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timunderwood's avatar

Most of them aren't actually bad. You look at the details of the big things that are described as corporate welfare, and from a centrist pov at least you'll generally shrug and think 'well there are good reasons we have this policy.'

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citizen15's avatar

Is it even true that we have more taxes than subsidies? Government often implements subsidies as tax credits or exemptions from taxes, e.g., credits that individuals or businesses can claim on income tax returns or exemptions of food and clothing from sales taxes. So, each tax has corresponding to it many subsidies. One income tax corresponds to multiple tax credits. One sales tax corresponds to multiple exemptions. In number at least, subsidies would seem to outnumber taxes.

If the argument is that many (actually almost all) *items* are covered by general income and sales taxes and, thus, those outnumber items subsidized, then I don't think it's true that it's harder to enforce these general taxes than subsidies, at least not in developed nations. In developed nations, governments seem to be able to enlist private businesses to enforce all sorts of regulations and collect general taxes, e.g., sales and income taxes. If a government can manage to collect one general tax, then it has a mechanism by which it can and does implement many subsidies (through exemptions and credits).

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