The Glade 4.0

Their CEO's response to Bernie's comments

Unlike the Wall Street hedge fund crowd he worries so much about, which admittedly does just move money from place to place, companies like GE, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, US Motors (Coro), Union Pacific and others do actually make real things and provide actual services like moving heavy stuff from point A to point B. You might want to learn what the difference is, Bernie.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

It's a good response.

Bernie's style of socialism relies on some fundamental misunderstandings of economy.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

It's not just Bernie that needs to learn it. People like living the way we live in the west. It would behoove them to remember that to live that way, someone has to actually make all those gadgets and things, and they have to make the stuff that makes the stuff that makes the stuff.

And while we're at it, it would also behoove us to remember that GE workers making jet engines aren't getting minimum wage, either. They're in the crowd that's getting screwed by $15 an hour minimum wage because they get all the price increases and none of the raise. They're also the ones that get laid off when ill-advised defense cuts go through - that "military industrial complex" people like to pretend is a problem pays a lot better than being a Starbucks barista.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Let's give another example, inspired by the moronic comments under that GE CEO's response -

"Corporate Taxes."

Corporations never pay taxes. It's actually impossible, as corporations don't really exist as individuals. When a corporation "pays taxes", you know who's paying those taxes? Several people, but remember that - it's always people paying the taxes, not the corporation.

Here's the people that end up paying "corporate taxes."

(1) Customers. Taxes work as an expense, and expenses cause the cost of goods to go up.
(2) Employees. Companies will work to cut expenses to accomodate the taxes. This will mean cutting jobs, a lack of pay increases, a lack of bonuses.
(3) You and I. We're the lower middle class. We are the owners of these companies, because we're investing for retirement. Most major corporations are widely held, with no "majority owner." They aren't owned by rich "fat cats." The shareholders are many millions of individual shareholders.

Note that in all of these cases, corporate taxes form a sort of double taxation ... sometimes triple taxation ... on the people least able to afford it. For an employee, they're already paying income tax, they don't get their bonus, and the cost of the goods they need to live are going up because we taxed the corporate manufacturer of those goods. (Hey, lets add a fourth layer of tax by adding a sales tax on those goods, too!)

Here's who does NOT end up paying corporate taxes.

(1) CEOs. CEOs are hired by talent search and bidding war. Companies will pay whatever they think they need to to attract the talent they want. They have fixed salaries and incentive bonuses that are not impacted by things like corporate taxes. CEOs pay individual taxes, based on their income (which is actually a hell of a lot of money.)
(2) Some rich billionaire sitting in a yacht. Oh, he might pay a little, because he may own some stock in the company, but he won't own a large percentage. And if taxes cause his investments to be worse, he'll invest in other countries where the corporate taxes are lower. Which results in less money in your country's economy, and that means you and I have less money.
(3) "The Corporation," itself. Ultimately, the corporation is just an organizational unit. All that money? It belongs to people, somewhere along the line. And those people are primarily regular, middle-class people just like you and I.

"Corporate taxation" is just a shell game con. It's the government trying to squeeze more out of the 99% in a way that makes them think they're going after the 1%.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

By that logic, workers don't pay taxes either - their employer does because his calculation of compensation includes the employees tax burden; the employee needs to have an acceptable net income, not just an acceptable gross income. If you follow this to its logical conclusion, everyone always passes on their tax burden to someone else, somewhere.

Yet there obviously is tax revenue. Taxes are paid by whoever is directly turning over money to the taxing entity. Passing on that expense in the form of costs to someone else isn't "not paying taxes"; it's an illustration of how excessive tax burdens hurt people other than just the ones that are directly paying them.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Well, again, the corporation doesn't exist as an individual. The corporation doesn't care if it is taxed or not, it's just an organizational unit.

You can make an argument that "The workers don't pay taxes, the employer does by paying enough to give the workers an acceptable net income," and that if the government didn't take its cut, that the employer could pay the employees less and they'd have more money. When you look at it from that perspective, yes, it's true.

But that "employer" is not the corporation, in that case. It's the shareholders, and to a degree, the customers. It's the individual people who have less money because the government took their cut of the employee's salary.

Of course I already listed the customer and the shareholder as payees of the "corporate taxes." I listed all the individual types of people affected by this. Employer (A.K.A. Shareholder), Employee, Customer.

What's not affected is "the corporation." Or more accurately, "the corporation" is irrelevant...the effect on the corporation is only relevant to the extent it effects individual people. And the people paying the vast majority of those corporate taxes -- whether you look at it as employee, employer, or customer (or a combination of all three, which is what I did above) -- they're the "99%", not the "1%".

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

All you're really saying here - in a long, very convoluted way - is that the corporation is not actually a person - i.e. it "doesn't care" because it's not actually a sapient entity, but a collection of them, and is just an organizational structure.

While this is obviously true, it's also rather tautological - we understand just fine that a corporation is not actually a human being; it's not necessary to explain that - and it also misses the point that taxes on that organizational structure exist in addition to taxes on individuals. If a given corporation did not exist, its taxes would not exist. If corporations in general did not exist, their taxes would also probably not exist because the economy simply would not be robust enough to support those taxes, or nation-states and modern governance structure at all. We'd have reverted to a pre-corporate, possibly pre-Westphalian status where nation-states do not exist, and we'd be in some variation of more primitive socioeconomic systems.

So yes, you can point out that other people that have various interests - shareholder or otherwise - in the corporation are hit by the tax burden placed on the corporation, but that tax burden exists because the corporation exists - when it ceases to exist, its tax burden disappears as well and does not magically re-appear in the form of higher direct taxes on those individuals. The corporation is not irrelevant, because it is greater than the sum of its parts - it causes things to be accomplished that couldn't be without that organizational structure, and also causes taxes on that same activity to exist that otherwise wouldn't and most likely could not be re-created.

Ultimately, every tax burden everywhere always results in the target of the taxation passing it on in some fashion to whoever is paying them. Whether it is an individual doing it or a corporation doing it is irrelevant. Yes, ultimately corporations are made up of people and owned by people who actually feel the cost, while the corporation doesn't because it has no feelings or consciousness, but that's really just another way of saying corporations wouldn't exist if people didn't exist - which again is something I think we're all pretty clear on.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

I think you're missing my point.

My point is that corporate taxation is hidden taxation primarily on "the 99%". It is NOT (as the left so frequently likes to argue) a tax on "the 1%." The customers, the shareholders, the employees - these are primarily middle class people. Corporate taxes are a tax on the common people. They do not significantly impact the very rich.

One interesting note - corporate taxation is one of the few ways that the lower class actually pays any tax at all. The cost of the goods they purchase to live are inflated by corporate taxation - so while they may not pay any real income tax, they are still paying corporate tax.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

All three of these points feed into the socialist dream of the State controlling your economic life for the betterment of society.

1) The solution is to fix prices. The state tells the Corporation what their services and products can cost.
2) The solution is to standardize wages. If the minimum wage is high enough, everybody will work at the minimum wage, and Corporations will be forced to pay it, and won't be able to afford to pay above it.
3) You clearly shouldn't be investing for your own retirement. How can you be trusted to do so? Your investments cannot be allowed to siphon the profits of Corporations away from the government's taxation, which must be kept high to ensure that EVERYBODY can retire meagerly after they're no longer capable of contributing to the economic engine that is the State.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

I'm not missing this point at all, nor disagreeing with it. This is a separate point from saying "corporations don't really pay taxes because they aren't actual people."

For the very rich, even if they didn't attempt to avoid taxes at all they wouldn't be "significantly impacted" anyhow without truly absurd tax rates and maybe not even then. A 5% tax on a person at the poverty line means a much higher marginal impact on them; if you make $30,000 a year, $1500 in taxes is a pretty meaningful factor in what you can afford. A 50% tax, however, on someone making $300,000 a year (who is not really even "rich") still has $150,000 left over which isn't bad to live on at all.



Except that they are not - the corporation is paying that tax - the corporation charging a certain amount because it has a certain tax burden is not the people paying its taxes; it's a driver for the costs to the customer and the wages of the employees, but $X of corporate taxes do not directly and measurably result in $Y costs down the line. By that logic, the provider of whatever income that poorer person has is really the one paying the taxes. If that's the government, in the form of benefits, then the government is really taxing itself.

If you want to see where lower classes really pay taxes, the proper place to look is sales tax - which they pay directly.

When you try to take a tax burden and move it from where it's paid on to come point further down the pipeline, it's really just getting into a "chicken or egg" rabbit hole, and then cutting it off at some arbitrary point and claiming that's who "really" pays the taxes. Its much more effective and direct to say "these are the effects of corporate taxes on low-income people" than to try to argue that corporations don't actually pay them.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

The underlying flaw in the thinking of Socialists is that they do not believe second- or third-order effects exist.

This is why socialist thinking is so seductive. Second- and third-order effects require greater intellectual effort to see, and do not have the emotional impact of parading "disadvantaged" people on TV or in front of Congress to bewail their situation. The above seems very fair and attractive if all you see is money in and money out for the worker; the problems only start to crop up once you actually have to think about it beyond the immediate.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

I'm not moving it around. I'm pointing out the people who pay for that tax.

It's always three types of people: Employers/Shareholders/Investors (all the same thing), Employees, and Customers.
The lower class absolutely fall into the customers category. And frequently employees, too.

It's not one or the other - you can't really discern exactly where that money would go if the tax was not there. It's very likely it would result in a combination of higher share prices/dividends, higher wages for employees/more employees, and lower costs for the end products. While it's possible that one or the other of those would benefit more in any given situation, I'm treating them all equally here.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

I'm going to disagree here to some degree. It's not that the substance is wrong, it's the fixation on socialism.

Many countries have more "socialist" systems than America (and Canada, which, contrary to American popular thinking, is not SIGNIFICANTLY more socialist than America). They are still not socialist economies. Scandinavia is frequently mentioned - but the Nordic countries are still primarily free market economies that have added public services available to their citizens (and available to ALL their citizens, not just the poor.) And it can function and function well, if planned right. Think of this kind of socialism like "salt," with the free market economy being the steak. A bit of salt on your steak is good. Variations in taste between individuals will have preferences with regard to how much salt - that cannot be objectively determined which is best. But everyone agrees that too much salt ruins the steak. With the exception of the hardcore libertarian types, very few even on the political right favor going completely without salt. Most want, for instance, a public education system.

What you're discussing here is victim politics, which, like "Socialist salt" is intricately associated with the left wing in America. It's an "us vs. them," trying to co-opt the vote of the have-nots by making an enemy out of the haves.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

None of which has anything to do with the fact that corporate taxes are, in fact, taxes on corporations.

You're not wrong, but you're also not pointing anything out anyone here already didn't know. The fact that corporate taxes ultimately affect individuals doesn't change that those taxes are based on corporate structures, and if they didn't exist, that would mean corporations didn't exist. It's almost inconceivable that corporations would go totally untaxed in a major country.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

I'm not talking about public-policy makers, I'm talking about the average leftist voter - they most definitely do not understand second or third order effects.

I've used the salt analogy before, and most Americans only think Canada is socialist in comparison to America. If asked to compare to Europe, all but the most uninformed get that its nowhere near the same.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

I think I am pointing out something that most people either don't know, or refuse to believe, though.

The left would have you believe that corporate taxation is "making the rich carry their share," and that opponents to this simply don't want the rich to be taxed because {insert reason here.} Unintentionally, or intentionally -- this is also results in a defacto strawman argument that too many on the right fall right into, arguing back that if you overtax the rich, they'll put their money elsewhere where it won't be taxed and can't benefit us, and you'll remove incentive for innovation and working hard and blah blah blah.

This is ALL bullshit because corporate taxes do not really impact the rich. They almost entirely come out of the pockets of the middle class (with the poor shouldering relatively more of the remaining corporate tax burden than the rich, too.) This is what most people on both sides do not get. Yes, if anyone thinks about it (too few do), it is obvious that the corporate taxation ultimately affects individual people. The thing they don't get is who it affects. Corporate taxes don't help get at the wealthy. It comes out of poor working class suckers like the rest of us. A vote to increase corporate tax, is a vote to increase the relative tax burden on the middle class compared to everyone else.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

Most people may not know this, or only have a vague sense of it, but almost everyone here does. I doubt we're getting many visitors anymore.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

The thing you guys need to remember is a very large percentage of Sanders' base consists of people who truly believe that the rich are in it for the sadism, not the money. As in, they 100% believe stuff like, "raising the minimum wage makes everyone richer" and the only reason corporate America doesn't voluntarily pay more in the face of this "truth" is because the Waltons get off on the suffering of the poor and are actually willing to waste money to perpetuate that suffering. This is not an exaggeration, they literally think that, say, Apple's large offshore cash reserves are the result the executives getting together and saying, "Those worthless povs will get this money over our dead bodies." Or that the water situation in Flint was not actually about money but was an actual attempt by the 1% to "genocide the undesirables."

You know, you're probably not wrong...and those people are scary.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

Replace "rich" with "sinners" or "infidels" or "vaccinators" and you have the same mentality. Sanderistas - the truly committed portion of them - hold these viewpoints as Received Wisdom. Ironically, Sanders himself does not actually think it's For The Evulz; he just thinks its dishonesty and corruption for profit.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."