[rytor718]

Yeah I agree. This seems to be a corruption that's been with the US since our inception tbh. There's been this generalized idea that "government = bad, business = good" and to that end we've relied heavily in our development on companies to build the country. One can take railroads in their early days as a prominent example or frontier settlers who were literally paid to go build cities out west.

It seems part of the problem is we're in a new world where such subsidies are counter productive because too many people rely on them. In this case, it shouldn't even be legal to use taxes to subsidize any singular private businesses -- and those that require subsidy to function should be nationalized (they're not functioning on the market system).

[alkonaut]

It's probably illegal to subsidize directly (?), but by using a negative subsidy through "tax breaks" or other incentives it's circumvented I assume.

[rhizome]

The legality possibly derives from it not being directed to a specific company directly, but by offering a tax break to any company who satisfies the criteria that has been tailored to fit only one or a few companies.