Profit from America, Just Don't Pay Your Share

[Divinity11]

[Indy]

To answer an earlier barb--no, I don't expect corporations to be patriotic because corporations only care about one thing: profit.

Although that opens yet another door because we expect people here to be patriotic--just not those people?

I do expect our elected leaders to be as such, though. And patriotism is an overrated thing anyway--"realistic" is more like it. When you allow the two groups who have the most money endless opportunities to pay into the country which has made them so rich, what do you think is going to happen?

As you pointed out, corporations don't even give a toss about their own employees so of course they're not going to care about anyone but their shareholders. To expect otherwise would be naive.

[Medius]

One of the big problems is that government spending isn't linked to revenue. So there really is no "fair share" there's no clear goal. They spend what they have. There is no sense of minimizing, except where money is being pushed to some new pet project. I'm not sure how anyone could really look at taxation and see it as patriotism. Most of it is money being almost literally thrown away to get votes.

That said, I do support corporations paying more into the system. They get the biggest benefits out of all of the supporting infrastructure of the country. I think it should be built into the requirements for incorporation. Legal shielding and investor protection for the price of civic responsibility.

[Indy]

I don't like the word "patriotism" either because it's so frequently abused and often used to refer to what's actually nationalism.

Gov't spending is a different issue that can be addressed separately.

I think your phrase "civic responsibility" is a much better fit and yes, unless you make it compulsory, no corporation is going to volunteer it. Or person for that matter.

[spacemonkey]

Ethics and legal/illegal do NOT run parallel in the financial/tax world. That needs fixed before anything can be fixed.

[Indy]

Even without the ethical argument you still have one.

When you create a model where your largest income earners are able to shield most of their earnings from taxation, you're bankrupting your own country. And shifting the burden for financing the nation onto the bottom 99%.

And we're not talking about vaporizing something like Apple's profits with some insane tax rate (which is what the CNBC gang would tell you), rich people will still be very rich and so will corporations. Yet suggesting anything other than the status quo, we're told, is equal to an assault on capitalism.

We don't need to "bring down" the 1% or corporations to bring up the middle and lower classes--just insist that they contribute like everybody else does.

[Saz]

The Us has an absurd corporate tax rate, at 35%, one of the highest in the world. It's no surprise that companies are booking whatever income they can in countries like Ireland, with a 10% corporate tax rate and rules that only subject a company to taxation if it is controlled or managed from Ireland. Every time you libs want to dip into someone's pockets to take money, we warn you, take too much and people will leave. Take to much and companies will leave. And they have. Apple books a good portion of it's worldwide earnings in Ireland, because why would they book it in a country with the highest corporate tax rate on the planet? That's would be beyond negligent and if I were a shareholder I would sue the shit out of them for it. Of course, these companies would love to reinvest that money back here in the united states, creating jobs and spending on research and development, but not when the penalty for doing so is 1/3 of the cash.

When you "insist" that someone contribute too much, the ones with the option to leave will. Which is why just about every pharmaceutical and tech company has done just that, only booking money in America that they need for American operations. Which is why France had to immediately back down from it's 75% millionaire tax. Blah blah blah about the tax rate under eisenhower, back in those days there were no real options to leave. Europe was destroyed, half the world was commie, and the other half was dirt poor. But in 2015, corporations and people have plenty of options, so an onerous regime will only encourage people to leave, not to pay up. The sooner sh8tlibs realise this the sooner we can go about reforming the tax code in a way that is based on fundamental economic and business realities, rather than about trying to force people to pay what is "fair."

[Indy]

And there you have it folks, 100% plutocratic propaganda from a guy raging about anybody who calls out the status quo is a "sh*tlib" and "you libs" and all the other usual frothing that you'd expect from a CNBC anchor.

You rail about recognizing "realities" of economy yet can't seem to grasp how letting your biggest earners dodge their tax contributions leads to a bankrupt country.

No, as usual, all the screeching here is about the poor corporations and 1% being victimized by those libs and... yeah. Those libs dipping into those poor 1%'s pockets to take their money.

Sniff.

Really, let me get my crying towel for how rough everybody has it under the "libs." Cue scary music.

[Saz]

[Philly]

Mitt Romney has so little economic patriotism that even his money needs a passport. It summers on the beaches of the Cayman Islands and winters on the slopes of the Swiss Alps. In Matthew, chapter 6, verse 21, the scriptures teach us that where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. My friends, any man who aspires to be our president should keep both his treasure and his heart in the United States of America