Social Versus Corporate Welfare

The greatest myth of modern times is the suggestion that capitalism and corporations do better with less government. The global economic crisis has certainly put paid to this idea. But the massive emergency state bailouts and interventions put in place from 2008 were unique only in their size and scale. Government programmes, designed to meet the needs of business, are not just everyday, they are everywhere and they are essential. Just as social welfare protects citizens from the cradle to the grave, corporate welfare protects and benefits corporations throughout their life course. And yet, in most countries, corporate welfare is hidden and underresearched. Drawing on comparative data from OECD states, this book seeks to shed light on the size, uses and importance of corporate welfareacross variouswelfare regimes.

In this groundbreaking pamphlet, based on testimony he delivered before Congress, Ralph Nader describes how corporations are picking our pockets, and what we can do to stop them. While the United States continues to experience unprecedented cuts in social service programs and millions of Americans go without health insurance, massive corporations continue to reap huge sums of taxpayer money through "corporate welfare"—corporate subsidies, bailouts, giveaways, and tax escapes. Cutting Corporate Welfare details numerous appalling examples of corporate welfare, including: the giveaway of the public airwaves, which by definition belong to the people, to private radio and television stations (including the latest $70 billion gift of the digital spectrum); taxpayer subsidies for giant defense corporation mergers and commercial weapons exports to governments overseas; and the practice of making patients pay twice for drugs—first, as taxpayers subsidize the drugs’ development, and again, as patients, after the federal government gives monopolistic control over the chemical’s manufacture to a price-gouging drug company. Cutting Corporate Welfare sounds a wake-up call for those concerned about how we are being pick-pocketed by big business, and what we can do to stop it.

The beginning of the twentieth century witnessed a remarkable growth of corporate welfare programs in American industry. By the mid-1920s, 80 percent of the nation's largest companies--firms including DuPont, International Harvester, and Metropolitan Life Insurance--engaged in some form of welfare work. Programs were implemented to achieve goals that ranged from improving basic workplace conditions, to providing educational, recreational, and social opportunities for workers and their families, to establishing savings and insurance plans. Employing the critical lens of gender analysis, Nikki Mandell offers an innovative perspective on the development of corporate welfare. She argues that its advocates sought to build a new relationship between labor and management by recasting the modern corporation as a Victorian family. Employers assumed the authoritative position of fathers, assigned their employees the subordinate role of children, and hired male and female welfare managers to act as "corporate mothers" charged with creating a harmonious household. But internal conflict and external pressures weakened the corporate welfare system, and it eventually gave way to a system of personnel management and employee representation. With the abandonment of the familial model, the form of corporate welfare changed; but, as Mandell demonstrates, its content left an enduring legacy for modern industrial relations.

This book discusses the impact of information and communication technologies (ICTs) on organizations and on society as a whole. Specifically, it examines how such technologies improve our life and work, making them more inclusive through smart enterprises. The book focuses on how actors understand Industry 4.0 as well as the potential of ICTs to support organizational and societal activities, and how they adopt and adapt these technologies to achieve their goals. Gathering papers from various areas of organizational strategy, such as new business models, competitive strategies and knowledge management, the book covers a number of topics, including how innovative technologies improve the life of the individuals, organizations, and societies; how social media can drive fundamental business changes, as their innovative nature allows for interactive communication between customers and businesses; and how developing countries can use these technologies in an innovative way. It also explores the impact of organizations on society through sustainable development and social responsibility, and how ICTs use social media networks in the process of value co-creation, addressing these issues from both private and public sector perspectives and on national and international levels, mainly in the context of technology innovations.

An examination of the savings and loan crisis and subsequent bailout reveals that the welfare state is a dynamic process: the bailout is an extension of a larger process of state projects for economic intervention that began with banking regulation following the Great Depression of the 1930s, and continued with the Chrysler bailout legislation in 1979 and the Garn-St. Germain Act of 1982, which deregulated the banking industry. In viewing the welfare state as a power process involving shifts in relative emphases on corporate and social welfare policies and expenditures, this book provides both central case studies and a new conceptual framework for policy debates on "welfare as we know it."

An examination of the savings and loan crisis and subsequent bailout reveals that the welfare state is a dynamic process: the bailout is an extension of a larger process of state projects for economic intervention that began with banking regulation following the Great Depression of the 1930s, and continued with the Chrysler bailout legislation in 1979 and the Garn-St. Germain Act of 1982, which deregulated the banking industry. In viewing the welfare state as a power process involving shifts in relative emphases on corporate and social welfare policies and expenditures, this book provides both central case studies and a new conceptual framework for policy debates on "welfare as we know it."

Although political rhetoric and public perception continue to assume that the United States is the very definition of a free market economy, a different system entirely has in actuality come to prominence over the past half century. This Corporate Welfare Economy (CWE) has come about as government come increasingly under the influence of corporate interests and lobbyists, with supposedly equalising factors such as regulation skewed in order to suit the interests of the privileged while an overwhelming majority of US citizens have experienced a decline in their standard of living. James Angresano examines the characteristics of this mode of capitalism, both from the theoretical point of view but also with key reference to the different sectors of the economy – trade, manufacturing, industry and defense among them.

Over the last two decades new arrangements have emerged for the finance and delivery of social welfare in the United States and other industrial democracies. Moving beyond the conventional paradigm of the welfare state, these arrangements form an alternative model. This study details a fresh vision of social welfare transfers--how they are delivered, and whom they benefit. The authors explore the use of private enterprise and market-oriented approaches to the delivery of social provisions, and examine how welfare benefits are derived from the full range of modern social transfers including tax expenditures, credit subsidies, and those induced by regulatory activity. Reappraising the modern boundaries of social welfare, this book provides insights into the structure and dynamics of a novel social model that will open new avenues for scientific study and public debate.

Explains the need for public ownership and the welfare state in the face of increasing globalization.