The 30 mega-corporations in the chart below generated $164 billion of profits in the last three years and paid no taxes. Not only did they pay no taxes, they received $10.6 billion in tax refunds. Not a bad return on their $476 million lobbying investment. This was all done legally. You see when their lobbyists right the laws for Congress and the tax rules for the IRS, things tend to fall in your favor. I’d love to see the compensation amounts for the CEOs of these organizations.
Did you pay any taxes between 2008 and 2010? If so, you paid more in Federal taxes than 29 of these 30 mega-corporations. You should fire your lobbyist.
Remember this information the next time you hear Gingrich or Romney declare that corporate tax rates are too high.
Country’s Largest Corporations Spend More Money On Lobbying Than Taxes
In a “remember me, three years ago?” speech in Kansas yesterday, President Obama told the crowd, “This country succeeds when everyone gets a fair shot, when everyone does their fair share and when everyone plays by the same rules.” A new report [pdf] from the non-profit organization Public Campaign shows that 30 of the country’s largest corporations—including GE, Wells Fargo, Verizon, and Fed Ex—paid more to lobby Congress from 2008 through 2010 than they did in federal income taxes. What country was the president referring to?
Of the 30 companies, only one actually paid any federal income taxes: FedEx. The rest received nearly $11 billion in rebates. And even FedEx only paid 1%, 34% less than the statutory rate. As for lobbying, the 30 corporations spent a combined $476 million—or $400,000 a day every single day of the year, to ensure their interests were represented in Congress. GE led with way with $84 million in the three-year period (wonder why?) Verizon spent $54 million, and Boeing spent $52 million.
We can hear Eric Cantor crying now: “But these companies create jobs!” Of the seven companies that would make their employment records public, the report shows that over 50,000 Americans were laid off by these corporations, despite them turning a profit.
If you’ve been weeping uncontrollably if you even attempt to pick the paper up from your stoop following the news, the results of this report shouldn’t surprise you. But hey, a few more speeches in Kansas should straighten things out.
Its obvious….
We need to get a permit for a Saturday demonstration from noon to 7 and wear our Sunday’s best.
That’ll show ’em.
man, i read that chart, and i just don’t understand why people are protesting near wall street. what the hell do they want?
I read that chart and wondered why all I read is…”it’s the Wall Street bankers that caused our problems”. Huh?
[img
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“These cretins actually believe it will trickle down!!!”
Let me get this straight. The goverment is borrowing money from the federal reserve, china ect… So much so they are spending 1.something trillion more than they take in. Then the goverment gives the money to the giant compines that the banks finance. They are doint this to the point of crushung the middle class. Am i close. What a joke.
You got it, Hollow Man…
What is the source of this info? I need to do some research before commenting. There are tax return profits and then there are company report profits. Which were used here? Rebates do not always mean the company gets money, as was the case with the earlier NYT article on GE – which was poor journalism at best.
I am not saying this was false – but if a company reports a tax return profit, they pay taxes, which may be offset by credits/rebates.
In a global market tax rates have to be globaly competetive or capital flees. I do not see a lot of capital fleeing to US based corporations – ie companies are not repatriating profits to the US as it is such a tax haven. That in itself tells you something. If you could avoid taxes in the US that easily the companies would shift profits back to the states. That isn’t happening.
http://publicampaign.org/reports/forhire
The only thing fleeing this country have been jobs.
The only people increasing their compensation in the last twenty years have been the corporate executives shipping middle class jobs to China.
Only those without lobbyists pay taxes.
Some would look at the chart and come to the conclusion that corporations are evil. That is not the issue. The issue is it is legal to lobby. That is disgraceful and needs to cease.
Corporations are amoral. They do not make decisions, largely, based on ethical or unethical or moral or immoral. They make decisions based on legal or illegal, and maximize profits on that basis. Some do of course act illegally but I believe that is generally not prevalent.
If lobbying is eliminated it needs to be replaced by a consultatative process. Government being what it is buries business in regulation and that needs to be fought. The mountain of ever chaning law is why companies generally try to abide by the law rather than consider moral or ethical aspects – those decisions are usurped by the government at every turn.
Corporations may be amoral but the men who run them can be immoral and criminal and pathological.
The system has been captured by corporations and bankers. They will loot and pillage to their hearts delight and care not for the country or the little people stupid enough to pay taxes.
They laugh at us from their penthouse suites and mansions in the Hamptons.
YES CORPORATIONS ARE THE LIFEBLOOD OF AMERICA. LET US COUNT THE WAYS:
1952 corporate tax as a % of GDP = 32.1%
2010 corporate tax as a % of GDP = 1.3%
(A 95% drop)
1952 Payroll taxes (Social security) as a % of total federal revenue = 9.7%
2010 Payroll taxes (Social security) as a % of total federal revenue = 40.0%
(A 400% increase in the burden on workers)
Thanks Admin.
Corps have trillions in profits perched overseas. Capital has fled. It is not only jobs.
Why have the jobs gone to China? They work cheaper and the tax structure is beneficial. What is the option if you are in charge of a company? I fight the Chinese threat evey day. So far I am hanging tough but they will probably get me in the end. It costs me about $80 to $100k per year to employ an unskilled factory worker. I can get the same job done in China for around $10k. The only reason I have survived is that my customers have not figured out how to keep quality and delivery and service up while sourcing my parts overseas. The parts would be about 30 percent of my price. If they can address those issues – which isn’t easy as I am a high quality niche supplier – I am history. No one will pay triple for the same product.
What is the answer? I do not know.
As soon as we lower the tax rate to 5%, I’m sure our patriotic mega-corporations will repatriate those trillions of profits and create millions of jobs in the good old US of A.
That was the line of bullshit they used during the Bush Administration. They created ZERO jobs while paying themselves 300 times the average worker.
llpoh~
you keep missing the target.
you wrote: “Government being what it is buries business in regulation…”
no. no.
government, being what it is, buries small and medium sized businesses in regulation. and taxation. and fees.
while, at the same time, protects the big, mega corporations from the same.
hey, you have tons of business experience. how much have businesses in your stead spent on lobbying over the years? how does that compare to the mega-corps?
“business” is not a monolith. the ‘businesses’ that have captured the system and steal from all of us, are your enemy, not your allies.
i know you understand this. i think i appreciate that you, as a businessman, fear any removal of the power and influence stolen by wall street, banks, oil, insurance, pharmaceutical, and even the automotive industries, will negatively impact the kinds of firms you have spent your life building and guiding.
the status quo was created by and is guided by exxon/chase/pfizer/walmart/et. al. not by liberals. not by democrats. not by gop politicians. not by neocons. the politicians are employees and errand boys.
how has the status quo of the past 20 years worked out for your firms?
a ‘consultative process’ is a fantasy. answering to voters is the ‘consultative process’ that used to work (remember? even reagan and bush raised taxes rather than saddle voters with rising interest rates from increased govt. borrowing). voters are too fucking stupid and uninvolved–their votes are bought by flashy commercials and lines of bullshit (there is the last bargain in america–buying an undecided vote, as 80% of the sheep vote ‘my party, wrong or wrong’).
i’m betting you never worked for a mega-corporation. i am also betting you have been close enough to recognize how different they are from the true backbone firms of american capitalism (the little that survives). i am legitimately interested in your ideas and views on this topic, as i love hearing about your real life experiences in business and commerce. i’m not trying to win an argument, napalm exchange or monkey-shit flinging contest. looking for reality, truth, and common ground. as much fun as those games are.
MCES
Admin –
Business pays half of SS. Actualy more at this time. So that narrows the gap you show significantly.
Second, there was no global marketplace back in the ‘d0s. Despite what you say, taxes need to be globally competitive. If the rate was 5 percent money would return. I believe their is in the neighborhood of 4 trillion in monies sitting overseas because the corps do not want to pay taxes.
I agree there are some criminals in corps but it is not the rule.
Little people do not pay taxes other than payroll – which they get back in spades.
It is not the corps job to care for the country – that is what we have government for. Change the lobbyist laws. For sure. But corps are there to turn a profit. Government is there to set the rules. Blaming coprs for disgraceful government and laws is pointless. They are not designed to do other than turn a profit. To expect more is a fool’s errand. Change the laws.
The laws are written by the corporations for the benefit of corporations. How do you suggest we change the laws?
Extremely weak argument rationalizing the 95% reduction of corp taxes as a % of GDP. You got nothing dude. There is no rationale other than corporations capturing our government.
What a boom for caviar sales, luxury car sales, expensive jewelry sales, and sales of NYC penthouses and Hamptons estates if we just reduce the corp tax rate to 5% for mega corporations to repatriate their profits and pay it out as bonuses to CEO’s for a job well done in using lobbbyists to pay off Congress for this tax break.
This is called corporate welfare and is the same as food stamps and extended unemployment benefits.
This was done before. Did it create jobs in the US? No fucking way.
Enough is enough. Fuck corporate America.
And the Corps were not behind the Citizen’s United decision to allow unlimited spending for candidates that further their aims? To assume that corporations have simply laid back and “allowed” the government to create a fair and impartial marketplace is the height of foolishness. Have the mega banks and Wall Street not captured the regulators? Why is there no prosecution of obvious financial criminal acts? Corporations are more than happy to use their massive influence to bludgeon the rest of society.
When Roberts and Alito were confirmed most everyone was misdirected into thinking the major issue those two stood for was restricting abortion. It was all a ruse. They are nothing more than corporate stooges and always have been.
admin,
When you say Fuck corporate America, does that include all corps. big and small?
stevie
I mean the mega-corporations that have captured our political and economic system. Small businesses are the job creators. They don’t have lobbyists and are buried under regulations pushed by the mega-corporations.
All payroll taxes – even those called individual – are corporate taxes. No kidding.
Good one llpoh. You haven’t lost that sense of humor.
I’ll thank a corporation when I see that FICA deduction on my next paycheck.
Admin – it is a business cost that once upon a time didn’t exist. It doesn’t exist in a lot of countries. It is a tax on business. Just take a look at your 1952 figures to confirm.
llpoh
What are you talking about? In 1952 corporate Federal income taxes accounted for 32% of GDP and now they account for 1% of GDP.
FICA is paid 50% by the employee and 50% by the corporation. What’s your point?
The figures are as clear as can be for someone without an agenda. Corporations pay FAR less proportionately today than they did in 1952. There is no other interpretation. Those are the facts and ridiculous rationalizations will not change those facts.
As shown in the “Corporate Income and Personal Income as as Percentage of GDP – Douscehbag Version” chart from Tuesday, the baselines divergence tells the story better than tax rates…
Sen. Bernie Sanders has proposed a constitutional amendment that would overturn the Supreme Court decision in a case called Citizens United vs. FEC.
The Saving American Democracy Amendment states that:
•Corporations are not persons with constitutional rights equal to real people.
•Corporations are subject to regulation by the people.
•Corporations may not make campaign contributions.
•Congress and states have the power to regulate campaign finances.
Sign the petition here:
http://sanders.senate.gov/petition/?uid=f1c2660f-54b9-4193-86a4-ec2c39342c6c
(thx to KaD)
Admin – payroll taxes are a tax on business, pure and simple. It is bullshit to say the employee pays half. The employee never even sees the money – poof -it is gone automatically. It is treated as an expense by the company same as “its” half. There is no employee portion in fact – rather it is all a cost to the corporation. Please get serious. You can essentially say the same thing re all taxes – they are all claimed as an expense by corporations or bvusiness. If they can be claimed as an expense then bvy definition it is that entity that is actually paying the tax. Why is that so hard to understand. Try taking a credit for your fed taxes on your fed tax return. Good luck with that. But companies get the credit.
Admin – I believe you have made a typo above when you say corp taxes used to be 32 percent of GDP. This would imply a profit margin net of probably double that. That is not possible.
Re your current 1 percent figure that is possible. A corp typically makes a margin net of between 5 and 10 percent when it is profitable. If we assume seven percent as the average then corps would pay around 2 percent of sales as taxes. If one dollar of sales equals one dollar of GDP then corps would pay around 2 percent of their GDP as tax. Of course some corps lose money. Etc. So one percent isn’t especially surprising.
So how much is reasonable for them to pay? I think the current rates are more or less correct. But the loopholes need to be closed.
Cost of doing business include salaries, benefits, payroll tax, corp tax, et al. These costs are high in the US overall in a global marketplace. Many countries have lower total cost of business, so capital and labor flows to them. The only alternative is trade barriers, but that has many issues as well. Until costs of business balance there will be continued movement of capital and labor.
Business is not evil. In fact it is totally logical. It is like water – it finds the lowest level and migrates there.
I have been associated with many large corps. Never – and I mean never – have I witnessed any senior manager propose or attempt any illegal action. Ruthless, yes, illegal no.
Almost every day I see some small business man propose or do something illegal. Sometimes it is an attempt to circumnavigate red tape. Most often it is a tax crime, an EPA crime or a health and safety crime. The amount of tax avoided by small business is very substantial.
The laws can be changed. Corps will do all they can to prevent it. But our elected reps have the power to do so. Tthey just need the backbone. .
The answer is to shrink the federal government, to consider lobbying a form of bribery, and to vote for Ron Paul.
Howard – sorry I missed your post til now.
I have worked for many megas. I believe you are dead wrong in what you say. I think they have it even harder than the small corps. They have mountains of red tape to sort through, and they have union/EPA/ NLRB etc crawling up their asses at every turn. The difference is that they have the resources to deal with it – specialists in each and every field. And they benefit from economies of scale. Much of their lobbying money would be spent on reasonable activity – to keep the EPA or NLRB or whoever fron screwing them to death. A lot of the balance would be to manipulate politicians.
EPA laws and red tape are horrors no matter who you are.
Admin – I will look at that the corp tax as a percent of gdp figure. It just cannot be right as it implies a profit margin of well over 50 percent. I am guessing it is actually the percent of corp tax to total tax take or something similar. There is no way corps make profit margins near that level. You have captured some bad figures there.
llpoh
I await your detailed analysis of the corp tax figures.
admin,
Just wondering about the negative talk about the evil corps….I am involved with a small family corp that involves a gold mine we purchased and all this talk about corps makes me a little nervous that the broad stroke might get inclusive of all. I haven’t heard it defined as to what a “evil” size is.
Admin
Did you take a close look at the chart you published? Out of the 30 companies listed, at least 12, maybe 14, companies are energy companies. That’s nearly HALF of the companies listed.
What’s my point? Just this. America’s energy companies have been FORCED by federal government regulations to adapt GREEN ENERGY policies and have been given a wide variety of tax write offs to do so. Big write offs. Money back from the fed.
I know this for a fact. El Paso is on the chart. It is a natural gas power company that supplies electricity to much of the Southwest, including Tucson. Yet it engages in hugely unprofitable and even laughable solar power projects. Why? Big PR gain and big tax write offs
So what’s your solution, tough guy. A power company CEO waving the bullshit flag and challenging the federal government’s absurd pressure and energy standards. Essentially saying, “Fuck you. Shut us down and see what happens.”
No, wait. That’s MY solution.
and i thought you were ignoring me.
after i posted, i realized you probably had plenty experience with turnaround situations for big huge megacorps. sorry, didn’t mean anything by that mistake.
indeed, you are probably the kind of specialist-expert they hire to deal with epa/osha/nlrb stuff, in part. this makes me more interested in your experiences, and your views. if you see any contrast between the forbes 100 firms you have worked with, compared to the forbes 1000 (or whatever).
i’m not looking for a black and white model with which to view the world. but i do see evil in outsized government influence, exercised by the biggest firms.
i don’t know where to draw the line, what is ‘too big’. i’m not even sure i would know it when i saw it. it probably is not merely size; i am sure there are some small firms that fulfill defense department contracts that write their own rules with just a few well-placed ex colonels and lobbyists on their payroll.
in a way, i do not blame a business for doing anything they can to make a profit. if the supreme court makes the citizens united ruling, why shouldn’t acme widgets contribute a million each to the dem and gop nominees? i’m not talking blame; ultimately the people are to blame for allowing the dominance of politics by a narrow group of monied interests.
but the fact that mega corporations have so much control over who sits in congress, and literally write the laws and regulations is true, and intolerable.
just because pfizer has a bunch of osha inspectors up their ass does not mitigate the fact they were instrumental in the medicare part d legislation making it illegal for government to negotiate drug price (as every other govt. on earth does with pfizer–well, maybe not iraq). just because one set of fda investigators make new drug approval difficult does not make it ok for pfizer to have such control of other huge swaths of the new drug process.
and there is a bottom line. a net bottom line. the profits. the record profits, and the distribution thereof. yet another evil that again the people have to accept blame, is the lack of responsibility to shareholders characterized by the top management and directors of these same firms. when people, either acting as individuals, or holding mutual funds/retirement accounts care not for dividends and long-term success, but only for the stock market valuation, if i was a ceo, i’d give myself a big bonus for cutting payroll and moving production overseas too. hey, stock price is up 10% this quarter!
back to the point. in the not too distant past, giant corporations were mechanisms for spreading wealth and prosperity. in the last two decades, they have become mechanisms for concentration of wealth, and concentration of political influence. every big bank; every big pharma company; walmart; monsanto, cargill and archer daniels; ge, raytheon, united technologies; exxon and chevron; aetna, oxford, travellers, met life, axa, cna and our favorite, aig. the role of these firms in our government, in our lives, in the decreased taxes they pay and increased profits, salaries and bonuses, are all significantly different today than in the 1980s.
to quote a wise man; shit is bullshit and fucked up. the simple, across the board broad stroke of removing cash donations to political candidates, and outlawing lobbyists, would work wonders.
don’t matter. ain’t gonna happen. and it won’t need to happen anyway. the system is so corrupted, the whole economic edifice is gonna snap. the financial structure behind all those firms will collapse, under its own weight.
i’m just hoping for some truth and reality, of how it all came to fail, survives and guides the rebuilding effort.
[img]http://slopeofhope.typepad.com/.a/6a00e0098982228833015435fe472a970c-800wi[/img]
Still a favorite picture some dude had on his blogspot…
Howard – I do not know what is too big. What I have found is that the biggest difference between large and not large is the degree that systems control the business. The bigger the company the more detailed and documented the system. The whole organization gets fragmented and specialized, and every action is systemized and documented, and individual decision-making is quashed and discouraged. Authority isn’t spread as you would expect but seems to be increasingly concentrated upward. Lower levels get too ashit scared to make decisions other than those documented in themanuals. Mediocrity thrives. Most folks simply play a game of don’t do anything to get fired.
In short, it is horrible. But not evil. I would never go back. But I understand what is going on. If you have 100,000 employees, you do everything possible to keep the odd lone idiot from doing something stupid enough to sink your ship. The trouble with idiots is they can be downright ingeneous in making mistakes. The key to running these businesses is to minimize big mistakes. They do this via systems.
Part of the system is to use every legal means to turn a profit. Lobbying is legal so it is used if it is deemed worthy. On the chart above, some companies spend relatively little lobbying even though I know some of them are brutalized by legislation on occassion. Why? Because they have found they have little impact by lobbying. Some others have more influence. As a for instance, how well does Boeing lobby money pay off for them? The NLRB just assraped them into signing a contract with a labor union. I guarantee that Boeing was trying to prevent this – but nbo luck. So much for the influence of big business.
Lobbying power of big business is significant, but nbot nearly to the extent people might think. A lot of the money is spent lobbying for totally appropriate causes. I would say most of it. Because if there is one thing for sure it is that politicians will fuck you over in a heartbeat. For no good reason and with nbo regard for unintended consequence.
Another example is that a lot of money would have been spent lobbying qagainst Obamacare. Fat lot of good that did.
Not all lobbying money works. A lot of lobbying money is spent trying to prevent stuff that should not happen. But some is spent pandering.
Business is not evil. Just amoral.
Lobbying Obamacare has done wonders llpoh. Obama has handed out thousands of waivers to Obamacare to LARGE CORPORATIONS and UNIONS. I wonder how they got the waivers. Did your business get a waiver? You need to get some facts before spouting off. Stop defending corruption. It makes you look stupid.
SSS – nice catch. I noticed some companies I know well on the list. Their lobbying expenses were low but they are getting screwed regularly. They have found their lobbying doesn’t pay. Primarily EPA issues screwing them. If you are in the carbon dioxide game you are getting hosed.
Criminals running the corporations, and criminals in Washington supporting them. Stealing, graft and bribery were crimes the last time I checked. You just have to steal and bribe the right people. Those charts and data are staggering, and don’t even include all the subsidies (cash hand-outs) given by the government. If people really understood how badly they are being ripped off, there’d be a revolution or civil war. Thank god for the filthy-slut Kardasians and MSM.
Admin says: “The system has been captured by corporations and bankers.’
So if we just get rid of all the corporations and all the bankers we’ll all just live happily every after?
Ok everyone, stop doing anything on credit and stop buying anything.
thanks, llpoh.
huge amounts were spent lobbying obamacare. it paid off huge. obamacare was written by the corporations that control health care. pharma and insurance.
yep, lots of corporations stand to get screwed by obamacare (well, they would if it were ever enacted, which is flat out not going to happen). but, as quinn points out, the biggest of those potential victims, like mickey d’s, simply paid a lobbying fine to get a waiver.
that is exactly my point. within the world of ‘big ass corporations’, there are an even smaller number of select winners, who own and control the govt machinery.
i will leave your view of corporations as amoral/not evil for another day. my view is different. but we haven’t even defined these terms. thanks for the back and forth.
My college room-mate is a big shot in a large telecom firm. Been there for 30+ years and moved to very high level – because of her political skills.
Before the 2008 campaign a huge McCain supporter. She really Obama for what he is expressed real fear about what he would unleash if elected.
After the election, her opinion totally changed. Obama wasn’t so bad after all. I google her occasionally and saw she made campaign contributions to Harry Reid in the 2010.
She’s not a capitalist, she’s a crony capitalist.
This huge multinational corporation that has screwed up its company, and deprived shareholders of value for decades. The people who run these corps are politicos and do not have the skills it takes to create anything of value.
They are unable to compete on a level playing field, so they just spend oodles of money to level it. They buy off the pols in power, write the laws and reap the rewards at the expense of start-ups, small and mid-sized companies that have talent and vision.
It is a generalization, but mostly true I’m afraid. There may be good, talented people who work for these mega-companies, but they won’t get the top jobs. Those gigs are reserved for the politicos, sociopaths and selfish individuals who make decisions that benefit them – not their country, their industry or their employees.
There are always exceptions, Llpoh. Admin and Howard are right, I’m sad to say…
Admin – I couldn’t look more stupid than saying corporate taxes amounted to over thirty percent of gdp.now that is stupid. Total tax take has historically been in the twenty percent range. You recently posted a chart showing net corp profit in 1960 was around 10 percent. How are those figures adding up for you.
I do not defend corruption. But I have to say your bullshit figures are growing old. You noi longer seem interested in facts or anyone else’s position or in learning a damn thing.
You are way in front of me in a lot of areas but not when it comes to numbers and not when it comes to how corps act. I have too much experience and skill there. Sure, some corps got exemptions – but not all. My experience – which I expect matches up to your Ikea stint and then some – is that most lobbying is for good reason. Not all are though. But you respond by saying don’t defend corruption.
What a fucking disgrace. I did no such thing. I pointed out some issues where corps had some
legitimate issues, including Obamacare. If they got exemptions on that – good fucking joob. The whole thing sucks. Should they have stood back and just taken it without a fight? Of course not. The fact that others are getting it shoved done their throats is the issue. But you do not see it that way. You think it was evil that they opposed a bad law and won. The evil is that it was paSed thru at all.
You are once again managing to piss me off. Well done. I was civil to you but seems that counts for nothing if I do not bow down to your position, no matter how mistaken. When one of your heroes has a different opinion of something, you are willing to revisit your position. But anyone else gets shit treatment. Beautiful.
I will indeed look up the corp tax as a percent of gdp in 1952. But I am calling bullshit.
Looks like llpoh doesn’t like it when the shit gets stirred. LLPOH – defender of mega corps screwing the middle class and fucking over America. Keep fighting for scum and corrupt slime. If we just cut corp tax rates everything will be better. The CEO’s surely deserve 345 times the average workers salary for fucking the country. Corporations only need to worry about making money. They are amoral. What a load of horseshit. Corporations are legal entiies runby greedy immoral fucks who have the sole goal of enriching themselves and their cronies.
Stick that in your pipe and smoke it.
Mary – everyone has their stories of folks they know. Very few have first hand experience. Do you? Does Howard? Admin does. I do.
I have met no psychopaths at the top levels. Good political types for sure. Lots of bad managers. No folks doing dishonest deeds. No one spending lobbying money willy-nilly except for good reason – to try to keep from getting screwed over.
Your little “I know someone’s” simply do not cut it with me. I have been there and seen it myself. It isn’t a pretty picture but it isn’t the evil portrayed either. But I know that “evil corps” makes for a better story than does mine. Believe what you want. Fact is most folks – even managers of big corps – are not evil. But their focus is not always good. It is what it is – an amoral bloodsport.
oh i know plenty of psychopaths at the top.
wait, we’re talking about doctors, right?
oh, corp executives.
yeah, but mostly wall-street types. finance mavens. people who build nothing, and command tens of millions a year. lots of psychopaths, defined by how they treat their wives and children, with my own eyes. i encounter them as patients, and occasionally socially (i can’t believe they let me in these places every now and then).
the true captains of industry, i don’t know too many of those. music industry doesn’t count either, does it?
most of my contact with the 1% is casual–short term patients, or in social settings. i have barely worked with only a few of these folks. the worse was both a physician and a big insurance exec. a complete parasite on society. made the music company exec look like a kitten.
Llpoh: It is what it is – an amoral bloodsport.
You just made my point. Bloodsport is a game. A game won by honing political skills. Moving pieces on a chess board to outmaneuver the guy in the next office or boardroom. Win at all costs.
I agree – these people running many of these firms are not evil. Some are doing what they believe is necessary to keep their companies open, their employees employed, their customers serviced. I get that. I do.
There actions, tho, do have calamitous results for our nation, our communities and our families.
Their willingness to go along to get along by paying off pols and writing the laws that lock out competition have decimated our economy and our country. The unilateral decision to go along with the transformation of US from a producing nation to a consumer nation has destroyed our economy and by extension, our lives.
Their intent may not be evil – but their results are.
Let’s use Steve Jobs as an example. A creative genius, created an industry, employed thousands of people. He’s been described as difficult guy – but not evil, by any stretch of the imagination. He’s revered.
Yet all Apple products are manufactured in China and employ workers who are paid a pittance. The working conditions are so ghastly that the government covers the windows of the factory/high rise home complex with netting to keep the Chinese worker from jumping to their death.
Now, am I calling Steve Jobs a murderer? No, of course not. He was a CEO who made, what he believed were the best decisions for his customers, shareholders and himself.
But is a factory covered in netting to keep workers who are producing your products from committing suicide a healthy by-product of his decision? Could someone legitimately characterize the results of his business decision as evil?
Yes, they could.
And that’s my point. Many top executives of large corporations make these decisions and either ignore the consequences or don’t care.
It’s a game for them
It’s real life for the rest of us.
Admin: here you go, a chart of total tax takes as a percentage of GDP by year. Blows your “1952 corporate tax as a % of GDP = 32.1%” out of the water.
[img
[/img]
Here is a graph showing revenue by type. Note that the shift from around 4% (just a bit lower than your 32%, but whatever) to 2 percent happened around 1970, and has held in a similar band ever since:
[img
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Also please note that SS tax has risen from around 2.5% in 1960 to around 6% today. This is largely in line with your statement, but also suggests a significant shift of tax to the corps as well, and implies total corp tax (payroll + corp tax) as a percentage of GDP has in fact changed almost none since 1950 when their share of payroll taxes are included. Wow! Isn’t that an amazing fact!
And here is another chart, which shows that since 1950 income taxes as a percent of total tax revenue have grown slightly, while corporation taxes have fallen, while payroll taxes have eexploded. As before, payroll taxes have replaced corporate taxes, so net corporate tax is relatively unchanged. The biggest driver of payroll tax increases was Medicare in 1965.
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These are the facts. No spin – just fact.
Mary – it is the proper role of government to regulate those activities. Lobbyists absolutely need to be banned – I have said so often. However, it needs to be replaced by something – some process whereby corps can try to defend themselves from absurd and damaging laws put in place by government. To eliminate lobbying without some defense mechanism would not be good.
As for your Chinese example – that is happening in China. It is an uneven playing field which needs to be levelled. I know of many such examples. The role of government is to ensure the field is level. Corps do not have the power to do it.
Howard – and I bet you have never seen working class or poor folk treat their wives and children poorly? Man, I have, and I see it still every day. It is a common human condition, and I do not see it as a viable argument to go from there (execs are bastards) to corps are evil. Execs are not alone in being bastards.
Corporations exist to make money. Mostly, that is what they try to do. Many, but not most, are run soley for the benefit of their senior managers and board. But I am seeing this change, albeit slowly.
Large funds are having more and more say in the make up of boards, and thus in the management of the corps themselves. This is a good thing, and it is having an effect on those that are running companies for their own interests.
Admin spoke of “corrupt” above. Corps behave, more often than not, legally. By definition that is not corrupt. The laws need to change to make these activities illegal. Plain and simple. But I fear the result if there is not a counter-balance to the idiocy of the politicians.
llpoh
Keep fighting the good fight on behalf of mega-corporations. Your position is untenable based upon facts clear to anyone who chooses not to be willfully ignorant of how things work in America today. It must be nice to live in a delusional bubble based upon theory rather than reality.
AWD – you said “Stealing, graft and bribery were crimes the last time I checked. You just have to steal and bribe the right people.”
Gotta say I have never seen it happen on a corporate scale. Individual yes – stealing and accepting bribes. On a corporate scale – no. As a matter of fact, just the opposite. I have seen mega corps walk away when it was either bribe or lose the business (when dealing with foreign states). Imagine that – a mega corp that would not bribe an official in order to secure business. Damn evil corps.
Llpoh
No need to bribe anyone when it is legal to bribe Congressmen through campaign contributions, gifts, trips and lobbying.
I have just reviewed the responses to my previous posts. I love it that the Admin gets thumbs up for posting erroneous figures and going all self-righteous based on those same erroneous figures (i.e. his claim of 95% reduction on corporate taxes. What a hoot.). You folks really need to be able to reason for yourselves and spot flaws without jumping on the bandwagon with nary a thought about whether it is true or not.
I say payroll taxes are a company tax – and get thumbs down. It is really simple – the cost is born by the entity that gets the deduction for the expense. Business gets the deduction. Therefore it is a company tax. If you stopped all “personal” payroll taxes, reducing the empoyees salary by the same amount and making those taxes “business” taxes it would have not one iota of impact on anything whatsoever. Why? Because it is a corporate tax, no matter what else it is called. And if you simply eliminated it entirely, corps would slowly but surely re-absorb the “overpayments” – individuals would get a temporary pay hike but it wouldn’t last.
People with no mega-corp experience come out to tell me how wrong I am. Their position sure sounds good, though. They “know somebody”. All anecdotal stuff. They want to believe that these corps are the cause of so much pain and anguish. These corps simply are ruthless and behave in a self-interested way. They are not out to get anyone. If we do not like their behavior, change the rules – it is that easy. But be careful of unintended consequence. It will be a bitch.
Great detailed analysis refuting my figures llpoh. Your factual analysis was overwhelming.
More facts llpoh. Poor corporations and their overburdened tax situation. We absolutely must cut their tax burden. You make me laugh. That damn socialist Eisenhower was pure evil.
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Admin – are you sticking by your corp taxes = 32% of GDP in 1952? You made a serious error there, and now try to deflect it with “your factual analysis was overwhelming”. You know it was an error, and I know it. You were only off by what, 800% or so. Missed it by that much. If you had given any thought to it you would have instantly seen that that number is not possible. Total government tax revenue was only around 15% of GDP back then, and for corporate profits to have been 32% of GDP was not possible.
And you used that error to make your “case” more than once. It is factually incorrect. Simple as that. Stand up and own up that your “facts” were in error. You will feel better. The fact is still that corp tax + payroll tax of today is close to what it was in 1952. Even if just the “business” portion is included.
I base my judgement on personal experience. I have expreience with a number of mega-corps. I am the first one to raise my hand about what assholes they are, and how ruthless they are. But they act rationally – they act in their own interests and they maximize their returns in every legal way (sometimes even stepping beyond that line, although I have never seen or heard illegalities proposed).
Anecdotes do not cut it with me. Sure, corps spend a lot of money lobbying to promote their own interests. They spend even more fighting bad governance. Imagine that – government working in opposition to business. That couldn’t happen, could it?
And that was also a point I was making – it isn’t corrupt if it is legal. Laws can be changed – but we need honest politicians to do it.
llpoh~
i was not making that link, between psychopath executives and evil corporations. there are psychopaths at all economic levels. the characteristics of a psychopath are rewarded, in current politics, and in current mega corporations.
politicians were not always uniformly corrupt in the usa. it has ebbed and flowed. we are at an ebb.
i conclude the same thing about corporations. they are different today than they were post war. which was a different era of character in american business, compared to the late 19th century.
like i said, i want to put aside ‘evil’, (a)moral, judgments for now. i am talking about outsized concentrations of wealth and power, staying away from the philosophical and ethical analyses, with the assumption that in a democratic republican system and culture, outsized power and influence is a bad thing.
the other major assumption, that the state of affairs today is new; it has not always been thus. although, marx said what we have today is the inevitable endpoint of capitalism. the fucker may be right; despite the course of american history in the first nine decades of the 20th century the argument that he is wrong. he might have the last laugh.
Admin – where is that 32% rate of GDP in 1952 you spoke of? Do not see it, try as I might.
The 1%, as I mentioned, isn’t far fetched. I cannot tell if the 1% was in 2008, when a lot of companies took a beating.
Amend that graph for payroll taxs paid by corps and it will look a fair bit diffeent. But that will not suit your purposes, will it? It will shift the line up to the 4 to 5 % area. Corporate tax rates were 52% back in 1952 – and I think there was a boom on at the time. Not surprising there was a spurt in tax as a % of GDP.
The fact is personal taxes as a percent of revenue have remained more or less constant during this period while corporate plus payroll taxes have climbed significantly. The facts speak for themselves.
And a corporate tax rate of 52% simply isn’t globally competetive these days.
~i forgot
i know a few psychopaths running small and medium sized businesses. even a few who got kicked out of big wall street banks.
Once again – Admin shifts when his bullshit figures are exposed for what they are to inventing positions for me, in an effort to obscure the fact that his facts are wrong and he has been caught out. Not on his best day can he go head to head with me on numbers (he is not alone there), so resorts instead to putting words in my mouth that I never said. Instead of owning up to the mistake, he goes on the attack.
I never said reduce the corp tax rate. Please point out where I did. I never said that they deserve the salaries they get – quite the contrary.
llpoh already forgetting his bullshit from yesterday. Good trait for a defender of corporate corruption. You think that corporate rates for the repatriation of overseas profits should be cut to 5% just like your Rebublican friends declare. This is corporate welfare for the rich bastards who have fucked the middle class of America. Too bad your buddy Smokey isn’t around to support your insupportable position.
For someone who loves the law when young people are beaten, shot and maced, you are blind to the blatant criminality of bankers and corporations destroying this country. Pitiful.
Howard – my experience is that psychopaths get exposed if they climb too high in a big business. There stomping grounds tend to be a bit lower so that they can wreak havoc without the scrutiny that comes with very senior management.
Ad small business is littered with psychos – small business owners very often are horrid to their employees and associated entities.
Post war was boom time – and America had no competition. Business didn’t begin to really fuck up until the 1960’s and 1970’s – when arrogance had taken full root. The auto companies are still suffering for those fuck-ups, for instance.
Where did I say reduce the tax rate? Where? Where? Come on Admin – quit making shit up. It is beneath you. You were the one who mentioned 5%, not me. I simply said that corporate tax rates have to be globally competitive. And they do. You somehow think they do not – which is naive at best. You said that capital hasn’t fled – which I easily refuted by pointing out the trillions in unrepatriated profits. Capital has fled. Go ahead, raise the rates, and see if that helps keep capital or business in place. It will do the opposite – business is rational and will flow to the most cost-effective locales.
You talk about blatant criminality – since when is lobbying criminal? Your use of hyperbole is to be commended, facts be damned.
I advocate much the same as you – eliminate lobbying altogether. I do not go so far as to think all lobbying is having an adverse impact. Quite the contrary. Without it, or a means of bringing pressure to bear when horrible laws are proposed, business would be hit very hard indeed.
And when are you going to admit you fucked up your figures? Keep throwing shit instead. That will make me forget. You scored some cheap points off of flawed figures, but won’t stand up and admit it. Out-fucking-standing.
Oh yes. The corporate tax rates are not competitive on a global scale. Are German corporate tax rates lower than the U.S? This article shows 30 MEGA-Corps that paid no taxes over a 3 year period despite generating billions in profits. But you insist our tax rates are too high. Absolutely laughable.
Mr Law and order only abides by the laws declared by the authorities. Anyone with half a brain can see that corporations have bought off the politicians to write the laws, regulations, rules and ordanances to benefit them. LLPOH declares that since this is legal, it isn’t really blatant criminality.
I won’t admit a fucking thing to you. Deal with it.
Yesterday Admin said “As soon as we lower the tax rate to 5%, I’m sure our patriotic mega-corporations will repatriate those trillions of profits and create millions of jobs in the good old US of A.” In response I said “If the rate was 5 percent money would return.” That was not a suggestion of a 5% rate, but a shear refutation of his position. If the rate was 5%, the money sure as fuck would return, as it would be world’s lowest rate, and money flows like water in that situation.
At a 5% tax rate the money would return into the greedy pockets of the scum that run corporate America. It would generate ZERO new jobs. So why reduce the fucking rate?