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Using taxpayer money to fund corporate favoritism and humanitarian charities is not a proper function of government. When government controls the giveaways, it creates behavioral and economic incentives that are counterproductive to society.
Federal, state, county, and city governments currently expropriate and consume approximately 40% of our income. If 40% consumption is appropriate under the current law, only time and a new set of political leaders keep us from justifying 90%. Total socialist statism and the government we have today are only separated by the degree of socialist implementation.
At the 90% level, there is little incentive to be productive. This also applies to the 40% level, except the effect is not as pronounced. When you reward lower levels of productivity that is what you get. More mouths and less productivity is what bankrupt socialist economies around the world in the latter half of the 20th century.
Another problem with government controlled favoritism is its attraction to shallow and unscrupulous people. Gaining control of the redistribution of taxpayer funds, allows favored groups to manipulate competitors and those less favored. This manipulation facilitates retention and expansion of political power. This is known as legal theft. A significant portion of the U.S. federal budget falls into this giveaway category. The CATO Institute calculates that U.S. taxpayers bankroll over 85 BILLION dollars of corporate welfare every year.
We understand why businesses, associations, and lobbyist pour money into campaign coffers. We understand why lawyers are always jockeying for positions close to political ears. They are playing the game of government-sanctioned legal theft.
Using unjust law, politicians and lobbyist, slowly expand their control of productive means by playing one group against another. Each offended group calls for more protection and more relief.
Unfortunately, all theft leads to violence. A homeowner uses the threat of violence to defend against armed robbery. This is a defensive use of force against illegal theft and it is just. Legal theft delays justice by turning it upside down. It uses the law to restrict our God given right to defend against it.
Recent history teaches us that even state sponsored legal theft cannot avoid a violent justice. This what occurred after 70 years of socialist Communist rule in the USSR. This is what happened during the American Revolution.
Individuals and tenderhearted associations willing to give their own time and money to relieve suffering are the best managers of charity and favoritism.
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