10.18.16
Always too late
Three years ago the six-figure explainers were ambivalent about the stupendous frauds corporate America has imposed on the economy in the name of the bottom line. To say they were serious villains was to be anti-capitalist, to not understand finance.
Now it’s all changed. And today, we have David Leonhardt, going from NYT economics reporter, defender of the riches, [1] to opinion page writer, wealthy whitemansplaining how, yup, American corporate tax dodgers are leeches.
This is about like seeing the town whore signing up for Church Universal and Triumphant correspondence courses. You can’t help but be slightly impressed while at the same time wondering how long it will last or if its really just a frantic hedge against a coming time of bloody pitchforks and raging bonfires.
The most affluent and powerful parts of our society have too easy a time legally avoiding taxes…
How does Amazon get away with this? A tangle of tax breaks and loopholes, some enacted in the name of creating jobs despite meager evidence that they do. For many companies, the key move is opening offices in a low-tax country like Ireland and then claiming that much of their business flows through those offices.
Put all these tax breaks together, and you end up with our system. AT&T and General Electric each paid a combined tax rate of only 18 percent since 2007, according to the S&P data. Coca-Cola, Apple and IBM paid 17 percent, and Alphabet (Google’s parent) is at 16 percent. Boeing is at 8 percent, Facebook at 4 percent…
The inequities contribute to the great American stagnation …
And the national stagnation has set great anger loose to roam the land with the result — Donald Trump! And it now every good American’s duty to join the fire brigade and send the man down to defeat before we can get on with fixing things:
[The] stagnation looms over life. It breeds political dysfunction, and it helps explain why so many Americans aren’t swayed by facts. When you have been struggling for decades, you tend to lose faith in society’s institutions and their sober-minded experts.
Without that faith, all of our other problems become harder to solve …
Obviously, the past year has highlighted the depth and breadth of the frustration. It takes different forms and crosses demographic and political boundaries…
Most dangerously, Donald Trump has captured a presidential nomination with one of history’s oldest tricks — using economic frustrations to attract political support by igniting ethnic hatred …
The country’s immediate task is to reject Trump — for each of us to help ensure that his deeply un-American campaign remains un-American. I’d encourage everyone to find one concrete way over the next four weeks to play a part.
Fuck that guy and his blandishments. And his behavior is part of the why behind the revenge vote, the desire to throw a monkey wrench into the unbalanced engine of rigged America, the desire to be a group Samson bringing down the temple on top of himself and the Philistines.
So last night a friend graciously took me out to dinner. And in the course of our conversation she came and asked, “Do you want Trump to win?”
And I paused before saying “No.” I told her I’d thought about not voting at all, the favored candidate being what she is — more of the same that has led to this.
Anyway, Dick Destiny electric folk was there before everybody else with “Taxavoidination.” And you can still have it, free, without even signing up.
Download and listen or I’ll contribute to killing the dog.
[1] Old Leonhardt, defender of the status quo:
Most voters in [the United States and Europe] have yet to come to grips with the notion that they have promised themselves benefits that, at current tax rates, they cannot afford …
The increasing claims come from the aging of the population, while the slowing growth of available resources comes from a slowdown of economic expansion over the last generation. A complex mix of factors, varying by country, has slowed growth, and the slowdown has been exacerbated everywhere by the worst financial crisis and global recession in 70 years.
And here, chronicling the losses of poor rich man, John McAfee:
Any major shift in the financial status of the rich could have big implications. A drop in their income and wealth would complicate life for elite universities, museums and other institutions that received lavish donations in recent decades. Governments — federal and state — could struggle, too, because they rely heavily on the taxes paid by the affluent.
Perhaps the broadest question is what a hit to the wealthy would mean for the middle class and the poor …
If anything, these economists say, any problems the wealthy have will trickle down, in the form of less charitable giving and less consumer spending. Over the last century, the worst years for the rich were the early 1930s, the heart of the Great Depression.
Other economists say the recent explosion of incomes at the top did hurt everyone else, by concentrating economic and political power among a relatively small group …
But if the rich have done well in bubbles, they have taken enormous hits to their wealth during busts. A recent study by two Northwestern University economists found that the incomes of the affluent tend to fall more, in percentage terms, in recessions than the incomes of the middle class. The incomes of the very affluent — the top one ten-thousandth — fall the most.
Over the last several years, Mr. McAfee began to put a large chunk of his fortune into real estate, often in remote locations. He bought the house in New Mexico as a playground for himself and fellow aerotrekkers, people who fly unlicensed, open-cockpit planes. On a 157-acre spread, he built a general store, a 35-seat movie theater and a cafe, and he bought vintage cars for his visitors to use …
In 2007, Mr. McAfee sold a 10,000-square-foot home in Colorado with a view of Pike’s Peak. He had spent $25 million to buy the property and build the house. He received $5.7 million for it. When Lehman collapsed last fall, its bonds became virtually worthless. Mr. McAfee’s stock investments cost him millions more.
One day, he realized, as he said, “Whoa, my cash is gone.???
His remaining net worth of about $4 million makes him vastly wealthier than most Americans, of course.