Forum Post: Record profits, lower wages, fewer Republicans - P2News!
Posted 11 years ago on Dec. 4, 2012, 5:39 a.m. EST by WSmith
(2698)
from Cornelius, OR
This content is user submitted and not an official statement
Monday, December 3, 2012
Record profits, lower wages, fewer Republicans
We don't have an 'entitlements' problem, we have a problem with those who feel entitled to take it all.
[The Geed-Addled few in the 1% and their GOP stooges!]
Corporate profits for US companies hit a new record high of $1.75 Trillion for the past quarter. (compare this to the total GDP of $16 trillion) This headline didn't keep Republicans from claiming that Obama has been killing business, and they're saying that 200,000 jobs have already eliminated by the threat of the 'fiscal cliff'.
If you wonder where they're getting these profits, consider that wages have fallen to only 43.5% of US GDP. Historically wages were more than half of GDP, and they were at 49% as recently as the beginning the Bush reign of terror. You also need to keep in mind that the wage total includes astronomical salaries paid to the one percent. Although the really big earners structure their income as capital gains or dividends that aren't counted in this total.
Capital gains, dividends and that favorite of Wall Street, 'carried interest', get taxed at a maximum of 15%, which makes all the noise about a 3 point tax increase on 'earned' income seem rather silly. If the rich were taxed at normal rates and you eliminated their special deductions, that would bring in $1.1 trillion in additional revenue. That's every year, not over ten years as the fiscal bunny slope numbers are calculated.
We don't have an 'entitlements' problem, we have a problem with those who feel entitled to take it all. This isn't about the income of the rich, it's about the rich taking literally everything. Not just the lions share of the money, but the very means of making money for anybody but them.
Basically this amounts to cash hoarding. In the 19th century the popular name for what we call a recession was a 'cash shortage'. People couldn't do business because there wasn't enough cash in circulation, because the rich would hoard it. Foreclosures were the inevitable consequence, and the rich got richer.
Income taxes were invented to deal with the problem. This is what it's all about with the Republicans hated of income taxes. It keeps them from taking it all for themselves. Of course most people who call themselves Republicans aren't on the 'taking' side of the equation, they just think they'll magically get rich if they help make more poor people.
You can't get through to most conservatives to explain what's really happening to them, they just won't give up their fantasy. It's not hopeless though, you'll notice that there are fewer Republicans every year. http://www.prairie2.com/
Question to the government : ( Record profits being reported while much of the middle class and all below the middle class continue to fall/fail - while the overall economy is in very bad shape. ) Doesn't this mean that current tax practice ( entitling the wealthy ) has only helped the top 1 - 4% ?
Question to the Public : ( Record profits being reported while much of the middle class and all below the middle class continue to fall/fail - while the overall economy is in very bad shape. ) Doesn't this mean that current tax practice ( entitling the wealthy ) has only helped the top 1 - 4% ?
Contrary to MSM (and Fox Lies and RW Hate & Lie radio) conventional wisdom, U R RIGHT!
Along with their record profits are record low tax payments by the tax evading "1-4%" profiteers (may be advisable to stay with 1%, for clarity and continuity purposes).
1% entitlement and tyranny over (and at the expense of) the 99% is why we are here in the first place.
Let's get together and do something about this!
Fighting Fiscal Phantoms
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: November 25, 2012
These are difficult times for the deficit scolds who have dominated policy discussion for almost three years. One could almost feel sorry for them, if it weren’t for their role in diverting attention from the ongoing problem of inadequate recovery, and thereby helping to perpetuate catastrophically high unemployment.
What has changed? For one thing, the crisis they predicted keeps not happening. Far from fleeing U.S. debt, investors have continued to pile in, driving interest rates to historical lows. Beyond that, suddenly the clear and present danger to the American economy isn’t that we’ll fail to reduce the deficit enough; it is, instead, that we’ll reduce the deficit too much. For that’s what the “fiscal cliff” — better described as the austerity bomb — is all about: the tax hikes and spending cuts scheduled to kick in at the end of this year are precisely not what we want to see happen in a still-depressed economy.
Given these realities, the deficit-scold movement has lost some of its clout. That movement, by the way, is a hydra-headed beast, comprising many organizations that turn out, on inspection, to be financed and run by more or less the same people; dig down into many of these groups’ back stories and you will, in particular, find Peter Peterson, the private-equity billionaire, playing a key role.
But the deficit scolds aren’t giving up. Now yet another organization, Fix the Debt, is campaigning for cuts to Social Security and Medicare, even while making lower tax rates a “core principle.” That last part makes no sense in terms of the group’s ostensible mission, but makes perfect sense if you look at the array of big corporations, from Goldman Sachs to the UnitedHealth Group, that are involved in the effort and would benefit from tax cuts. Hey, sacrifice is for the little people.
So should we take this latest push seriously? No — and not just because these people, aside from exhibiting a lot of hypocrisy, have been wrong about everything so far. The truth is that at a fundamental level the crisis story they’re trying to sell doesn’t make sense.
You’ve heard the story many times: Supposedly, any day now investors will lose faith in America’s ability to come to grips with its budget failures. When they do, there will be a run on Treasury bonds, interest rates will spike, and the U.S. economy will plunge back into recession.
This sounds plausible to many people, because it’s roughly speaking what happened to Greece. But we’re not Greece, and it’s almost impossible to see how this could actually happen to a country in our situation.
For we have our own currency — and almost all of our debt, both private and public, is denominated in dollars. So our government, unlike the Greek government, literally can’t run out of money. After all, it can print the stuff. So there’s almost no risk that America will default on its debt — I’d say no risk at all if it weren’t for the possibility that Republicans would once again try to hold the nation hostage over the debt ceiling.
But if the U.S. government prints money to pay its bills, won’t that lead to inflation? No, not if the economy is still depressed.
Now, it’s true that investors might start to expect higher inflation some years down the road. They might also push down the value of the dollar. Both of these things, however, would actually help rather than hurt the U.S. economy right now: expected inflation would discourage corporations and families from sitting on cash, while a weaker dollar would make our exports more competitive.
Still, haven’t crises like the one envisioned by deficit scolds happened in the past? Actually, no. As far as I can tell, every example supposedly illustrating the dangers of debt involves either a country that, like Greece today, lacked its own currency, or a country that, like Asian economies in the 1990s, had large debts in foreign currencies. Countries with large debts in their own currency, like France after World War I, have sometimes experienced big loss-of-confidence drops in the value of their currency — but nothing like the debt-induced recession we’re being told to fear.
So let’s step back for a minute, and consider what’s going on here. For years, deficit scolds have held Washington in thrall with warnings of an imminent debt crisis, even though investors, who continue to buy U.S. bonds, clearly believe that such a crisis won’t happen; economic analysis says that such a crisis can’t happen; and the historical record shows no examples bearing any resemblance to our current situation in which such a crisis actually did happen.
If you ask me, it’s time for Washington to stop worrying about this phantom menace — and to stop listening to the people who have been peddling this scare story in an attempt to get their way.
A version of this op-ed appeared in print on November 26, 2012, on page A27 of the New York edition with the headline: Fighting Fiscal Phantoms.
This is why we must apply Social Security Tax to,
all forms of income first dollar to last
People no longer make their money the way they once did.
Also any “tax reform” we do as well as any other policy changes should focus on raising the percent of GDP paid in wages. We should hold our policies accountable just like our teachers we should check every six months or so and make sure the middle class is growing if not we fire some policies; you think it’s hard to fire a teacher? Try firing a tax cut!!
I agree that is the solution (same with Medicare)
Just add a small tax to cap gains, royalty, rental, carried interest, all passive income & every fin transaction. We will have enough revenue to provide SS for 75 years, & healthcare (public option, single payer for all ages)
Plus we could lower the contributions from the lowest income citizens.
"it's the only way"
Because of the low tax rates on certain kinds of income our economy has become a huge tax avoidance scheme, we should treat all types of income the same for tax purposes, if anything we should tax work less than investment but it's just the opposite we could have a progressive tax system or a very large collection upon one's death above say 100 times the medium annual income, that would be around 5 million today, that's an American dream to pass on 100 years worth of work to your children, a King dreams of passing on 100,000 years worth, we don't need to be making Kings here. So the first 100 years worth, no tax, the next 99,900 years worth a 99% tax.
I can sign on to that. Less tax on working class.!
SSI deductions from first to last, and means testing for all bennies! I heard some of these dislocated WS execs claimed UI just for laughs!!
"Tax Reform" is Rightie code for more ripping off the middleclass.
Gotta read http://www.prairie2.com/
explain to me how more money in government helps the people again? (such as your proposal to do away with tax cuts for the rich) I must have missed that point.
We are the government!
The rich are hoarding the money, holding us hostage!
"must have missed that point" ?? I'd say you missed many many more than one!!
How's the Fox Lies treat'n ya?