BonaLibro

As other people have said before, given that employee costs, i.e wages and benefits, are tax deductible, it could be argued that lower tax rates are a disincentive to employ people, one of those unintended consequences for which conservatives are always lambasting liberals.

But no matter, the real issue we’re dealing with here is one of responsibilities vs. rights. Another favorite movement-Conservative theme. Corporations are licensed by the state, given the right to sell shares carrying limited liability, which make them attractive investments. They should be regarded as community assets, and not be permitted to pick up shop whenever they decide their marginal costs might be pennies less elsewhere. They are provided at public expense with police and fire protection, highways on which to transport their goods, bridges over which those goods cross rivers, naval protection of the sea-lanes for the products they export, occasional marine corps landings to protect their foreign investments, and EPA Superfund clean-ups of their hazardous materials dumps, bailouts from their soured investments, either as direct subsidies or as tax deductions for losses. I could go on and on. Yet the fat cats take it all for granted because the mythology they invented for themselves, to justify their egregious practices, teaches them those are all external costs. Not their responsibility.

Fostering trade and commerce is an expensive proposition for the state, for which it expects some corporate support in the form of taxation. Yet the fat cats refuse to acknowledge that as their RESPONSIBILITY. They think the diminishing numbers of people they employ should be grateful enough for their jobs to assume those costs for them. Why? Because they are being overpaid for the value they add to the product? Balderdash. The fat cats tax the workers production excessively to pay their own salaries, then expect to freeload off us in our long suffering role as tax payers. Next time one of those fat cats lectures you about responsibility, hold up a mirror to his face with your upraised finger in the center of it.