Sometimes we all have the same perspective but different opinions while looking at the same thing. In other words, We look at the same tree from the same point in the forest and see it differently.
With this issue, I would like to take you to many new places to look at the same tree. Some might call it thinking outside the forest (box). Most of us have been trained to only view it black or white. Move away from those that would tint your glasses to conform to one idea or the other. There are many colors in between. You must move outside the spot that was selected for you to see them.
Corporate Welfare has many shapes and sizes. Everyday I discover some that have been in front of my face everyday and did not see them for what they are. Some come about in slow unnoticeable ways and some are quick with the names changed to protect the guilty.
Let’s start a walk to a new position and have a look at that tree…
By suppressing wages that are in the best interest of corporate profits, eventually the point of economic growth around the wages (inflation) gradually makes you a fully qualified low income welfare case or, for better words, qualifying for government assistance to feed your family and keep a roof over your head.
Since those programs are taxpayer funded, Aren’t the rest of us just subsidizing the wages of working men and women who do not make enough to raise a family. Sparing that company the expense.
Corporations and the top 5% are paying less and less of their fair share of taxes in the name of jobs that they keep shedding. No CEO goes to the board with plans to create more jobs. They go with plans to create more profits. Jobs and higher wages run contrary to profits.
Here is a legitimate argument or MOOT for the increase of minimum wage. But, as we have all said, you can’t legislate morality. Especially to Corporate America. But you can provide a means to an end. Raising the wages will lower your tax burden and/or lower the amount we borrow as a nation to pay for services.
It seems a senseless way to go about making it right. The true conservative in me says you should not take government action unless it is absolutely needed. But I think it is, and fast.
I also believe that it should be automatically gauged to some government standard like the cost of living. That way, many do not suffer while we argue about it for years at a time. And by the time we act, it’s even worse for many more. To little to late for even a neutralizing effect.
Close one eye here…
Here is a strange fact. The government subsidizes the sugar industry and has for many decades to protect the native sugar companies from cheap foreign imports of it.
At the same time, we subsidize the creation of methanol from corn. Taking corn from food to industrial purposes raises the cost of food. You pay twice. Once for the subsidy and the second for the higher price for food. Corn products and by-products are used in almost all the processed food in your kitchen. Most of your sweets are sweetened with corn syrup.
Since you can make methanol much more than twice the efficiently from the same crops you make sugar from, why not remove both subsidies and let the sugar manufactures make methanol. We save three times over. A free market solution and a no brain’er.
Switch eyes…
Just about everything we consume here in the U.S. , the Drug Companies sell in other parts of the world also. Good for them that they can do that. But why are the same drugs being sold at a 20 to 80 percent price reduction over there. After all, they ship them from here to there, so why are they not more money over there…. The truth,
You are getting ripped-off or you are subsidizing drugs in other countries or both.
Just tilt your head here…
Every time we have a slump in the economy, the government reaches out to help with a tax break for companies that create new jobs. Most of the time, it is taken advantage of by everyone except who it was intended. Those currently employed by a company.
How so ?
When these come down the pike, they technically lay you off and hire you back with the tax break enhancing your employment to them. You may not have even missed a days work or know about it. Is that not a subsidy ? It’s a way for the government to give a bunch of companies a tax break and be supported by the public. The term smoke and mirrors comes to mind.
Wouldn’t it be nice to know what companies were getting what tax beaks since all of us who don’t get them are paying for them. Much of the tax savings is spent on overseas investment. Helping the domestic economy little if any.
Let’s move to a new spot and have a look…
Since I was on the issue of tax breaks let’s just have a look at what in general they do to the economy.
If we give a tax break to anyone for any reason, it means less revenue in the treasury to spend. Since we are not at the same time reducing our spending, we would be increasing our borrowing. Borrowing has a additional cost of interest compounding.
In addition to borrowing to cover the new shortfall, we need to increase revenue even more. So those that are paying taxes, need to pay more, now and in the future because we borrowed part of it.
So if you look at it the right way, tax breaks are not any different than spending more. Because you are borrowing to pay for it. Making a bunch of money for some to enjoy today while others pay for it in the future.
Back-up three steps…
What is a good tax break…
One that is temporary, serves a direct purpose in stimulating the economy or industry we need, But only in a area that is a strategic importance to the country. Otherwise “Capitalism” rules apply for a company just as we expect from it’s citizenry. Rise or fall on your own merits.
Example: Giving domestic automakers a “temporary” tax break when the entire or large portion of domestic production is at risk.
Realistically, how do you give a multinational company a tax break and know it benefits us domestically. How would you know it wasn’t just helping them cover losses outside the U.S. or allowing them to invest outside the U.S.
To often these temporary tax breaks get baked into the pie. The same goes for tax increases.
I see it all the time in local tax initiatives that were temporary, but turn into just a renewal of a levy that will not increase your taxes. No kidding, they should be going down as it was a temporary measure originally and expired. They won’t tell you that or the original wording that you passed. So you really don’t know just what you are renewing.
Anyone that would trick you into thinking something other than what it is, deserves nothing. No different is a politician, a car salesman or a corporation. But it happens everyday and will till folks demand something different. They call it buyer beware.
Cover your ears and close your mouth, open eyes wide…
A dangerous trend has been brewing in online selling. That is to take much of this “metadata” that is sometimes much more info than you think about you to figure out who you are and what kind of lifestyle you lead and how much money you have to spend.
If you want to see a “small example” of it, just go to Lowes.com or any national retail chain that you must select the store you are shopping at. First notice that they already know what store is close to you. Then price a handful of items and at least one appliance or part. Then switch stores to look at the same item and look at the price there.
The chain stores give varying reasons for this, but it’s all the same mud in my ears because “It’s never is the cost of a item plus a modest mark-up“. Most of the time it is “the highest price the market will support”. Gas, food or that refrigerator.
So are you paying more so it can be cheaper somewhere else or are you paying less by support from a patron in another store ?
The bigger problem with this “metadata collection” is, and I think we are very close to it now if not already, is when they know you are a potential “good spender” (have money) on the website. This can give you a better price than your neighbor who is poor. So he pays more so that they can lure you in for less as you are more likely to spend your money in abundance to the item you originally came to them for.
Price by demographic has been going on with many industries like insurance for quite some time now. Depending on where you live, how much you make equals how much you will pay.
What… the poor subsidizing the well to do? Oh… they do have studies to justify this so it’s OK.
This could create a big time class warfare in the future. But I wonder how they will explain it in a way that makes it OK to the masses when they are caught.
Some areas have special lanes of taxpayer funded highway that if you pay a little more toll, you get a lane of traffic to yourself. I wonder if the make enough from that to even resurface that lane ? Probably subsidized by the others.
Let’s move across the lake to look at this tree…
Most of the fortune 500 is doing a bunch of business outside the US. And many of them are producing their products overseas and shipping them here for sale. But who pays for the military that defends them while they are over there hood-winking a different population.
Don’t think this happens ?
Tell me why our military was used many times to go after hijacked oil tankers that were being held for ransom. They were not US ships and not flying the US flag until we requested that they flew them to make it legal. But they were part of a tanker company owned by a major US bank.
I find it offensive to know that the hijacked oil tankers were just a sitting target. Doing nothing but storing oil that was being kept off the market to drive the cost of future oil up. This story continues but you still pay for it. In taxes to defend the ships and higher prices at the pump. Corporate welfare at it’s best.
Who was it that said… some folks rob you with a gun, and the others with a pen.
If you look at any of the fore-mentioned, please tell me where the rule of supply and demand enters the picture. I am a capitalist but this is not capitalism.
I could go on, but we have seen enough to summarize what this tree looks like .
I think the most compelling reason that corporate America, and those that make the most from them, should be paying more in every way, is just the fact that they have benefited the most from the security “we” provide, domestically and internationally for their profits to climb.
Yes, the taxpayer and our troops should get the credit for providing the best business environment here and abroad. That good, stable business environment costs a lot of money to provide.
Isn’t that worth at least as much as the guy who has to defend it when it is in jeopardy and even more if you are the largest beneficiary of it?
If the answer to that was no, you need to ask yourself right now, just how much more in taxes are you are willing to pay to keep your job.