[tim333]

Most of this stuff is not subsidy in the sense of the govt/taxpayers writing a cheque to the company. They are tax breaks where the company writes a cheque to government but a smaller one than they might of otherwise. As to why have tax breaks - why not? Rather than have every company pay 35% of profits why not have deductions for this and that? Pretty much all countries do it to some extent. Admittedly its a problem if the system gets corrupted and you get things like hedge funders only paying 15% mostly because the donate to the right politicians/lobbyists.