Quote Sal Paradise="Sal Paradise"... All I hear on here is government is subsidising big business - nobody has yet produced figures to support that argument that is my point...'"
I have given you an extremely specific example of government subsidising big business by using public health – and the budgets involved – to advertise branded products on behalf of the corporates that it had invited to join the government's public health committee.
On in-work benefits: a number of companies are not paying the living wage to at least some of their employees (and some are, in effect, avoiding paying the minimum wage by cutting hours).
We know this to be factually the case.
We also know it to be the case that people on low incomes require in-work benefits, including but not limited to housing benefit, simply in order to live at a basic level.
If that stopped and people could not keep a roof over their heads or barely feed themselves, this would not be conducive to their performance in the work place. That's not rocket science.
So if companies that are highly successful are relying on the taxpayer to top up low wages in order that their employees can operate at a basic level, it is a subsidy.
We know that plenty of companies are not paying a living wage to their lowliest staff – if you Google every single company that I mentioned specifically in my earlier post, together with 'living wage', there is a mass of information out there about campaigns to change this.
In the meantime, companies are showing remarkable levels of reluctance to do this – that's why the campaigns have been in place for some time and are ongoing. But since the taxpayer is making up the difference, why should they treat their own employees better and potentially reduce their (massive) profits a little (even though the evidence shows that the living wage has a positive impact on productivity etc)?
Whether originally intended as a subsidy or not, that is what it is.
