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And now, some alternative perspectives... 'Most Corporations Don't Pay Income Taxes' http://www.truthout.org/article/most-corporations-dont-pay-income-taxes ht

And now, some alternative perspectives... 'Most Corporations Don't Pay Income Taxes' http://www.truthout.org/article/most-corporations-dont-pay-income-taxes http://www.truthout.org/article/most-corporations-dont-pay-i... 'Big business must pay it's fair share' http://www.cleveland.com/opinion/index.ssf/2009/07/big_business_must_pay_its_fair.html http://www.cleveland.com/opinion/index.ssf/2009/07/big_busin... You can slice the numbers and both your point and my point turn out to be true. The questions become: what kind of society do we want? how can we build that society? and who will pay for it? It doesn't seem unreasonable to ask corporations who benefit from the infrastructure of the nation (including transportation, educational systems, public libraries, medical systems) to help pay for those benefits.

cwan 17y ago
I've often wondered about this line of reasoning - that corporations "benefit" from a given nation and its infrastructure but the problem is that it's a two way street. The others use incentives put in place by government encouraging them to do things like research or investments. Local economies, consumers and nations themselves benefit greatly from corporations - both in the obvious point of jobs but even more so in the products and services they provide. The report you cite at truthout also fairly points out that 80% of those companies paid no taxes because they didn't make any money. This doesn't take away from your point though that we have to ask what kind of society we want, but we also should be asking what's fair and also how services are provided.
- locopati 17y ago
  The trick with 'no profit' is that it's possible for a company to tweak the numbers such that the books show 'no profit' while great profit was made and distributed in ways to allow that (some legal, some illegal, some gray area depending on interpretation). Big companies can take advantage of these rules much more easily than small ones due to a greater ability to allocate resources a legal dept that can explore these options.
CWuestefeld 17y ago
I'm troubled by the suggestion that we can make a conscious decision about what kind of society we want. First, pragmatically: the work of Friedrich Hayek shows that it's quite impossible for any top-down control mechanism to manage this stuff properly. Second, philosophically: given the foundation that America is supposed to build on, I don't see how any group of people has the right to actively force a structure of society onto the others.
- skorgu 17y ago
  Surely we build societies at least as much by our collective individual behavior as by centralized control? "Be the change you want to see in the world."

cwan 17y ago

I've often wondered about this line of reasoning - that corporations "benefit" from a given nation and its infrastructure but the problem is that it's a two way street. The others use incentives put in place by government encouraging them to do things like research or investments. Local economies, consumers and nations themselves benefit greatly from corporations - both in the obvious point of jobs but even more so in the products and services they provide. The report you cite at truthout also fairly points out that 80% of those companies paid no taxes because they didn't make any money. This doesn't take away from your point though that we have to ask what kind of society we want, but we also should be asking what's fair and also how services are provided.

locopati 17y ago
The trick with 'no profit' is that it's possible for a company to tweak the numbers such that the books show 'no profit' while great profit was made and distributed in ways to allow that (some legal, some illegal, some gray area depending on interpretation). Big companies can take advantage of these rules much more easily than small ones due to a greater ability to allocate resources a legal dept that can explore these options.

CWuestefeld 17y ago

I'm troubled by the suggestion that we can make a conscious decision about what kind of society we want. First, pragmatically: the work of Friedrich Hayek shows that it's quite impossible for any top-down control mechanism to manage this stuff properly. Second, philosophically: given the foundation that America is supposed to build on, I don't see how any group of people has the right to actively force a structure of society onto the others.

skorgu 17y ago
Surely we build societies at least as much by our collective individual behavior as by centralized control? "Be the change you want to see in the world."