The federal government is not the only source of corporate welfare.
According to Veronique de Rugy, a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, “corporate welfare is a significant problem at the state level.”
De Rugy writes that state governments often use “generous, targeted subsidy packages” to lure corporations to relocate.
The Mercatus Center has released charts detailing state involvement in corporate welfare. They examined known subsidies in each of the 50 states and Washington, D.C.
There are 29 states whose subsidies exceeded one billion dollars.
Nine states are responsible for 58 percent of the total $152.9 billion spent on known subsidies of the subsidies.
This chart shows which corporations are the biggest recipients of state-level corporate welfare. Boeing is the largest recipient, having received $13.3 billion dollars in state funds alone.
“The chart shows that established corporations, not small businesses or startups, are the overwhelming recipients of state benefits,” wrote de Rugy.
De Rugy also notes that many of the corporations, such as General Motors, are “double-dippers” who also benefit from federal assistance.
According to the Mercatus Center:
Targeted state subsidies to private businesses are often promoted as a “market-friendly” means to boost growth, jobs, and development. However, the empirical studies on state subsidies find that these programs have little to no effect in producing their intended goals. What’s more… these subsidies are often ultimately damaging.
The information was compiled using the Subsidy Tracker 2.0, a dataset collected by Good Jobs First. According to their website, Good Jobs First is “a national policy resource center for grassroots groups and public officials, promoting corporate and government accountability in economic development and smart growth for working families.” The Subsidy Tracker 2.0 is a compilation of data from over 500 state and local sources making it “the first national search engine for economic development subsidies.”