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Corporations and Big business

Tex

Well-known member
aplusmnt said:
Tex said:
I do believe in a progressive tax and I would like to see it more flattened as our country stops its overspending and lives within the taxes it recieves. I don't think you tax your way to prosperity, but neither do I believe that you borrow your way to prosperity.

We are talking about a distribution of the tax burden, not distribution of wealth--- that is a welfare program you are talking about, don't get them confused.

A person who makes 100 k per year has 65k to spend on themselves (really more because there are a lot of tax breaks like writing off your home interest, IRAs, other investments, etc) and a person making 10k only has 9,000 to spend on themsleves. The better the income, the more the ability to pay--- and to invest-- rather than just spending it all the necessities of food, shelter, clothing. They have much better opportunities to enjoy their earnings than some worker they hire for 10k per year as a housemaid. Would you rather the maid only got 6500?

My overall goal is to make govt. efficient, and opportunities for even the poor in society to make a decent living. It is not taxes---but tax policy should have social values considered, not just rich people's values because they are the ones paying off politicians.

I believe in fairness not the ability to pay. It is not fair for a person making more to have to pay 35% of their income and those making less pay 10%. Why should a boss pay 35% and a secretary pay 10%? Not all people are Warren Buffet with BILLIONS so the capital gains scenario skews the figures.

I will give you an example: I went to school since second grade with my best friend and best man at my wedding. After school he bummed around for a couple years while I went to college. Then after two years we both ended up working for the same company, he stayed for a year and me for a couple at 22 he was bouncing around doing construction jobs and I started my own business growing to 10 employees within a couple years.

Now years later we send our kids to same schools, we have the same police protecting us, we have the same fire department and drive the same HWY's but I pay taxes in a 15-20% higher tax bracket, maybe even more if you factor in his unearned income not sure how that all would work out on paper.

Tell me how it is fair because he goofed off in his 20's and 30's while I sacrificed and worked 80 hours a week at times to build a business in mine.

I say screw ability to pay, fair is fair. I should not have to pay a higher percentage of my wages than my friend to pay down a government debt any more than Bill Gates should not have to pay more than me.

Not all people in higher tax brackets are the same as Warren Buffet who has so much money his taxes become twisted due to Capital Gains. Most people are hard working motivated people trying to push into that 6 figure range.

Tell me, aplus, what did Jesus say about this subject?
 

aplusmnt

Well-known member
Tex said:
aplusmnt said:
Tex said:
I do believe in a progressive tax and I would like to see it more flattened as our country stops its overspending and lives within the taxes it recieves. I don't think you tax your way to prosperity, but neither do I believe that you borrow your way to prosperity.

We are talking about a distribution of the tax burden, not distribution of wealth--- that is a welfare program you are talking about, don't get them confused.

A person who makes 100 k per year has 65k to spend on themselves (really more because there are a lot of tax breaks like writing off your home interest, IRAs, other investments, etc) and a person making 10k only has 9,000 to spend on themsleves. The better the income, the more the ability to pay--- and to invest-- rather than just spending it all the necessities of food, shelter, clothing. They have much better opportunities to enjoy their earnings than some worker they hire for 10k per year as a housemaid. Would you rather the maid only got 6500?

My overall goal is to make govt. efficient, and opportunities for even the poor in society to make a decent living. It is not taxes---but tax policy should have social values considered, not just rich people's values because they are the ones paying off politicians.

I believe in fairness not the ability to pay. It is not fair for a person making more to have to pay 35% of their income and those making less pay 10%. Why should a boss pay 35% and a secretary pay 10%? Not all people are Warren Buffet with BILLIONS so the capital gains scenario skews the figures.

I will give you an example: I went to school since second grade with my best friend and best man at my wedding. After school he bummed around for a couple years while I went to college. Then after two years we both ended up working for the same company, he stayed for a year and me for a couple at 22 he was bouncing around doing construction jobs and I started my own business growing to 10 employees within a couple years.

Now years later we send our kids to same schools, we have the same police protecting us, we have the same fire department and drive the same HWY's but I pay taxes in a 15-20% higher tax bracket, maybe even more if you factor in his unearned income not sure how that all would work out on paper.

Tell me how it is fair because he goofed off in his 20's and 30's while I sacrificed and worked 80 hours a week at times to build a business in mine.

I say screw ability to pay, fair is fair. I should not have to pay a higher percentage of my wages than my friend to pay down a government debt any more than Bill Gates should not have to pay more than me.

Not all people in higher tax brackets are the same as Warren Buffet who has so much money his taxes become twisted due to Capital Gains. Most people are hard working motivated people trying to push into that 6 figure range.

Tell me, aplus, what did Jesus say about this subject?

:lol: :lol: What kind of answer is that? But I might find it amusing to hear what you think he said about it? Based on what I have read I would think there is a good chance Jesus would want me to pay my fair share and not want me to mooch off of Warren Buffet or Bill Gates.

Gal 6:5 "For every man shall bear his own burden".

He did tell us to pay our taxes Mark 12:17 "And Jesus answering said unto them, Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's,"

But he never said we could not come on message boards and complain about how high they are!!! :wink:

Now I assume you are going to try to twist some rich man scriptures, but just because it is hard for a rich man like Warren Buffet to make it to heaven that does not mean I should be expecting him to pay MY share to Caesar, Jesus told me to pay it not expect someone else to pay it.

But based on your past writings you probably think someone like Backhoeboogie explained just trying to provide for his family and send his kids to college is rich man. I think Rich men are people like Warren Buffet that you idolize so much. Maybe that is why Warren is trying to give away all his money, maybe he is looking for a Biblical loophole you know, be rich for 77 years and then right before death give it all away so he can go to heaven. Have his cake and eat it also.
 

Tex

Well-known member
Steve said:
Tex
We can cut the tax rates when we cut the spending.

why not just cut the spending?

I agree.


Then we could cut taxes when we don't have a deficit--- or pay our current one down some. Sometimes it is good to pay your credit card down in good times.
 

cutterone

Well-known member
Now I'm not trying to beat a dead dog here but you can tie together a lot of issues into one hub. The ficancial woes, trade, politics, inflation, stagnation, recession have been all excellerated by one issue - corporated greed and control.
I know that I don't deserve to make a million dollars a year for the tough decisions I make such as which bull to use, cut hay today or Sat, ect. but NO one individual is worth millions & millions in salary to run ANY company! Hell the President who oversees more areas and has more responsibilty than any ceo only gets a salary of $400,000 a year. The greed of corporate executives & directors rip off every investor and consumer.
According to Forbes.com here are the top 10 CEOs for salaries:

Richard D Fairbanks Capitol One 249.42 million
Terry S Semel Yahoo 230.55 million
Henry Silverman Cendant 139.96 million
Bruce Karatz KB Home 135.53 million
Richard Fuld Jr Lehman Bros 122.67 million
Ray R Irani Ocidental Petrolum 80.73 million +
322 million w/stock
Lawrence J Ellison Oracle 75.33 million
John W Thompson Symantec 71.84 million
Edwin M Crawford Caremark Rx 69.66 million
Angelo R Mozillo Countrywide 68.95 million

Notice what type of comanies they head up? Now that's just salaries - let's take a look at some more.

The chief executives of America's 500 biggest companies got a collective 38% pay raise last year, to $7.5 billion. That's an average $15.2 million apiece. Exercised stock options again account for the main component of pay, 48%. The average stock gain was $7.3 million.
The highest-paid boss of the 500 companies we tracked: Apple (nasdaq: AAPL - news - people ) chief Steve Jobs. He drew a nominal $1 salary but realized $647 million from vested restricted stock last year.
The next four top-paid chief executives also earned most of their pay from exercised stock options: Ray Irani of Occidental Petroleum (nyse: OXY - news - people ) ($322 million total pay), Barry Diller of IAC/Interactive Corp (nasdaq: IACI - news - people ) ($295 million), William P. Foley of Fidelity National Financial (nyse: FNF - news - people ) ($180 million), and Terry Semel of Yahoo! (nasdaq: YHOO - news - people ) ($174 million).

Then there are those who walked away with hefty sums in retirement after screwing the investors.

In Pictures: Ten Super-Sized Severance Packages
Stanley O'Neal may not be getting a severance in the technical sense, but that doesn't mean he's walking away from Merrill Lynch a poor man.
The chief executive "retired" Tuesday after a tumultuous few months of steep derivatives losses that resulted in the biggest quarterly loss in its 93-years as a company.
O'Neal, who had been chief executive since December 2002 and had 21 years total at the firm, did not have an employment contract. But because he was allowed to retire, instead of being fired as most expected he would be, he is eligible to receive the $160 million he has accumulated in an employee pension plan that is available to many other Merrill employees. That includes $30 million in retirement benefits and $129 million in stock and option holdings.

That's $160 million for losing $2.24 billion.
Of course O'Neal isn't alone in the annals of really big walking-away pay packages. And certainly he has made some positive contributions to Merrill. Perhaps his crowning achievement of the last year was Merrill's 49% stake in the hot investment management firm BlackRock (nyse: BLK - news - people ), which in turn agreed to take on Merrill Lynch (nyse: MER - news - people ) Investment Management.
He will be remembered, however unfortunately for him, for presiding over a big push to increase the firm's proprietary risk taking--all the better to juice profits (which were at record levels earlier this year)--and losing big.
Academics from Northwestern's Kellogg School of Management, researched the subject of severance and concluded in September that it can be an incentive for risk taking. The value of employee stock options "increases when companies’ stocks are more likely to move significantly higher," wrote Thomas Lys, Tjomme Rusticus and Ewa Sletten. "The expected value of severance pay, on the other hand, increases when companies’ stocks are more likely to fall and CEOs are more likely to lose their positions."
The pattern is not unique to this decade. In the late years of the go-go 1990s, several financial chief executives raised eyebrows for taking away huge severance packages after driving their companies into the ground on risky strategies.
Stephen Hilbert of Conseco (nyse: CNOPRB - news - people ), for example, took home an estimated $72 million even though the value of the company's stock during his tenure sank from $57 to $5 a share and the company ultimately ended up bankrupt. Conseco's misstep, on Hilbert's watch, was buying home finance company Greenpoint Financial just before the last great subprime lending blowup.
Then there was Frank Newman, the ex-chief executive of Bankers Trust, whose aggressive push into technology banking and lending, coupled with an unfortunately large position in Russian government bonds in the summer of 1998, brought the investment bank to the brink before being rescued in an acquisition by Deutsche Bank (nyse: DB - news - people ). He walked away with $55 million.
Philip Purcell left Morgan Stanley (nyse: MS - news - people ) after a shareholder revolt against him in 2005, and took with him $43.9 million plus $250,000 a year for life.
Richard Grasso, who headed up the New York Stock Exchange, took $140 million in deferred compensation and the disclosure of that payment sparked a furor that led to his departure. The pay also provoked an investigation and lawsuits, which are still being worked out. Grasso has vowed to fight.
Douglas Ivester of Coca-Cola (nyse: KO - news - people ) took $120 million when he stepped down in 2000 in his mid-50s. The departure was deemed a "retirement," but Ivester had presided over a period of stagnant growth, declining earnings and bad publicity.
The big winner in the severance derby: Robert Nardelli, who walked away from Home Depot (nyse: HD - news - people ) with $210 million. He fixed up the home products retailer using techniques he learned as an executive at General Electric (nyse: GE - news - people ), but by 2006, he was starting to seriously irritate shareholders. The final straw was when he told the board to skip the annual shareholder meeting and prevented shareholders from speaking for more than a few minutes. He was ousted in January 2007.

I could go on and on but the point is corpotations and their executive staffs, directors and CEOs have No loyality to their investors, consumers, or country. Even when we kick one bad one out there is just another sake waiting in the wings to replace him. The bottom line is a buck for them and secondly to their company and they don't care where they make it. If they can take all their business overseas and sell out the American economy, workers, or consumers to make that buck they have no regrets! What's maybe even worse that most of the big corps have majority foreign ties and major investors controling them. And do you really think that the government politicians have the balls to take them on? It's Greed that drive them! Nobody works that hard and deserves that kind of salary !!
 

rider

Well-known member
It's more than that executives deserve to get paid high salaries, retirement, and severences packages. The worst part is that those costs get passed on to us in some way or another. We have to pay more for insurance, oil, computer products, technology, home supplies, or whatever.

So I get paid less for my "lowly career," pay more for my everyday needs, and continue to live my humble life.

Even though it's not right, I am still thankful for where I am in life. I am not choosing evil or good, working to keep up with the Jones', and certainly not surrounding myself with other sketchy execs.

I wish there were some way that we, the ordinary people, who make up the majority of the population, could make a difference.

Quick question... Can we make a difference? How?
 

aplusmnt

Well-known member
rider said:
I wish there were some way that we, the ordinary people, who make up the majority of the population, could make a difference.

Quick question... Can we make a difference? How?

Don't buy stocks in their companies and don't buy products they produce. I would push my car before I bought gas at a Citgo.

Problem is most people complain but they don't do anything about how they feel. They complain about how Wal-Mart is bad company but they still go in there and buy everything instead of paying a little bit higher price for goods at a local or smaller store.

We as consumers have to share the blame. Look at sports as an example If the NY Yankees pay Derek Jeter $25 Million a year and the fans continue to go to the games and pay the inflated ticket prices and buy $5.00 hot dogs then the crazy salaries will just continue. But if we do not go to the games and we do not spend our money on Jeter Jerseys for our kids then the Market will bring the salaries down as well as the cost to go to the games.

We have a tendency as Americans to complain about things and do nothing about them. Same with gas prices, we complain about gas prices but we still buy SUV's and still drive outlandish miles per year in our vehicles.
 
A

Anonymous

Guest
In surfing the web- I found this article about a 2005 Pew Institute survey and study done about American Republicans... It shows the big split now in just Republican beliefs on economic matters- and I'll bet if the study was done now the numbers would be the same or even more opposing rolling back tax cuts to the wealthy and favoring government regulation of big business....No wonder the Dems took back control of both houses of Congress in 06 ....

In short, the report divides Republican voters into three categories, each comprising about a third of the whole: Enterprisers (pro-business), Social Conservatives, and Pro-Government Conservatives (believe government has a role in address conservative issues). It turns out that a majority of Republican voters favors government regulation and opposes the current Republican love affair with supply-side economics.

The numbers are startling. Eight-eight and 83 percent of Social and Pro-Government conservatives believe "too much power is concentrated in the hands of a few large companies," as opposed to 26 percent of Enterprisers. Likewise 58 and 66 percent of Social and Pro-Government conservatives feel it's in the public's interest to regulate business (compared to 16 percent of Enterprisers), and 67 and 61 percent of Social and Pro-Government conservatives favor stricter environmental regulations even if it costs jobs and hurts the economy (compared to 16 percent of Enterprisers).

But the most startling finding in the report surrounds the attitude towards Bush's tax cuts. According to the report, only 13 percent of Enterprisers feel that these cuts should be entirely repealed, or rolled back for the wealthy only, compared to a plurality of Social Consertives (47 percent favor tax cut rollbacks, versus 42 percent opposing) and 58 percent of Pro-Government Conservatives.

A majority of Republican voters favors rolling back tax cuts for the wealthy.
 

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