“Give him an inch and he takes a mile” is a common saying and this has been especially true for American corporations.
But instead, these guys are given a dollar and want to steal the entire billfold. And who’s the victim of this back-alley mugging? It’s more than likely going to be the ever-growing lower class. Last year, over 80 corporations moved hundreds of billions of dollars to offshore bank accounts increasing the grand total to just shy of $1.5 trillion and, yet, they want more.
Companies are now wanting to, not only decrease corporate tax rates to 25 percent, but they also want Congress to establish a territorial tax system that will make offshore profits exempt from taxation. Greed knows no bounds for these guys, especially since profits reached a 60-year high and corporate tax rates struck a 40-year low in 2011.
Since companies are finding these overseas tax loopholes and are pushing for more ways to split their pockets at the seams, legally syphoning money from the United States government, who’s left to pick up the other end of the check? The cashier at McDonald’s, that’s who, while the company that more than likely pays Joe Punchpad minimum wage basks in tax rates that only cut into 14 percent of profits compared to the 37 percent rate in 1973.
Now say one should argue that such increased profits could be used to increase worker salaries. It wouldn’t happen. This money is being kept overseas and how many American workers has one seen receive a paycheck from Bermuda, the Cayman Islands, Ireland and other such countries banking these corporate fortunes?
It’s all legal theft. The government will lose millions, tax the middle and lower classes harder and big corporate CEO types will run around their offices like kids on Christmas morning chucking wads of money as if it’s a snowball fight with their pin-striped brethren.
Joshua de Leon is a writer and researcher with Ring of Fire.
