日志
各省和下一届联邦政府应终止企业福利
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各省和下一届联邦政府应终止企业福利
作者：Tegan Hill 和 Jake Fuss 2025年4月23日 | 刊登于《多伦多太阳报》
通用汽车近期宣布暂时关闭其位于安大略省的电动汽车 (EV) 制造厂，裁员500人，原因是其新款电动汽车销量不佳。尽管政府提供了数亿美元的纳税人补贴，但该工厂仍将关闭六个月。这只是企业福利的又一个例子——政府补贴受青睐的行业和公司——各省和下一届联邦政府应该取消这种福利了。
通用汽车获得了联邦政府和安大略省政府约5亿美元的电动汽车转型资金。但这只是汽车行业企业福利的一个例子。 Stellantis 和大众汽车将获得约 280 亿美元的政府补贴，而本田则承诺获得 50 亿美元的补贴。
更广泛地说，从 2007 年到 2019 年（新冠疫情前最后一年的数据），联邦政府在企业福利上花费了约 846 亿美元（经通胀调整后），而省级和地方政府则花费了 3029 亿美元。至关重要的是，这些数字不包括其他形式的政府支持，例如贷款担保、直接投资和监管特权，因此在此期间企业福利的实际成本要高得多。
当然，政客们声称企业福利惠及工人。然而，根据大量研究，企业福利未能产生广泛的经济效益。可以这样想——如果获得补贴的企业一开始就能够生存下去，它们就不需要政府支持了。因此，无利可图的企业通过政府的支持得以维持运营，这可以防止资源（包括投资和工人）流向盈利企业，从而损害整体经济增长。
换句话说，企业福利非但不能刺激经济增长，反而只是将就业和投资从其他企业和行业（这些企业和行业生产效率更高，因为它们不需要政府资金就能实现经济可行性）转移到政府青睐的行业和企业，从而规避了消费者和投资者的偏好。而且，由于政客们花的是别人的钱，他们几乎没有动力成为谨慎的投资者。
政府还必须对其他所有人征收更高的税率来支付企业福利。反过来，更高的税率又会抑制创业和商业投资——而这又会刺激经济增长。税率越高，抑制的经济活动就越多。
通用汽车电动汽车工厂的关闭再次证明，当政府试图用企业福利来操纵经济时，最终受害者将是工人。现在是各省和下一届联邦政府（无论是谁）最终终结这种代价高昂且无效的政策手段的时候了。
Provinces and the next federal government should end corporate welfare
By: Tegan Hill and Jake Fuss APRIL 23, 2025 | APPEARED IN THE TORONTO SUN
Between the federal government and Ontario government, GM received about $500 million to help fund its EV transition. But this is just one example of corporate welfare in the auto sector. Stellantis and Volkswagen will receive about $28 billion in government subsidies while Honda is promised $5 billion.
More broadly, from 2007 to 2019, the last pre-COVID year of data, the federal government spent an estimated $84.6 billion (adjusted for inflation) on corporate welfare while provincial and local governments spent another $302.9 billion. And crucially, these numbers exclude other forms of government support such as loan guarantees, direct investments and regulatory privileges, so the actual cost of corporate welfare during this period was much higher.
Of course, politicians claim that corporate welfare benefits workers. Yet according to a significant body of research, corporate welfare fails to generate widespread economic benefit. Think of it this way—if the businesses that received subsidies were viable to begin with, they wouldn’t need government support. So unprofitable companies are kept in business through governments’ support, which can prevent resources, including investment and workers, from moving to profitable companies, hurting overall economic growth.
Put differently, rather than fuelling economic growth, corporate welfare simply shifts jobs and investment away from other firms and industries—which are more productive, as they don’t require government funding to be economically viable—to the governments’ preferred industries and firms, circumventing the preferences of consumers and investors. And since politicians spend other people’s money, they have little incentive to be careful investors.
Governments also must impose higher tax rates on everyone else to pay for corporate welfare. In turn, higher tax rates discourage entrepreneurship and business investment—again, which fuels economic growth. And the higher the tax rates, the more economic activity they discourage.
GM’s EV plant shut down once again proves that when governments try to engineer the economy with corporate welfare, workers will ultimately lose. It’s time for the provinces and the next federal government—whoever it may be—to finally put an end to this costly and ineffective policy approach.
