Pat Oliphant for April 14, 2011

So you give big tax cuts to huge corporations so they can use that money to hire people get the economy moving again and they keep it … . what a surprise.

http://abcnews.go.com/Business/hoarding-hiring-corporations-stockpile-mountain-cash/story?id=10250559

no, they stimulated the trickle

Corporations don’t pay taxes, they collect them.

Should have been drawn more like an Alice in Wonderland cartoon. Then it would have been more believable.

There are enough stats on both sides to confirm anyone’s visceral opinions…

Our “retail” corporate tax rate (35%) is high compared to other nations but filled with so many loopholes it’s effectively ~20% - essentially the same as most countries. And here companies can buy loopholes tailored to themselves.

The wealthy do pay more taxes on a dollar-to-dollar basis, because 35% of $10M is a lot more than 25% of $40,000. I’ve heard conservatives say that 50% of the country pay no taxes so why should they?

To which I respond 1) The kleptocratic executive class gets rich despite the fact they don’t demonstrate anything they do to earn it. The executive/employee pay ratio in this country is about 500/1, about double the rest of the developed world.

2) Because the unemployed or underemployed don’t make enough to hit the bottom rung is hardly an excuse to let the richest off the hook. $1000 to a poor person is worth a hell of a lot more to someone with nothing than someone with $100M.

3) Reaganomics is a proven failure. Even Laffer and Stockman have disavowed it.

4) In some of our most prosperous decades the top tax bracket has been over 70%

5) Even Adam Smith advocated a graduated tax system (though he might have argued a flat rate on income is “graduated” because a percentage of more is more)

Yeah harley….now tell us the one about how the Easter Fairy is coming soon.

Or, is it the Tooth Bunny? I always get those two confused.

It’s the Repubs who have been waging class warfare, NOT Obama or any Dem. And it’s not wealth envy, only a desire to see the folks who have been making out like bandits for the last 30 years. ( Performing such vital tasks as as managing hedge funds ) pay their fair share.

^The problem with Harleykinns and Peetey is that they think that everyone in America wants to be an entrepreneur. Little do they realize that there are some people who WANT to be mechanics, customer service reps, or real estate agents. There are some who can’t even become that since they don’t have the skills. To them those people are lazy. And in their minds we should reward the risk takers and punish those that don’t put anything up.

If you make a living you’re lazy. If you make a ton of money off of wall street gaming the system then you’re successful.

The top marginal tax rate when Reagan took office was 70%; now it is down to 35%. Combined with not having to pay SS taxes after your first $106K or so, it is obvious why the tax burden is falling on the middle and lower classes. That, combined with wage stagnation for the bottom 90% over the last 30 years has ensured that the middle class is an endangered species.

Umm… harleyquinn… Could you repeat that in English?

^ harley’s mad because he thinks we’re at war with the class HE”S going to belong to someday….and just you wait, it will happen.

The ACTUAL “average” tax rate PAID by corporations, large and small, hovers around 6%. Most is paid by SMALL corporations indeed, but hey, let’s not change the code and close the loopholes- can’t you see all the CEOs lined up to pay?

Corporations don’t pay taxes, they collect them. This is true to a point, but it is those SO BIG corporate salaries and benefits that need TAX TAPPING.

^ Isn’t that hilarious?

“Illegal aliens are ILLEGAL, rawr rawr rawr! Fix the laws, send ‘em home! Rawr rawr rawr Go Arizona!” “How DARE Obama not care for his ILLEGAL ALIEN Aunt?! Rawr Rawr Rawr!”

Holy Bejaesus….what has that man been smokin…we ALL know that that particular group is as likely to pay their fair share as Quadafi is willing to step down

Nice, meetinthemiddle. I would add..

1) Yes, the data says the vast majority of the rich inherited their status. Hard-working my (*&%

3) If you keep over-feeding the rich, something trickles down, but it’s not money. They keep that, except for the part that goes to politicians to keep the rates low. The rich ^may^ invest in the economy, or they may just buy a place on the Riviera. When the chips are down, i.e. a recession, they’ll quickly “uninvest” , leading to a boom-and-bust economy. The middle class will always pump as much money as they can right back in to our consumer economy. When they were doing better, we all were doing better.

We also have a lot of capital in the hands of the children of rich people, even the lazy, stupid, or both. At the same time, someone twice as smart can’t start a business because they’re paying off college loans, or were bankrupted by a child’s health problem, or were born in a district with poor schools.

Both common sense and history should clearly tell us that low tax rates for the rich don’t make us a better country. Using their largesse to provide a superior infrastructure and an educated workforce is what made us great.

^ I used to know a guy who argued that there is usually a “regression to the mean”. In other words, the rich inheriting wealth will eventually fritter it away.

I’ve known several “formerly old money” families that demonstrate the principal.

But like corporate monopolies, I refer to it as the “Roman Empire” theory of capitalism - sure, all empires eventually fall, but do you want to wait 1500 years?

It doesn’t matter who is TALKING about class warefare. It matters who is WINNING class warfare.

it’s easy to see, just open your eyes and look.

^In other words the rich are anti-Competition.

Middle, the american closer is closer to downfall than you think. Modern empires don’t last millenias.

Especially when they are in their “over-the-top” phases, their final boom.

The absolute monarchy, the Versailles days were the glorious last days of the french monarchy; 125 years that gave us the best in french-language art, litterature, science and thought. The last 125 years before the revolution.

Germany had its golden, nationalistic years at top of the World, too. The country was unified between 1870 and 1945, for 75 years. In those days, the German-speaking World gave us Freud and Einstein. Just a few years before, the Rhur valley was an epicenter of the industrial revolution. They let it go to their heads, believed a guy named Hitler who told them they were the supreme race and we know the rest.

The Soviet empire lasted 72 years, too.

The British empire lasted several centuries, but Britain was just a colonial power among others for most of it. It reigned supreme between 1815 and 1914. A century. They gave us the industrial revolution, trains, steamships and a good deal of modern medicine. They believed they were exceptionnal, meant to rule the World.

It’s like they can’t outlast too many generations. Most of those places had crippling flaws (poverty) at the heart of their capital cities an their grandeur was mostly an image. Those are more fragile than you think.

America’s great century at the top of the World gave us the film and television industry, rock and roll music and the internet. It started at the end of WW2, 65 years ago…

And people are already fool enough to think America is exceptionnal! Famous last words.

America’s decline won’t mean the US will stop existing as a country. Germany, France, Russia and England are still countries, are they?

It will simply mean they won’t be the only ones calling the shots anymore.

^What a ridiculous manipulation of statistics in that article. The top .01 percent? When you pick such a tiny slice, of course they are out of it soon. The odds of anyone staying in such a narrow band are ridiculously small for any income range. Do they actually fall out of the top 1%, a group 100 times larger? Highly unlikely.

Notice he quotes mobility figures from the 70’s and 80’s? That’s because if he used more recent figures, he’d prove his own point wrong. Plus, mobility figures differ from study to study, mainly depending on their methodology, and this right-wing partisan writer has obviously picked the one that shows the most mobility. Other studies clearly show that Scandinavian countries have 4-5 times higher mobility than we do, and that our own mobility has been declining.

http://tinyurl.com/3sq75uf

http://www.economicmobility.org/assets/pdfs/EMP%20American%20Dream%20Report.pdf

http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/2010/01/social-mobility-in-america/

Also, the 8% figure doesn’t appear in that article, so must have gotten that from somewhere else or made it up.

^ I heard that in Illinois in the 1800s, they actually passed a law decreeing pi to be 3 instead of having all those pesky decimals :)

Anyone who thinks anti-intellectualism (anti-thinking) is new is wrong.

Anti-intellectualism is as old as the human race. It’s just that we’re in a new resurgence of it.

But the corporations need all that money to buy the next election (Thank you SCOTUS) so they can keep bleeding the general public dry and giving mega bonuses to their CEO’s.

meetinthemiddle, it wasn’t Illinois, it was Indiana. And it wasn’t actually a law mandating pi to be 3 (I’d originally heard 4). It had something to do with a newly “discovered” method of squaring a circle, that some legislator wanted read into the record, giving it legitimacy. Google “Indiana Pi Bill” for details (I tried to post the wikipedia link, but this forum won’t parse the underscores).

So it wasn’t quite as stupid as it sounds, but even so I have to stick up for my home state, Illinois.

^^You have hoods in Boca Raton, FL?

HAHAHAHAHAHAA!!!!

Those old people must O.G.’s shooting up the place, huh pops?

I have to ask you pops did you accept food stamps when you were an ice cream truck driver? Or did you have those neat swiping card machines on-board? Cause last I checked those people get paid with one or the other. Some of them have jobs ya know.

BTW according to the CIA our distribution of family income is worse than Egypt. How are you and Harleykinns correct about living the American Dream besides those right wing websites you guys visit?

Nothing in that pile of figures you entered proves me wrong, Church.

Russell, I believe he was shooting for quintile, though he never used the word.

From the study referenced by Church:

“Contrary to American beliefs about equality of opportunity, a child’s economic position is heavily influenced by that of his or her parents. Forty-two percent of children born to parents in the bottom fifth of the income distribution remain in the bottom, while 39 percent born to parents in the top fifth remain at the top.”

42% to 6, and this is the study you chose to show high mobiltiy? Other nations are doing much better.

If the Republicans are allowed to slash at will, ours will get much worse.

Also note that these studies are looking at income and not wealth. If you are born into a family worth many millions, where’s the drive to work? One in such a position could easily drop out of the top income quintile, while remaining quite wealthy.

It might be significant, but as I pointed out, one who had no need to work because of their parent’s wealth would also drop a long way under the methodology used, that of looking at income and not wealth. I also suspect some of them also have “fallen out with the family”, gone out in to the world, and found it’s a tough place.

I’m not talking about taking money from the rich and merely giving it to the poor. Handing a bunch of cash to the poor would be an excellent short-term stimulus, but unsustainable long-term policy. We fell into that trap a bit pre-Reagan, but not so much today, and even less since the 1996 effort led by Gingrich’s Congress and signed by Clinton.

The countries who are leaving us in the dust in mobility are doing a much better job of funding education and health care, along with other supports for the unemployed and working parents. I find it morally reprehensible to allow any child of poor parents to attend a poor public school or do without regular health care. It’s also counter-productive if we don’t enable them to become someone with the health and skills to support themselves and pay taxes.

I