Corporate welfare can be turned into taxpayer investment by creating a National Permanent Trust modeled after the Alaska Permanent Trust.  In 1976 the voters of Alaska approved the Trust as a method of sharing the wealth created by opening up their lands to oil and other exploration. Since 1982 every citizen in Alaska has received a check as high as nearly $2,000 in one year. This is not welfare, but a return from the people’s share of the oil wealth.  It’s no coincidence that Alaska is the one state that has not seen a rise in poverty the past 25 years and was the only state where the rich-poor divide did not expand in the last decade. If each person in Alaska receives $2,000 then a family of five receives $10,000 to use as they want, e.g. pay tuition, reduce debt, buy a home, invest in business.

The U.S. could apply the same model for the country as a whole.  Say, the government supplied seed money to a pharmaceutical company to research an anti-viral drug for AIDS.  Once the new drug hit the market, the American people would share in the profits as stockholders.  These profits would be placed in a National Permanent Trust that would be invested and then shared with all Americans. This would create “a real ownership society” where the wealth of the nation was shared equitably.

There are entire agencies of the Federal Government whose sole responsibility is to provide corporate welfare. The U.S. has import quotas on sugar, for example, to protect a few sugar-cane farmers in Florida and elsewhere. The result?  Higher prices for sugar. We give grants to corporations to help them market their products overseas, research dollars to pharmaceutical companies, $25 billion annually to fossil fuel industries.

In large part due to corporate welfare, the resources of America are funneled up from the working and middle classes up to the wealthiest Americans.  This is one reason why the top 1% wealthiest Americans have wealth equal to the bottom 95% of all Americans.  The wealth divide in the United States is the largest it has been since 1929.

The GDP of America is expected to triple or quadruple in size over the 21st Century.  If we do not put in place policies that share the wealth more equitably (see also Zeese Tax Plan where the first $100,000 is federal income tax free) then we will continue to expand the wealth divide, the median income will remain stagnate, the middle class will shrink and poverty will continue to rise.  We need to create an Economy for the 21st Century that includes a fair economy.

Capitalism is supposed to be about businesses earning their own money and making their own investments. Corporate welfare does nothing but foist the costs that should be borne by business onto the American taxpayer and warp the free market to favor the special interests that fund political campaigns. It is time to end corporate welfare as we know it and replace it with taxpayer investment that shares the wealth.

For more information see “Share the Wealth . . . Protect Retirement,”.

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