If fidgety do-gooders can sit still long enough to watch this, it’s a very easy to follow, reasoned explanation of why robbing the rich to feed the government will never work.
Stealing in any of it’s forms is counter to solidarity. So go ahead and chow down, Occupiers, but you’ll be hungry again in an hour.
Posted in: Economics and Politics
Anymouse
January 8, 2012
Wealth destruction.
Laceagate
January 8, 2012
This is why eating refined carbs is bad for you…
Elspeth
January 8, 2012
This is why eating refined carbs is bad for you…
LOL!
The problem is not that the rich pay too little in taxes, but that government and big business are too closely intertwined. Sheesh, don’t people get this yet?
Or are they too busy demanding their pound of flesh?
Laceagate
January 8, 2012
People know that big business and government are intertwined for sure. In fact, they are more than intertwined. If you could draw a Venn diagram, there’s so much overlap that you might as well draw another circle in the middle. Agriculture is no more, it’s become agribusiness, and the government is slowly but surely turning everything into a service with its involvement.
Alte
January 8, 2012
The problem is not that the rich pay too little in taxes
Everyone pays too little in taxes and spending is too high. Cut the guv by 60% and raise taxes on everyone.
Saint Velvet
January 8, 2012
I was actually disappointed (why do I continue to let myself be surprised by anything these people do) that Panetta as head of the Pentagon didn’t take the brilliant political opportunity to say that yes, while all spending should be cut, that the military as the self-professed example of efficiency and stoicism would in fact lead the way in showing how much more could be done with less. The Republican candidates were fools for not latching on to the same idea, instead whining about defense cuts. There is ultimately only peril in waste.
Laceagate
January 8, 2012
Cut the guv by 60%
The day that happens is when I buy the newspaper, laminate it, and save it in our lock-box to preserve for posterity.
empathologicalism
January 9, 2012
alte
No
Tax everyone. Not raise taxes on everyone.
Skin in the game makes for responsible citizens, cures ignorance and apathy too.
Even tax welfare and benefits, tax the poor…INDEED, show them the cumulative power of $20/week or something.
Unless and until 90% are paying SOMETHING…..fugetaboutit
Elspeth
January 9, 2012
You read my mind, empath. This is exactly right. Although that’s probably what Alte meant in the first place, it’s a vital distinction that needs to be articulated correctly.
Alte
January 9, 2012
If someone is paying zero taxes, then raising taxes on them would mean that they pay “more than zero” taxes.
Black_Rose
January 9, 2012
Here’s a pitch from my left arm from my 6’1″, 175 lbs frame (no, I am not that tall, nor a male, and I am right-handed):
http://www.bea.gov/iTable/iTable.cfm?ReqID=9&step=1
Table 6.16D…
I don’t know what are the profits of the Fortune 500, but it is highly dubious that it is only $357 billion. Note the table I provide said Corporate Profits, which presumably doesn’t include the profits from the vaunted small businesses. The table says that Corporate Profits, from domestic industries, in 2011 are at least $4.3 trillion, and that’s omitting the fourth quarter.
It’s a 90 mph sinker on the low insider corner.
Another pitch:
Also, it is likely that most corporate profits are not equally distributed, and that there is immense inequality among corporations. For instance, the weighted average of Market Capitalization of the Russell 2000 (the bottom 2/3s of the Russell 3000) is $1.28 billion (as of 5/31/11) while for the Russell 1000, it is $80.6 billion. (Of course, this requires on the reasonable assumption that a company’s market capitalization is a reliably proxy for its current profit rate.) One cannot, therefore, retort that most of the profits are spread among other corporations not part of the Fortune 500.
http://www.russell.com/indexes/tools-resources/reconstitution/us-capitalization-ranges.asp
An 80 mph change-up on the low outside corner.
I imagine myself to be like Jaime Garcia: people like Stephen Gowans and Henry CK Liu are like Cliff Lee and Clayton Kershaw; they got better “stuff” than me.
Saint Velvet
January 9, 2012
Rosie, I think the little video was an over simplification, to be sure. But profits aren’t the problem, spending is the problem, taxing labor is the problem. Reconfigure the corporate profits to suit whatever model of corruption you like, but there will still never be enough of other people’s money to pay for it.
Elspeth
January 9, 2012
If someone is paying zero taxes, then raising taxes on them would mean that they pay “more than zero” taxes.
Well yes, that’s why I said you were including even those who pay no taxes now in your first statement. However the longer I live the more I realize that there is no such thing as “It goes without saying”. NOTHING goes without saying, even among the ostensibly more intelligent, LOL.
Alte
January 9, 2012
Extreme profits are a sign of extreme rent-seeking. Normally, in a competitive environment, no company should be able to skim such amounts off of their customers as competitors would quickly pop up to get their share of the loot. As sales stagnate, this is evidence of onerous copyright and patent laws, rampant monopolization (which suggests government picking favorites among businesses), and lots of financial wizardry in their accounting departments (companies making more money investing in financial vehicles than in the development of their companies or product lines).
Smaller businesses can’t earn that sort of profit because they don’t have the same access to political power and cheap credit. Bubble #42 is going to pop soon, and it’ll be gruesome.
Alte
January 9, 2012
But profits aren’t the problem, spending is the problem, taxing labor is the problem.
Profits, spending, and taxing are all not technically “problems” unless they get out of balance, and they are now all out of balance. Profits and government spending are both obscenely high, and taxes are just an obscene mess. The money the companies are taking in and the governments are spending is coming from somewhere, after all. They’re taking it out of our pockets, but delivering precious little in return.
The idea that “we all benefit” from corporate profits depends upon the assumption that those profits are being spent or reinvested in the companies. But they aren’t. They’re being parked at the banks and investment portfolios, where they turn a huge profit just for storing it there. Everyone’s staying liquid and waiting for the whole thing to burn down. They’re just collecting our money for a rainy day now.
Black_Rose
January 9, 2012
“Bubble #42 is going to pop soon, and it’ll be gruesome.”
No, according to the data I presented, there is no bubble. It seems that the corporations are immune to the macroeconomic travails that ordinary citizens are vulnerable to; in fact, they thrive in such an environment.
Sure, the stock market may crash due to a euro-zone default, but that is due the general correlation (beta statistic) of the broad market with the solvency of the global financial system.
Saint Velvet
January 9, 2012
Extreme profits are a sign of extreme rent-seeking.
Right, but that’s an element of corruption – you can’t answer the problem with more corruption and expect the result to be anything better. Taking the extreme rent seeking profits and transferring them to the extreme benny seeking zombie snacks isn’t a solution. There is NEVER enough of other peoples money, no matter how it was acquired or how much is “spread around”.
Alte
January 9, 2012
It seems that the corporations are immune to the macroeconomic travails that ordinary citizens are vulnerable to; in fact, they thrive in such an environment.
Well, obviously they’re now making much of their profit overseas, as consumers eventually crop up around producers, and they’re all producing elsewhere now. They just bring the debts home to write them off of their taxes.
But the corporations are “thriving” on the cheap credit from the Fed, and that will only last another year or two.
Saint Velvet
January 9, 2012
They’re just collecting our money for a rainy day now.
lol, you think they’ll enjoy watching us get wet? It will be like a reverse fish tank.
I specifically target tax on labor as a problem, not taxes, period.
Alte
January 9, 2012
There is NEVER enough of other peoples money, no matter how it was acquired or how much is “spread around”.
This is true. My point is that extreme corporate profits are also “other people’s money”. They didn’t earn that money, they just rake it in with government complicity. And with our current stock market design they HAVE to rake it in, or their stock price takes a hit because investors expect ever-rising profits every quarter. And the government encourages it because so many voters (read: retirees) are investors, and they’d immediately go broke if they’re not getting 8% returns.
The entire system is broken.
Alte
January 9, 2012
I specifically target tax on labor as a problem, not taxes, period.
It’s best to tax rents, not labor, but you are against that. So what do you propose taxing? Sales/consumption taxes? That is highly regressive, you know. And the FAIR tax would again set up a complicated system of exemptions and breaks.
Saint Velvet
January 9, 2012
No, I’m not against taxing rents, I’m for removing the system that perpetuates the political exchange with big business. There would less rent to tax in that case, so yes, money would have to come from somewhere. Lower taxes on production (small ag, mfg, hard and soft lines), actually collect some taxes without reciprocal tax credits from pie in the sky types, that sort of thing.
Consumption tax is the only “fair” tax on the individual level. It’s not necessarily regressive, it’s just unfamiliar. It’s just one more line on the receipt, really, and ensures that everyone pays something. Of course, that will dry up the rents for the tax attys so dream on…