy to a certain extent. It's part of the grease that keeps the wheels of economies going. However, not controlling greed can have significant repercussions on everyone, and corporate personhood makes it extremely difficult to control greed.
I mean if I was given a legal reason to not pay taxes, I wouldn't pay taxes. Not only because it benefits me, but I also feel my tax dollars are often wasted. I'm also a hard right libertarian who believes taxation is theft so there is also that bias I have
@@angryzak4389 taxation is how civilization exists.. to think the taxation is theft is an unreasonable expectation
@@timschultz1928 that isnt true. Civilization has always prospered from free market enterprise and innovations. Government didn't create any of the luxurious that we have as a country, private businesses did and they did it as a profit. I'm not saying that taxation is completely useless, we need it for defense most obviously. But most of our tax money is taken from us and used on useless programs and big bureaucrats such as the federal reserve, the department of education, department of transportation, department of commerce, department of homeland security to name a few. Not to also mention that they fail audits every year and lose 10s of millions of dollars every year and nobody seems to be outraged by that. In my opinion, taxes are better on a local level which is significantly less money I pay in taxes compared to the federal government and even the state government in some examples. Taxes should be as low as possible and let people do things with their money that they rightfully earned
Corporations are business entities for their shareholders. Denouncing corporate personhood and taxing them separately from their shareholders is a bit inconsistent.
Thank you for talking about this Mr. Beat, I’m currently in law school and I hate how obvious this issue is, it feels like we are being pushed to talk about and worry about other issues to be distracted from this issue
I'm pretty sure that's exactly what's happening. These media conglomerates have a vested interest in keeping us, the American people, divided against each other instead of realizing how we are united in this issue against the true enemy, the corporations like them. Also super glad for Mr. Beat making a video about it; I've been trying to explain this for quite some time now and I feel like I finally have some power in my corner.
Thanks for making this video Mr. Beat! Hopefully more Americans see this, we need to realize what's actually the problem in this country, not each other.
Good luck with that. I love optimists...deluded though they may be.
@wholeNwon Better to get the truth than other people spreading misinformation.
I really appreciate the way you directly define words and display them. It makes your videos concise, direct, and very understandable. You're a wonderful teacher ❤
I had forgotten about
"Nader's Raiders"! Thank you Mr. Matt for this very thoughtful and informative video.
Corporate donors have too much power in politics. We the people have none
I'd pull from Aristotle that that is inherent to representative democracy (and why the Athenians practiced demarchy).
Even little things like READING every bill before a vote before the public and having a citizen veto prior to any legislation being passed would have the most effect in curbing corporate power.
Social Security also universally unites almost all Americans. Being labeled as opposed to Social Security is the fastest way anyone can kill a campaign.
Mostly because the social parasites on Social Security get to vote, which is contradictory.
Unfortunately. Social security needs to be privatized. The return on investment for stocks is greater than on social security, and so people will become richer if they were allowed to privately invest their social security taxes.
@@person3070How? Why is it upsetting for you that a program intended to help seniors is actually well liked?
Eh that's debated.
Funny that they to use force to make people pay social security.
If a corporation is "Too big to fail", it really ought to be owned by the people (the state) and democratically accountable.
No, that's an extremely inefficient way to run an economy. If the government needs to bail out an important company, they should just replace the management and take partial ownership of it selling its share when the company has recovered.
It worked out great when the government bailed out the banks in 2008, the banks recovered quite quickly and the state even made a slight profit by doing so.
I don't know about that one sounds too close to socialism and can be inefficient in the long run.
No, but let it fail if it gets close. Capitalize gains and losses, not just gains.
It's not to be owned democratically; it is too big to exist. The problem isn't that a company is oligarchic, democratic, or autocratic, the problem is that no private entity should have so much power. Soviet countries don't 'work because they have workers at their heads' they sucked too. There is no model of megacorporations that can be made to work.
@@aaa232ds21 I don't think you understand what you're saying. You can't 'capitalise the gains'; when a disaster occurs due to corruption and malfunction, like Chernobyl or Wuhan, the loses are incurred communally. If Amazon collapsed over night you and I would feel it for years, despite not having a monetary tie to the corporation. That is too big to exist, and it's a threat to our security.
The right size for a company is small enough that it could vanish off the face of the Earth, and nothing changes.
A really important video, Mr Beat! Personally I think ending corporate personhood is something that would dramatically reduce the power of big business.
There is a Swedish song called ”Staten och kapitalet” by punk band Ebba Grön, translating roughly to ”The government and the corporations”. Its about the huge corporate welfare problem in Sweden that has existed since the war. Basically one of the most persistent policies in Sweden has been the favoritism and financial support by the social democratic goverment of certain companies or wealthy families. It’s a good song that I would really recomend!
I’m so grateful to Mr. Beat. I always learn so much from his videos. For example: Santa is a capitalist and Panda-Cyclists are communists.
We have socialism for the rich
And rugged individualism for the poor
@@hectorcm2063 precisely
If the government would get corporation stocks in return, then it would be socialism
That's how Nader and Bernie Sanders puts it.
@@iammrbeat where do you think I got it
We need another great person like Teddy to bust some of these corporations
We really need a new FDR too
Wrong Roosevelt lol
Neither of the Roosevelts were great people.
@@arizenation3188 you take US history yet?
@@eatingyoshi4403 AP, minor in college, 2 peer reviewed papers, why what's up?
Thank you for this. The American consciousness and people are probably much more on each other's sides than the current culture war that those corporate owned media outlets love to push.
It isn't as though we've solved racism, xenophobia, or any other social issue per se but those issues would not be nearly as difficult to breach if everyone had generally better lives, could afford homes, and were under less financial pressure.
The big media corporations are the ones who create those issues and keep them going in order to stop us from uniting against them
You need to get out more and talk to those who proudly label themselves MAGA. You seem to have no idea how truly far apart we are in economic philosophy and on the social issues of gender, women's rights, racism. Just go talk to them. Try to have a reasonable conversation......then come back and tell us what happened.
@@lisaahmari7199 you sound like a bigot
@@lisaahmari7199that’s just want the MSM want you to think
@@lisaahmari7199 I proudly label myself maga, talk to me
Fun fact: the fishing industry is subsidized the amount of money it would take to end world hunger.
I really like it that you want to reach out to as many people as possible, its important to understate that we're all on the same boat dealing with the same things. Its nice and refreshing to see that in the current political climate.
We're all in the same boat, dealing with the same things, and most of us agree on who to throw off of it to the sharks.
“ the alternative would be much much worse.” well, I agree that letting some of these companies fail and go down would lead to a worse outcome. Initially, I think by artificially propping them up with taxpayer dollars just kind of makes the problem worse. Sometimes you need to take one step back so you can take two steps forward. sometimes you need the top trees to fall so that the other trees can grow.
I agree I think. If you just treat the symptoms without addressing the root of the problem then it will inevitably not improve or get worse. And yeah, your point about trees falling for others to take their place, I mean, yeah. Why is it that the small few largest and most profitable corporations 'cannot be allowed to fail ?' Many of them have slowly burned away all competitors and white whaled their way to first place..maybe if they weren't so powerful and monopolized the industries they were in would be doing better lol
I hope this video goes viral... how did this happen? We've created a kleptocracy.... What an important video this is.. Thank you Mr. Beat.
Great video breaking this down. Thank you and I've shared it with another, hopefully more and more people become aware of this issue.
I think what we need to do is do tax exemptions for small businesses and drastically limit lobbying. If the economy belongs to the people, then small businesses should be preferred over big corporations.
I agree that limited corporate welfare for small businesses (and, in addition, infant industries) is still needed to compete with global markets.
@@iammrbeatI wouldn’t exactly consider it corporate welfare as money isn’t given, just that less money is taken. But I do think it is corporate-welfare adjacent, so I see your point.
As long as the benefit for small/starting business is always the same ofc.
This is great in theory, but unfortunately very difficult to put into practice. If we limit lobbying in the traditional sense, those that have profited and become so powerful, in terms of the money they have, will find other ways to pay-off those that will further their ends. Instead of millions being put into their bank accounts, the same money will be given to their 'charity' foundations, given to them in the form of business transfers, land transfers, or just 'gifted'. The problem, as I see it, is that too much money necessarily = too much power.
I could go on, but for the sake of not writing a book in the comments, I'll end my digression here.
@@exemplify6593true but we do need to find a solution that can make it less worse. I am curious how you think we can try to tackle this issue?
I wish more people would take notice of this issue. I think they would really realize how united we are.
As a Social Worker, whenever people complain about any kind of people "getting over" on their fellow American. This is is always my response. Why are we giving money to the rich instead of literally any other kind of investment. If capitalists want a free market then they should have a free market. While our neighbors are on the street, the money to build housing or schools or rent control isn't finically viable. Thanks for this one.
A decade ago when I was at occupy Wall Street there were college communists and tea-party republicans (the MAGA of their day, for those too young) standing side by side. The slogan of “We are the 99%” was almost universally true - everyone supported OWS, at least in premise. I didn’t notice at the time but shortly thereafter the media started fueling every possible grievance aside from those aimed at the 1%. Especially today, barring some token words about “income inequality,” the spotlight is very much cast on anything but corporate politics.
You mentioned our economy relying too heavily on just a few large corporations, and I totally agree. This is due to the fact that in recent decades, as a nation, we have been sliding ever closer to Italian-style fascism, right out of the playbook of Giovanni Gentile, who was to Italian Fascism what Marx was to communism. You see, people like the Bolsheviks saw the end goal as communism, and believed the way to get there was to overthrow existing societies and set up socialist societies that would eventually morph into communist ones. Italian Fascists like Gentile and Mussolini, in contrast, did not see socialism as a transitional state, but as an end goal. The way to reach that goal, according to the Italian Fascists, was to use corporate welfare to encourage monopolies and over time crush all business that wasn't controlled by a very few companies. At the same time, these companies would be brought under greater and greater government control, to the point where they were essentially arms of the government. At this point, all means of production would be under control of the state and they would achieve full socialism. Italy never reached that point fully before Mussolini was overthrown, and neither did Germany before Hitler fell, but this is essentially the system the People's Republic of China has now, and many Western nations are moving rapidly in that direction, including the United States. These fascist policies actually cross party lines, with a majority of both Democrats and Republicans falling in line. The main opposition comes from some outliers among the Democrats, from the Libertarian Party, and from the small libertarian wing of the Republican Party.
It's a common part of populist platforms, but it's important to research what sorts of politicians actually follow through with it
Agree you need to always be critical of who you are supporting and best choose those who can bring great change
Green Party does not accept corporate donations. Dems and GOP do.
Yeah also in my opinion, a lot of it is good, supporting pilot industries, new businesses and beneficial products like green energy. I don’t understand why bailing out banks is a ‘necessary evil’, maybe it feels unfair but it was to our benefit. Subsidising companies that don’t do consumers or the economy any good is an evil and so is bribery but I didn’t get the sense that Mr Beat saw any subsidies to corporations as good. Also he didn’t even talk about the massive subsidies agriculture gets in the US.
I just have to say how much I appreciate your videos, you understand politics incredibly well and are great and exploring it in an informative and unbiased way and making things easy to understand, all of which is a rarity on UA-cam. Keep up the great work!
It’s hard to get the lawmakers who receive money from corporations to not write legislation that benefits the corporations giving them money at the same fricken time! There’s gonna have to be a new set of legislators that write laws that reverse corporate welfare policies. My concern is that as long as lobbying is constitutionally justifiable, it’s hard to see corporate welfare being reduced substantially in our lifetime.
The problem is there are too few legislators, many of which are well beyond retirement age and are losing their marbles, to effectively govern a nation as large as the US.
@@doomsdayrabbit4398 that’s a good point.
Mr Based. This happens a lot in Australia, especially due to the impacts of COVID … Qantas especially is getting a bit of (well deserved) flack with regards to this. You’re not wrong, this issue unites us all. 🤝🏻
Corporate Welfare is egregious, but I can't stop thinking about how well-put together this video is.
2 words Trust Bust.
One of the reasons the majority of our industries failed so catastrophicly during the pandemic was because corporations have centralized everything, wich lead to logistical break downs in the supply chains.
If our economy had been disitralized we would have been more able to pivot during large scale and small scale disasters.
That is just one out of a few hundred reasons that monopolies are bad for the majority of of Americans.
Trust busts never work because there are no monopolies except for those the state creates. You should look into the breakup of Standard Oil and what a failure it was and how Standard Oil never actually operated as a monopoly.
"People think the political spectrum is from left to right, but it's really top to bottom" -Molly Ivins
Brilliant
So who is the top and who is the bottom here ? Or are there like switches ?
I remember learning about subsidies for things like farming and thinking it was a pretty neat thing for areas that typically are the poor areas of a country. The issue i see is when companies are being reckless and the government helps them anyways. Its one thing to help jog the economy even at the vaunted ideal of the "free market", its another to just let these companies get off scot-free.
Subsidies for farmers is a joke. The fruit and vegetable sector get no such subsidies and yet they are as competitive and efficient as any other industry that competes worldwide.
@andrewpeters5145 well generally rural areas are the poorer areas, i didnt say there arent exceptions to this rule.
Conservative slogan "axe the tax" here in Canada has a ton of traction, with most people (presumably?) not realizing this is almost entirely tied to corporate taxes.
You earned my subscription with this one Mr. Beat. As far as I’m concerned, corporate welfare is anti-consumer and anti-citizen. If there’s one thing I dislike as a Libertarian, it’s when corporations and businesses get bailouts from the government that the citizens pay for. Not only is the government directly interfering in the economy and picking who controls the market, they’re using our money to pay for it!
If they need our funding to operate, and we need them to operate, then we should own them.
That's... exactly what you already do.
When the government bailed out the banks in 2008, they replaced the management and got partial ownership in them. The banks recovered quite quickly and the government made a slight profit of it.
What exactly is it you're criticizing here?
@@8is because it's not just banks....
@@8is Where exactly did I say "partial"? No, we the people do not own the banks today that gambled this country on subprime mortgages.
@@GynxShinx The government has no business owning private companies if that is what you mean. The government sold its shares once the banks had recovered and the crisis had been averted (job done). And the state even made a slight profit of the whole ordeal, what's your problem?
@@8is Crisis was not averted. It was mitigated. Many were hurt and its repetition was not prevented. It will happen again since we did nothing to fundamnetally change anything. You can say that's not the business of the government, but you provide no reason. And ownership at the will of the state is not the only alternative. I said it belongs to the people. There are different business structures in which the consumer and/or worker are given democratic ownership.
Subsidies for big projects could also just have been government capital investment instead. Meaning the government didn't just give it to them but also actually owns equity in the project. Meaning the project can still happen but it doesn't have to be corporate charity
Corporate welfare will even affect what we end up purchasing at the grocery store, such as with the agriculture industry, as mentioned in the video. For example, animal ag is so highly subsidized to the point where it's literally cheaper to feed a bunch of crops to cows and take their milk than it is to just make milk from plants directly. It really obscures the true cost of what we buy and props up products we wouldn't otherwise buy as often.
Thank you for covering all points of view. Adulting is hard, and childish discussion does not help us move forward. Grey areas are where responsible adults must navigate.
I feel like the struggle is how a politician can lens the corporate welfare. A politician wont say, "Lets give big oil more subsidies." But they will say, "The opposition party has let gas prices spiral out of control!" Similarly a politician wont say "I spent tax dollars to buy a mega-corp a new building." but they will say, "I helped mega-corp bring 3,000 new jobs to our state."
One major problem with corporate welfare is that it hurts most businesses. The biggest corporations have teams of lawyers accountants, and lobbyists, so they can have regulations changed to suit them, find the easiest ways to comply, and get every possible subsidy or deduction, but most businesses can't focus enough on compliance and lobbying to benefit. Little start ups that make a better product cheaper end up paying more taxes and getting fewer subsidies than the juggernauts. If you and a few friends start up a courier service in your home town, you will pay higher taxes than FedEx, and mom and pop stores pay higher taxes than Amazon.
Seems like a lot of our legal systems on businesses are like that unfortunately huh. Copyright law certainly seems to be one. If you are a small business and another entity starts selling something they stole from you, most people seem to have little options. Meanwhile, Disney paid out enough to keep Mickey Mouse from entering the public domain through a full law change...
Mr. Beat > Mr. Beast
This should have way more views than that Beast guy gets.
Thank you for the kind words!
As George Carlin once said, "It's a big club, and you ain't in it."
The two items right next to each other - *term limits* and *reducing the influence of lobbyists* - are contradictory.
We've had term limits in California for decades - it's why Willie Brown isn't _still_ Speaker of the Assembly. The idea is that there shouldn't be a permanent political class, in which every politician is constantly working to hang onto their job; and that's a valid concern.
The problem is that term limits don't solve that problem. Instead, what happens is, we get a game of political "musical chairs" in which every politician needs to constantly be working towards their _next_ job (taking their focus even further away from doing their current job), and in which the only permanent presence in the legislature _are the lobbyists and staffers_ who, every two years, get to school a new freshman class of legislators on how things work in Sacramento.
I think term limits in the executive branch, where power is focused on one individual, are a good thing; the most revolutionary-democratic thing George Washington did was to quit after two terms & set that precedent. But term limits in the legislative branch do more harm than good, and I'm not sure they do any good at all.
*Proportional representation* in the legislature - *ending the duopoly* - would go a lot further to solving these problems. But of course, those who have the power to do that, are unlikely to do so precisely because _they're in power._
i really appreciate you including your annotated google doc script for the video with sources linked in the description. i think you should mention that in your videos more often as its very handy for doing research
It really annoys me how interested in current events I get when watching your stuff
The ultimate economic populist talking point.
Exactly. This video is total brain rot. He should know better.
How come corporations are not punished like a person when it comes to gross violations and crimes? Business that infringe on the rights of people should be nationalized and taken away from shareholders if convicted just like how people are incarcerated/imprisoned.
Because they’re “too big to fail”.
Yeah... "Corporate personhood" as a legal status seems inherently corrupt to me. A corporate entity being a person when it is convenient and a corporation when it is not is not just
I'm voting for Mr Beat. That was the most brilliant campaign ad I've ever seen
Thank you so much for this excellent video Mr. Beat
Its funny cuz the most important move in solving the problem that has the citizens united, is to overturn citizens united
Corporate welfare unites us all, yet the vast majority still vote for the unabashedly pro-corporate party or the reluctantly pro-corporate party every 4 years….
People who decry socialism don't seem to understand that we live in a socialist country. Our socialism just pushes money upward to fewer people rather than downward to many people.
Government spending existing does not equal socialist country lmao
There’s a great clip of Bernie Sanders unmasking corporate media on Face The Nation back in February. The anchor gets all defensive and protective real quick. One of the best things I’ve ever seen.
This is a legendary analysis, everybody should watch this, especially as a deeper recession looms overhead.
Man, its such a shame that Mr.Beat died from a car accident on November 22nd 2023.
The more influence the government asserts on the economy, the larger is the interest and ability of corporations for lobbying. It is not a one way street.
Yep, and it creates a vicious cycle.
The role of the government in the economy ought to be in the interests of the common people, not the corporations. When you favor big business you’re inherently screwing We The People.
I don't think the argument unites everyone. It's only a uniting issue on the left of politics whereas the right is relatively supportive of this. I don't like using the term "welfare" for it as welfare to me is meant to redistribute wealth in society towards the working class and vulnerable since the wealth that's distributed in capitalism is distributed based on share of capital rather than labor/merit thus creating massive unjust inequality. "Corporate welfare" is just wealth redistribution aimed at the benefit of the well-off rather than the social or communal and it's best shown with tax cuts (especially Trump's $1.9t that the Republicans want to expand) for the wealthy.
Well explained video, great watch. Whatever your political alignment, we can agree that monopolies are categorically bad
Instead of bail-outs the government should do seizure instead. Don't let the company actually fall over just take ownership of it, hold the board of directors accountable for the missmanagement and get the company on it's legs asap to sell it back to the market. This would mostly just hurt the shareholders, but that's their risk of being an investor.
This is my new favourite channel and I've been bingeing for weeks - now if only I could find a Mr. Beat-type for my own (Canadian) history haha
J.J. McCullough is a good channel
This video aged extremely well lol.
It's refreshing listening to things both sides can agree on
In law school, one of my professors was a top executives at a large corporation. He taught us that the idea that corporations needs tax breaks or incentives to take on the investments to expand their business in a fiction. They bid cities and municipalities against each other to extract further concessions from the place they were going to build in anyway.
You're like the coolest social studies/history teacher I never had.