On Nov 28, 8:14 pm, Les Cargill <
lcargil...@comcast.com> wrote:
> BillSlomanwrote:
> > On Nov 28, 12:18 pm, Les Cargill<
lcargil...@comcast.com> wrote:
> >>BillSlomanwrote:
>
> >> <snip>
>
> >>> The people funding the denialist propaganda - Exxon-Mobil amongst
> >>> others - enjoy a variety of tax loop holes that rip off a lot more
> >>> money from the US taxpayer than has even been spent on academic
> >>> research.
>
> >> False. Quite false.
>
> > Care to find some numbers?
>
> It is not a "numbers" thing. It is a narrative and facts thing.
The fact is that nobody spends a lot of money on academic research,
and the tax loop holes involve serious money. If you want to argue
with that, it would be nice if you found some numbers to support your
implausible position.
Here's the 2011 National Science foundation budget totalling $6,859.87
million.
http://www.nsf.gov/about/congress/112/highlights/cu11_0523.jsp
Here's a discussion of corporate tax loop holes
http://reclaimdemocracy.org/corporate_welfare/real_tax_rates_plummet.php
where individual companies seem to be skimming more than the NSF has
to spend.
> >> There are no loopholes unique to oil
> >> operations.
>
> > Are you sure?
>
> yes. I got hammered saying the exact same thing you are, and
> found I was wrong.
>
> > In any event my argument didn't depend on oil companies
> > getting their own specific tax loop holes
>
> Yes, yes it does. It is logically equivalent to what you said.
No. What I said was "The people funding the denialist propaganda -
Exxon-Mobil amongst
others - enjoy a variety of tax loop holes that rip off a lot more
money from the US taxpayer than has even been spent on academic
research."
This isn't saying that they enjoy tax loop holes specific to their
industry, merely that they - like may other US corporations - exploit
loop-holes that reduce their corporate taxes
http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2011/05/tax_man.html
> > - the US has one of the
> > highest maximum rates of corporation tax in the world, and one of the
> > lower collection rates of corporation taxes, entirely because of the
> > "rich set of tax options", more accurately described as tax loop-holes
> > and the oil- and coal-mining- industries are just some of the
> > industries riding the gravy train.
>
> I honestly don't know what to make of this mess. I can't really
> read it, goalpost shifting to the side.
The goal posts haven't shifted at all. You just didn't read my post
very carefully.
> SFAIK, corporations pay exactly what they are legally obligated to
> pay. I can't think of an improvement on that as a standard.
The corporations get the tax loop holes written into law, so it is all
perfectly legal - tax avoidance rather than tax evasion - totally
immoral, and depressingly stupid.
> Corporations can certainly be big and dumb, but I get weary
> of them being the perfect whipping boy for all our evils.
Unfortunately they aren't dumb. They spend big momey on getting
lobbyists to speakt to legislators on their behalf to get their tax
loopholes written into law, and Exxon-Mobil has famously spent some
$20 million on funding denialist propaganda via front organisations
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Exxon_Mobil
> >> They just happen to be both a mining and industrial
> >> operation, so there's a richer set of available tax options.
>
> > The famous depletion allowances, which most objective commentators see
> > as ripping off the US taxpayer.
>
> I will never, ever buy that, because the probability that a taxpayer is
> not also a customer is very close to zero. You'd be moving money around
> in a useless cycle.
It's the share-holder who get the benefit, rather than the customers.
> > Since 1979, the richest 1% of the US population has seen its income
> > rise by 275% while the poorest 80% has seen their income decline.
>
> Yes - although it's quite difficult to say these changes are as you
> seem to think they are. We literally have families who struggle to make
> ends meet on $250k, and it is not as ridiculous as it might seem.
> Meanwhile, the poor have relatively comfortable lives. So it's messy.
The top 1% in the US has done a lot better than top 1% in most other
countries - the US has an unusually high GINI index for an advanced
industrial country, and it seems to be gettin gmore unequal, which is
also unusual
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_equality
> > Tax
> > loopholes for the rich have contributed generously to this skewing of
> > the income distribution.
>
> No, I do not believe that this is true. The richest 1% does not
> include corporations. It includes people who are paid by corporations.
Correct, corporations aren't individuals in this context. The richest
1% are individuals who have a lot of shares in corporations, sometimes
a controlling interest.
> >
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_inequality_in_the_United_States
>
> >> Oil companies run leaner and create more consumer surplus per unit
> >> profit than just about any other kind of corporation.
>
> > Until you start counting the defence department expenditures to
> > protect their oil wells and supply routes.
>
> That is a particularly ahistoric view of things. Who founded,
> for example, ARAMCO?
What has that got to do with anything? The US-orchestrated recovery of
Kuwait from Saddam Hussein after he'd invaded the place was paid for
by the Defence Department, not the oil companies.
> >> And academic research never was particularly spent-on.
>
> >>> If you want a truly spectacular rip-off, look at the difference
> >>> between what you spend on "defence" - some $698 billion - and what you
> >>> ought to be spending on defence, which is the sum of what ypour two
> >>> closest competitors - China and France - are spending ($114.3 and
> >>> $61.3 billion respectively). The difference - some $500 billion -
> >>> seems to be corporate welfare for the military industrial complex,
>
> >> No, it is mainly local boondoggles. Pork. It also has a pretty high rate
> >> of return to the general economy.
>
> >> Some years back? Yes. Now? No.
>
> > Those are 2010 numbers.
>
> Right. That is what I mean. Ironically, $500B isn't all that much in
> the larger scheme of things.
It's close to half the deficit - not insignificant.
> > The fact that pork benefits the fat cats in
> > the local economies doesn't make it any less of a rip-off for the tax-
> > payers funding the 1% of the population that includes those fat cats.
>
> >
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_expenditures
>
> I just don't know where to start with this mess.
>
> 1) The US was staunchly isolationist in 1940. By 1945 that had been
> overcome by a *MASSIVE* propaganda effort ( the OSS repopulated Madison
> Avenue with executives after they demobbed post-War ).
>
> 2) Herbert Hoover thought we should stay out of the War and let
> germany and the Soviets go to Hades in their own way.
>
> If we mobbed up the military, it is because Europe was on fire.
> Once established, as Eisenhower said in his final speech, it's
> very difficult to unload all that. One can clearly see that
> Vietnam and Iraq were at least partly the public choice
> inevitability of this.
You started way too early. WW2 ended in 1945. The question only gets
interesting after 1991
http://milexdata.sipri.org/result.php4
only goes back to 1988, when the US was spending $532 billion against
the Russian's $296 billion and France's $67.4 billion - $169 billion
more than it's two closest rivals, an extravagance that had the useful
effect of persuading the Russian's to spend more on defence than they
could afford, which lead to the disintegration of the USSR in 1991.
You'd won at the point, but rather than turning off the extravagant
spending, you kept at it ...
<snipped the irrelevant comments about Pax Americana - which ought now
to be costing you about $180 billion per year, not the $698 billion
you are spending>
--
Bill Sloman, Nijmegen