Corporate welfare occurs when government provides private corporations with subsidies, tax breaks, reduced interest loans, special services, or relaxed legal restrictions. Although most conservatives abhor government actions to alleviate economic inequalities or hardships among its citizens (i.e., social welfare), many conservatives voice little, if any, objection when government extends subsidies and tax breaks to private corporations (corporate welfare).
George Will's labeling of payments by U.S. auto manufacturers (column, April 13) to its temporarily unemployed autoworkers through the Jobs Bank as "private-sector welfare" is absurd. This is money these autoworkers earned for the corporation while they were employed.
The Jobs Bank is essentially the same as the unemployment insurance program created by the Federal Unemployment Tax Act in which employers make payments from revenues generated by employees to federal and state governments to pay the benefits of those temporarily unemployed.
If GM and the Ford Motor Corp. had maintained or increased their respective market shares and profitability over the past 20 years rather than losing market share because of incredibly poor management decisions, the Jobs Bank would be a nonevent. However, union autoworkers are now being made scapegoats for inept corporate management, the same management that contractually agreed to this private unemployment insurance program in the first place. Like any insurance program, when benefits exceed premiums, the insurance company suffers a loss.
George Will and other conservative columnists try to discredit unions and have the audacity to blame the workers for corporate mismanagement. However, without the American worker, union or nonunion, any factory, store or office is empty space incapable of generating a penny. It is the American worker who makes a building a profitable enterprise. Conservatives such as Will need to direct their attention to the real U.S. entitlement crisis — corporate welfare and the looming bailout of the U.S. auto industry due to corporate mismanagement.
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