The Big Ripoff: How Big Business and Big Government Steal Your Money, Timothy P. Carney, John Wiley & Sons, Inc. (2006).
Does anyone think that big businesses just want to be left alone by the government? If so, this book should be an eye-opener.
Many corporations have found it to their advantage to troll for government subsidies and favors, to accept regulation of their industries on terms that will give them a competitive advantage, and even to support tax increases that will fuel the growth of government (particularly if someone else will bear the brunt of the increase).
Politicians welcome the support of wealthy contributors and are willing to do favors to get it. The characterization of one party being for big business and the other for the downtrodden is quite misleading.
These themes are illustrated by numerous examples – corporate welfare, regulatory schemes that deter new entrants, the tobacco settlement, etc. – that ring true and are convincingly documented. The final section about environmentalism for profit is particularly well done.
Enron, which some have cited as an example of private enterprise run amok, was quite adept at adapting to and profiting from government rules and policies. The company’s accounting scams were designed to survive SEC scrutiny (short sellers were the first to notice that something was awry), it raised gaming the energy regulations of California to an art form, and it favored ratification of the Kyoto Protocol in hopes of becoming a player in the resulting cap-and-trade system.
Archer Daniels Midland has long benefited from government mandates and subsidies for ethanol, yet corn-based ethanol takes a lot of energy to produce (perhaps more than it provides) and the asserted environmental advantage over gasoline is illusory. The CEO is quoted as saying, when being pressed about acceptance of government aid, that “people who are not in the Midwest do not understand that this is a socialist country.”
Other companies (e.g., General Electric and DuPont) hope to profit from “going green” in the future. They do not figure to make much progress without government support, however, and their motives are not necessarily altruistic.
Overall, The Big Ripoff paints a picture of society being victimized. We believe this impression is overdone, in that many people in the business and government worlds are trying to contribute to the good of society even if their efforts fall short at times. Also, the author might have offered some suggestions for making the situation better.