[paulddraper]

Well, the government does need to hire contractors, to build buildings, develop public transit, etc., which don't make sense to have a permanent government business around.

But yes, anything more than the minimum required to perform public functions is inequitable.

[alkonaut]

Not sure what you mean. I'm all for a large government providing all kinds of services. What was discussed was subsidies (usually tax breaks) directed to individual businesses or industries. That's a terrible practice and we were saying how we were amazed how it is still allowed (unlike in e.g. the EU).

Governments obviously will always need to enter contracts with businesses to provide the services it wants to provide.

[paulddraper]

Sometimes the meaning of "subsidy" can be stretched.

For example, people will sometimes use "subsidy" to describe the government purchasing defense research and products.[1]

But it's apparent you weren't considering all forms of government paying private companies to be "subsidies".

https://www.thenation.com/article/heres-where-your-tax-dolla...

[pergadad]

It's not fully outlawed in the EU, to simplify things, essentially it's just not Prüfkriterien to favour individual companies. But respecting certain conditions you can still have some local incentives. One idea there is to protect from companies playing regions against each other, although that still happens to some degree, the other is to assure fair competition between companies (eg as others here mention that not only big companies can benefit)