No matter how you cut it, government subsidies are immoral.
In politically correct terms, subsidies aid those in need in order to enhance the greater good. Objectively speaking, any subsidy takes money from most citizens and gives it to a select few, based on subjective criteria. This practice is both unfair and economically retarded.
The practice of doling out subsidies is simply unjust. The process of deciding on who gets a government grant, and who does not, is always a subjective one. Take subsidies for artists. There are thousands and thousands of aspiring painters, dancers, singers, writers, and every other artistic endeavor. Who should get subsidized? All of them? There is not enough money for that. Only the dancers? Uh, that would not be fair! Only the most talented ones? But who are they? There isn’t a snowball’s chance in hell that even a commission of the wisest men and women in the world could answer that with any degree of objectivity. Some highly debatable choices will have to be made. Moreover, the vast majority of artists will get nothing. Yet, to add insult to injury, they will have to compete with those artists who do get subsidized. The same goes for trade subsidies, area development subsidies, entrepreneurial subsidies, and any other kind of subsidy. Handing out money is nothing less than playing favorites. The only just and simultaneously efficient way of deciding on who gets what, is pure democracy. In other words, leave it to the market.
On top of that, government subsidies are a monstrous economic tool. Subsidies lead to unfair competition and a massive squandering of resources. Providing subsidies, by nature, quickly spirals into more taxation, more government spending, and more bureaucracy. To illustrate, just to determine who will get subsidized, Western societies maintain thousands of committees and ‘non-profit’ foundations, all of which need income themselves to stay afloat (which often means carrying huge management salaries and luxury cars with chauffeurs). Their income mostly comes from, yes, more subsidies as, well as huge fees paid by other foundations for ‘services rendered’. Consequently, ‘non-profit’ grows like cancer. There are also loads of foundations that have to keep the other foundations in check. Which, commonly, they don’t or can’t. But who cares? They get government funding anyway. This ever-growing underbelly of crony capitalism and covert socialism drains our economy. It can only be fed by increasing taxes, again and again. Until it all blows up in our faces.
Yet, Big Government politicians love subsidies, for they provide an excellent platform to meddle where they want, foster their networks, forward their pet projects, hide funds, create sweet jobs for cronies they need to pay off, and just play favorites in general. The only way to get rid of subsidies, is to get rid of Big Government. It is a happy few politicians who keep funding a selected group of citizens at the expense of everybody else. It is immoral.
