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JULY 26, 2022
Meyerson on TAP
Big Business Loves Government Spending
When the spending's on them, as it is in the CHIPS bill, which cleared
a major Senate hurdle today
Earlier today, by a 2-to-1 margin, the Senate voted
(64 to 32) to overcome what's become its almost automatic cloture
blockade and open debate on the CHIPS Act, which would throw more than
$50 billion at some of America's most profitable corporations (Intel
heads the pack) to make more of the semiconductor chips they already
make. Absent those chips, any number of software-reliant services and
goods-most prominently, cars-don't work anymore, as workers at GM,
Ford, Nissan, et al. who've been idled by the chip shortage can
attest. The bill also, commendably, boosts the government's funding of
basic research, which is one of the many things that governments should
do.
As Bernie Sanders noted in his speech on the Senate floor today, some
proponents of the Let's-All-Help-Intel perspective have exposed a
curious if unsurprising double standard. Bernie cited Mitt Romney's
argument that since other nations are subsidizing their own
semiconductor manufacturers, we should, too. Why, Bernie wondered, did
we model our corporate largesse on the corporate largesse of other
nations, but fail to model our health care and economic rights policies
on those nations' universal health care, paid family leave, etc. etc.
policies as well?
A good question. The answer, of course, is that the corporations and
Wall Street banks that remain the big dogs in our political economy are
relentlessly mercantilist-none of this free-market crap-when it
benefits them. They loved China's mercantilism, which enticed them to
open hundreds of low-wage factories there, subsidized by the Chinese
government, after they persuaded Congress to vote for permanent normal
trade relations with China at the turn of the century. Now, they love
U.S. mercantilism when it funds their return to the United States,
providing the dollars to do more manufacturing at home once the elected
representatives of our taxpayers cough up the bucks. They love it when
states and cities offer them tax breaks and other subsidies to locate
their facilities there, too.
Jack Welch, the late, former, and all-too-iconic CEO of General
Electric, once opined that if he could, he'd relocate all GE factories
to floating islands that could attach themselves to nations when (and
only when) those nations guaranteed the company a pliable, low-wage
labor force and sufficient governmental largesse. There's actually
existing capitalism for you.
Milton Friedman? Who he?
~ HAROLD MEYERSON
Follow Harold Meyerson on Twitter
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It's Time for Universal Voting
Requiring every citizen to vote would make our elections more inclusive
and our democracy more legitimate. BY E.J. DIONNE & MILES RAPOPORT
Abolish State Senates
What the country needs is 50 majority-rule unicameral state
legislatures. BY HAROLD MEYERSON
The Insidious Attack on the Training of Ob/Gyn Residents
The anti-choice lobby doesn't want them to learn the full range of
reproductive care, including abortion. BY ROBERT KUTTNER
Immigration Judges File Petition to Recertify Union
A three-year odyssey for the formerly unionized employees could be
nearing an end. BY JAROD FACUNDO
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