Gambling with our Tax Dollars: What’s in it for the taxpayer?

To the notion some candidates have of deregulating the government even more, clearly a free market doesn’t work when you allow some companies to inflate themselves like balloons in a world where there will always be pins.

“Less regulation,” they continue to cry. Massive companies have lost their bet — the stock market is just a casino after all, though one that you can actually win big at — and these companies have played their hand and lost it all. Were they to have won, they would have simply grown larger, more consolidated no doubt, and therefore even larger still.

One thing’s for sure: they would not have shared their profits with us, the common taxpayer.

So now that they have lost, why is it exactly that person — you and I, the common taxpayer — who will be bailing them out?

And by doing so, will we have a stake in the company’s financial futures? If we’re going to use taxpayer money to put these companies back on track, so that they won’t make the mistakes of the past, shouldn’t we also reap the rewards of their climbing stock prices in the event that does happen?

Because after all, if they fail to get themselves “back on track”, it will not be their money that they’ve lost this time, it will be ours.

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