Titanic
By Edward Daley (10/02/08)
I was reading an op-ed the other day in which the author (who's name was not attached to it) wrote that getting rid of corporate taxes as a means of helping to shore up our economy was a bad idea because some 25 percent of all income taxes are paid by corporations. He (or she) went on to state that it'll be the average American worker who has to make up the difference if we stop taxing corporations, but what the author didn't point out was that the average American, by and large, already pays the taxes our government levies on corporations. How can that be? Because the people who work for corporations, own stock in them, and purchase their goods and services are mostly average citizens. Remove from the equation the upper managerial staff of just about any a large, publicly traded company, and what you have left are mostly middle class employees and stock holders who bear the brunt of the corporation's tax burden through lower wages, less benefits and smaller stock dividends than they would otherwise be afforded. After them, it's the consumers who finish paying the government's bill when they patronize that corporation.
What the author of the op-ed in question also failed to mention was that eliminating corporate taxes would incentivise untold numbers of American entrepreneurs to start new businesses, while enticing foreign corporations to move their headquarters to the United States. This would rapidly stimulate economic growth, putting more American workers into higher paying jobs, and consequently, increasing income tax revenues over time to such a degree as to offset the initial loss in corporate tax receipts. As it stands, the U.S. has the second highest corporate tax rate in the world, and as we're all painfully aware, good companies and the employment opportunities that go along with them have been leaving our country in droves for decades now. With our already massive debt steadily expanding to nightmare proportions, the last thing we need is punitive corporate taxes that only serve to drive major business interests away from America and into the waiting arms of competitor nations like China, which already owns a substantial portion of our national debt.
What is truly disquieting (and may prove to be catastrophic where future governmental policy is concerned) is that far too many Americans tend to think of corporations as soulless, faceless entities that should be punished for the gross incompetence and, at times, felonious activities of their executive officers. While there has certainly been mismanagement and outright criminal behavior within the corporate world over the years, and while such acts have led to average workers losing their jobs, their relatively high standards of living, and even their retirement incomes, taxing those corporations does nothing to repair the damage done as a result of past ineptitude or corruption. Indeed, raising corporate taxes only further burdens the people who have already been harmed by the aforementioned shenanigans of corporate big-wigs.
Taxing corporations doesn't punish the people at the top, it punishes everyone below them, and inevitably leads to economic distress at all levels of the private sector. While left-leaning American politicians and their lapdogs in the mainstream media have been busy pointing their hypocritical fingers at "evil" business enterprises like Exxon-Mobile and Wal*Mart - which are among the few remaining major corporate success stories in this country - and talking about the most effective way to punish them, other countries have reduced their corporate tax rates and are, as a result, eating our lunch on the global economic stage.
The most formidable barrier standing in our way as we (true American capitalists) seek to eliminate our nation's corporate tax burden isn't - as one might suspect - leftist politicians, although they certainly do not help matters any. No, the greatest obstacle is the average American voter, who has not been properly educated in basic economic theory, and as a consequence, is easily manipulated into believing that taxing "rich" corporations will somehow benefit working-class citizens. It will not, and anyone with even the most rudimentary understanding of our economic system will tell you so. This is why education along these lines is so crucially important to the future well-being of our nation. If we continue to allow the socialist doctrine embraced by individuals like Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton to fester within our education system, as has been the case for the past 40 years or more, politicians of their ilk will continue to ascend to high levels of political power in this country, and that will inevitably lead to economic disaster.
The neo-Marxist ideologues who currently run the Democrat party, and have begun to infest the GOP as well, exhibit no appreciation whatsoever for the historical fact that pure capitalism - unencumbered by punitive tax policies and the over-regulatory nature of government - is by far the superior model for stimulating economic growth and prosperity among every income class in America. They embrace a socio-economic theory which has been proven time and time again to be an unmitigated failure, and with every step we take as a nation toward their ultimate goal of a primarily government-controlled economy, the closer we get to the next great depression.
Oh, and by the way, if you thought the last one was bad, keep in mind that back in the 1920s and '30s our country wasn't trillions of dollars in debt, and practically everyone was used to getting along without outside assistance... especially the sort of government-provided assistance that tens of millions of Americans have since grown accustomed to. A full-blown depression at this particular time in America's history would be devastating in ways we cannot even comprehend, and no amount of political wrangling or finagling of the government's books will be able to right our economic ship once the iceberg of socialism has breached its hull.
Edward L. Daley
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