So, the guy running for governor on the anti-socialist platform and who wants to keep welfare bums out of New York turns out to be a beneficiary of corporate welfare.

In fact, Carl Paladino looks like the biggest proponent of government involvement in the private economy since Karl Marx.

Sunday’s Buffalo News analysis showing him getting rich in good part on government contracts while pushing to have tax-break zones include his downtown properties reveals Paladino as just another businessman playing government for every penny he can squeeze out of it.

The cost to taxpayers: millions. The hypocrisy: priceless.

This is way better than him forwarding racist and sexist e-mails. After all, he never claimed to be racially enlightened or aware that women can now vote.

But the millionaire “man of the people” did claim to be against big government while surfing the tide of “tea party” sentiment he hoped would take him to Albany.

Now it turns out he’s one of the people he’s running against. He could have a debate about big government all by himself: Carl the Reformer vs. Carl the Recipient.

Tea partyers must be steamed. But they shouldn’t be too hard on Paladino. After all—with the exception of running for governor—he’s not doing anything every other businessman doesn’t do. Reaching into the public pocket is as American as misspelling signs at a protest rally.

All of that blather about rugged individualism, entrepreneurial spirit and pure self-reliance? That’s as old-school as paying your full share of taxes.

From government funding of basic research that enriches private firms, to subsidies for farmers, to taxpayer support for renewable energy and sports stadiums, the whole notion of a strict separation between government and so-called private enterprise is part of an American mythology that survives only in civics books.

Ensuring health care for all Americans or saving jobs in the financial and auto sectors were hardly the first steps down that path.

Socialist? Let he who is without tax breaks, subsidies or infrastructure assistance cast the first stone.

In fact, I’ll believe Paladino and his tea party pals are serious when they start calling for getting government out of Medicare and for abolishing Social(ist) Security.

The reality is that we are an interconnected populace in a mixed economy, with government supporting those enterprises we deem to be in the public interest because our faux capitalists don’t want to assume the risk.

Instead, our intrepid entrepreneurs play one municipality against another, looking for the biggest taxpayer safety net. In the process, they drain public coffers of the very revenue needed to improve, among other things, the public schools Paladino complains about.

I don’t fault him for getting old government buildings for $1 or being Western New York’s major governmental landlord, taking in $10 million from the public on leases for space in his buildings. If he’s the low bidder and is a good landlord, so be it.

Just don’t run around talking about being a reformer when you’ve got your hand stuck in the public till all the way up to the elbow. And, by all means, don’t complain about taxes when you’re running around grabbing tax breaks that other residents then have to make up for.

Come to think of it, Paladino could be the inspiration for a new tax that could balance the books and make all of our other levies unnecessary: a tax on hypocrisy.