Neoliberalism in a nutshell: Target CEO's package matches package

bush_cheney2004 · January 27, 2015

.....Tax inversion and the loopholes which allow companies to, for example, pay large sums to their foreign subsidiaries in order to reduce their US taxes need to be closed.

More corps will move offshore....Medtronic just moved to Ireland. Burger King to Canada. Corps will legally avoid tax liability whenever possible as good bottom line business practice. Windfalls, be they public or private, do not belong to the government just because spending and debt is out of control.

Edited January 27, 2015 by bush_cheney2004

Shady · January 27, 2015

Well if that's the case, Shady, then I guess there should be no objection to putting rates back the way they were in 1981, right?

Why?

Shady · January 27, 2015

More corps will move offshore....Medtronic just moved to Ireland. Burger King to Canada. Corps will legally avoid tax liability whenever possible as good bottom line business practice. Windfalls, be they public or private, do not belong to the government just because spending and debt is out of control.

Exactly. Some people don't like it that businesses are private property, and can be done with as the owner pleases.

Michael Hardner · January 27, 2015

Some people don't like it that businesses are private property, and can be done with as the owner pleases.

For now...

Shady · January 28, 2015

For now...

I don't want to live in a country where private property doesn't remain private anymore.

GostHacked · January 28, 2015

You can't destroy a system without having a replacement, and there is no replacement at hand.

I don't think the current system is broken. It's government ineptitude that allows corps to break the rules and allows banks to do what they do. IF the rules/laws were actually enforced on their level, then the corruption would not be so rampant.

I guess target could have always approached the government for a bail out.

Edited January 28, 2015 by GostHacked

Michael Hardner · January 28, 2015

I don't want to live in a country where private property doesn't remain private anymore.

You may have an option to leave, assuming other countries have private property. I only point this out so that people think about such things, and realize that rights have to be given... Private ownership is a relatively recent concept. All of these things - property, rights, money - are constructs.

Just food for thought is all.

bush_cheney2004 · January 28, 2015

You may have an option to leave, assuming other countries have private property. I only point this out so that people think about such things, and realize that rights have to be given... Private ownership is a relatively recent concept. All of these things - property, rights, money - are constructs.

No....certain rights are "natural"..."unalienable"...not "given". Just food for thought !

Shady · January 28, 2015

No....certain rights are "natural"..."unalienable"...not "given". Just food for thought !

Exactly. If government can "give you rights", they can take them away. The concept of one's own property should be considered a fundamental right that transends government. It's scary that this is even debatable. Because we know what the alernative is.

On Guard for Thee · January 28, 2015

Exactly. If government can "give you rights", they can take them away. The concept of one's own property should be considered a fundamental right that transends government. It's scary that this is even debatable. Because we know what the alernative is.

I will agree with you there, what the government gives, the government can take away. Nothing is unalienable. We need to be vigilant if we want to keep those rights.

eyeball · January 28, 2015

Government...it must have been a stupid lefty that came up with the concept. Probably thought they were transcending something fundamentally wrong.

Shady · January 28, 2015

I will agree with you there, what the government gives, the government can take away. Nothing is unalienable. We need to be vigilant if we want to keep those rights.

I disagree. Rights are rights, and are not "given" to us by a government.

eyeball · January 28, 2015

That's correct, we give governments their rights.

We must be out of our minds.

Shady · January 28, 2015

That's correct, we give governments their rights.

We must be out of our minds.

I'm not sure what that means. But ok.

On Guard for Thee · January 28, 2015

I disagree. Rights are rights, and are not "given" to us by a government.

So who does give them to us, God? Government are the people we allow to enact the laws we are forced to live by. For instance right now you can be thrown in jail for smoking pot. According to JT, if we elect the Libs. that will change and you can smoke all the pot you want. Get it?

eyeball · January 28, 2015

I'm not sure what that means. But ok.

Ok what? The government gets the right to govern out of the same thin air our rights came from or somewhere else?

Bonam · January 28, 2015

So who does give them to us, God?

No one has to "give" you your fundamental rights, least of all a magic sky fairy.

There are rights that one has by virtue of being in a given society... for example the right to vote can only exist because you live in a society where people are elected.. it's a right whose existence requires that there be a certain form of government. Or in some societies that provide a "right" to health care, or to a basic standard of living, these rights require other people to do work to provide them to you, and hence are really entitlements that a society chooses to provide, rather than rights.

But there are rights that are inherent to a human being, and can only be taken away by others, not given by them. You have an inherent right not to be killed (the right to life), not to be forcefully held in servitude (freedom), and not to have your property stolen from you, and to say whatever the heck you want (free speech). These rights are the rights that you would have if there were no other people around, no one is going to kill you, enslave you, or steal your stuff if you live alone in the forest. You already have these rights just by virtue of being human, and they can only be taken away from you by other people (governments).

On Guard for Thee · January 28, 2015

No one has to "give" you your fundamental rights, least of all a magic sky fairy.

There are rights that one has by virtue of being in a given society... for example the right to vote can only exist because you live in a society where people are elected.. it's a right whose existence requires that there be a certain form of government. Or in some societies that provide a "right" to health care, or to a basic standard of living, these rights require other people to do work to provide them to you, and hence are really entitlements that a society chooses to provide, rather than rights.

But there are rights that are inherent to a human being, and can only be taken away by others, not given by them. You have an inherent right not to be killed (the right to life), not to be forcefully held in servitude (freedom), and not to have your property stolen from you, and to say whatever the heck you want (free speech). These rights are the rights that you would have if there were no other people around, no one is going to kill you, enslave you, or steal your stuff if you live alone in the forest. You already have these rights just by virtue of being human, and they can only be taken away from you by other people (governments).

Yes but if I have to be alone in the forest to excercize these right, what good are they?

WIP · January 28, 2015

and replace it with what?

Are you just going to steal the wealth back?

Break into their homes and shoot them for being wealthy?

It has been done. Never worked out as it was planned

Did you run out of hyperbole?

The numbers don't lie - accumulated wealth and annual earnings are increasing at the top of the food chain; and after 40 years of increasing concentration of wealth at the top, and shrinking of the middle class, the latest word is that this trend continues today, through recessions and what qualifies as 'recovery'. From yesterday's NY Times:

Gains From Economic Recovery Still Limited to Top One Percent

It’s the economic statistic that spawned the Occupy protest movement (“We are the 99 percent”), reshaped President Obama’s domestic program (“middle-class economics”), and most recently led the eternal Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney to bemoan that “the rich have gotten richer.”

I am speaking of the income share of the richest 1 percent of American families. Emmanuel Saez, the economics professor who crunches these numbers based on data provided by the Internal Revenue Service, has just released preliminary estimates for 2013. The share of total income (excluding capital gains) going to the top 1 percent remains above one-sixth, at 17.5 percent. By this measure, the concentration of income among the richest Americans remains at levels last seen nearly a century ago.

But, why would this surprise anyone, after the decades-long trend in the U.S., Canada and other Neoliberal lab rats, to cut top tax rates, shift the tax burden to sales taxes, cut investment income taxes more than earned income tax rates, expanding corporate rights, allowing large corporations to reduce competition through mergers etc. etc. etc.! The system is designed by the rich (or more specifically their lawyers, accountants and lobbyists) for their benefit.

As to what to replace it with? That's a harder problem to deal with today than it was prior to the establishment of the modern globalization cabal, which has the power to ruin almost every economy that refuses economic blackmail!

Today's exhibit is the new government in Greece. They are promising that they won't default on the E.U. loans which mostly went to enriching Deutscebank and Goldmann - Sachs, and that can only be interpreted as a loss of courage on their part, since the wealthy Greek tycoons have already sent most of their ill-gotten wealth to foreign tax havens, and Greece is left with a choice of:

a. calling the E.U.'s bluff, and refusing further payments on foreign loans by past governments or

b. caving in, and accepting the E.U.'s terms: paying loans to stay in the Eurozone, further privatization of the Greek economy, and the continued downward spiral that has already led to wide scale homelessness and malnutrition.

I haven't been following Greece's political scene closely, but if Syriza's leader is turning into the Greek version of Obama, then they will likely end up with the bloody communist vs. fascist battle that had been predicted three or four years ago.

The sad fact is that the only thing that can ultimately save us from economic, ecological and nuclear destruction is the complete collapse of our present global capitalist system. That seems to be the only avenue for starting over with something completely different.

Michael Hardner · January 28, 2015

No....certain rights are "natural"..."unalienable"...not "given". Just food for thought !

You don't believe that.

bush_cheney2004 · January 28, 2015

You don't believe that.

Yes I do...remember...I don't have a monarch. That's what the fight was all about.

WIP · January 28, 2015

President Obama kept the Bush tax cuts in place for all but the highest marginal rate. The U.S. federal debt continued to grow despite balanced budgets. If higher taxes on the rich is such a great idea, then higher taxes on the not so rich should work too. You see, there are not enough filthy rich people to tax away the deficits and debt.

Obama...even with a Democratic Congress didn't have the guts to cut the pork where it really exists in the U.S. Government: i.e. the CIA's secret black ops budget that has grown four fold in size since 9/11....cut the rest of the billions in pork that every military and security dept. and contractor has used to try to grab more money; cut the Farm Bill! There's one I don't understand.

Those farming states like Kansas, used to be considered leftwing decades ago, until Republicans started giving them subsidies. But, rather than support the family farm of Republican rhetoric, they allowed corporate conglomerates like ADM to swallow up millions of acres of farmland and collect the subsidies to grow more of the crap like soybeans and corn...which is causing obesity and type 2 diabetes in the first place!

Obama could have taken a chainsaw to the Farm Bill and improved the environment and general health, along with balancing the budget.....but he didn't have the guts to do it, so without any alarm from the MSM he went after his supporters: freezing most federal govt. employees wages, and cutting funding for social spending programs for the poor....I know the rightwing media doesn't care about the poor, but where the hell were the so called liberals in the first term of the Obama Administration? Too late now.

What the Obama Administration has done, is follow the same general bipartisan plan of the last....at least 40 years...since Nixon officially took the U.S. off the Gold Standard: keep piling up more debts with more virtual dollars, and use overwhelming military power as the leverage to enforce the continued supremacy of the U.S. Dollar as international reserve currency. As long as just about every other nation on Earth has to make trades with Dollars, they are stuck with assuming their portion of America's deficits and growing debts. If they try to break from the Dollar...well we know what happens because that's been the reason for the wars that aren't being fought because of oil these days.

WIP · January 28, 2015

I don't want to live in a country where private property doesn't remain private anymore.

So, we should allow one gazillionaire to buy up all the property and businesses...if he so chooses, and according to libertarian fantasy, it will still be a "free" market economy!

Michael Hardner · January 28, 2015

Yes I do...remember...I don't have a monarch. That's what the fight was all about.

Might makes right too, I thought.

Shady · January 28, 2015

So, we should allow one gazillionaire to buy up all the property and businesses...if he so chooses, and according to libertarian fantasy, it will still be a "free" market economy!

I'm not sure what you mean. But there are monopoly laws, anti-trust laws, etc already on the books.