Corporate welfare
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Corporate welfare is a term that analogizes corporate subsidies to welfare payments for the poor. The term is often used to describe a government's bestowal of money grants, tax breaks, or other special favorable treatment on corporations or selected corporations, and implies that corporations are much less needy of such treatment than the poor. In practice, the term is often used virtually interchangeably with crony capitalism. To the extent that there is a distinction, the latter term could be considered broader, including all types of govern-mental decisions that favor the "cronies" (big businesses and industry lobby groups providing the bulk of political campaign contributions), while corporate welfare might be restricted only to direct government subsidies.
