GE and Exxon/Mobil crowned welfare king and queen for 2010

Yeah, but they were shuttled-off to a fake ceremony, while Wall Street partied hard at a Corporate Welfare event organized by shareholders and treasury department staff.

yt, stop being such a communist. If corporations were actually forced to pay taxes like every one else they wouldn't be able to employ so many people and trickle down their generous bounty, like a golden rain upon the lazy plebes.

LOL, indeed.

I'm not really understanding. If there is anyone in the article to be truly upset with, it's GE for filing all the subsidaries under the GE Capital name thus in a way manipulating the tax advantage. But Exxon pays its taxes even if it has some offshore shelters. So I'm not sure where you're going with this...

I see now what you are referring too. $15 Billion is going to Non-U.S. taxes which sucks for us.

Exxon seems to have a refund coming for specifically "Federal Income Taxes". Now I don't know anything about accounting but that does seem quite strange and I guess Exxon will be determining their actual tax liability later this year when the IRS goes through all of their filings.

But this blog helps to clarify that article: http://blogs.forbes.com/energysource...-income-taxes/

Well who is to blame then? Sure we could could levy some on these huge corporations that take advantage and manipulate things. But don't we also have to put some of the burden on our own gov't?

I don't know how they operate, but the obviously make billions of dollars.

Would you mind linking me some of the stuff to read about how things have changed the past 30 years?

The reason companies like Exxon move so much of their operation overseas is because the corporate income tax rate in the U.S. is one of the highest in the world. A lower tax rate would bring a good deal of that work back stateside, and Exxon would be paying those taxes here, and not elsewhere. It's economics, not rocket science.

Yes the top marginal income tax was cut from 70% - 28%. But that was a good thing. The Tax Reform Act of 1986 also created only 4 tax brackets from the original 15. And a person making $16,700 was paying 23%, but after the Tax Reform Act of 1986 they were paying 15%. I agree though that this hurt some in the middle class, specifically those making $16,800-$25,300 (by paying up to 5% more in tax). However, those making upwards of $27,000 all received tax breaks. Though some excise taxes and Social Security tax increased which everyone had to pay. Now Corporate Income taxes were dropped substantially from 48% to 34%. But considering the massive recession at the time, that was probably a good idea to further spur growth.

Now tax havens are definitely a disease. But they aren't just for American companies. Our own banks are used as havens for foreigners as well. We need to clean up our own banking system and then institute some changes to the tax code to help combat that. In some cases we should lower taxes and/or burdens so that in the case of Exxon that $15 billion gets brought back here.

I still need to read The Powell Memo and the two links following. Sorry I'm at work, but I'll get to it.

But so far, I have to agree with what changed in the 80's. There were far too many loop holes and the tax system and become so large that it was corrupting itself. Inflation was not taken into account in developing the tax bracket until 1986. Now overhaul was much needed and perhaps it is needed again.

Yeah, truthout is sure to provide a balanced, nuanced, and well-informed take on the subject.

Were the 70's a great economic time? The 70's had high fuel prices and high unemployment. I'm interested, what would you have done in the early 80's to right the country?

Hindsight is 20/20 yt, the deficit grew amazingly during the 80's. It's horrible that the U.S. went from the largest creditor to largest debtor in the span of a decade. Most of it was due to massive defense spending during the cold war. Whether or not that was right is anyone's opinion.

The "banking" system was okay it was the Savings and Loans that had problems. A self-professed "neighbors helping neighbors" institution was corrupt because the "officials" were appointed by those who had the most clout in the institution (i.e. big savings account and/or loans).

I'm not real sure about the division of wealth. I don't really see anything that says all the money was taken from poor people and given to rich people. Did the AMT effectively help the rich? Yes it sure did. But they are also paying the majority of the tax in this country anyways. I guess if your saying the rich got richer and the poor got poorer, I don't really see that either. The rich got richer because the economy turned around, but the poor also received the benefit of unemployment rates dropping so they didn't necessarily get poorer. Now those who were unemployed and still had to pay tax on benefits probably suffered heavily and that is of great misfortune and was disingenuous.

The condition of the country? Well Unemployment dropped to 5.9% and GDP grew at an amazing rate, 9.4% annually (3.96% adjusted for inflation).

Now you're right when it comes to base wages. The minimum wage did not move at all during the 80's. And it was obvious that productivity was up due to GDP.

So all in all, I find that there were some good things and some bad things about the 80's. But it was not the most epic of fails. Part of the recovery was no doubt due to cyclical movements in the economy.

One thing I'll say about NAFTA is that President Clinton, after making some changes, signed the agreement. Interestingly, people point to the Clinton years as being such a great economic time and that was precisely when NAFTA was in effect.

Based on the reading material, I'm guessing you probably aren't very fond of conservative principles or conservatives in general. But there are good economic principles on both sides that should be listened too. Too much of one thing is bad and that is why we need to meet in the middle.

I completely agree that the corporations in this country have too much influence and power. But at the same time why does the govt classify them as to big to fail? Because of that power and influence? If the billions used to prop up these companies were actually invested in the people of this country, I think we would see a great amount of ingenuity and growth. Not to mention it could help some of the poverty issues facing the country.

Yeah I read the links yt. Probably isn't much to debate because I didn't really give too much opinion. But I read other stuff too and continued to google so I had a decent idea of what was going on from both sides. I shouldn't have said the thing I did about the conservative stuff. I don't know what your definition is, just as you don't know what mine is.

The only places I put words in your mouth would be the wages part, possibly the division of wealth section, and the conservative thing. I apologize, that was sloppy. But you have to understand that I'm trying to infer a lot from what you are saying. You have given me articles about things, but you haven't clearly defined your POV for me. Other than that, it was just some facts I read and agreeing with your previous statements. I was just responding to reading the links. If there are other areas where I put words in your mouth, please point them out. I was just trying to consolidate your posts but if I got what you were saying wrong then I would like to know.

I hope you don't mind me asking you a couple questions:
1. Would I be right in saying that you don't like big corporations having a lot of power and being almost never "disciplined" as it were?
2. How do you think the economy gets stronger? (More precisely, what kind of economic principles do you support?)

I'm assuming you meant "when corporations aren't prevented..." I was a little confused because without any regulation or control by the gov't, there is too much risk in the market compounded further by the fact that the businesses can dictate to many things.

Just so you are aware, I'm a centrist. I feel that there are positives and negatives on both sides.

Warning: I work in one of those companies.

To say that GE doesn't contribute anything to the country is really ridiculous, specially with the amount of people who it employs and who pay taxes (for one thing).

However, the question here is, are these companies doing anything illegal? And it shouldn't surprise anyone that GE Capital suffered a lot of obvious reasons and you should notice the amount of people who also lost their jobs because of the fin. crisis (btw i don't work in capital). But if there are tax breaks that are legal, expecting the corporation to not take advantage of them legally would be actually be irresponsible from the perspective of a share holder and an employee.

But...

GE brings good things to life, YT. How can you argue with that?