Tax-avoiding,
consumer-exploiting big business leaders are largely responsible for
these abuses. Congress just lets it happen. Corporate heads and members
of Congress seem incapable of relating to the people that are being
victimized, and the mainstream media seems to have lost the ability to
express the views of lower-income Americans.
It’s
odd to think about billion-dollar financial institutions objecting to
cuts in the SNAP program, but some of them are administrators of the
program, collecting fees from a benefit meant for
and
other needy Americans, and enjoying subsidies of state tax money for
services that could be performed by the states themselves. They want
people on food stamps, not less. Three corporations have
: JP Morgan, Xerox, and eFunds Corp.
,
the food stamp program “is a very important business to JP Morgan. It’s
an important business in terms of its size and scale…The good news from
JP Morgan’s perspective is the infrastructure that we built has been
able to cope with that increase in volume..”
the bankruptcy laws to ensure that high-risk derivatives, which devastated the market in 2008, have
over savings deposit insurance, pension funds, and everything else.
But the same banker-friendly “bankruptcy reform” has ensured that college graduates
keep their student loans till they die. And sometimes even
after that, as the debt is assumed by their co-signing parents.
3. Almost 70% of Corporations Are Not Required to Pay ANY Federal Taxes
And that’s even before tax avoidance kicks in. The
‘nontaxable’ designation
exempts 69% of U.S. corporations from taxes, thus sparing them the
expense of hiring tax lawyers to contrive tax avoidance strategies.
The
Wall Street Journal states,
“The percentage of U.S. corporations organized as nontaxable businesses
has grown from about 24% in 1986 to about 69% as of 2008, according to
the latest-available Internal Revenue Service data. The percentage of
all firms is far higher when partnerships and sole proprietors are
included.”
In recent years the businesses taking advantage of the exemption
include law firms, hedge funds, real estate partnerships, venture capital firms, and investment banks.
4. Lotteries Pay for Corporate Tax Avoidance
This
means revenue comes from the poorest residents of a community rather
than from billion-dollar corporations. Many of the lottery players don’t
realize how bad the odds are. Fill out $2 tickets for 12 hours a day
for 50 years and you’ll have
half a chance of
winning.
Some astonishing facts reveal the extent of the problem. Low-income households spend anywhere from
fiveto
nine percent of their earnings on lotteries. A Pennsylvania
survey found
that nearly half of low-income residents planned to gamble at a
newly-opened casino. America’s gambling losses in 2007 were
nine times greater than just 25 years before.
5. The National Football League Pays No Federal Taxes
One
of the most profitable organizations in America, with billions in
tickets, TV rights, and merchandise sales, and with an NFL Commissioner
who
earned more money than the CEOs of Wal-Mart, Coca-Cola, and AT&T, is considered a non-profit. It has a
tax-exempt status.
It gets even worse. While the individual teams themselves are
not exempt from federal taxes,
they enjoy multi-million-dollar subsidies from their states for new and
refurbished stadiums. Fans – and non-fans – of the Washington Redskins,
the Cincinnati Bengals, the Minnesota Vikings, the Seattle Seahawks,
the San Francisco 49ers, and the Pittsburgh Steelers are among those who
pay taxes for their hometown football fields. New Orleans taxpayers
paid for leather stadium seats. For the Dallas Cowboys, a $6 million
property tax bill was waived.
A Harvard University urban planning study
determined that 70 percent of the capital cost of NFL stadiums has been provided by taxpayers, rather than by NFL owners.
6. Live on Park Avenue, Get a Farm Subsidy
A disturbing but fascinating
report called
“Farm Subsidies and the Big Dogs” lists Washington, DC, Chicago, and
New York City, in that order, as the worst offenders.
s– In
New York,
“Many entities receive the federal subsidies at their downtown office
buildings, such as 30 Rockefeller Plaza, or at their million dollar
residential condos.”
– In
Chicago,
“Nearly every neighborhood in the city receives federal farm subsidy
payments – including the Gold Coast, Downtown-Loop, Lincoln Park, and
even the President’s neighbors in Hyde Park.”
– In
Washington, “Even U.S. Senators are receiving farm subsidy checks.”
Perhaps more of us should become farmers. In Florida, according to
Forbes, “anyone could legally qualify their land as farmland by stocking it with a few cows.” Wealthy heir Mark Rockefeller received
$342,000 to NOT farm, to allow his Idaho land to return to its natural state.
7. Profit Margin Magic: Turning a dollar into $100,000
Both printer ink and bottled water cost the consumer more than they should. Calculations by
DataGenetics reveal
that the ink in a $16.99 cartridge comes to almost $3,400 per gallon.
The cost of a gallon of cartridge ink would buy enough gasoline to run
the
average car for over two years.
Water
seems to cost less than that, until the details are factored in.
Companies buy public water at almost no cost, treat it in
unknown ways, and then sell it back to us at an exorbitant markup. Nestle, for example, pays
about two dollars for public water that produces about 100,000 plastic bottles of water.
Consumer-exploiting,
tax-avoiding, profit-maximizing, responsibility-shirking,
winner-take-all capitalism. An economic system which, as Milton Friedman
once believed, “distributes the fruits of economic progress among all
people.”
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