Liberals rely on government subsidies to get people to buy products that would otherwise flop in free and open markets. A perfect example is electric vehicles and their component parts.
Most recently, President Biden’s pork-filled spending package included tax credits to encourage companies to manufacture EV batteries in the United States.
Axios reports that these credits reduce production costs of batteries by a third – but that the lost revenue from “those tax credits may be four times higher than Congress’ budget experts anticipated.”
Axios headlined this soaking of taxpayers as a great success before revising it to more neutral language:
The Congressional Budget Office projected the tax revenues lost to these credit loopholes at $30,6 billion over 10 years. Others put the figure at $136 billion over the same period – and probably more as it fails to include Tesla’s recently announced multi-billion dollar investment.
Imagine how fast the economy would grow if we got rid of these special interest write-offs in the tax code and just went with the 17% Forbes flat tax. But then how could Congress buy and sell tax favors?