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Battle Lines Being Drawn As Obama Plans To Curb Tax Avoidance
theodp writes "Barack Obama has squared up for a major battle with big business, announcing a crackdown on offshore tax avoidance and evasion by US multinationals that's designed to raise $210B and make it easier for companies to create 'good jobs here at home'. Obama cited a building in the Cayman Islands where more than 18,000 US companies are housed: 'Either this is the biggest building in the world or it is the biggest tax scam in the world,' he said. 'I think the American people know which it is.' The administration says that more than a third of US foreign profits in 2003 came from Bermuda, the Netherlands and Ireland, and noted US companies paid an effective tax rate of just 2.3% on the $700bn they earned in foreign profits in 2004. Among tech companies affected by the crackdown, Microsoft joined 200 companies who signed a letter complaining that the proposed tax changes would put them at a disadvantage with their rivals, Cisco moaned that the measures 'would adversely impact our ability to invest and grow our business in the US,' and Google declined to comment for the time being."
Its a building of holding... Duh.
If sharing a song makes you a pirate, what do I have to share to be a ninja?
Avoision.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
two ways to solve the tax "scam"
1. raise overseas tax
2. lower domestic tax
guess which road the government takes.
I'm not a big fan of the system, but fixing it is a big step in the right direction. I wonder if/when we'll see the EU do the same thing (e.g. with Monaco).
For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
What does he think is going to happen? These evil rich businessmen are going to go out and deliver pizzas in their free time to pay the extra taxes? Corporate taxes are exactly the same as raising income tax, except you are paying at the point of purchase rather then the point of earning. The only real point of corporate taxes is to give the government the ability to punish companies that fall out of favor.
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
Not my free market! Take your hands off my free market Nobama!
Oops we're bankrupt, give us money Mr. President :(
Am I cynical to think that these businesses will just raise the cost of their goods to cover the additional tax, thus making consumers the ones to pick up this $210 billion tab? I somehow doubt that publicly traded companies are excited to see the earnings hit show up in their quarterly statements.
For the infrastructure they use, for the costs they incur upon citizenry, for the government support they receive regularly, and the bailouts they get surprisingly often?
About. Fucking. Time.
The common citizen pays far too much of the tax burden, while the corporate "citizen" reaps too many of the benefits. The more they weasel out of, the more we, the people, have to pay.
The stock market went up today.
This should really be viewed as a Return To Normality, or the removal of the corrupt tax avoidance schemes that the Talibangelists put in place.
To have a battle, you need to be fighting. The media just want to sell ads.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
For starters, maybe if corporations started paying their taxes, we could take down the debt some, or maybe we could lower taxes on the rest of us. I don't feel bad for the corporations, maybe they'll just have to forgo paying their executives their excessively huge salaries.
Also, every time Obama does something wrong, we see a bunch of people making sarcastic comments here on how Obama represents "change we can believe in". I do not agree with everything he has done, but I do like to see this sort of thing, he seems like he is honestly trying to run the government in a fiscally responsible way. That's a big difference from our previous president who refused to cut spending to pay for his tax cuts, and even refused to allow the cost of his several hundred billion dollar unnecessary war to be included in the normal budget. We're all paying for that kind of "limited government" now, as will be our children and grandchildren.
Gentlemen! You can't fight in here, this is the war room!
This is the major problem with the political system. The people voted for change - news flash here, there won't be any change except what is left in your pocket. The machine must be fed. The US tax code is so bloated and filled with special interest deals that unless government shrinks, TAXES WILL GO UP! This is a Demopublican problem. There is no differences between the parties - and they are partying on your money.
If you push on the balloon it will expand somewhere else.
Buckle in, this is not going to change unless all the bastards are thrown out, ALL OF THEM!
"I say we take off, nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure."
And of course we can expect this to work flawlessly, and won't make businesses avoid the US, just like other great laws such as SOX.
How about lowering taxes and making the tax code simpler, so theres not all these loopholes and thus no reason to have the offshort accounts.
Complicated tax codes create the loopholes that allow this to happen, and this legislation will only make more of them.
What are they talking about?
We pay over 30% corporate tax. and compulsory health insurance for our personnel.
Most of those Bermuda/Cayman holding companies exist not to avoid taxes entirely, but rather to keep the US from double-taxing profits that have already been taxed once by Europe/Asia, which is what the US does when this offshore trick isn't used.
It seems likely to me that if US companies can't do that any longer, many will cease to be US companies. It's not that hard to move HQ to Ireland or Canada or wherever. Then the US can become a nation of grunt workers while the real power and intellect (and taxable personal income) is abroad.
With the "free" (read "internationally managed") trade agreements we have with foreign nations, I don't think "fixing" these "loopholes" will have the effect this administration desires. "Fixing" these "loopholes" and thus increasing the over all tax burden of a corporation may have quite the opposite effect.
If it becomes more lucrative and less of a tax burden to be a foreign business inside one of these countries with managed trade agreements instead of a domestic one, what will happen? The business will move because tariffs and import taxes become cheaper than domestic ones. That means unemployment grows and tax revenues drop.
This administration would be well served to tread lightly, and ensure that conducting business withing the U.S. is cheaper than foreign alternatives, else the U.S. may find itself with very little businesses conducting any business at all.
Be Safe! Sleep with a Marine. Semper Fi!
It is not the case that "usually" lowing taxes increases revenue. It hasn't seemed to work too well for the last several rounds of tax cuts. Certainly there is a point where lowering taxes reduces total revenue. That point is a tax rate somewhere between 0 and 100%; where? That's up for debate.
Many economists would argue we passed that point some time ago.
SirWired
This is more or less what's happenning to the USA as a whole. American companies simply cannot compete against foreign companies, that's why the industrial sector is moving to Asia. It's useless to say "stop trying to make a profit and die", they died a quarter century ago.
It's the US government at all levels, federal, state, and local, that should learn to live by the rules. When the corporations are moving overseas to places with lower taxes this means your taxes are too high, you should cut government spending and taxes at the same time.
The race to lower taxes is a race straight to the bottom. Businesses will continue to use tax havens as long as there is any benefit to doing so, and the simple fact is that a big economy like the USA cannot afford to lower tax rates to what a little place like the Cayman Islands can charge, e.g. basically nothing.
A better solution is to change conflict laws to ignore the formal jurisdiction of incorporation and instead use the primary place of business. Want to be a Cayman corporation? Then move your ass to the Cayman Islands, along with your entire family. Otherwise, you will be taxed based on where your company really is headquartered. This is something that the major economies of the world can cooperate to make happen, and we don't have to drop our taxes into the toilet to do it.
I think you're wrong about that trade law, mostly because the tax havens don't have any actual trade to use as a threat. Switzerland, Cayman Islands, Isle of Man, Jersey, Ireland, Luxembourg - these are the little countries that are holding the tax policies of the rest of the world hostage. Trade war? What trade war?
These States function exactly as tax heavens not only for foreign companies...
Mod parent up. People who want to raise taxes on evil "big business" seem to not understand that the end result is that those evil "big businesses" will have to fire people or increase their prices to remain competitive successful.
Big businesses employ big numbers of people. This concept is lost on most Democrats and populists that scapegoat big corporations. You can't just blame big companies for everything and expect that they'll ignore this and carry on!
Here in Wisconsin we are looking at a number of laws that will substantially increase taxes on corporations doing business in the state. As a direct result of the anti-business climate in the state, a number of businesses have either relocated operations that were in Wisconsin or actively decided to decline to locate their headquarters in the state -- for example, our famous Miller Brewing Company, formerly headquartered in Milwaukee, merged with Coors of Denver and decided to relocate their headquarters to Chicago.
Congratulations on missing the point congress. (surprise)
Forbes had a great piece on this a few months ago. People aren't going to Ireland / the Caymans because they don't want to pay taxes and just want to cheat... the cost of compliance is too high.
One of the good things Regan was supposed to have done was get lots of tax money back to the US by simplifying our tax code. Even though they may have brought their money back from countries with lower tax burdens, it was easier to have it in the US.
There is an opportunity cost to moving your money to another country or using a tax shelter (legal or not). People judge it worth it because of what they have to go through.
If you simply simplify the tax code so it's not so hard to deal with, people will come back. Things have only gotten worse recently with SarbOx. Closing loopholes is trying to tie the arms of suicidal people to beds. It works much better to try to get them to stop being suicidal.
There will always be people who try to cheat the system because they are immoral jerks. But if it doesn't take wealthy people a team of 30 tax attorneys to keep their wealth in line, they're more likely to keep it in the US and avoid the hassle of all the international laws (and spending 183 days of the year out of the country, and blah blah blah). No tax breaks for pork farmers on 17-35 acres in areas that don't observe daylight savings time unless they grow at least 3% barley ethanol using sustainable methods.
The problem is complexity in the tax code, not tax shelters.
Example way to fix things.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
Companies that cheat a country out of taxes should be barred from selling their products in that country. My guess is that if North America and Europe signed a treaty to that effect (pay your taxes or else you can't operate here), we'd suddenly see a large increase in tax revenue. It's hard to make a profit after you lose 1.2 billion potential clients.
I came here for a good argument
It's funny listening to Obama preaching about raising taxes. Assuming American companies said "Gee, Obama is right, we should pay more taxes!", which companies does Obama think could afford to pay those taxes?
Even with the existing tax havens, traditional American companies like GM and Chrysler are going broke and selling their bits and pieces to foreign companies. How many trillions have the US federal government paid in the last six months to save American corporations?
Oh, OK, go ahead, raise those taxes. Raise $200 billion more in taxes and pay $200 billion more in bailouts, is that how it's supposed to work?
Operative word being "would". If you were to gather all the economists in the world and put them all in one room, and propose to them what sirwired said, I'm sure that many *would* argue that we passed that point some time ago. It's a fairly safe bet that there wouldn't be unanimous disagreement with this statement, among all the economists on planet earth.
You're the one who wanted to get pedantic.
There are almost 200 countries in the world. Taking this route is like a step in the direction of taxing any corporation in any country because an American owns stock in that company or because the U.S. government just plain wants to. Other countries are sovereign nations that have their own people, laws, customs and taxes. If you do not like what is in the U.S. you should leave, right? Well that is just what these corporations did. They did not like the taxes here, so they incorporated elsewhere.
Corporations are treated like their own legal entities. If you want them in the U.S., then the U.S. needs to be attractive.
Cities have often times given special tax breaks to large companies in order to get a plant or whatever built in their city (Why do you think Dell is in Round Rock, TX instead of Austin?). The feds should do the same.
This is almost like saying that if I were to give up my U.S. citizenship and become a citizen somewhere else, then the U.S. should be able to come after me and tax me if I do any business with Americans.
Get a grip!
Who do you suppose lobbied for and were given all those tax breaks and loopholes? Mom & Pop's Bike Repair? Wasn't me. How about you?
If you want your life to be different, live it differently.
I block the Politics section for a reason
But Slashdot seems more and more obsessed with ramming the Politics section down everyone's throats.
First I had to block the Your Rights Online section because it morphed into Your Rights COMMA On-Line.
Then Science, because Slashdot turned it into a Creationists/Stem Cell debate section
Now, 3 stories in the last few weeks have leaked out of Politics (where they rightly belong) and on to the front page/News
Dear Self-Important Editors:
You (yeah you) created sections and the ability to block sections for a reason.
Maybe you should show some self-restraint and put you Damn Fucking soap boxes back in their proper sections.
I and many others have no desire to be subjected to stories, the main point of which seems to be running screeds on how "Jews control the GOP" or how "Ron Paul was right".
Your inability to observe the standards of conduct you yourself created shows an utter lack of class.
Inherent in that argument is that maximizing revenue is desirable for the government. Perhaps that is true in a time of war, but government is not a business, minimization, not maximization should be it's goal imo.
Set up the tax system for business based on two things. Tax how much of their company they have in the U.S. (the portion of their company that is in the U.S. uses our infrastructure and government to its benefit), and tax how much profit they make from the U.S. (you are making money off our people and country so we get to tax that). Do that, and that's the end of any tax loop holes. If they aren't in our country or make money from our country we don't care.
Party at O'zorgnax's Pub! Buy me a Slurmtini aye?
One: The Congressional Budget Office issued a report to that effect in 2005 (when the US federal government was entirely Republican-run). http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/69xx/doc6908/12-01-10PercentTaxCut.pdf
Two: Nobel prize laureate James Tobin, for another. In 1992 he wrote that "[t]he 'Laffer Curve' idea that tax cuts would actually increase revenues turned out to deserve the ridicule with which sober economists had greeted it in 1981."
And three, economist Paul Pecorino calculated in 1995 that peak revenue was generated at a tax rate of around 65%, much higher than current tax rates in the US.
Most economists agree, 60% maximum tax rate is the high point of the Laffer curve. Even the lowest estimate puts it at 35%. Lower it any more, and the government is losing money. With all the loopholes, our effective tax rate is around 10% of GDP. The government would make more money by raising taxes, there is absolutely no doubt. Look at any recent studies, you can find dozens of them on the wiki page for 'laffer curve.'
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
The best solution I've ever heard to the tax problem in general is to eliminate corporate income taxes completely. Then close every last loophole in the personal income tax code. No more writing off cars as business expenses for personal use, or houses, or swimming pools. Either it's owned by the corporation or it's owned by an individual who happens to work for a corporation. If a CEO rewards himself with a new car that's paid for by the company, then he pays income taxes on that. This type of tax structure would cut down on abuses of the tax code by the very wealthy while at the same time encouraging companies to invest money back into themselves. In other words corporations would have an incentive to do something useful with their money rather, helping the national economy, rather than hiding it off-shore.
Not only would this scheme promote businesses right here in the US, it would even out the tax disparity between the extremes of personal income levels.
Sadly it will never happen. Not in a million years.
If you keep insisting that corporations don't deserve all of their tax breaks and special treatment by the government, the really greedy ones may be put out of business. Then, the network of Fortune 1000 CEOs might make less money, and they might have to actually work, or not even receive hundreds of millions of dollars in bonuses when their businesses are failing.
This may lead to the end of large, bureaucratic, inefficient mega corporations which exploit people and resources for short term profit, using monopoly tactics and sleazy practices like bribing politicians or using tax havens or ripping off their customers. You might end up with unions, four week vacations, the right to health care, and a lower poverty rate!
You fell for it! Bravo, douchebag.
I dispute the premise that maximizing tax revenue is a legitimate function of government.
120 characters isn't enough to explain it.
Corporations can pay taxes too. All I can say is "hello transactional tax" and hopefully (but not likely) goodbye to many other taxes. You can't dodge a transactional tax unless you cease doing business in a country. Considering this would ruin most companies, not having transactions in the US, it would remove any incentive to move headquarters overseas. In actuality every country is slowly going to move towards a transactional tax anyway to stop the, shall we say less than positive intimations (read: Blackmail), companies try to pull now. The funny thing is while the US has a higher tax rate, it has a lower collected rate than most countries.
The plus here is that corporations are the ones that are going to f*ck themselves over. You see they need, and I mean NEED, the government. Yes, the same ebil gubbermint they complain about. China isn't exactly a haven for Intellectual Property (i.e. rampant theft), other countries can't project power to defend the corporations various holdings, other countries lack the legal mechanisms for corporate defense, et al. That's why corporations raise the hew and cry often, but do very little but lobby.
The right keeps using the words "Socialist", "Marxist", and "Fascist" to describe Obama. Those words do not mean what they mean think they mean. I mean, really, Obama is a _______ (fill in the blank)? Obviously the right has ZERO idea of how center-right Obama really is. Heck, in any "Socialist" country, Obama would be seen as a right-winger. Fascist? Yeah, right, let me know what the previous President's wonderful record on the Bill of Rights was, in particular the 4th amendment. Marxist? Puh-lease, let me know when Obama pulls a Reagan and sends troops in somewhere over a labor dispute.
Just goes to show you what a lack of perspective nets people.
End all tax "credits" and "exemptions" (including EITC and Mortgage tax credits) and government handouts to corporations. After 5 years of paying off debt, lower the marginal rate. Remember, no exemptions at all. This would sting at first, in fact it would have to be phased in, but then the country would have a tax system that is as "fair" as taxes can be.
People say the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Why? Is there any shortage of bad ones?
A lot of that answer is depending on who's measuring "better", obviously. But there's a lot of little effects that are hard to measure in reality, even decades after the fact.
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
I think you probably couldn't name 3.
Most studies of hard economics relating to tax policy point out that we're substantially below the "optimal rate". Most estimations put that between 40% and 50%.
Papers that draw this conclusion, or at least have suggestions in this direction include:
Mirrlees, 1978
Seade, 1977
Tuomala, 1990
Sandmo, 1977
Wilson, 1993
Ballard and Fullerton, 1992
Dhalby, 1998
Stern, 1976
Piketty, 1997
Roberts, 2000
Atkinson, 1990
Kanbur, 1994
However, most are also very clear in stating that optimizing revenue is NOT necessarily the best rate. It is important to weigh social needs and competitiveness with alternative locales, population happiness, etc.
Most of the world has adopted top marginal rates just below 50%. The US was in that category until the 1980s. Upon reducing that rate, the US began leading all industrialized countries in terms of deficit-to-GDP ratios. While most economists point out that this is likely a combined result of increased spending, rather than tax cuts)... however, tax cuts that occur below the 35% range have never really been shown to increase revenue... In fact, most models suggest the opposite.
If you can cite ANY papers that have specifically defined models that account for opportunity costs, economic elasticity and a cohesive mathematical model, please point them out as I'm not aware of anything in that camp isn't ideological punditry from the Cato Institute or the Heritage Foundation or other similar politically motivated organizations.
Thanks!
What you said is clearly pointed out by most economists in studies on these topics...
BUT, the standard party line of reducing taxes is that "cut taxes to increase revenue".
It is frankly, based on nothing but hot air and/or lies and most serious economic studies have found little to no room for quibbles in that.
What do you mean, everyone else? What does that have to do with that I wrote, and with what he or she chose to infer?
I tend to choose my words carefully, especially so for serious topics. If that poster chose to read what they wanted to see, that is their problem, and the mark of someone who uses a written communication channel poorly. They deserved to be dressed down.
Furthermore, in the thread in question, what was being discussed initially was the workers seizing the control of production. Since when is the government synonymous with the workers? If there were to be any error in comprehension on that poster's part, it should have been by assuming I meant "seizing by force" as another poster did.
Seriously. This is one of the reasons it's hard to have a serious discussion on slashdot -- because people don't read well.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
Oh? Go look at the revenue figures, they disagree. Every time tax rates get cut revenue rises. Every time,
Where are the figures? Lets compare every year and whether there were cuts and what the revenue did. And comparing just cuts to the previous years doesn't work, we also have to compare increases. Where is a place where the tax percent change and change in revenue is correlated in a nice spreadsheet for every year we have numbers? I'd love to look at the numbers, but they aren't presented in ways that are easy to read. So please, lets look at them. Where did you look at them before you posted this assertion? I would love to see for myself.
Learn to love Alaska
I actually know a bit about the Laffer Curve, as I breifly studied under Ben Stein. It is very controversial. Does anyone know what Vice President Bush called this in 1980? Anyone? Something-d-o-o economics. "Voodoo" economics.
One of the three was hoping for the tax liability to expire beyond the normal collection point.
Sorry, but there are so called elite of the crop and if they can't do their taxes right it either means...
a) the tax code is too convoluted for even experts
b) they are dishonest
c) all of the above.
I guess we can thank Obama for at least identifying scoundrels in his Administration, the problem is he still allowed them in. Congress gave them a pass which isn't saying much for that group either.
I welcome the IRS to check my numbers. I know I am honest. I also know that it is right. You have to figure that not only do these guys know better but many probably had help filing. It doesn't wash.
I would love the IRS to be required to go over in detail ALL members of Congress EACH YEAR. They should be subject to the utmost scrutiny at all times. However just like Presidents too many adopt an elitist "nobility" attitude that they are too good to be closely examined. After all, it is they who protect us and therefor deserve the latitude.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
They claim it will cause higher prices and more unemployment? GET REAL. The spoiled brat answer to having to pay their fair share of taxes is to make less money so they can pay less taxes? When they are done with their threats of throwing a tantrum, the real world suggests they will continue trying to maximize their profits and increasing their bonuses. Companies still believe in the notion that if they aren't growing, then they are dying. Ignoring the fact that they exist on a finite world and the fact that nearly everything has a saturation point, they aren't about to willingly make less money because they suddenly have to budget taxes into their plans.
Another mark of someone who uses a written communication channel poorly is when very few people understand the point the writer is making. Especially when it is (claimed to be) a simple point that could have been clearly made by changing a few inflammatory words.
It seems the Obama administration has been making a lot of noise about tax avoidance. Let's make one thing perfectly. Tax avoidance is perfectly legal. There is absolutely nothing wrong with minimizing the amount of taxes you owe. Tax evasion, however, is highly illegal. Stashing your profits in a secret off-shore bank account is tax evasion. Finding as many business write-offs as possible is tax avoidance. If a company is using legal loopholes, they have done nothing wrong. If you don't like the loopholes, change the damn law.
I do not like this trend. The Obama administration is purposely trying to make the term "tax avoidance" unpopular. A few years from now it could be conceivable that you will avoid telling anyone that Turbo Tax Ultra-Deduction Edition saved you an extra thousand bucks through business expense deductions you didn't know about, all because you don't want your friends and associates treating you like a leper.
IANAL, but I play one on the internet
-- Will program for bandwidth
Here's some -isms for you...
I fear progressive authoritarianism operating under the guise of a liberal democracy. I fear those who would tear down our current society to enforce a raw democracy, guided by the "enlightened" elite, using propaganda via the media to steer the masses, creating a perception of "have-nots" so they can hate those that don't like where the system is taking us. Those that don't follow are run over; it's not a new concept, after all, these tactics have been around since "Philip Dru: Administrator", 1917.
We're being steered away from the republic, because a republic represents the freedom to get away from bad decisions made by others. "Why do we need an electoral congress when we can just let the people decide?" No... we have a democracy where you only need a majority to decide that someone else should pay for what you want, a fear that the Founding Fathers voiced often. There's a reason why they call it a progressive tax code, such that today 90% of the public pays 30% of the federal tax. Our "closing the loophoole" will end up chasing away the 10% that actually generates the cash for our society.
We have the media in league with the POTUS, in 100 days reporting favorable stories in a 2:1 ratio over the last president, yes 42% vs 20% favorably biased stories. And it's just not NBC or CNN... They steer the national conversations, and under the guise of entertainment (ComedyCentral, of Viacom, which lest we forget owned CBS up until 2006), they ridicule those that don't fall in line with their political ideology. John Stewart rips apart Cramer thanks to his NYSE executive brother, then falls back on "I'm just an entertainer" when his beliefs are cornered...
It's not socialism, no, because at least there they told you up front that the system was being run by the elite to forcefully equate the masses, except for those at the top of course. It's not fascism this time around either, because under fascism the corporations run the government, when today the government is itching to run the corporations (another $4.5 billion 1 hour ago). It's authoritarianism, chipping away our freedoms, our options, our future. Spending money they don't have today, telling us what we can't believe, then using the 1920's progressive tactics of criticising and ridiculing the non-believers.
Second, not only did taxes paid by the rich increase as a percent of total taxes paid, income distribution shifted from the rich to the poor under George W. Bush.
Sorry, but the facts just don't jibe with your diatribe. Your racist class warfare claims to the contrary.
Oh, and Obama's solution to paying off the debt? More than doubling the debt that took 230+ years to accumulate, and do it in under a decade. Nothing like tripling the deficit his first year out, and planning for ever-increasing deficits after next year (all of which are greater than ANY deficit under George W. Bush).
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
The United States currently has the lowest overall tax rates in the world, by a small margin.
However, the cost of living in the United States (even including taxes) is MUCH higher than most countries.
For example, health care quality in Canada is generally regarded as equal to a US based HMO. You can argue all you want about specialists and whatever... I'm talking about an HMO like Kaiser.
However, in Canada, the cost-per-person of providing that health care is barely half in Canada...
So they have 5% higher taxes to pay for it, but are able to avoid spending 8-10% of their income to provide health care for their family.
In addition to the lower overall costs for healthcare, they have the added benefit of universal coverage, which means that people like homeless children are also covered.
If anyone could point out, numerically, how a privatized health care system is better, I'm interested to hear. I don't particularly care for polemic or euphemism about slavery. Almost everyone in the world pays more taxes than you do and you DO NOT want to live in countries where you would not (Zimbabwe and Somalia come to mind).
Back when raising an army consisted of feeding and clothing a bunch of already-armed farmers, taxes could be lower, but 10% tax rates don't buy F22s, National Guard disaster relief Blackhawks and advanced CDC laboratories to isolate and analyze nationwide virus outbreaks.
How is it we've totally forgotten that? Everything I see gov't doing now is about "maximizing revenue", as if we're all cows to be milked rather than citizens.
Maybe if they didn't maximize spending, they wouldn't need so much revenue, ya think??
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
You act as if our economy depends on these big businesses which are too big to fail when in reality more jobs are created by small businesses.
Where can we find a list of the 200 companies that oppose this plan?
Dude, where's my packet?