http://www.reason.com/0403/fe.js.confessions.shtml
This is a pretty hard-hitting article, and it will probably offend some people.
Basically, the arguement is, corperate welfare is a larger problem than the rest of the stupid things governments do. From farm subsidies, to flood insurance, to using eminant domain to appropriate land for non-government use, sugar price supports, and on and on. When the best way to make money is to convince the government to give it to you, something is wrong.
The problem is, the people who benefit from these programs pour tonnes of money into politicians pockets. In other cases, you have workers addicted to the handouts: they have reshaped their business to maximize their income from the government, instead of maximizing their income from doing things that others want to buy.
So, these subsidies are either way under the radar, as people froth at the mouth about silly things like gay marriage, or they are central enough to large voting block's economies that changing them is nearly political suicide.
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I interviewed Lott. Without moving the tripod, our camera could pan from his Mississippi home to the shipyard that got half a billion dollars of your money to build a ship the Defense Department never even requested. Lott didn’t even seem ashamed of that. "Pork is in the eye of the beholder," he joked. "Where I’m from...[pork] is federal programs that go north of Memphis."
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Sound management? It’s never welfare if it goes to you.
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