BoatBanter.com - View Single Post - No, this can't be true, the hard core righties say they don't work!

iBoaterer[_2_]

In article ,
says...

On Sat, 10 Nov 2012 08:51:59 -0500, iBoaterer wrote:

In article ,
says...

On Fri, 9 Nov 2012 14:44:03 -0500, iBoaterer wrote:

In article ,
says...

No I didn't cherry pick anything

"land grants" were just what I said, giving away land they took from
the indians.

Still a subsidy.

I saw them say "loans" but I didn't see any examples.
I have never heard about Carnegie, Vanderbilt or Morgan taking out any
government loans. They had more money than the government.

No but they got subsidies.

Low taxes and less regulation is just the government getting out of
the way, not them doing anything in a positive way.
Tariffs really were not even relevant in the industries in the
article. The industries were American designed and built, without any
real foreign competition.

No, they are subsidies.

I call False equivalency

You are trying to compare a loan nobody took a gift of land the
government didn't own and tariffs for products the company didn't make
with a fat check from the tax payers.

Nope, not true. After they stole the land, the U.S. did indeed "own" it,
then gave it to the RR companies. That's a subsidy.

It is not a subsidy that came from unwilling tax payers and that is
the difference.

I'm sure at the time, the hard scrabble farmers would have loved to have
some of that land.

It is a fairly recent thing that the government started diverting tax
money to private corporations and not for any particular public good..

No it's not.

In the days you are linking stories about, the private companies
funded their own enterprises and they did it for profit.
Certainly Edison funded many dead end products and ideas for products,
I have a c;lump of bamboo in my back yard as a legacy of that but he
was not getting development grants from the government.

Maybe Edison didn't but a lot of them did.

Oh, back to your's and Greg's claim that the railroad magnates didn't
get subsidies, go read up on the Pacific Railroad Act:

Pacific Railroad Act
Main article: Pacific Railroad Act
The Pony Express from 1860 to 1861 was to prove that the Central Nevada
Route across Nevada and Utah and the sections of the Oregon Trail across
Wyoming and Nebraska was viable during the winter. With the American
Civil War raging and a secessionist movement in California gaining
steam, the apparent need for the railroad became more urgent.
In 1861 Curtis again introduced a bill to establish the railroad, but it
did not pass. After the secession of the southern states, the House of
Representatives on May 6, 1862, and the Senate on June 20 finally
approved it. Lincoln signed it into law on July 1. The act established
the two main lines?the Central Pacific from the west and the Union
Pacific from the mid-west. Other rail lines were encouraged to build
feeder lines.
Each was required to build only 50 miles (80 km) in the first year;
after that, only 50 miles (80 km) more were required each year. Each
railroad received $16,000 per mile ($9,940/km) built over an easy grade,
$32,000 per mile ($19,880/km) in the high plains, and $48,000 per mile
($29,830/km) in the mountains. This payment was in the form of
government bonds that the companies could resell. To allow the railroads
to raise additional money Congress provided additional assistance to the
railroad companies in the form of land grants of federal lands. They
were granted right-of-ways of 400 feet (100 m) plus 10 square miles (26
km2) of land (ten sections) adjacent to the track for every mile of
track built. To avoid a railroad monopoly on good land, the land was not
given away in a continuous swath but in a "checkerboard" pattern leaving
federal land in between that could be purchased from the government. The
land grant railroads, receiving millions of acres of public land, sold
bonds based on the value of the lands, sold the land to settlers, used
the money to build their railroads, and contributed to a rapid
settlement of the West.[9] The total area of the land grants to the
Union Pacific and Central Pacific was even larger than the area of the
state of Texas: federal government land grants totaled about
5,261,000,000 square meters and state government land grants totaled
about 1,983,000,000 square meters.[10] The race was on to see which
railroad company could build the longest section of track and receive
the most land and government bonds.