Dean Baker offers the best explanation I’ve come across of why Social Security should not be sacrificed to the debt debate. Social Security, as he shows, has nothing to do with the nation’s alleged debt crisis.
Dean Baker on Social Security
Dean Baker offers the best explanation I’ve come across of why Social Security should not be sacrificed to the debt debate. Social Security, as he shows, has nothing to do with the nation’s alleged debt crisis.
Hank Kalet 
Along with Paul Krugman, Joseph Stiglitz and Robert Kuttner, Dean Baker is one of my favorite economists. He debunks all the GOP/right wing/libertarian/Ayn Rand zombie myths that refuse to die and which are recycled over and over by the usual suspects. Bernie Sanders also makes the point that SS has nothing to do with the deficit because it has its own dedicated funding stream that added nothing to the deficit. SS, Medicare and Medicaid are amongst the few decent programs for average working class Americans. The rich and the powerful can't stand this, they are determined to return us to feudalism, poor houses, debtor prisons, old folks with no health insurance, old folks begging in the streets and another 100 million without any shot at health care.Return the top marginal tax rates to what they were under Ike, 91% or under Nixon, 74%. Make those corporations pay their fair share of taxes.
\”Return the top marginal tax rates to what they were under Ike, 91% or under Nixon, 74%. Make those corporations pay their fair share of taxes.\”Only \”real people\” pay taxes. Corporations either pass along that cost or, if they don't have the ability to raise prices, fold.Corporate taxes further hide how much tax \”We, The Sheeple\” are paying. How much tax is represented in the price of a can of beans? Like inflation, the Gooferment loves hidden taxes.Sorry, but the correct corporate tax rate is zero.
You want zero taxes for the corporations? They have that pretty much now and they are not lowering prices or creating jobs here. They are just squatting on their wealth. In any case, whether they pay income taxes at 39% (which they don't) or zero percent, which many of them do for certain periods of time, sometimes years for some, corporations will raise prices and do anything to maximize profits. If you think awarding corporations the huge gift of paying zero taxes is going to make them model citizens, not pollute, not raise prices, not gouge the public, not move their operations overseas, you are dreaming. The big capitalistic pro free market, pro laissez-faire CEOs have moved a massive amount of the US manufacturing base to COMMIE China, an authoritarian police state, not a democratic republic by any stretch. Just savor the irony of that for a minute. That says a lot about predatory capitalism, they have no allegiance to country not even to their free market ideology, they just love that COMMIE Chinese slave labor, lax pollution laws and lack of accountability. The billionaire CEOs don't give a damn if their corporations go belly up, they still get to walk away with millions. It often happens that some ballyhooed CEO takes over a corporation, he/she then fires thousands of workers but the corporation still founders and loses money anyhow. So only after a few years of failure, he/she quietly steps aside with a multi-million dollar golden parachute and he/she moves on to the next disaster or joins the board of directors of several corporations and for a few days work at these board of directors meetings he/she can make hundreds of thousands and usually millions.I wish there was honesty in labeling, instead of Made in China, it should read Made in Communist China. We would have a whole new ball game, sports fans.
>You want zero taxes for the corporations? Yes. Because that's the right thing for all the poor people. Why should they pay taxes on their can of beans? If you say that corporations should pay 40%, then what you are really saying is that the poor should pay that 40% in their beans. That's not fair by any standard. >They are just squatting on their wealth. Guess that the IRS isn't collecting that \”retained earnings\” tax on excessive holding of wealth by corporations. See the IRS wants all profits paid out so it can be double taxed. Corporations are really just fictions that pass stuff thru. Who's the biggest holders of Exxon? Pension funds, mutual funds, senior citizens, and such. People!>awarding corporations the huge gift of paying zero taxes is going to make them model citizens, not pollute, not raise prices, not gouge the public, not move their operations overseasNo, they are crass delivers of products and services. We want them to do that job as cheaply and as efficiently as possible. And, if the Gooferment hadn't screwed stuff up, then we'd still have excises taxes and tariffs to fund the Federal Government which would just be doing defense.>The billionaire CEOs don't give a damn if their corporations go belly up, they still get to walk away with millions. Well, the Gooferment could control that if they wanted to. No exec should have a salary greater than the President. All executive compensation should be in the form a twenty-five year non-transferable corporate bond ladder. (25M$ bonus = 25 one million dollar bonds due over a period of 25 years.) That would change the culture in 25 minutes. If the corporation folds, the remaining bonds would be worthless. That'll change motivations and actions.