Conquer Club

How is it a different issue? The corporate tax rate in the US is 35%, but corporations in the US don't pay 35% so to say that the corporate tax rate in the US is the second highest in the world doen't really mean much at all.

Also, I'm not arguing that the rate should be increased, but these guys get away with not paying their taxes. And its fine. If you're middle class and don't pay your taxes, you get flung in jail.

"People who support class warfare are low information voters."

Couldn't agree more. People claiming that if you're unemployed, if you're on welfare, you're a lazy bum stealing from the rich and not paying your fair shake, is class warfare. Companies in the US have cash surpluses of 1.8 trillion dollars, a 51 year high. Giving them more money, tax breaks, letting them take more money out of the system, a rigged system where they get all the benefits and little of the cost, doesn't help the economy or unemployment. The rich get richer, the middle class shrinks, but class warfare is targeted at the affluent...

Aradhus wrote:How is it a different issue? The corporate tax rate in the US is 35%, but corporations in the US don't pay 35% so to say that the corporate tax rate in the US is the second highest in the world doen't really mean much at all.

Also, I'm not arguing that the rate should be increased, but these guys get away with not paying their taxes. And its fine. If you're middle class and don't pay your taxes, you get flung in jail.

"People who support class warfare are low information voters."

Couldn't agree more. People claiming that if you're unemployed, if you're on welfare, you're a lazy bum stealing from the rich and not paying your fair shake, is class warfare. Companies in the US have cash surpluses of 1.8 trillion dollars, a 51 year high. Giving them more money, tax breaks, letting them take more money out of the system, a rigged system where they get all the benefits and little of the cost, doesn't help the economy or unemployment. The rich get richer, the middle class shrinks, but class warfare is targeted at the affluent...

If you are unemployed, and not looking for work and just gonna ride it til the end, yah. If you are unemployed but trying to find a job, no. Welfare for life, yes. Temporary welfare, no.

You of all people should not be generalizing all unemployed and all welfare people as lazy bums.

Don't know what profitable companies have to do with this....

Aradhus wrote:How is it a different issue? The corporate tax rate in the US is 35%, but corporations in the US don't pay 35% so to say that the corporate tax rate in the US is the second highest in the world doen't really mean much at all.

Also, I'm not arguing that the rate should be increased, but these guys get away with not paying their taxes. And its fine. If you're middle class and don't pay your taxes, you get flung in jail.

"People who support class warfare are low information voters."

Couldn't agree more. People claiming that if you're unemployed, if you're on welfare, you're a lazy bum stealing from the rich and not paying your fair shake, is class warfare. Companies in the US have cash surpluses of 1.8 trillion dollars, a 51 year high. Giving them more money, tax breaks, letting them take more money out of the system, a rigged system where they get all the benefits and little of the cost, doesn't help the economy or unemployment. The rich get richer, the middle class shrinks, but class warfare is targeted at the affluent...

OMG I so don't care one way or the other about any of this but - and no offense, Ardhus - when a British nurse gets into an argument about the codification of U.S. tax law with a U.S. tax attorney after reading an article in Forbes, the thread becomes about as interesting as hearing a bus driver argue with a Braniff pilot about how difficult it is to land at BEY after seeing Catch Me If You Can (the Broadway musical, not the movie).

Which is to say, not interesting at all.

Which is my problem with another - not to be named - commenter in these parts that makes my head expllllllloooode!

Phatscotty wrote:

radiojake wrote:
And yet despite this you still maintain a free global market is the best solution?

no. I have never said that.

Phatscotty wrote:When the gov't stops subsidizing tuition, tuition prices stop rising. Watch and See! In fact, tuition mainly rises because of gov't funding. Just look at what happened to real estate. you pull the gov't out of it, and you have a free market. Tuition prices will stabilize easy.

So just exactly how free do you want the market to be?

Aradhus wrote:How is it a different issue? The corporate tax rate in the US is 35%, but corporations in the US don't pay 35% so to say that the corporate tax rate in the US is the second highest in the world doen't really mean much at all.

Also, I'm not arguing that the rate should be increased, but these guys get away with not paying their taxes. And its fine. If you're middle class and don't pay your taxes, you get flung in jail.

"People who support class warfare are low information voters."

Couldn't agree more. People claiming that if you're unemployed, if you're on welfare, you're a lazy bum stealing from the rich and not paying your fair shake, is class warfare. Companies in the US have cash surpluses of 1.8 trillion dollars, a 51 year high. Giving them more money, tax breaks, letting them take more money out of the system, a rigged system where they get all the benefits and little of the cost, doesn't help the economy or unemployment. The rich get richer, the middle class shrinks, but class warfare is targeted at the affluent...

I think maybe things are getting misunderstood again. Corporations are legally paying what they are supposed to pay. They have a significant lobbying influence in Congress and thus have legal tax loopholes. They aren't getting put in jail because they aren't breaking the law. On the personal income tax side, it's legal for me to take a deduction on my personal income tax return for mortgage interest; obviously this favors people who buy homes. Similarly, corporations are permitted a deduction for interest paid on loans; this favors corporations who borrow money. All perfectly legal.

Cash surpluses have little to do with taxable income. It's hard for me to explain this over the interwebs, but for book/accounting purposes, one may have income, but for tax purposes one may have losses (or vice versa).

radiojake wrote:

Phatscotty wrote:

radiojake wrote:
And yet despite this you still maintain a free global market is the best solution?

no. I have never said that.

Phatscotty wrote:When the gov't stops subsidizing tuition, tuition prices stop rising. Watch and See! In fact, tuition mainly rises because of gov't funding. Just look at what happened to real estate. you pull the gov't out of it, and you have a free market. Tuition prices will stabilize easy.

So just exactly how free do you want the market to be?

as free as possible.

obviously, under any system and under any circumstance, people learn how any given system works and certain opportunities or exploitations are discovered.

There is a free market approach to fixing any given problem, and there is a big gov't approach to fixing any given problem. The free market has proven time and again that it works to make more goods/benefits available to more people at lower prices. Anything the gov't touches explodes in price. Be it tuition, housing, pharmeceuticals, energy, roads....you name it.

Competition drives down prices and creates jobs. As the public grows, there is less competition. Rising prices are the result.

Phatscotty wrote:The free market has proven time and again that it works to make more goods/benefits available to more people at lower prices. Anything the gov't touches explodes in price. Be it tuition, housing, pharmeceuticals, energy, roads....you name it.

Competition drives down prices and creates jobs. As the public grows, there is less competition. Rising prices are the result.

You think the free market creates lower tuition and drug costs? Pharma companies do everything they can to screw you over (like charge £5 for a pack of drugs thats costs just pennies to produce). Also, government tuition cost £3000 a year and created the best university in the world by the latest rankings, free market (with heavy philanthropy) has uni costs arounf £20000 a year.

A free market does not equal more competition. A free market creates abuses and monopolies and extortions, regulation of their heinious acts and the promotion of fair competition creates the most competitive and benefitial markets.

Titanic wrote:(like charge £5 for a pack of drugs thats costs just pennies to produce).

Point of clarification - before using the phrase "costs just pennies to produce" referencing the price of retail pharmaceuticals, consider adding the phrase "and costs millions to research and develop."

Titanic wrote: Also, government tuition cost £3000 a year and created the best university in the world by the latest rankings

If you're talking about Cambridge I'd say it's publicly-financed, privately-run; seems to be another case of dichotomy of terminology between the US and the UK that produces these rambling discussions that never go anywhere.

I think the closest examples to Cambridge-style mixed-form university governance in the U.S. are Penn and Penn State and those are exceptions. In American pedagogical nomenclature a "public university" is generally one both funded and directly governed by the state with only a tertiary partition, in symmetry with the German-Dutch model of University governance from which the U.S. and Latin American systems draw influence. Governance of Cambridge is more similar to that in American private universities; via a council that is either self-perpetuating, composed of academic stakeholders or a mixed-body of luminaries.

rockfist wrote:

Aradhus wrote:Roughly 70% of Americans wanted the bush tax cuts on the rich to expire. Roughly the same number wanted a public option. Unless you exert pressure on these guys, they'll never do what people want.

I doubt that is true in regards to the tax cuts or the public option, but if it is it is only because they were ill informed. People who support class warfare are low information voters.

People who use meaningless phrases that they have been taught like "class warfare" instead of analysing the situation are low information voters.

Titanic wrote:

Phatscotty wrote:The free market has proven time and again that it works to make more goods/benefits available to more people at lower prices. Anything the gov't touches explodes in price. Be it tuition, housing, pharmeceuticals, energy, roads....you name it.

Competition drives down prices and creates jobs. As the public grows, there is less competition. Rising prices are the result.

You think the free market creates lower tuition and drug costs? Pharma companies do everything they can to screw you over (like charge £5 for a pack of drugs thats costs just pennies to produce). Also, government tuition cost £3000 a year and created the best university in the world by the latest rankings, free market (with heavy philanthropy) has uni costs arounf £20000 a year.

Absolutely. I find it rather amusing that your first choice is pharma companies cough cough FDA cough cough.

Education in America was at it's best before the Department of Education. It costed basically the same amount to run a class room of 20 kids in 1820 as it did in 1910. All from scratch too and scarce resources

Titanic wrote:A free market does not equal more competition. A free market creates abuses and monopolies and extortions, regulation of their heinious acts and the promotion of fair competition creates the most competitive and benefitial markets.

if you have a monopoly, a free market does not exist. The monopoly runs the market....

I am not arguing against regulation. I am arguing our current gov't is incapable of regulating well. there is good regulation and bad regulation.

get better examples, because I don't even think those are proper ones

Phatscotty wrote:*Aims* *Trolls* *Fails*

saxitoxin wrote:*Aims* *Fails* *Trolls*

thegreekdog wrote:
I think maybe things are getting misunderstood again. Corporations are legally paying what they are supposed to pay. They have a significant lobbying influence in Congress and thus have legal tax loopholes. They aren't getting put in jail because they aren't breaking the law. On the personal income tax side, it's legal for me to take a deduction on my personal income tax return for mortgage interest; obviously this favors people who buy homes. Similarly, corporations are permitted a deduction for interest paid on loans; this favors corporations who borrow money. All perfectly legal.

Cash surpluses have little to do with taxable income. It's hard for me to explain this over the interwebs, but for book/accounting purposes, one may have income, but for tax purposes one may have losses (or vice versa).

Wasn't what I was saying.

I was trying to respond to multiple things and tie them togther in a cogent way, obviously I didn't do it particulalrly artfully, or successfully.

I find it hard to believe that the loopholes these companies exploit were designed for the very purpose of allowing companies to exploit loopholes to not pay taxes. I find it hypocritical and reprehensible that persons would criticize the poorest, most feckless of society for not 'paying their way', whilst corporations do the same thing on a much larger scale. Obviously a "free market" would fix everything as corporations would never scam people within a free market.

Also, Government subsidizes education so more people can have it. Take away those subsidies, less people will be able to get an education, price will fall, more people will be able to afford it, more people getting an education will increase price, therefore all that is achieved is less people got educated.

Aradhus wrote:

Phatscotty wrote:*Aims* *Trolls* *Fails*

saxitoxin wrote:*Aims* *Fails* *Trolls*

thegreekdog wrote:
I think maybe things are getting misunderstood again. Corporations are legally paying what they are supposed to pay. They have a significant lobbying influence in Congress and thus have legal tax loopholes. They aren't getting put in jail because they aren't breaking the law. On the personal income tax side, it's legal for me to take a deduction on my personal income tax return for mortgage interest; obviously this favors people who buy homes. Similarly, corporations are permitted a deduction for interest paid on loans; this favors corporations who borrow money. All perfectly legal.

Cash surpluses have little to do with taxable income. It's hard for me to explain this over the interwebs, but for book/accounting purposes, one may have income, but for tax purposes one may have losses (or vice versa).

I was trying to respond to multiple things and tie them togther in a cogent way, obviously I didn't do it particulalrly artfully, or successfully.

agreed

Aradhus wrote:Also, Government subsidizes education so more people can have it.

as always, only in the short term....in the long run it is a failed concept.

Phatscotty wrote:

Aradhus wrote:Also, Government subsidizes education so more people can have it.

as always, only in the short term....in the long run it is a failed concept.

When government spends money on wars nobody wants or needs, subsidizes failed corporations so that ceos can take all the money and leave shareholders bankrupt, and wastes money on shit that isn't useful to society, yeah. Independant of other economic or government policies, making it possible for more people to recieve higher education is a good thing.

thegreekdog wrote:Point of clarification - before using the phrase "costs just pennies to produce" referencing the price of retail pharmaceuticals, consider adding the phrase "and costs millions to research and develop."

From which they recieve very generous tax rebates. Also, most pharma companies now spend most their resources on headache pills and viagra and stuff like that which will sell more but cure less seious stuff. Almost all the major R&D is part or wholly funded by government funds, but they are forces to pass it over to big pharma because of the very successful lobbying to change to the rules over the years.

Want the clearest example they are ripping us off, compare the prices of products on the last day of an expiring patent and the 40% cheaper they are the next day.

Phatscotty wrote:Absolutely. I find it rather amusing that your first choice is pharma companies cough cough FDA cough cough.

Education in America was at it's best before the Department of Education. It costed basically the same amount to run a class room of 20 kids in 1820 as it did in 1910. All from scratch too and scarce resources


....


I am not arguing against regulation. I am arguing our current gov't is incapable of regulating well. there is good regulation and bad regulation.

get better examples, because I don't even think those are proper ones

You think the pharma companies would offer us better services for a better price without the FDA? See my post above, they control the system so much it only serves to their benefit (money in their pockets) and not to the wellbeing of the nation.

Btw, nice to see that you agree with regulation. Out of interest do you support public financing of federal elections?

Aradhus wrote:I find it hard to believe that the loopholes these companies exploit were designed for the very purpose of allowing companies to exploit loopholes to not pay taxes. I find it hypocritical and reprehensible that persons would criticize the poorest, most feckless of society for not 'paying their way', whilst corporations do the same thing on a much larger scale. Obviously a "free market" would fix everything as corporations would never scam people within a free market.

I don't find it hard to believe at all. If you take a look at the evolution of the Internal Revenue Code, you'll see it go from 100 pages to thousands of pages. Similarly the regulations increased substantially over the course of time. The reason is because companies lobbied Congress to put deductions/tax breaks for corporations. I'm not really sure what else to say. The only way to change how much tax corporations pay is to change the corporate tax laws, not to raise the tax rates. People seem to be more concerned with companies receiving taxpayer money rather than receiving deductions and the like (which I think is a viable concern as well).

nagerous wrote:I don't think it was all students, a lot of the people doing the destruction were older anarchists.

Ahhh, yes.......I remember The "Stop The City" days of the late 70's & early 80's......great fun Basically lots of Students, Punks, and the unemployed and whomever else had an establishment "beef" met enmass and crowded out the finance district, stock exchange banks govt buildings streets etc....always started out being a peaceful protest but the use of mounted police charges changed all of that. As an aside - some wiley biology students used to spread Lion crap everywhere in the later days - was quite the horsey detterant apparently

thegreekdog wrote:

Aradhus wrote:I find it hard to believe that the loopholes these companies exploit were designed for the very purpose of allowing companies to exploit loopholes to not pay taxes. I find it hypocritical and reprehensible that persons would criticize the poorest, most feckless of society for not 'paying their way', whilst corporations do the same thing on a much larger scale. Obviously a "free market" would fix everything as corporations would never scam people within a free market.

I don't find it hard to believe at all. If you take a look at the evolution of the Internal Revenue Code, you'll see it go from 100 pages to thousands of pages. Similarly the regulations increased substantially over the course of time. The reason is because companies lobbied Congress to put deductions/tax breaks for corporations. I'm not really sure what else to say. The only way to change how much tax corporations pay is to change the corporate tax laws, not to raise the tax rates. People seem to be more concerned with companies receiving taxpayer money rather than receiving deductions and the like (which I think is a viable concern as well).

I am not speaking from a knowledgable position, just trying to apply some logic and reasoning. Politicians in the US wanted to encourage foreign business to trade in the US, so to do so they wouldn't tax them the full corporate rate US companies are taxed. Us companies wanted to exploit this by creating a base of operations outside of the US so that they too didn't have to pay the full corporate tax.

Aradhus wrote:

thegreekdog wrote:

Aradhus wrote:I find it hard to believe that the loopholes these companies exploit were designed for the very purpose of allowing companies to exploit loopholes to not pay taxes. I find it hypocritical and reprehensible that persons would criticize the poorest, most feckless of society for not 'paying their way', whilst corporations do the same thing on a much larger scale. Obviously a "free market" would fix everything as corporations would never scam people within a free market.

I don't find it hard to believe at all. If you take a look at the evolution of the Internal Revenue Code, you'll see it go from 100 pages to thousands of pages. Similarly the regulations increased substantially over the course of time. The reason is because companies lobbied Congress to put deductions/tax breaks for corporations. I'm not really sure what else to say. The only way to change how much tax corporations pay is to change the corporate tax laws, not to raise the tax rates. People seem to be more concerned with companies receiving taxpayer money rather than receiving deductions and the like (which I think is a viable concern as well).

I am not speaking from a knowledgable position, just trying to apply some logic and reasoning. Politicians in the US wanted to encourage foreign business to trade in the US, so to do so they wouldn't tax them the full corporate rate US companies are taxed. Us companies wanted to exploit this by creating a base of operations outside of the US so that they too didn't have to pay the full corporate tax.

Taxes are the more highly publicized reason that companies go overseas. It also happens to be a reason that companies go overseas (and why they have losses in the United States).

A less publicized reason is that workers in China, India, and Ireland (and probably a whole lot of other places) get paid a whole lot less than employees in the United States.