Let me preface this by saying I like the free market. I think, to some extent, a free market works best and I usually use the car industry as a perfect example of what I mean. I hate seeing American companies do poorly, but when they continuously offer a product directly contrary to popular opinion, I almost can't help but get a certain joy out of the fact that their stock is falling and their competitors' are rising.
All it does is prove my point.
But then we run into the problem we're in now.
An opinion in my local Newspaper put it quite well:
With the recent taxpayer bailout of IndyMac, Bear Sterns, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, it is time that we realize that the United States no longer has a capitalist economy led by the mythic CEOs who rose through a Darwinian system to become the alpha males.
In reality America has a corporate economy in which business and government are partners, and corporate welfare drains millions of taxpayer dollars from the treasury as corportions seek to privatize their gains and socialize their losses.
The most prevelant argument I hear against taxing oil companies is that "you shouldn't tax companies that do well", which in a perfect free market (or even a
half-decent one) is a reasonable argument. However, the oil market is anything but free, which is why I can overlook the idea of taxing them, especially when they walk away with higher and higher profit margins while the general public strains more and more to buy their product.
In a free market, we could have either gone to any number of
other suppliers who have lower prices or moved away from oil
entirely... but we can't because we have a government that doesn't
think, influenced by an industry that doesn't
care, run by a product that doesn't
last.
But I'm going off topic. This isn't about the oil industry exclusively, but rather how people complain about oversight in a free market... when even the most casual glance would reveal a market that is anything
but "free".
Bad companies should have failed. Why? Cause they're bad companies. They made mistakes and a free market should have dealt with them, but instead the government re-infuses them with (imaginative) capital and keeps them afloat well beyond their purpose and usefulness has passed.
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are two more perfect examples. Sadly, their failure would impart such a negative impact on the nation's economy that anything
but federal interference would be seen as "negligent".
Mr. Dente is absolutely right. Today's economy has inspired a market that "privatizes its gains and socializes its losses" and people still have the audacity to complain that we tax corporations too much, saying high taxes destabilizes the free market.
My question is, "what free market"?
As a lover of a free system, I take serious offense with the idea that we're in one already. And because we're so far from one right now, I almost can't see a reason not to defend the government's right to tax corporations that have done nothing but benefit from the taxes we citizens all pay now.
This is my opinion and wonder how others feel.
