Iron City quite an interesting post. I jeeped around the Boeing web site a bit and found that the Dash 80 (prototype of the KC-135 tanker and the B707 airliner) was funded totally by Boeing before it had any orders for KC-135 and/or B707. But the web site clearly states the funds came from profits of the early Cold War B-47/B-52 production runs.
So if a business makes a profit (as well as gaining technical know-how) from a government funded project, and then applies that profit to another project, is that second project being subsidized?
From various dictionaries, I find definition of subsidy to be along the lines of: "Monetary assistance granted by a government to a person or group in support of an enterprise regarded as being in the public interest.".
Given this, I can see how many of the things mentioned here about the local governments giving Boeing money for infrastructure are subsidies, but I don't see how re-investing profts from the military ventures into commercial ones are subsidies, unless of course you can show that the US government intentionally granted Boeing a large markup on the B-47/B-52 with the intent of subsidizing development of commercial products.
I imagine some people will want to believe that, but there's no evidence. From what I can tell, the large windfalls Boeing made from B47/B52 had to do with the fact that the production runs were larger than planned, and this was due to the good old cold war hysteria. Boeing delivered hardware that met the specifications (and lots of it is still in use today!) and could have done whatever it wanted to do with the resulting profits.
I don't know what some people here think Boeing should have done with the profits. I doubt they would return them to the government out of the goodness of their hearts.
--ev--