I am a college professor. On the first day of class I tell my students that I expect them to be in class on time, every time, and that they should be ready to work. I realize of course that everyone will get stuck in traffic once in a while, and that all of us occasionally are affected by life's ups and downs (weddings, births, death, jury duty, etc.), and so I build some amount of forgiveness into my tardiness and absentee policy. But after a certain, preannounced number of tardies or absences the student's name is automatically withdrawn from my class roll. After all, not only should college students behave business-like (I teach in a business school), but they should realize -- and appreciate, I tell them -- that for every dollar of tuition they pay, the state's taxpayers pay at least another three. 

For every dollar of tuition my students pay, the Georgia taxpayer puts in, roughly, another three.

Students' education is subsidized. It's a subsidy I approve of. Exceptions notwithstanding, education makes us better and more productive citizens. The subsidy will be recovered by the state's citizens as our students, after graduation, become higher-income earners who pay larger amounts in taxes than they would have paid without a college education. The subsidy thus makes eminent social and economic sense.

It is government's obligation toward citizens to ensure an adequate social rate of return on subsidies. Regrettably, in this task government often fails miserably. Subsidization of water for vegetable and fruit producers in California, nearly free grazing rights on federal (i.e., taxpayers') land for cattle ranchers in the American West, growing corn to convert into ethanol in the American plains, direct and indirect agricultural subsidies to already wealthy corporate farmers, and import taxes to "help" inefficient US steel makers at the expense of steel consumers in the appliance, auto, construction, and other industries all are egregious examples where the rate of return on taxpayers' money is negative, rather than positive, let alone positive in a respectable amount.

I wish the media would zealously pursue  government's mishandling of our tax dollars.  Subsidies with negative returns would be very high on my list of federal projects to cut.

The federal government recently has made a showcase out of cooked corporate accounts. I wish the media would with equal zeal report on government's own mishandling of your and my tax payments. Subsidies with negative returns would be very high on my list of federal projects to be cut. Instead, I would expand subsidies that yield positive returns such as on an educated, healthy, and safe labor force.

Mr. Greenspan, chair of the Federal Reserve Bank understands well that it is not government's job to "help" particular segments of private markets, and despite pressure he wisely resists to fiddle with interest rates to please the stock and bond markets. His job is to look after the entirety of the country, not just after the financial markets. The US Congress and the President likewise need to understand that the job of federal government is not to please particular interests but the public interest at large. Provide the underlying conditions -- clear laws, stable money, effective administration, and so on -- but for all our sake, let's get out of the negative returns subsidy business.