America’s wealthiest families smash income ceiling, middle-class left far behind

[MeBelle]

Show me.

Have at least 10 K handy. Go see your investment broker and confront him hard. He will hee haw around at first. The Banks know about it but don't pass it on. Big investors know about it but won't comment on it. Good luck. It's a Rich Man's Secret.

$10k makes someone rich?? wth is a 777 account?

He made it up.

That's what I thought!

Do a simple search for a 777 account or investment. You will notice that most of the investment firms will come up but NONE will actually admit to a 777 investment account. It goes to the select few, not you.

Show me!

Or this goes straight into conspiracy theories.
~Mebellien Mothership

 

[Londoner]

The middle class was created by postwar liberalism. It was based on the New Deal, progressive taxation, trade protections and policies that tied American capital to American labor, antitrust legislation and powerful labor laws. It was also based on the Fed's traditional role of using fiscal stimulus to maintain full employment. The fed's role changed to austerity for workers under Reagan . . . fighting inflation being the primary objective.

[The theory of "Demand Side" liberalism was that a solvent middle class with more spending money would flock into main street stores waiving dollars - so much so that the capitalist would have an incentive to invest and add jobs to soak up all the consumer spending. This created the golden era of American capitalism and lead to the spectacular economic growth of the 50s-60s.]

Reagan declared war on the New Deal and created policies that moved resources and wealth from the middle class, where it was broadly shared, to the wealthy, where it has risen to levels of concentration beyond that of most 3rd world dictatorships.

Reagan's goal was to give suppliers cheaper labor (i.e., cheaper operating costs) because the prospect of higher returns would create a greater incentive to invest and grow the economy. This lead to greater capital mobility, as suppliers were freed to scour the globe for the cheapest possible labor (usually found in freedom-hating dictatorships with downtrodden, freedom-less workers who make Nike sneakers for under $5/day. This lead to spectacular profits for US Corporations, and it lowered wages for the US labor market who, all the sudden, had to compete with Chinese sweatshops).

As U.S. wages went down and production was shifted to the 3rd world, the U.S. workforce, having lost good jobs/wages/benefits, was put on credit cards. The American Worker shifted from wage based consumption to debt based consumption. Don't take my word for it; research what happened to family debt levels starting in 1980. It will blow your mind.

Debt based consumption gave us a wild ride in the 80s and 90s, as strapped Americans flocked into shopping malls with credit cards to buy stuff manufactured in China.

Problem is, the debt eventually destroyed the middle class, which is a lot like what happened to 3rd world nations after the WB & IMF came to town.

Debt is a great tool of enslavement, and it works best when your lower and middle classes can't survive without it.

We swallowed poison in 1980 . . .

 

[Dad2three]

The middle class was created by postwar liberalism. It was based on the New Deal, progressive taxation, trade protections and policies that tied American capital to American labor, antitrust legislation and powerful labor laws. It was also based on the Fed's traditional role of using fiscal stimulus to maintain full employment. The fed's role changed to austerity for workers under Reagan . . . fighting inflation being the primary objective.

[The theory of "Demand Side" liberalism was that a solvent middle class with more spending money would flock into main street stores waiving dollars - so much so that the capitalist would have an incentive to invest and add jobs to soak up all the consumer spending. This created the golden era of American capitalism and lead to the spectacular economic growth of the 50s-60s.]

Reagan declared war on the New Deal and created policies that moved resources and wealth from the middle class, where it was broadly shared, to the wealthy, where it has risen to levels of concentration beyond that of most 3rd world dictatorships.

Reagan's goal was to give suppliers cheaper labor (i.e., cheaper operating costs) because the prospect of higher returns would create a greater incentive to invest and grow the economy. This lead to greater capital mobility, as suppliers were freed to scour the globe for the cheapest possible labor (usually found in freedom-hating dictatorships with oppressed, downtrodden, freedom-less workers who made Nike sneakers while making under $5/day. This lead to spectacular profits for US Corporations, and it lowered wages for the US labor market who, all the sudden, had to compete with Chinese sweatshops).

As U.S. wages went down and production was shifted to the 3rd world, the U.S. workforce, having lost good jobs/wages/benefits, was put on credit cards. The American Worker shifted from wage based consumption to debt based consumption. Don't take my word for it; research what happened to family debt levels starting in 1980. It will blow your mind.

Debt based consumption gave us a wild ride in the 80s and 90s, as strapped Americans flocked into shopping malls with credit cards to buy stuff manufactured in China.

Problem is, the debt eventually destroyed the middle class, which is a lot like what happened to 3rd world nations after the WB & IMF came to town.

Debt is a great tool of enslavement, and it works best when your lower and middle classes can't survive without it.

We swallowed poison in 1980 . . .

Profits Just Hit Another All-Time High, Wages Just Hit Another All-Time Low

1) Corporate profit margins just hit another all-time high. Companies are making more per dollar of sales than they ever have before. (And some people are still saying that companies are suffering from "too much regulation" and "too many taxes." Maybe little companies are, but big ones certainly aren't. What they're suffering from is a myopic obsession with short-term profits at the expense of long-term value creation).


2) Wages as a percent of the economy just hit another all-time low. Why are corporate profits so high? One reason is that companies are paying employees less than they ever have as a share of GDP. And that, in turn, is one reason the economy is so weak: Those "wages" are represent spending power for consumers. And consumer spending is "revenue" for other companies. So the profit obsession is actually starving the rest of the economy of revenue growth.

In short, our current obsessed-with-profits philosophy is creating a country of a few million overlords and 300+ million serfs.

Profits At High Wages At Low - Business Insider

 

[Toddsterpatriot]

Hmmm... how come?

\

AGAIN:

Loopholes mainly Bubba

GOP blocks Sanders' proposal to close tax loophole


The Senate voted Tuesday to reject a proposal by Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont that would have created millions of infrastructure jobs and closed an "absurd" tax loophole to pay for the plan.

Fifty-two lawmakers opposed the proposal during votes on amendments to a GOP fiscal 2016 budget proposal. Forty-five supported it in the party-line vote.

The tax loopholes targeted by Sanders' amendment let corporations and wealthy Americans shift jobs and profits overseas, often to offshore tax havens like the Cayman Islands. Nearly $100 billion is lost annually to offshore tax dodging, according to the U.S. Treasury.

GOP blocks Sanders proposal to close tax loophole

The tax loopholes targeted by Sanders' amendment let corporations and wealthy Americans shift jobs

A loophole is needed to "shift jobs"?
What loophole is that?
Any specifics?

"The law, right now, permits companies that close down American factories and offices and move those jobs overseas to take a tax deduction for the costs associated with moving the jobs to China or India or wherever."

That was the assertion of Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse earlier this fall when he went on the floor of the Senate to argue for a bill, designated S-3816 and known as the "Creating American Jobs and Ending Offshoring Act."

The proposal, he said, "would close some really perverse loopholes in the tax code that, right now, reward American companies for moving American jobs overseas. The law, right now, permits companies that close down American factories and offices and move those jobs overseas to take a tax deduction for the costs associated with moving the jobs to China or India or wherever."

There's nothing controversial about allowing companies to deduct their expenses for doing business, but does the tax system actually help companies cover the cost of moving local jobs to another country?

"You can take a business deduction for the costs associated with moving the job. So if you close down your factory in Providence, pack everything up and have to train the workers and ship the machinery overseas, all the costs associated with that are tax deductions," she said.

As a result, companies get back roughly a third of their expense at the expense of U.S. taxpayers, she said.


"There have been a lot of attempts over the years to get rid of this," but corporation lobbyists have argued that the loophole is needed because it creates more jobs, said Lee. "You can believe that or not. I don't give it a lot of credence."

Whitehouse says companies get a tax break for moving jobs overseas PolitiFact Rhode Island


GUESS WHICH PARTY BLOCKS IT EVERY SINGLE TIME??? LOL

"The law, right now, permits companies that close down American factories and offices and move those jobs overseas to take a tax deduction for the costs associated with moving the jobs to China or India or wherever."

If a company moves equipment and incurs an expense, it can write off that business expense.
There is no expense to "ship a job", so no write off.

It would be fun to cut our corporate tax rate to a sane level, so foreign countries would "ship jobs" here. I guess Dems aren't interested in that.

Right Gov't couldn't get rid of that expense write off right? Can you guess who has fought Obama's proposals since 2010 to lower Corp taxes from 35% to 28% and getting rid of loopholes to use for infrastructure?



Yeah, jobs aren't being created in the US because the tax rates *shaking head*

HINT RECORD CORP PROFITS, LOWEST LABOR EXPENSE EVER RECORDED AND A 11% AVG CORP RATE!

Right Gov't couldn't get rid of that expense write off right?

You don't want a corporation to write off the expense of shipping equipment?

Can you guess who has fought Obama's proposals since 2010 to lower Corp taxes from 35% to 28%

The people who understand his proposal would end up increasing taxes?

Yeah, jobs aren't being created in the US because the tax rates *shaking head*

Jobs are lost to lower rate areas so they won't come back, or be lost more slowly, if our rates are lowered? Is that your claim? LOL!

 

[Londoner]

This is why capitalism is so crisis-prone, because the drive for higher returns destroys consumer demand through lower wages, fewer benefits and the elimination of government programs that help the middle class (e.g., affordable public universities). The resulting austerity increases the consumer's reliance on debt. Under this kind of model, the economy runs out of solvent consumers. When this happens - as it did to Bush 43, who inherited a middle class that spent more than it earned by an alarming degree - there is pressure to find more borrowers to meet the demand requirements of the world's most robust consumption economy.

Problem is, when you run out of solvent borrowers you have to start lending to non-credit-worthy borrowers.

I don't have to tell you how this ends.

(You cannot run a 1st word consumption economy on a 3rd world wage & benefit structure without toxic levels of debt. At some point capitalism, by constantly having to fabricate demand, ends up getting swallowed by one of its own bubbles)

 

[Dad2three]

\

AGAIN:

Loopholes mainly Bubba

GOP blocks Sanders' proposal to close tax loophole


The Senate voted Tuesday to reject a proposal by Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont that would have created millions of infrastructure jobs and closed an "absurd" tax loophole to pay for the plan.

Fifty-two lawmakers opposed the proposal during votes on amendments to a GOP fiscal 2016 budget proposal. Forty-five supported it in the party-line vote.

The tax loopholes targeted by Sanders' amendment let corporations and wealthy Americans shift jobs and profits overseas, often to offshore tax havens like the Cayman Islands. Nearly $100 billion is lost annually to offshore tax dodging, according to the U.S. Treasury.

GOP blocks Sanders proposal to close tax loophole

The tax loopholes targeted by Sanders' amendment let corporations and wealthy Americans shift jobs

A loophole is needed to "shift jobs"?
What loophole is that?
Any specifics?

"The law, right now, permits companies that close down American factories and offices and move those jobs overseas to take a tax deduction for the costs associated with moving the jobs to China or India or wherever."

That was the assertion of Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse earlier this fall when he went on the floor of the Senate to argue for a bill, designated S-3816 and known as the "Creating American Jobs and Ending Offshoring Act."

The proposal, he said, "would close some really perverse loopholes in the tax code that, right now, reward American companies for moving American jobs overseas. The law, right now, permits companies that close down American factories and offices and move those jobs overseas to take a tax deduction for the costs associated with moving the jobs to China or India or wherever."

There's nothing controversial about allowing companies to deduct their expenses for doing business, but does the tax system actually help companies cover the cost of moving local jobs to another country?

"You can take a business deduction for the costs associated with moving the job. So if you close down your factory in Providence, pack everything up and have to train the workers and ship the machinery overseas, all the costs associated with that are tax deductions," she said.

As a result, companies get back roughly a third of their expense at the expense of U.S. taxpayers, she said.


"There have been a lot of attempts over the years to get rid of this," but corporation lobbyists have argued that the loophole is needed because it creates more jobs, said Lee. "You can believe that or not. I don't give it a lot of credence."

Whitehouse says companies get a tax break for moving jobs overseas PolitiFact Rhode Island


GUESS WHICH PARTY BLOCKS IT EVERY SINGLE TIME??? LOL

"The law, right now, permits companies that close down American factories and offices and move those jobs overseas to take a tax deduction for the costs associated with moving the jobs to China or India or wherever."

If a company moves equipment and incurs an expense, it can write off that business expense.
There is no expense to "ship a job", so no write off.

It would be fun to cut our corporate tax rate to a sane level, so foreign countries would "ship jobs" here. I guess Dems aren't interested in that.

Right Gov't couldn't get rid of that expense write off right? Can you guess who has fought Obama's proposals since 2010 to lower Corp taxes from 35% to 28% and getting rid of loopholes to use for infrastructure?



Yeah, jobs aren't being created in the US because the tax rates *shaking head*

HINT RECORD CORP PROFITS, LOWEST LABOR EXPENSE EVER RECORDED AND A 11% AVG CORP RATE!

Right Gov't couldn't get rid of that expense write off right?

You don't want a corporation to write off the expense of shipping equipment?

Can you guess who has fought Obama's proposals since 2010 to lower Corp taxes from 35% to 28%

The people who understand his proposal would end up increasing taxes?

Yeah, jobs aren't being created in the US because the tax rates *shaking head*

Jobs are lost to lower rate areas so they won't come back, or be lost more slowly, if our rates are lowered? Is that your claim? LOL!

"You don't want a corporation to write off the expense of shipping equipment?"

NOT offshore!


"The people who understand his proposal would end up increasing taxes?"


Nonsense, it gets rid of loopholes that allow US Corp EFFECTIVE tax rates to be lower only in Mexico and Chile in the developed world!



"Jobs are lost to lower rate areas so they won't come back, or be lost more slowly, if our rates are lowered? Is that your claim? LOL"



Can't EVER be honest I see Bubba. My posit is they offshore jobs thanks to lower wages, nothing to do with the 3rd lowest effective rate in the developed world in the US

What Fortune 500 Firms Pay (or Don’t Pay) in the USA And What they Pay Abroad — 2008 to 2012

Some Key Findings:

• As a group, the 288 corporations examined paid an effective federal income tax rate of just 19.4 percent over the five-year period — far less than the statutory 35 percent tax rate.

• Twenty-six of the corporations, including Boeing, General Electric, Priceline.com and Verizon, paid no federal income tax at all over the five year period. A third of the corporations (93) paid an effective tax rate of less than ten percent over that period.

• Of those corporations in our sample with significant offshore profits, two thirds paid higher corporate tax rates to foreign governments where they operate than they paid in the U.S. on their U.S. profits.

These findings refute the prevailing view inside the Washington, D.C. Beltway that America’s corporate income tax is more burdensome than the corporate income taxes levied by other countries, and that this purported (but false) excess burden somehow makes the U.S. “uncompetitive.”

Other Findings:

• One hundred and eleven of the 288 companies (39 percent of them) paid zero or less in federal income taxes in at least one year from 2008 to 2012.

The tax breaks claimed by these companies are highly concentrated in the hands of a few very large corporations. Just 25 companies claimed $174 billion in tax breaks over the five years between 2008 and 2012. That’s almost half the $364 billion in tax subsidies claimed by all of the 288 companies in our sample.

• Five companies — Wells Fargo, AT&T, IBM, General Electric, and Verizon — enjoyed over $77 billion in tax breaks during this five-year period.


Recommendations for Reform:

• Congress should repeal the rule allowing American multinational corporations to indefinitely “defer” their U.S. taxes on their offshore profits. This reform would effectively remove the tax incentive to shift profits and jobs overseas.

• Limit the ability of tech and other companies to use executive stock options to reduce their taxes by generating phantom “costs” these companies never actually incur.

• Reinstate a strong corporate Alternative Minimum Tax that really does the job it was originally designed to do.

The Sorry State of Corporate Taxes Citizens for Tax Justice

 

[Dad2three]

This is why capitalism is so crisis-prone, because the drive for higher returns destroys consumer demand through lower wages, fewer benefits and the elimination of government programs that help the middle class (e.g., affordable public universities). The resulting austerity increases the consumer's reliance on debt for survival. Under this kind of model, the economy runs out of solvent consumers. When this happens - as it did to Bush 43, who inherited a middle class that spent more than it earned by an alarming degree - there is pressure to find more borrowers to meet the demand requirements of the world's most robust consumption economy.

Problem is, when you run out of solvent borrowers with jobs and collateral, you have to start lending to non-credit-worthy borrowers.

I don't have to tell you how this ends.

2) Wages as a percent of the economy just hit another all-time low. Why are corporate profits so high? One reason is that companies are paying employees less than they ever have as a share of GDP. And that, in turn, is one reason the economy is so weak: Those "wages" are represent spending power for consumers. And consumer spending is "revenue" for other companies. So the profit obsession is actually starving the rest of the economy of revenue growth.

In short, our current obsessed-with-profits philosophy is creating a country of a few million overlords and 300+ million serfs.


Profits At High Wages At Low - Business Insider

 

[Rambunctious]

A bunch of persuasive gullible middle class idiots that only pay half attention and voted for an absolute moron and a racist American freedom hater now have less money than they did under the Bush administration. I think they were warned. Live with it morons...hahahahahahahahahahaha I'm soooooo fucking glad I'm set for life and I don't have to worry about financial matters. I feel sorry for younger middle class folks today. You are screwed and will not live as well as your middle class parents have. Please America! No more idiot community organizers....okay?

 

[Dad2three]

A bunch of persuasive gullible middle class idiots that only pay half attention and voted for an absolute moron and a racist American freedom hater now have less money than they did under the Bush administration. I think they were warned. Live with it morons...hahahahahahahahahahaha I'm soooooo fucking glad I'm set for life and I don't have to worry about financial matters. I feel sorry for younger middle class folks today. You are screwed and will not live as well as your middle class parents have. Please America! No more idiot community organizers....okay?

September 27, 2010

So How Did the Bush Tax Cuts Work Out for the Economy?


The 2008 income tax data are now in, so we can assess the fulfillment of the Republican promise that tax cuts would produce widespread prosperity by looking at all the years of the George W. Bush presidency.

Just as they did in 2000, the Republicans are running this year on an economic platform of tax cuts, especially making the tax cuts permanent for the richest among us. So how did the tax cuts work out? My analysis of the new data, with all figures in 2008 dollars:

Total income was $2.74 trillion less during the eight Bush years than if incomes had stayed at 2000 levels.

That much additional income would have more than made up for the lack of demand that keeps us mired in the Great Recession.

Tax Analysts -- So How Did the Bush Tax Cuts Work Out for the Economy


The Bush Era Tax Cuts Didn't Create The Wealth They Were Supposed To

The Bush tax cuts were a test of these claims about supply-side economic policies. To justify the tax cuts the nation was, in effect, given a business prospectus from the Republican Party.

We were promised that cutting taxes on the wealthy would result in much higher economic growth and broadly shared prosperity. For those who wondered how we would pay for such a large cut to the government’s revenue stream, the Republican prospectus had a remarkable claim.

The tax cuts wouldn’t cost us anything. Growth would be so strong that the tax cuts would more than pay for themselves. Even those who admitted that the tax cuts might not be fully self-financing still made strong claims about faster economic growth offsetting much of the lost revenue from the tax cuts.


The reality, of course, has been quite different

Bush Era Tax Cuts Didn t Fix Economy - Business Insider


Supply-Side Economics Sounds Good But It Hasn't Worked


Supply-Side Economics Sounds Good But It Hasn t Worked Byron Williams

 

[Dad2three]

A bunch of persuasive gullible middle class idiots that only pay half attention and voted for an absolute moron and a racist American freedom hater now have less money than they did under the Bush administration. I think they were warned. Live with it morons...hahahahahahahahahahaha I'm soooooo fucking glad I'm set for life and I don't have to worry about financial matters. I feel sorry for younger middle class folks today. You are screwed and will not live as well as your middle class parents have. Please America! No more idiot community organizers....okay?

James Kennedy and Alan Greenspan, on the effect of mortgage equity withdrawals (MEWs) on the growth of the US economy.

Notice that in both 2001 and 2002, the US economy continued to grow on an annual basis (the "technical" recession was just a few quarters). Their work suggests that this growth was entirely due to MEWs. In fact, MEWs contributed over 3% to GDP growth in 2004 and 2005, and 2% in 2006. Without US homeowners using their homes as an ATM, the economy would have been very sluggish indeed, averaging much less than 1% for the six years of the Bush presidency. Indeed, as a side observation, without home equity withdrawals the economy would have been so bad it would have been almost impossible for Bush to have won a second term.

The Economic Blue Screen of Death - Thoughts From The Frontline - Investment Strategies Analysis Intelligence for Seasoned Investors.

 

[Jarhead]

If they would get off the Democratic party plantation they wouldn't be so poor. My income has nearly doubled since 2007.

Looks like you've done well under Obama.

Actually, I have done well despite Obama.

 

[Toddsterpatriot]

The tax loopholes targeted by Sanders' amendment let corporations and wealthy Americans shift jobs

A loophole is needed to "shift jobs"?
What loophole is that?
Any specifics?

"The law, right now, permits companies that close down American factories and offices and move those jobs overseas to take a tax deduction for the costs associated with moving the jobs to China or India or wherever."

That was the assertion of Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse earlier this fall when he went on the floor of the Senate to argue for a bill, designated S-3816 and known as the "Creating American Jobs and Ending Offshoring Act."

The proposal, he said, "would close some really perverse loopholes in the tax code that, right now, reward American companies for moving American jobs overseas. The law, right now, permits companies that close down American factories and offices and move those jobs overseas to take a tax deduction for the costs associated with moving the jobs to China or India or wherever."

There's nothing controversial about allowing companies to deduct their expenses for doing business, but does the tax system actually help companies cover the cost of moving local jobs to another country?

"You can take a business deduction for the costs associated with moving the job. So if you close down your factory in Providence, pack everything up and have to train the workers and ship the machinery overseas, all the costs associated with that are tax deductions," she said.

As a result, companies get back roughly a third of their expense at the expense of U.S. taxpayers, she said.


"There have been a lot of attempts over the years to get rid of this," but corporation lobbyists have argued that the loophole is needed because it creates more jobs, said Lee. "You can believe that or not. I don't give it a lot of credence."

Whitehouse says companies get a tax break for moving jobs overseas PolitiFact Rhode Island


GUESS WHICH PARTY BLOCKS IT EVERY SINGLE TIME??? LOL

"The law, right now, permits companies that close down American factories and offices and move those jobs overseas to take a tax deduction for the costs associated with moving the jobs to China or India or wherever."

If a company moves equipment and incurs an expense, it can write off that business expense.
There is no expense to "ship a job", so no write off.

It would be fun to cut our corporate tax rate to a sane level, so foreign countries would "ship jobs" here. I guess Dems aren't interested in that.

Right Gov't couldn't get rid of that expense write off right? Can you guess who has fought Obama's proposals since 2010 to lower Corp taxes from 35% to 28% and getting rid of loopholes to use for infrastructure?



Yeah, jobs aren't being created in the US because the tax rates *shaking head*

HINT RECORD CORP PROFITS, LOWEST LABOR EXPENSE EVER RECORDED AND A 11% AVG CORP RATE!

Right Gov't couldn't get rid of that expense write off right?

You don't want a corporation to write off the expense of shipping equipment?

Can you guess who has fought Obama's proposals since 2010 to lower Corp taxes from 35% to 28%

The people who understand his proposal would end up increasing taxes?

Yeah, jobs aren't being created in the US because the tax rates *shaking head*

Jobs are lost to lower rate areas so they won't come back, or be lost more slowly, if our rates are lowered? Is that your claim? LOL!

"You don't want a corporation to write off the expense of shipping equipment?"

NOT offshore!


"The people who understand his proposal would end up increasing taxes?"


Nonsense, it gets rid of loopholes that allow US Corp EFFECTIVE tax rates to be lower only in Mexico and Chile in the developed world!



"Jobs are lost to lower rate areas so they won't come back, or be lost more slowly, if our rates are lowered? Is that your claim? LOL"



Can't EVER be honest I see Bubba. My posit is they offshore jobs thanks to lower wages, nothing to do with the 3rd lowest effective rate in the developed world in the US

What Fortune 500 Firms Pay (or Don’t Pay) in the USA And What they Pay Abroad — 2008 to 2012

Some Key Findings:

• As a group, the 288 corporations examined paid an effective federal income tax rate of just 19.4 percent over the five-year period — far less than the statutory 35 percent tax rate.

• Twenty-six of the corporations, including Boeing, General Electric, Priceline.com and Verizon, paid no federal income tax at all over the five year period. A third of the corporations (93) paid an effective tax rate of less than ten percent over that period.

• Of those corporations in our sample with significant offshore profits, two thirds paid higher corporate tax rates to foreign governments where they operate than they paid in the U.S. on their U.S. profits.

These findings refute the prevailing view inside the Washington, D.C. Beltway that America’s corporate income tax is more burdensome than the corporate income taxes levied by other countries, and that this purported (but false) excess burden somehow makes the U.S. “uncompetitive.”

Other Findings:

• One hundred and eleven of the 288 companies (39 percent of them) paid zero or less in federal income taxes in at least one year from 2008 to 2012.

The tax breaks claimed by these companies are highly concentrated in the hands of a few very large corporations. Just 25 companies claimed $174 billion in tax breaks over the five years between 2008 and 2012. That’s almost half the $364 billion in tax subsidies claimed by all of the 288 companies in our sample.

• Five companies — Wells Fargo, AT&T, IBM, General Electric, and Verizon — enjoyed over $77 billion in tax breaks during this five-year period.


Recommendations for Reform:

• Congress should repeal the rule allowing American multinational corporations to indefinitely “defer” their U.S. taxes on their offshore profits. This reform would effectively remove the tax incentive to shift profits and jobs overseas.

• Limit the ability of tech and other companies to use executive stock options to reduce their taxes by generating phantom “costs” these companies never actually incur.

• Reinstate a strong corporate Alternative Minimum Tax that really does the job it was originally designed to do.

The Sorry State of Corporate Taxes Citizens for Tax Justice

Can't EVER be honest I see Bubba. My posit is they offshore jobs thanks to lower wages, nothing to do with the 3rd lowest effective rate in the developed world in the US

With such low rates, I'm shocked Obama was whining about inversions.

Limit the ability of tech and other companies to use executive stock options to reduce their taxes by generating phantom “costs” these companies never actually incur.

Stock options? You mean the thing they used after Clinton stuck it to them by making executive salary non-deductible over $1 million?
How'd that work out? LOL!

 

[Toddsterpatriot]

A bunch of persuasive gullible middle class idiots that only pay half attention and voted for an absolute moron and a racist American freedom hater now have less money than they did under the Bush administration. I think they were warned. Live with it morons...hahahahahahahahahahaha I'm soooooo fucking glad I'm set for life and I don't have to worry about financial matters. I feel sorry for younger middle class folks today. You are screwed and will not live as well as your middle class parents have. Please America! No more idiot community organizers....okay?

September 27, 2010

So How Did the Bush Tax Cuts Work Out for the Economy?


The 2008 income tax data are now in, so we can assess the fulfillment of the Republican promise that tax cuts would produce widespread prosperity by looking at all the years of the George W. Bush presidency.

Just as they did in 2000, the Republicans are running this year on an economic platform of tax cuts, especially making the tax cuts permanent for the richest among us. So how did the tax cuts work out? My analysis of the new data, with all figures in 2008 dollars:

Total income was $2.74 trillion less during the eight Bush years than if incomes had stayed at 2000 levels.

That much additional income would have more than made up for the lack of demand that keeps us mired in the Great Recession.

Tax Analysts -- So How Did the Bush Tax Cuts Work Out for the Economy


The Bush Era Tax Cuts Didn't Create The Wealth They Were Supposed To

The Bush tax cuts were a test of these claims about supply-side economic policies. To justify the tax cuts the nation was, in effect, given a business prospectus from the Republican Party.

We were promised that cutting taxes on the wealthy would result in much higher economic growth and broadly shared prosperity. For those who wondered how we would pay for such a large cut to the government’s revenue stream, the Republican prospectus had a remarkable claim.

The tax cuts wouldn’t cost us anything. Growth would be so strong that the tax cuts would more than pay for themselves. Even those who admitted that the tax cuts might not be fully self-financing still made strong claims about faster economic growth offsetting much of the lost revenue from the tax cuts.


The reality, of course, has been quite different

Bush Era Tax Cuts Didn t Fix Economy - Business Insider


Supply-Side Economics Sounds Good But It Hasn't Worked


Supply-Side Economics Sounds Good But It Hasn t Worked Byron Williams

Total income was $2.74 trillion less during the eight Bush years than if incomes had stayed at 2000 levels.

Yes, things would have been better if the tech bubble had gone on and on and on.

 

[Londoner]

James Kennedy and Alan Greenspan, on the effect of mortgage equity withdrawals (MEWs) on the growth of the US economy.

Notice that in both 2001 and 2002, the US economy continued to grow on an annual basis (the "technical" recession was just a few quarters). Their work suggests that this growth was entirely due to MEWs. In fact, MEWs contributed over 3% to GDP growth in 2004 and 2005, and 2% in 2006. Without US homeowners using their homes as an ATM, the economy would have been very sluggish indeed, averaging much less than 1% for the six years of the Bush presidency.

The big problem with Reaganomics is that it put too much liquid in the hands of the suppliers, and too much debt in the hands of the lower classes. (As mentioned above the debt stems from the lowered wages required to incentivize investment).

However, when the suppliers lack the necessary amount of solvent consumers, they run into a crisis of over-production. Put another way: if consumers can't buy what the supplier is selling, the suppliers lacks the incentive to invest in the real economy of goods and services. This can result in spiraling lay-offs, with each individual layoff weakening demand and thus triggering additional layoffs.

Another problem with having too much liquid is that it becomes harder for Wall Street to generate high returns without creating dangerous asset bubbles. For instance, the wave of neoliberal tax cuts that spread across the globe under the Reagan/Thatcher model climaxed under Bush 43. The global surplus of money poured into Wall Street looking for higher returns. And because the real economy of consumers was too indebted, Wall Street created high returns out of thin air, by loaning money into the economy on the backs of the poor and the naive. This allowed them to create trillions of dollars in fake profits from an array of bogus mortgage back securities and derivatives. After the whole thing blew up, the perpetrators got bailed out, and then they foreclosed on teir victims, so they could reboot for the next round.

Point is, an economy cannot function if only one group of people has all the money, while the other groups are sustained on debt. Eventually it becomes too crisis prone.

 

[Dad2three]

"The law, right now, permits companies that close down American factories and offices and move those jobs overseas to take a tax deduction for the costs associated with moving the jobs to China or India or wherever."

That was the assertion of Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse earlier this fall when he went on the floor of the Senate to argue for a bill, designated S-3816 and known as the "Creating American Jobs and Ending Offshoring Act."

The proposal, he said, "would close some really perverse loopholes in the tax code that, right now, reward American companies for moving American jobs overseas. The law, right now, permits companies that close down American factories and offices and move those jobs overseas to take a tax deduction for the costs associated with moving the jobs to China or India or wherever."

There's nothing controversial about allowing companies to deduct their expenses for doing business, but does the tax system actually help companies cover the cost of moving local jobs to another country?

"You can take a business deduction for the costs associated with moving the job. So if you close down your factory in Providence, pack everything up and have to train the workers and ship the machinery overseas, all the costs associated with that are tax deductions," she said.

As a result, companies get back roughly a third of their expense at the expense of U.S. taxpayers, she said.


"There have been a lot of attempts over the years to get rid of this," but corporation lobbyists have argued that the loophole is needed because it creates more jobs, said Lee. "You can believe that or not. I don't give it a lot of credence."

Whitehouse says companies get a tax break for moving jobs overseas PolitiFact Rhode Island


GUESS WHICH PARTY BLOCKS IT EVERY SINGLE TIME??? LOL

"The law, right now, permits companies that close down American factories and offices and move those jobs overseas to take a tax deduction for the costs associated with moving the jobs to China or India or wherever."

If a company moves equipment and incurs an expense, it can write off that business expense.
There is no expense to "ship a job", so no write off.

It would be fun to cut our corporate tax rate to a sane level, so foreign countries would "ship jobs" here. I guess Dems aren't interested in that.

Right Gov't couldn't get rid of that expense write off right? Can you guess who has fought Obama's proposals since 2010 to lower Corp taxes from 35% to 28% and getting rid of loopholes to use for infrastructure?



Yeah, jobs aren't being created in the US because the tax rates *shaking head*

HINT RECORD CORP PROFITS, LOWEST LABOR EXPENSE EVER RECORDED AND A 11% AVG CORP RATE!

Right Gov't couldn't get rid of that expense write off right?

You don't want a corporation to write off the expense of shipping equipment?

Can you guess who has fought Obama's proposals since 2010 to lower Corp taxes from 35% to 28%

The people who understand his proposal would end up increasing taxes?

Yeah, jobs aren't being created in the US because the tax rates *shaking head*

Jobs are lost to lower rate areas so they won't come back, or be lost more slowly, if our rates are lowered? Is that your claim? LOL!

"You don't want a corporation to write off the expense of shipping equipment?"

NOT offshore!


"The people who understand his proposal would end up increasing taxes?"


Nonsense, it gets rid of loopholes that allow US Corp EFFECTIVE tax rates to be lower only in Mexico and Chile in the developed world!



"Jobs are lost to lower rate areas so they won't come back, or be lost more slowly, if our rates are lowered? Is that your claim? LOL"



Can't EVER be honest I see Bubba. My posit is they offshore jobs thanks to lower wages, nothing to do with the 3rd lowest effective rate in the developed world in the US

What Fortune 500 Firms Pay (or Don’t Pay) in the USA And What they Pay Abroad — 2008 to 2012

Some Key Findings:

• As a group, the 288 corporations examined paid an effective federal income tax rate of just 19.4 percent over the five-year period — far less than the statutory 35 percent tax rate.

• Twenty-six of the corporations, including Boeing, General Electric, Priceline.com and Verizon, paid no federal income tax at all over the five year period. A third of the corporations (93) paid an effective tax rate of less than ten percent over that period.

• Of those corporations in our sample with significant offshore profits, two thirds paid higher corporate tax rates to foreign governments where they operate than they paid in the U.S. on their U.S. profits.

These findings refute the prevailing view inside the Washington, D.C. Beltway that America’s corporate income tax is more burdensome than the corporate income taxes levied by other countries, and that this purported (but false) excess burden somehow makes the U.S. “uncompetitive.”

Other Findings:

• One hundred and eleven of the 288 companies (39 percent of them) paid zero or less in federal income taxes in at least one year from 2008 to 2012.

The tax breaks claimed by these companies are highly concentrated in the hands of a few very large corporations. Just 25 companies claimed $174 billion in tax breaks over the five years between 2008 and 2012. That’s almost half the $364 billion in tax subsidies claimed by all of the 288 companies in our sample.

• Five companies — Wells Fargo, AT&T, IBM, General Electric, and Verizon — enjoyed over $77 billion in tax breaks during this five-year period.


Recommendations for Reform:

• Congress should repeal the rule allowing American multinational corporations to indefinitely “defer” their U.S. taxes on their offshore profits. This reform would effectively remove the tax incentive to shift profits and jobs overseas.

• Limit the ability of tech and other companies to use executive stock options to reduce their taxes by generating phantom “costs” these companies never actually incur.

• Reinstate a strong corporate Alternative Minimum Tax that really does the job it was originally designed to do.

The Sorry State of Corporate Taxes Citizens for Tax Justice

Can't EVER be honest I see Bubba. My posit is they offshore jobs thanks to lower wages, nothing to do with the 3rd lowest effective rate in the developed world in the US

With such low rates, I'm shocked Obama was whining about inversions.

Limit the ability of tech and other companies to use executive stock options to reduce their taxes by generating phantom “costs” these companies never actually incur.

Stock options? You mean the thing they used after Clinton stuck it to them by making executive salary non-deductible over $1 million?
How'd that work out? LOL!

AGAIN:

Can't EVER be honest I see Bubba.

 

[Dad2three]

A bunch of persuasive gullible middle class idiots that only pay half attention and voted for an absolute moron and a racist American freedom hater now have less money than they did under the Bush administration. I think they were warned. Live with it morons...hahahahahahahahahahaha I'm soooooo fucking glad I'm set for life and I don't have to worry about financial matters. I feel sorry for younger middle class folks today. You are screwed and will not live as well as your middle class parents have. Please America! No more idiot community organizers....okay?

September 27, 2010

So How Did the Bush Tax Cuts Work Out for the Economy?


The 2008 income tax data are now in, so we can assess the fulfillment of the Republican promise that tax cuts would produce widespread prosperity by looking at all the years of the George W. Bush presidency.

Just as they did in 2000, the Republicans are running this year on an economic platform of tax cuts, especially making the tax cuts permanent for the richest among us. So how did the tax cuts work out? My analysis of the new data, with all figures in 2008 dollars:

Total income was $2.74 trillion less during the eight Bush years than if incomes had stayed at 2000 levels.

That much additional income would have more than made up for the lack of demand that keeps us mired in the Great Recession.

Tax Analysts -- So How Did the Bush Tax Cuts Work Out for the Economy


The Bush Era Tax Cuts Didn't Create The Wealth They Were Supposed To

The Bush tax cuts were a test of these claims about supply-side economic policies. To justify the tax cuts the nation was, in effect, given a business prospectus from the Republican Party.

We were promised that cutting taxes on the wealthy would result in much higher economic growth and broadly shared prosperity. For those who wondered how we would pay for such a large cut to the government’s revenue stream, the Republican prospectus had a remarkable claim.

The tax cuts wouldn’t cost us anything. Growth would be so strong that the tax cuts would more than pay for themselves. Even those who admitted that the tax cuts might not be fully self-financing still made strong claims about faster economic growth offsetting much of the lost revenue from the tax cuts.


The reality, of course, has been quite different

Bush Era Tax Cuts Didn t Fix Economy - Business Insider


Supply-Side Economics Sounds Good But It Hasn't Worked


Supply-Side Economics Sounds Good But It Hasn t Worked Byron Williams

Total income was $2.74 trillion less during the eight Bush years than if incomes had stayed at 2000 levels.

Yes, things would have been better if the tech bubble had gone on and on and on.

Bubble popped in early 2000. Weird, Dubya had ZERO growth in 8 years right? lol

 

[Dad2three]

James Kennedy and Alan Greenspan, on the effect of mortgage equity withdrawals (MEWs) on the growth of the US economy.

Notice that in both 2001 and 2002, the US economy continued to grow on an annual basis (the "technical" recession was just a few quarters). Their work suggests that this growth was entirely due to MEWs. In fact, MEWs contributed over 3% to GDP growth in 2004 and 2005, and 2% in 2006. Without US homeowners using their homes as an ATM, the economy would have been very sluggish indeed, averaging much less than 1% for the six years of the Bush presidency.

The big problem with Reaganomics is that it put too much liquid in the hands of the suppliers, and too much debt in the hands of the lower classes. (As mentioned above the debt stems from the lowered wages required to incentivize investment).

However, when the suppliers lack the necessary amount of solvent consumers, they run into a crisis of over-production. Put another way: if consumers can't buy what the supplier is selling, the suppliers lacks the incentive to invest in the real economy of goods and services. This can result in spiraling lay-offs, with each individual layoff weakening demand and thus triggering additional layoffs.

Another problem with having too much liquid is that it becomes harder for Wall Street to generate high returns without creating dangerous asset bubbles. For instance, the wave of neoliberal tax cuts that spread across the globe under the Reagan/Thatcher model climaxed under Bush 43. The global surplus of money poured into Wall Street looking for higher returns. And because the real economy of consumers was too indebted, Wall Street created high returns out of thin air, by loaning money into the economy on the backs of the poor and the naive. This allowed them to create trillions of dollars in fake profits from an array of bogus mortgage back securities and derivatives. After the whole thing blew up, the perpetrators got bailed out, and then they foreclosed on teir victims, so they could reboot for the next round.

Point is, an economy cannot function if only one group of people has all the money, while the other groups are sustained on debt. Eventually it becomes too crisis prone.

All good points, we went through this in the 1920's, then a little under Ronnie with his S&L crisis he ignored, but Dubya almost took US back to the Harding/Coolidge depression. Markets will self regulate? lol

 

[EdwardBaiamonte]

HINT RECORD CORP PROFITS, LOWEST LABOR EXPENSE EVER RECORDED AND A 11% AVG CORP RATE!

that's because liberal unions, taxes, and deficits force corporations off shore where they do very well without American labor.

If you want to solve problem overnight just make liberal unions taxes and deficits illegal as Republicans have always wanted.

 

[EdwardBaiamonte]

Despite, or because of, the fallout from the 2007 Great Recession, annual earnings between the richest Americans and everybody else have exploded to record levels. Meanwhile middle- and lower-class wealth growth remains stagnant.
The median wealth for high-income families hit $639,400 last year, a whopping 7 percent jump from three years earlier and seven times greater than middle-class incomes, which stood at $96,500 according to Pew Research Center, citing data from the Federal Reserve.
Middle-class median wealth, which Pew defines as the difference between the value of a household’s total assets and debts, has not advanced since 2010.
The financial chasm now separating the rich and everybody else is the widest since the Fed began tracking earnings 30 years ago, which became even more pronounced following the 2008 global financial crisis.
America 8217 s wealth gap between middle-income and upper-income families is widest on record Pew Research Center

Wealth Gap between America s Rich and Middle-Class Families Widest on Record - Real Time Economics - WSJ

IMO The American Dream was always a myth, but now it has turned into a nightmare for 47% of Americans. This robbing of the poor half of the population has been quite deliberate, by allowing unchecked immigration to obtain cheap labor and by off shoring of jobs to India and China. The Federal minimum wage has remained at $7.25 per hour since Obama took office, while the cost of living has increased substantially. There is no justification for this, since corporate profits have never been higher.

Zzz. Oh good. More mindless and basically dishonest class warfare divide and conquer rhetoric from the left.

Shout out a healthy "1%!"

Tell us something about "workers of the World, UNITE!"

Then consume an enormous mug of stfu already. Your stale shit is stale. And shit.

I have asked dumbto3 if he is a communist 9 times but he won't answer. I wonder why??

 

[Dad2three]

Despite, or because of, the fallout from the 2007 Great Recession, annual earnings between the richest Americans and everybody else have exploded to record levels. Meanwhile middle- and lower-class wealth growth remains stagnant.
The median wealth for high-income families hit $639,400 last year, a whopping 7 percent jump from three years earlier and seven times greater than middle-class incomes, which stood at $96,500 according to Pew Research Center, citing data from the Federal Reserve.
Middle-class median wealth, which Pew defines as the difference between the value of a household’s total assets and debts, has not advanced since 2010.
The financial chasm now separating the rich and everybody else is the widest since the Fed began tracking earnings 30 years ago, which became even more pronounced following the 2008 global financial crisis.
America 8217 s wealth gap between middle-income and upper-income families is widest on record Pew Research Center

Wealth Gap between America s Rich and Middle-Class Families Widest on Record - Real Time Economics - WSJ

IMO The American Dream was always a myth, but now it has turned into a nightmare for 47% of Americans. This robbing of the poor half of the population has been quite deliberate, by allowing unchecked immigration to obtain cheap labor and by off shoring of jobs to India and China. The Federal minimum wage has remained at $7.25 per hour since Obama took office, while the cost of living has increased substantially. There is no justification for this, since corporate profits have never been higher.

Zzz. Oh good. More mindless and basically dishonest class warfare divide and conquer rhetoric from the left.

Shout out a healthy "1%!"

Tell us something about "workers of the World, UNITE!"

Then consume an enormous mug of stfu already. Your stale shit is stale. And shit.

I have asked dumbto3 if he is a communist 9 times but he won't answer. I wonder why??

Perhaps because you are a low info troll? Just saying