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What brings in more tax money? individual or business?
Business creates multiple taxpayers plus pays tax in itself.
Therefore, it is easy to start a business in America because they are banking on the entrepreneurial spirit to create jobs (taxpayers). Y'all with me so far? Good. ..Because here is the vital part to overstand.
The more profit a business makes, the more people they can supposedly hire, and the more the business itself can pay the gov't.
Big Business in turn wants to keep more of these profits for themselves and are constantly looking for ways to increase productivity, making more money with less or equal expenses.
Scenario 1:
Technology comes in to play to replace workers, saving corporation from having to pay hundreds to thousands of people in wages replacing those wages with just the maintenance/operation costs of the machinery.
Less wages paid = increase in revenues
Gov't doesn't care about those out of luck workers because the corporation's money saved becomes an increase of money earned by the gov't. The taxes paid by the corporation trumps by far all the combined taxes that would have been paid by the workers.
Scenario 2:
Big business moves some operations overseas for cheap labor, eliminating jobs for Americans but creating more wealth and revenue for the company.
Business has made exponentially more revenue, created less taxpayers but more taxable income than before.
Gov't doesn't care about those out of luck workers because the corporation's money saved becomes an increase of money earned by the gov't. The taxes paid by the corporation trumps by far all the combined taxes that would have been paid by the workers.
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These examples shows you how to gov't can care less about unemployment as long as the taxes from the lost jobs are being replaced somewhere else. Whenever you hear "unemployment" replace that term with "lost taxes". More interesting is how the gov't supports The Corporation's anti-social behavior for the sake of tax revenue. So in the end, its all about WHO CAN GET US THE MOST MONEY? The individual tax payer or the corp? The corp wins every time.
You wonder why the popular culture is built off the back off of tv/movie stars, sports stars and other celebrities, etc? Because these industries generate millions of dollars and create a lot of wealthy people who in turn get monitored and taxed accordingly. So the whole entertainment industry is a clever "tax trap" and is very profitable to the nation.
That would be great if the government and the economy were getting something from the lost taxes or the offshoring of jobs. It hasn't. Corporate taxes as a percentage of GDP has dropped. It used to be around 5-6% in the 1950s, and now it's about 1.5%. Corporate Tax revenue accounts for just 9% of the federal tax revenues in 2012. So the Corporations aren't providing the most money to the Feds - it never has.
Pop culture/celebrity culture/entertainment industry doesn't contribute all that much to the economy as one might think. In Los Angeles, relatively few people are employed by the entertainment industry compared with retail, finance, manufacturing, transportation, etc.
Probably something to do with Nietzsche and Slave Morality. Weaker people must create a morality that elevates poverty, weakness, docility, populism and obedience to the rest of the herd - if they didnt they'd walk around depressed and wanting to kill themselves.
Seems pretty straightforward to me. I mean, one can ask serious questions about the dangers of large organizations, but the type of people who complain about corporations don't complain about JUST corporations. No, they have trouble acknowledging distinctions of ANY kind especially distinctions that label one behavior "better", "stronger" or "more successful" than others.
Actually, it's really a lot simpler than than that: it really boils down to "Love your neighbor, as yourself". It's not about weakness or jealousy or class envy, or anything remotely like that...I think the real reason that some people may be unhappy with the super-wealthy is because some of the super-wealthy may have no love or mercy or compassion, for their fellow human beings. Certain other very wealthy individuals, such as Bill Gates, the Rockefellers, the Carnegies, the Fords, and others, however, may instead be very much looked up to and admired and respected, due to their very generous philanthropy and humanitarian efforts at making the world a better place to live in, for all people
"Why complain about wealthy people and big companies,
who create jobs and share there wealth with the rest of the world."
Really?
Most of the truly wealthy go out of their way to avoid sharing their wealth with anyone. Heck, most of them don't even want to pay taxes while still expecting to drive on our roads, use our services, and so on. And, no, I don't count giving campaign contributes to politicians or religious groups that are really political organizations as "charity." There are only a handful of truly wealthy people that give any significant fraction of their wealth to any worthy cause, and the ultra-rich are, on average, less charitable than the working class when you look at percentage of income given up.
As for creating jobs, those who worship the rich love to ask, "when was the last time a poor person gave you a job?" To them, I ask, when was the last time a rich person gave you a job?" Do the rich hire people - did the CEO give you your job? Of course not - it was some guy in middle management or HR who made that decision while the CEO was off golfing or counting his stock options. Ah, but then they'll say, "But the rich make these companies possible," which is also wrong. Do large corporations melt away when the leaders at the top shuffle around to other places? Of course not! Do the absurdly overpaid stuffed suits at the top actually design and build all the products they sell? Again, of course not. No, the reality is that the rich would NOT exist were it not for the working class. Unfortunately, many at the top are delusional and actually think they are the company - in reality, nobody would miss many of them if they were gone.
Now, if you want to ask "how many times has a rich person COST you your job," that's a different story. The executives may not hire people, but they sure love to fire them, outsource them, and otherwise thrown the working class under the boss. But I guess we're still supposed to worship them... hahaha... right.
As for creating your own work, that is statistically a path to failure. Nearly all small businesses fail, and even those that succeed take years to show a profit, all of which is completely useless to the average discarded corporate worker who needs to pay his bills NOW, not "someday, maybe, if his small home business pays off." And let's not forget the countless industry professionals who simply cannot start a home business based on their skill sets - I'm a mechanical engineer... I guess I'm supposed to start designing and manufacturing car engines in my basement... right...
The absurdly wealthy have done a wonderful job brainwashing the American people. Their actions are no different than the barons and lords of the Dark Ages, lording over the peasants and taking far more of the wealth than they have earned. But, slap "corporations" on them, toss in a few marketing slogans and a healthy dose of misguided patriotism - because loving the rich is "'merican!" - and you have peasants who now love being abused. It's sad, really.
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Why complain about wealthy people and big companies, who create jobs and share there wealth with the rest of the world.
It is very hard to take someone seriously about such a subject if they cannot even spell. After all, that is easy and this subject is hard. If an easy subject is not yet mastered by you, why would you be able to master a difficult subject and offer interesting points.
These examples shows you how to gov't can care less about unemployment as long as the taxes from the lost jobs are being replaced somewhere else. Whenever you hear "unemployment" replace that term with "lost taxes". More interesting is how the gov't supports The Corporation's anti-social behavior for the sake of tax revenue.
I kindly and politely disagree -- the government does in fact, IMO, actually care about the unemployed and the economically disadvantaged. If the government didn't care about people who are suffering and in need, there were would be no legislatively-mandated and progressive social programs in place today like Social Security, food stamps, Medicaid, welfare, etc.
I am currently making an annual salary in the low six figures, but having myself grown up in relative financial poverty in my immediate family when I was much younger, I will gladly and happily provide any and all of my fair share of my tax dues, to be able to help and care for my fellow American citizens who have less-fortunate financial circumstances, and/or who are suffering from poverty or unemployment
I kindly and politely disagree -- the government does in fact, IMO, actually care about the unemployed and the economically disadvantaged. If the government didn't care about people who are suffering and in need, there were would be no legislatively-mandated and progressive social programs in place today like Social Security, food stamps, Medicaid, welfare, etc.
I am currently making an annual salary in the low six figures, but having myself grown up in relative financial poverty in my immediate family when I was much younger, I will gladly and happily provide any and all of my fair share of my tax dues, to be able to help and care for my fellow American citizens who have less-fortunate financial circumstances, and/or who are suffering from poverty or unemployment
You get it, because you actually struggled in life. The people that don't get it have either A) not TRULY struggled in life, or B) have been brainwashed into complete opposition against anything resembling an "entitlement" or welfare program (my father and most of my poor blue-collar family fall into this category despite benefiting from many of these programs). Then, of course, there is that group of people who just don't give a damn about anyone else but themselves.
When you come from a truly disadvantaged background, where you spend most of your life perpetually clawing your way up and over some type of obstacle, you tend to feel a little more compassion and empathy towards those around you.
"Why complain about wealthy people and big companies,
who create jobs and share there wealth with the rest of the world."
Really?
Well, let's talk for a minute about a few of those people you love to demonize; I'm going to limit it for now to five individuals who are self made (the late Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos (Amazon), and Larry Page and Serge Brin (Google),
The wealth of these men is represented almost entirely by the perceived value of their enteprises; that, in turn, is embodied in the market price (as opposed to the "book", or net asset value of the company's property, which is usually considerably lower -- Amazon's is about 1/5 of the current stock value).
In the case of Steven Jobs, the man's estate will be taxed before it is distributed to his heirs. under Federal tax law, only gains or losses btween the time of death and the end of the year, and gains and losses in succeding year, are subject to income tax, as opposed to the one time estate tax on the corpus (asssets) passed on to heirs,
This practice has been a cornerstone of estate law for generations, and partisan politics has little to do with it. It simply refelected the point that someone who built a business over a long time shoud not be subjected to a Draconian tax bite at death. (Still, many closely-held small businesses and farms can be ravaged if some of the heirs sseek to sell out, while opthers want to continue the operation.)
So how do you Lefties plan to confiscate this "evil" wealth? A personal proprty tax on intangible assets like stocks and bonds would be one option, but small stakeholders would likely be subjected to the same penalty as large. And thiose executive "stock options" you rant about are usually the province of upper-level exectives -- in other words, employees who were hired from outside and had to "suck' as well as work their way up, becuse the mentality of self-effacement and self-subjugation still applies until one gets very close to the top.
And finally, you fail to understand that much of the newly-created wealth you seek to confiscate is an intangible, based on faith in the future. A lot of the money that "disappeared" in the 2008 meltdown evaportated due to the prospect of a relative neophyte answering to people who are little more than watered-down Marxists occupying the nation's highest office.
That can ahppen again, if the Lefty ideologues and their mouth-breathing followers start saber-rattling.
Enough time has gone by that it's been possible to gather some very interesting data on our economic downturn that became apparent when We the People had to bail out the big investment banks from their stupid decision-making.
Just this month, Emmanuel Saez and Thomas Piketty, economists at the University of California, Berkeley, and the Paris School of Economics, respectively, released some results of their tracking. The most interesting statistic to me:
2012 was the first time, in the 100 years that records have been kept, that the top 10% of earners took home half the nation's household income. HALF. The differential is even more extreme when we look at the top 1% of wage earners. They took home 19.3% of total household income in 2012. The previous record set in 1927 was 18.7%. Think about that. In no time since immediately prior to The Great Depression has income disparity been this great in the U.S. It's not your imagination that the rich are getting richer and you aren't. They have NEVER BEEN RICHER IN THE RECORDED HISTORY of wage disparity.
Here's another interesting look at that study. The rich did indeed suffer at the time the recession began. The top 1% of wage earners experienced a drop in income of about 36%. Wow. That's a lot. The other 99% of us suffered a loss in income on an average of "only" 12%. But here's the difference. Since their initial loss, the 1% have regained 31% of their losses. The rest of us? We've regained ... get ready ... 0.4%. So, in other words, this "recovery" the U.S. has been experienced has only been enjoyed by 1% of us. And I would bet that ain't you.
How does this relate to the question raised by the OP? First and foremost, I would say I don't heap praise on the wealthy of this nation because THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS TRICKLE DOWN. When the owner of the mine increases his economic standing in life on the backs of the work done by his employees, the miners enjoy no such improvement in their lives. They cannot buy a better car, or send their kids to college, or even see their safety on the job improved, merely because the place where they work sharply increased its profits. I ask you, IS THIS FAIR?
Would you like some statistical data to back up that opinion of mine? I read some recently in The Nation magazine:
"The National Employment Law Project looked at Census data from 2009–11 and found that 66 percent of low-wage workers are employed by large businesses with over 100 employees. Moreover, it found that the fifty largest employers of low-wage workers have all recovered from the recession and are in strong financial positions:
92 percent were profitable last year.
78 percent have been profitable for the last three years.
75 percent have higher revenues now than before the recession, and 73 percent have higher cash holdings.
63 percent have higher operating margins than before the recession. [THAT'S WAY MORE THAN HALF.]
Also, the study found that at these fifty firms, executive compensation averaged $9.4 million, and they have returned $174.8 billion to shareholders in dividends or share buybacks in the past five years." All while the "haves" are complaining that the "have-nots" don't deserve a raise in the minimum wage paid to workers in our country.
I strongly agree with boxus that the poor do indeed create jobs. When the poor get any amount of money whatsoever, what do they do with it? They spend it. They pay their electric bill. They trade up to a better used car. They give the kids a nice graduation party. They buy shoes for the family. Unlike the rich, who put it in the bank (often even offshore so they don't have to pay taxes on the interest the way the rest of us do). Feel free to disparage what the poor spend money on. I hear it every day: why do the poor have cell phones (because they're cheaper than land lines) ... how can the poor afford cable TV (it's the only thing they spend on entertainment for their entire family) ... I saw a poor person drinking alcohol (you'd drink, too, if you tried to live on minimum wage).
Sorry if I don't love the rich, OP. You shouldn't either.
. who share there wealth with the rest of the world
There's the problem, you assume they are "sharing" when they are giving the bare bones minimum they can while jacking up their prices at the same time. Unless you own stock in a company, they aren't sharing anything. People work for those wages and IMO are severly underpaid. A car used to cost what, a few years worth of salary? Now it costs like 10 years worth! But wages haven't risen the same as costs because companies aren't paying like they used to AND the value of the dollar keeps decreasing...
Shareholders are killing us too because companies have to keep increasing profit somehow to keep the shareholders happy. Sometimes that profit is made by laying off high paying people and hiring new people to do the same job for a lower rate...
Makes me sick that my company has done layoffs twice, the first round involved going to every single department and laying off the highest earners. Then after the second layoff the CEO comes in and says "don't go to work thinking about how much money you make, go to work thinking about the difference you are making in people's lives" - easy to say when you are multi-millionaire and not having to worry about money.
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