One of the points taught in a great many introductory courses on microeconomics is that a tax-cut can be expected to have the same effect on schedules of supply and of demand, and thence on the resulting equilibrium, as would a subsidy. In this sense, economics shows that a tax-cut is equivalent to a subsidy. And, ignoring differences in administrative costs, the resources possessed by the state given a tax-cut are equivalent to those after dispensation of a subsidy. But it is only in these effects that microeconomics shows an equivalence; and, even if we confine ourselves to the considerations of non-normative microeconomic theory, we would be speaking or writing rather loosely if we simply said that a tax-cut were the same as subsidy.

In the sphere of normative discourse, whether a party's refraining from taking is equivalent to giving is determined by whether that person or group of people is entitled to take. A person who forgives a debt may be said to give;[1] but the person who does not steal that which is yours does not in this way donate to you. The invaders or other thugs who declared themselves to be lords did not give what they merely did not confiscate from the farmers whom they conquered.

To treat a tax-cut as morally equivalent to a subsidy, or to do as so many progressives and left-wing populists — to insist that a failure to increase some tax on some party to a prior or even new level simply is a subsidy — is to insist that the state is morally entitled to tax at the greater level, that the state owns those resources.

This moral claim is certainly not a principle of economics nor a consequence of bringing economic principles to bear on moral theory, and should not be allowed to pass as such nor by insinuation.

[1] A creditor who forgives a debt has given her rights as surely as if she had assigned them to a third party.

I haven't followed everything that has been said about the proposed bail-out of the major American automobile manufacturers, and I don't know whether the principal point that I'm going to make below has been much noticed.

It is quite natural for people to hold that, if the manufacturers are given a major infusion of financial capital, then they should surrender some control to the creditors; that if the manufacturers are given a bail-out by Congress, then Congress ought to be able to impose some changes in practices and in policies, to ensure that tax-payers are in some way repaid.

But ownership is no more or less than a right of control, and to the extent that control is transferred, ownership is surrendered. What we are then discussing, however we might put it, is nationalization, albeït perhaps only partial nationalization, whether it is called this or not.

Once the automobile industry is nationalized, management of that industry becomes another government programme, with a large bloc of voters fairly directly dependent upon that programme for their incomes. A sizeable portion of this bloc will insist upon indefinite guarantees concering employment and income. The industry would likely become another third rail of the political system, virtually untouchable unless it is to expand the benefits received by the beneficiaries. Further, conceptualizing what amounts to a transfer programme (welfare) as a manufacturing programme will consume additional resources, which really ought to go into other projects. It would literally be more efficient to pay some or all of the automobile workers to stay home than to pay them to make some or all of the vehicles that they would make; but, by golly, the illusion of productivity will trump the reälity of waste.

Because the political significance of a transfer programme is positively correlated with its direct economic benefits to recipients, the stronger are the initial guarantees of employment and of income, the more powerful will be the abiding political effect of the programme. The Republican insistance that a bail-out provide for swift wage cuts probably speaks to some awareness that the bloc of voters in-question would more naturally align with the Democratic Party.

Meanwhile, the White House discussion of doing an end-run to provide a bail-out from other funds may be an attempt to head-off later action by Congress when the Democrats assume the more sizeable majorities from the last elections. Giving money to the manufacturers with fewer strings attached puts less of a programme in place.