I am against. Maybe something else will come out that changes my mind, but I'm doubtful.

I don't like it, but if they're going to do it the shares need to be non-voting.

quote:

Originally posted by smlsig:
Didn’t the Federal Government take an interest in GM a few years ago??

Yep, and the Feds lost over $10 billion in that deal.

Link

why not, if the company takes loans or grants to operate,

Trump ought to ask Musk for shares in Tesla because we paid to create that company and will do so until September 30th Imagine the value of the stock selling a bit of it could have wiped out a hunk of debt...

I like the idea that the patents created from university research that is funded by federal grants should provide income back to the US for suppling the money.

Don't like it, well dig into your endowment money and not the governments.

My understanding is that this part of an initiative to start a long-term revenue source to eventually eliminate income taxes for those under certain income levels.

Patents at Texas universities become property of the state of TX.

Marketing the patents is the issue. When there was a professional team at A&M, the university made a tremendous amount of money


Those people were replaced by relatives of professors and admins, and the revenues collapsed.

Not sure if that’s been fixed.

In the event of corporate welfare, aka the 11b Intel grant I’m ok with a temporary stake in the company. In the event of the industrial military complex who already operate as de facto government agencies it is a horrible idea. When has the government done anything better than private industry.

Pay attention to Palmer Luckey the founder of Anduril. He’s currently acting as a major disruptor to the broken defense industry. Creating technology that works and then selling it to the government for a profit as opposed to selling an idea and using our tax money to see if they can create the tech. It’s never under budget and much of it doesn’t work.

There should be some high guardrails on government ownership because the slope is slippery and ripe for abuse. The “legal” bribing of congressional members done through lobbying, speaking engagements, or book deals is a prime example on why this shouldn’t happen except in rare instances.

Governments should neither bail companies out, nor give them grants, nor subsidize them, nor 'lend' them money, nor own them - partially nor completely.

There aren't any exceptions to that, and mixing the nonsense together (bailing out, then owning bits as a result, for example) doesn't improve the faulty logic.

The excuses range from, 'but, it's a big employer', to 'their pension plans might fail', to 'those evil foreigners might make money' to 'but, we really really like them' to 'they're big donors to XYZ' or 'too big to fail', but economically, which private group owns the assets of production is a big 'doesn't matter'.

If GM had gone bankrupt, some other car company would have bought the facilities from bankruptcy court and the cars would have kept coming, just as one can still get Hostess Cupcakes after Hostess Brands went under - Smuckers wound up buying the assets.

Here's a list of some current examples of the ridiculous waste of taxpayer money that is corporate welfare, accumulated from 2000-2024:


link to source of above

quote:

Originally posted by lkdr1989:
My understanding is that this part of an initiative to start a long-term revenue source to eventually eliminate income taxes for those under certain income levels.

We did that under GW Bush. Now, half the people in this country don't pay income taxes.
These lower income folks get "earned income tax credits" whereby they get larger refunds than what they paid in. It's another form of welfare.

As Chellim1 stated, it’s tacit nascent fascism. Government control of private industry to move political influence among the population is the basic definition of fascism per Mussolini. As is typical, these things happen gradually. First comes regulation, then comes so called investment then comes torsion and finally full on fascism. Torsion is what we experienced when government mandated private industry threaten the population with career loss for refusing the jab.

Count me as another strong supporter of the great majority of Trump's policies, who think this one is a loser. I'm with Mr. Wonderful as expressed last night on Gutfeld: take Intel out behind the barn and shoot it.