GOP: Put up or shut up

[rb336]

Multinational Monitor, Vol 25, No. 11

Aerospace and defense companies enjoyed the lowest effective tax rate over the three years, paying only 1.6 percent of their profits in federal income taxes. This industry's taxes declined sharply over the three years, falling to -30.0 percent of profits in 2003.
Other very low-tax industries, paying less than half the statutory 35 percent tax rate over the entire 2001-2003 period, included: transportation [[4.3 percent), industrial and farm equipment [[6.2 percent), telecommunications [[7.5 percent), electronics and electrical equipment [[10.8 percent), petroleum and pipelines [[13.3 percent), miscellaneous services [[14.4 percent), gas and electric utilities [[14.4 percent), computers, office equipment, software and data [[16.0 percent), and metals & metal products [[17.4 percent).
Not a single industry paid an effective tax rate of more than 29 percent, either for the entire three-year period or in any given year.

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSN...080812?sp=true

The Government Accountability Office said 72 percent of all foreign corporations and about 57 percent of U.S. companies doing business in the United States paid no federal income taxes for at least one year between 1998 and 2005...
During that time corporate sales in the United States totaled $2.5 trillion

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QED

[maxx]

Interesting arguments on both sides about U.S. ag. subsidies.

http://www.idebate.org/debatabase/to...hp?topicID=613

[maxx]

oladub:. I mean, how many dollars did the Bush tax cuts for the rich amount to compared with the $14T [[Mother Jones figure) dumped into the banking system mostly by the Obama Treasury and the Fed ?

maxx: Don't forget the completely unnecessary Iraq war debt. And I guess, the question is: where would our economy be right now if we hadn't bailed out the banks?

[oladub]

oladub:. I mean, how many dollars did the Bush tax cuts for the rich amount to compared with the $14T [[Mother Jones figure) dumped into the banking system mostly by the Obama Treasury and the Fed ?

maxx: Don't forget the completely unnecessary Iraq war debt. And I guess, the question is: where would our economy be right now if we hadn't bailed out the banks?

maxx, Ag subsidies are designed to go to the rich whether it is for not growing corn or irrigation rights. From http://costofwar.com/, the total cost of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, to date is almost $1T. The banks should have been allowed to go bankrupt so that debts could be liquidated and the economy could rebuild. Not to advocate this but had the $14T given to the Wall Street banks, Fannie, Freddie, & friends been instead distributed to Americans, the average family would have received a check for $84,000 and most people would not be in mortgage trouble.

Every step of the way, be it these corporate ag subsidies, wars, or outragious Wall Street subsidies, Democrats have voted right along with Republicans.

[ghettopalmetto]

The banks should have been allowed to go bankrupt so that debts could be liquidated and the economy could rebuild.

How do you propose to rebuild the economy without a functioning monetary system?

[oladub]

How do you propose to rebuild the economy without a functioning monetary system?

We first have to recognize the things that took down the economy including massive corruption, greed, and too much government spending. The perpetrators of these things, whether Goldman-Sachs or their bought and paid for politicians must be brought down. The greed and corruption must not be subsidized with bailouts. The rotten to the core government institutions like Fannie and Freddie need to be abolished. Let the more conservative and smaller banks pick up the pieces for pennies on the dollar because that is all trash that Goldman Sachs is selling to the taxpayers through Fannie/Freddie is worth.

Think of it. The Federal Reserve is owned by the nation's largest banks. The Federal Reserve prints electronic money out of thin air with the permission of the government and distributes that money to its owner banks for less than 1% interest. The owner banks then loan the money to the federal government for 4-5%/year. The federal government bills the taxpayers for the entire loan. 4% of trillion$ is a lot of money. What a racket right at the heart of our financial system. Then when those same banks get too greedy, the taxpayers are forced to bail them out. This should make taxpayers angry.Taxpayers, to date, have instead responded by voting in politicians who are financed by those same banks. This isn't working. We have to stop believing that government officials pre-selected by controlling financial interests will more than nominally or incidentally work in our favor when they have other masters.

"The government doesn’t work. It is broken. It can’t be fixed. It can’t be fixed because only those within it could, and their interest lies in not fixing it."
-exerpt Fred Reed Taking the Tenth The Last Hope 3/19/10

[maxx]

oladub: had the $14T given to the Wall Street banks, Fannie, Freddie, & friends been instead distributed to Americans, the average family would have received a check for $84,000 and most people would not be in mortgage trouble.

maxx: What are you talking about? $84,000 doesn't go very far , and the people who had mortgages they couldn't afford would still be in trouble. I don't know how long bankruptcy takes. I understand that GM got hustled through the process with uncommon speed. So while all the major banks were going through bankruptcy, what would the rest of us be doing ?

[ghettopalmetto]

oladub: had the $14T given to the Wall Street banks, Fannie, Freddie, & friends been instead distributed to Americans, the average family would have received a check for $84,000 and most people would not be in mortgage trouble.

maxx: What are you talking about? $84,000 doesn't go very far

Assuming the numbers are correct, $84,000 *really* doesn't go all that far when all of our money is worthless due to lack of a functioning monetary system.

[oladub]

maxx: What are you talking about? $84,000 doesn't go very far , and the people who had mortgages they couldn't afford would still be in trouble.

ghettopalmetto: Assuming the numbers are correct, $84,000 *really* doesn't go all that far when all of our money is worthless due to lack of a functioning monetary system.

If someone's mortgage payment's were $2,000 a month, $84,000 would pay for the next 3.5 years of mortgage payments and keep the bank in business. Please understand that I wasn't advocating writing out $84,000 stimulus checks to every American family. I was instead trying to point out the enormity of the wealth transfer from working class America to our financial elites in the last two years.

I forgot to mention in my previous post that Senator Dodd and President Obama have a plan to regulate the banks. The plan is to give the megabank owned Federal Reserve even more power by having it 'regulate' the banks that own it. This is the ultimate case of hiring the fox to guard the henhouse. This is corruption and betrayal at the highest level of government.

I don't know your backgrounds but, to me, $84,000 is a huge amount of money. I grew up among Flemings who didn't trust banks to the point that they did not lose any houses in the depression because they refused to take bank loans. They built their own houses after living in garages and borrowed from relatives. From what I read, modern Korean immigrants do much the same thing is starting up businesses. If individuals or banks unwisely get in over their heads, they put themselves at risk by their own choices. For the record, I am more of a modern American, who has taken out home loans from banks although I did build and sell a house in Kalkaska County along the way sort of as a right of passage.

Monetary policy? Had the US remained on a gold and silver standard as required by the Constitution, the federal government would not have been able to print money to support unpopular spending programs and wars. We would not have the inflation we do today. I just figured this out, since 1969, a high point, gasoline prices have gone up 9x while the price of gold has increased 25 times. Had the dollar still been linked to gold, a dollar would today buy 2.78x more gasoline and more of it would still be in the pockets of working people.

Or by monetary policy do you mean the ramblings of the NY Times fool Paul Krugman whose recent rant is to blame China for not fulling floating it's currency? I don't know if it's such a good idea to insult and make demands of our national banker. Like the homeowners mentioned previously, had the US government been more prudent in it's spending, it wouldn't be beholden to China.