In the last six months, I shifted my loyalty to Toyota from lame US car companies. I respect Toyota -- as a maker of fantastic cars, a moderate-thinking and compensating long term business, and as a good employer of US citizens. US car manufactures make shitty cars, sell out their future for bonuses for their shitty executives, and treat their unionized employees like shit (and according to NPR more of a Toyota is built in the US than a US car).

I am proud to support Toyota, and the sooner the Big Three are forced to sell out out to "the japanese" the better.

For what it's worth, Toyota built a plant in my hometown and of the 4 people I know who got jobs there, all of them eventually quit due to the anti-union shenanigans pulled by management. They are a good company, but not without their flaws. (And to be fair, I'm not sure how much of this behavior was influenced by corporate policy vs. typical small town closemindedness.)

You know, I don't support unions as automatically as I used to. From my amateur interest in Toyota and industrial management, one of the major problems with unions isn't wages but inflexible work rules, seniority attached to certain very minutely defined jobs and no accompanying cross training/ rotation, and general bad attitude.

I've never worked for one, but it wasn't an ideological thing. If you worked with people for more than 6 months or so, you'd get your team broken up. If management found out that you were friends with a group of coworkers and were getting together outside of work, you'd get reassigned so none of you were working together. It was the harassment to prevent people from unionizing that that made it a bad working environment.

Yeah, that is sort of weird if it is like that. I don't have any personal experience at all, not even secondhand... but I know Toyota rotates people around all the time according to the books I am reading about them (which do have rose colored viewpoints). I hate to say it, but I have worked with production factory workers who would whine about anything -- having to do inventory, learn a new skill, meet a new person; I am a bit cynical about their complaints. Does "getting reassigned" == "harassment" ? maybe...

This was pretty specifically anti-union behavior, although obviously nothing was done that would generate any paper trail. I am sure there was some exaggeration due to human nature, but it is basically an open secret that large non-union shops will do just about anything to prevent unions from forming.

It may be different for line employees, the people I knew worked skilled trades, electrician, hvac, etc.

Interesting. I am not sure I blame them for fighting the unions, honestly, but there you go.

Reduced taxes on profitable oil companies are not the same as non-recourse taxpayer loans for 100 times the revenue of Tesla.

And it isn't "us," the Germans and Toyota are equity stakeholders in Tesla.

Sure they are, if you reduce taxes on one targeted industry without regard to the prevailing tax rate, it's effectively a subsidy. Carving out a tax break specifically for oil is like handing them money compared to other industries who have to pay the full rate. The difference between that and the interest subsidy to Tesla is that it's much bigger and Tesla at least arguably represents a legitimate reason to distort the market.

Good for Germany and Toyota. The tech will be here, they'll be playing catchup, or explicitly neglecting their own tech because they have cheap access to ours.

Reduced taxes or tax breaks for an industry lets them keep more of what they earn and do something useful with it.

Taxpayer funded subsidies are like taking money out of your wallet and setting it on fire, most of the time.

Can you explain the difference as far as balance sheets?

Gov't - down money Recipient - up money

Does the mechanism really matter?

EDIT: Hypothetically, let's say the government gave one company a direct subsidy, another a tax rebate, and a third a targetted one-company-only tax break, all for X dollars. You're saying these are substantially different from a macroeconomic perspective? And different enough that a few million in one method is egregious while 50 billion via another method is just how things should be?

One is real dollars (subsidy), one is potential dollars - tax revenue doesn't exist without actual revenue to create it. If the business bankrupts without ever making a dime, you haven't lost anything through a tax break. If you give the business 100 million in capital and they bankrupt, you've just lit 100 million of our tax dollars on fire.

To add to this, looking at the upside of the risk:

If the company is successful with a subsidy or a loan, they've first got to make up the raw dollar value of the subsidy (in extra taxes) or loan (in repayments) before additional taxes become an ROI.

If the company is successful with a tax break, they can start reaping rewards right away as (assuming there is some limited taxation involved), tax revenues increase with volume.

However, with either option you're still gambling with public funds and policy and there are many ways to screw the public fiscally. I'm personally against using the tax code for social engineering purposes (punitive, stimulative, or otherwise), and doubly against subsidies in nearly all cases.

> Reduced taxes or tax breaks for an industry lets them keep more of what they earn and do something useful with it.

like coke and hookers and yachts