Sunday, August 31, 2014

Government financing for business


It’s the same old story, always has been….

A recent post on The Junto, a group blog on early American history, tells the little known story of government financing and support for private business enterprise—in the 1820s, when America’s first integrated “factories” were built in Lowell, MA.


The Junto report, also picked up by DailyHistory.org, spells it out:

Several of the private investors who organized the Lowell enterprise received $1 million from the national government, which agreed to pay off private claims against the Spanish government as part of the 1819 treaty under which Spain transferred Florida to the U.S. and agreed to favorable western boundary adjustments. I guess the Spanish government wasn’t planning to honor those claims. The Lowell owners also benefited directly from American government trade negotiations with Peru, and, specifically, U.S. intervention in support of American textile exports.


It’s been going on ever since then.

Let’s acknowledge government financing of American canals in the 19th century, land giveaways and other government financing for railroads, and, of course, the interstate highway system in the 20th century—you go ahead and add your own examples.

Too many politicians and business leaders today rally to the cry of “get government off the backs of business,” but it seems they forget to complain about the vast web of tax breaks that benefit individual companies and industries, and it seems they forget to refuse the government spending that “serves the public interest” and also materially benefits the corporate world.

It’s the same old story.






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