I'm kind of a softy, so when I'm watching, for example, movies about giant evil corporations who knowingly pollute a small town or cut corners that ended up resulting in tragedy, or profit off of an unnecessary war, and there's the inevitable scene where the greedy corporate pig character is about to die and he shows a flash of humanity, I'm always tricked into thinking: "Don't push that crooked accountant off the side of the skyscraper, sick-of-it-all hero! He's just like us, but he made some bad choices. And who wouldn't?"
Real life is a movie, of course, only the villains are a lot worse. I'm starting to wonder whether or not that same empathy would apply IRL for me. Like if you lined up the lawyers and execs at companies like Exxon Mobile, or Citigroup, or Verizon in front of an industrial man-sized meat grinder (probably made by Boeing and fuled by Conocophillips,) would I hesitate before sending them to their painful doom?
Hard to say. Something to think about while you read this report from ThinkProgress about the most profitable companies in the country and how much they pay in taxes. Spoiler: the number is smaller than you think. Unless you think the number is zero, in which case good thinking.
A new report by Public Campaign examines how these major corporations have influenced Congress to craft a tax code that lets them get away with making so much money and paying so little taxes in return. In its report, “The Artful Dodgers,” Public Campaign juxtaposes the limited tax liability of dozen major corporations with the companies’ campaign contributions and lobbying expenditures, which amount to more than a billion dollars over the last decade:
GENERAL ELECTRIC: General Electric spent $13 million in campaign contributions and $205 million in lobbying expenditures over the last decade while netting a tax refund of $4.1 billion over the past five years. It made $26 billion in profits over the same time period.
EXXON MOBIL: The oil giant that was the world’s most profitable corporation in 2008 has spent $5.7 million in campaign contributions over the last ten years and $138 million in lobbying expenditures. Its federal corporate income tax liabilities for 2009? Absolutely nothing. Not only did it pay nothing, but it also received a tax rebate the same year of $156 million.
BANK OF AMERICA: Bank of America employees contributed $11 million to federal political campaigns from 2001 to 2010 and spent $24 million lobbying over the same period of time. It made $4.4 billion in profits in 2010 while receiving a tax refund of $1.9 billion.
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10 comments:
Getting mad at CEO's is like being mad at the sun for shining. It really doesn't matter who heads the corporation, virtuous or not. They are all a slave to one thing and one thing only...profits.
The book link at the bottom does a great job breaking this down. One chapter in particular is entitled, "Corporations As Machines." The corporate structure cares little for anything other than the bottom line. I still say push them in an industrial meat grinder though. Only of course if they are well aware of the actual damage their particular company does.
http://www.amazon.com/Absence-Sacred-Failure-Technology-Survival/dp/0871565099
I know it's their nature to be evil. I happen to think gorging on profit, whether or not people are willing to pay for it, or whether you manipulate unfair loopholes in laws set up to enrich lawmakers friends, is bad on its face. You invented a moon car that cures cancer? fine, then you can have a billion. Everyone else pushing bullshit around and gambling on the imaginary stock market? Fuck you. Die on your money.
I'll check this book out, cool.
Line BP up against the wall too while we're at it.
hey, you're supposed to call them British Petroleum now, right?
I call them Rapers of the Earth.
Definitely doesn't stack up against the brutally honest, 100% full of integrity, tax return of most freelancers, right?
Freelancers are destroying the world at 25 cents a word.
I have no problem when a private company (that doesn't get a government bail out) pays their CEO's whatever they want to pay them. That doesn't mean our government should give them money back just for existing.
If I'm being reasonable, I don't either sometimes, but the fact that they are allowed to not only pay no taxes, but get millions back! /? d/ad,adsf/elrjg oeritjeo eret
Let's face facts. Corporations run the world, not governments. The Federal Reserve is a private corporation that can print money at will. Our politicians work hand in hand with corporations to make business easier.
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