popper wrote:What industries and individuals qualify for bailouts. So far it's the banking, auto manufacturing and a subsection of student borrowers' (probably a few others I'm forgetting).
defense contractors
airline industry (same stakeholders as defense contractors, tbh)
savings and loans in the 80's
AIG got a piece of the bank bailout in 2008
However I'll be the first to admit that the government will have to assist if we're going to bring back our domestic pharmaceutical manufacturing capability. I think they're already assisting with domestic chip manufacturing and I believe modular small scale nuclear power demonstration projects as well. I support all three.
if we're defining subsidies as a form of bailout?
energy (fossil fuel primarily, with a fraction going to green energy), agriculture (crop insurance), healthcare, housing (section 8), education (pell grants), food (food stamps)...
so really it just breaks down into (a) things that the every day american needs; and (b) things the government needs.
Every day americans need to meet immediate food, water, and shelter, and then they need things to get jobs (gas for their car, baseline education).
The government needs americans to be working, national defense, and to prop up privatized services that would otherwise be nationalized (banking, airlines, railroads).
That's the linedrawing. That's the weighing as to who gets bailed out and who doesn't.
Higher ed fits into that framework.
Childcare fits into the "things everyday americans need to get jobs" category but isn't being met.
Housing is becoming increasingly expensive, that there should be some sort of subsidy there as well; FHA loan is proving to be insufficient to fill that need.
But to a point that Zonk made a few pages ago, the administrative costs of running these programs are high, and it's also additionally expensive to means test the individual recipients to see who's "worthy" or not, especially since with wealth disparity being as wide as it is, most americans qualify one way or another, and it's more cost effective to give everyone free lunch than it is to pay someone to sort the students into who needs it and doesn't need it.
So to cut through these inefficiencies, at least on the individual level, it's arguably more cost effective to just take the money that we would put towards social programs, and instead cut everyone a check (UBI) and the recipient can more efficiently allocate the money to go towards what they need to get paid, whether it's food, water, shelter, diapers gas money, school supplies, drugs, alcohol, etc.
But to bring it back to bipartisan talk, there's no discussion on this. And republicans' are only crying out "we can't afford it" while voting for an ever-increasing military budget. They cry over a bailout of GM, but single-handledly keep the entire defense industry afloat (there are no other customers for F35's but for the US government).
Are UAV's and missiles ESSENTIAL for the national defense, or merely BENEFICIAL? What's the point of national defense, if (1) we shouldn't be fighting foreign wars; (2) the people we're defending are literally starving; (3) we're neglecting more cost-effective areas of national defense like cybersecurity and disinformation; and (4) our military spending is fueling by definition an arms race by forcing other nations (China) to hypermilitarize to keep up with us which in turn forces us to spend more on defense, which forces other nations (China) to hypermilitarize...
