Stealth Subsidy for Businesses Comes Under Scrutiny

The last time the nation’s tax code was overhauled, in 1986, Congress tried to end a big corporate giveaway.

But this valuable perk — the ability to finance a variety of business projects cheaply with bonds that are exempt from federal taxes — has not only endured, it has grown, in what amounts to a stealth subsidy for private enterprise.

A winery in North Carolina, a golf resort in Puerto Rico and a Corvette museum in Kentucky, as well as the Barclays Center in Brooklyn and the offices of both the Goldman Sachs Group and Bank of America Tower in New York — all of these projects, and many more, have been built using the tax-exempt bonds that are more conventionally used by cities and states to pay for roads, bridges and schools.

During that period, the single biggest beneficiary of such securities was the Chevron Corporation, which last year reported a profit of $26 billion.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/05/busine...;pagewanted=all

Fishy

I like the WSJ just fine, just don't pay for it anymore so reading online is limited for me.

CBO Data Show Tax Cuts Have Played Much Larger Role than Domestic Spending Increases in Fueling the Deficit

The new Congressional Budget Office budget projections released today show that the nation faces a fourth consecutive year of substantial budget deficits. Some seek to portray “runaway domestic spending” or growth in the costs of entitlement programs as the primary cause of the shift in recent years from sizeable surpluses to large deficits. Such a characterization is incorrect. In 2005, the cost of tax cuts enacted over the past four years will be over three times the cost of all domestic program increases enacted over this period.

http://www.cbpp.org/cms/?fa=view&id=966

Though it's from 05 it shows how tax cuts have put us farther into debt.
" I know Hank, but your the one who brought up the subsidy issues dating back to 1913"



Fishy

A girl has to know her limitations.

I'm sure you do.

Fishy

Income Inequality Is At An All-Time High: STUDY

Income inequality in the United States is at an all-time high, surpassing even levels seen during the Great Depression, according to a recently updated paper by University of California, Berkeley Professor Emmanuel Saez. The paper, which covers data through 2007, points to a staggering, unprecedented disparity in American incomes. On his blog, Nobel prize-winning economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman called the numbers "truly amazing."

Though income inequality has been growing for some time, the paper paints a stark, disturbing portrait of wealth distribution in America. Saez calculates that in 2007 the top .01 percent of American earners took home 6 percent of total U.S. wages, a figure that has nearly doubled since 2000.

"...while the bottom 99 percent of incomes grew at a solid pace of 2.7 percent per year from 1993-2000, these incomes grew only 1.3 percent per year from 2002-2007. As a result, in the economic expansion of 2002-2007, the top 1 percent captured two thirds of income growth."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/08/14/income-inequality-is-at-a_n_259516.html

Fishy

Trends in the Distribution of After-Tax Income:
An Analysis of Congressional Budget Office Data

The Congressional Budget Office recently released tables on after-tax income in the United States in 1994. A comparison of these data to data CBO previously had released for 1977 finds that the gains in after-tax income since the late 1970s have gone overwhelmingly to households in the upper parts of the income scale.

http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=2098

Fishy

Game Over for the American Middle Class – Inflation Adjusted Wages up 20 Percent in Last 20 Years While Housing Costs are up 56 Percent and Healthcare Costs are up 155 Percent.

The struggle for average Americans to keep up is largely becoming an act of will power and force in this current grand recession. Now you wouldn’t think that there is a definite war raging against the middle class if you simply follow the mainstream media but the facts speak to a more distilled and corporatized method of debt slavery.

But we are at an inflexion point and the middle class is largely being squeezed out. A recent study from the Commerce Department shed some light on an issue that we already know. Over the past 20 years the middle class has been falling behind:

http://www.mybudget360.com/income-budget...up-155-percent/

Fishy

Fishy--- you lost credibility with me when you quoted Paul(spend, spend, spend) Krugman

JG, from your past posts I never had any credibility with you and since you've walked in lock step with Hanks posts, (some of which come from ultra right wing tea bagger sympathizers) I say "Oh Well".

Fishy

Sure Hank, and wine will flow in the streets.

Cake anyone?

1945

Although the war is the largest tragedy in human history, the United States emerges as the world's only economic superpower. Deficit spending has resulted in a national debt 123 percent the size of the GDP. By contrast, in 1994, the $4.7 trillion national debt will be only 70 percent of the GDP!

The top tax rate is 91 percent. It will stay at least 88 percent until 1963, when it is lowered to 70 percent. During this time, America will experience the greatest economic boom it had ever known until that time.

http://www.hyperhistory.com/online_n2/connections_n2/great_depression.html

Fishy

Or just cut all corporate taxes, let the pharmaceutical company's charge the market rates, let the medical field hold those needing medicine hostage and let the rest of corporate America police itself and we will all be good.
Then we can all stand around and eat cake.



Fishy

BREAKING NEWS
U.S. Fell 2% in January on Defense Cutbacks
Corporate Profits Soar as Executives Attack Obama Policy

U.S. corporations’ after-tax profits have grown by 171 percent under Obama, more than under any president since World War II, and are now at their highest level relative to the size of the economy since the government began keeping records in 1947, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Profits are more than twice as high as their peak during President Ronald Reagan’s administration and more than 50 percent greater than during the late-1990s Internet boom, measured by the size of the economy.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-01-17...ama-policy.html



Fishy

Companies have reduced their workforce and gotten rid of the dead wood so of course less workers being more efficient means more profits plus the fact that inventory levels have been reduced meaning instead of cash being tied up in inventory it is being held as cash. Lots of items we used to get next day are now a 2 week lead time.

These are good trends in your mind? Haven't Republicans been defending corporate welfare on the grounds that stronger corporations create jobs, as opposed to eliminating them? Doesn't holding on to cash, versus maintaining inventory, indicate lower consumer demand for products?

All that "dead wood" can't spend what it can't earn....

Giving tax breaks to big corporations has created jobs...in the money management and yacht building fields. The corps sure as hell haven't used the money to be the much vaunted "Job Creators" that they continue to call themselves.

Under the "Socialist Regime" of Obama income inequality has continued to go up...and pocketing tax breaks is exactly the reason why.

Fish on...

Todd

And hiding $31 trillion in offshore bank accounts.

Pretty hard to create jobs if there isn't a demand for the product.

Carrying excess inventory right now is a recipe for disaster.

Want demand? Make sure your customers are the ones getting the tax breaks, instead of your CEO.

Fish on...

Todd

It is still not fair, obama said so.

Its not just american money, its money from nearly all of the developed nations.