Title Expunged

[Bitek]

How is this nonsense allowed in this forum?

Corporate welfare is 10x more and worse than helping a few people get shelter/food to survive.

This is an absurd thread for DC.

 

[kia75]

Well first you would have to figure out what corporate "welfare" is.

Normally it is used to refer to paying corporations to provide services/goods to the government :hmm: or to give tax breaks to special corporations to cover up the fact that the US has one of the highest marginal corporate rates in the world.

The closest example of real corporate welfare would be the bank and auto bailouts. Which were paid back with interest.

Providing actual goods and services to the government, i.e (selling Dell computers to the ATF) is fine. Providing goods to the government it doesn't want but has to (i.e $500 million dollars in Tanks the army doesn't want) is corporate welfare. How many free school lunches do you have to cut to equal $500 million dollars? Since the School lunch program costs roughly ~80million, that order of useless tanks is roughly 6 times more expensive then the entire School lunch program.

Then there's Farming subsidies, in which farmers are paid to NOT farm, there's infrastructure improvements that are never done, there's 0 interest loans to banks. We're literally talking about billions of dollars worth of money spent every year for no benefit to the US. Cutting one of those programs would be more effective at balancing the budget then cutting the school lunch program. Or ensure the company actually does what it's supposed to do, I'm still waiting for Fibre to my premises.

You're right, the Bank and Auto Bailouts are welfare, and they did pay for themselves. But there are many examples of welfare that vastly pay for themselves that we don't do.

The best example would be the GI bill of the 1940's. It's estimated that ~ 8.8 million people took part in the GI bill. I'm not seeing the total spent but I'm seeing an annual cap of ~$18,500. So assuming a 4 year college of every one of those people (which is using worst case, most use it for vocational training, and $18,500 was the max per year, not the average) then the GI bill, at it's worth cost us 645 Million dollars, or the cost of the tanks. Now how much more did we gain by that bit of welfare? Our economy after World War 2 was among the best of the world! And remember that certain effects are cumulative. Bill gate's Father went to college using the GI Bill. As a result he became well-to do and was able to get he son unique programming experiences. Bill Gates then went on to found Microsoft and become one of the World's richest men, which he might not have done without his father taking part in the GI bill. The more successful you're allowed to be, the more successful you become.

 

[HamburgerBoy]

I like the idea of denying welfare recipients the right to vote, as it neatly avoids the bread and circuses problem.

So do I. We should extend that to soldiers, employees of defense contractors, public teachers and professors, most students of the universities they teach at, many civil engineers, and all civil servants.

 

[DaveSimmons]

If we can't go after those organs, then I like the idea of a requiring a minimum income level to vote. Why should those outside of the 2% be allowed? They clearly lack the job-creating ambition needed to have a say in this country's leadership.

 

[Moonbeam]

People who hate themselves see others as worthless and not deserving to breed. It is via this contempt for others who express their notions of worthlessness they attempt to jack up their own lacking of self respect. You will be judged as you judge because you judge who you are. It is judging others as worthless that makes one worthless himself. The judgment is created by the pre-existence of the feeling. The OP is in deep need of mental help but won't get it because he is in denial. As self hate increases it becomes more and more difficult to treat. Have sympathy for the OP because if you don't it reflects on how little sympathy you have for yourself.

 

[Craig234]

I like the idea of denying welfare recipients the right to vote, as it neatly avoids the bread and circuses problem.

How about the right of the people who own big companies that profit from government contracts - to not only vote, but spend millions on lobbying and electing 'their candidates'?

 

[Onceler]

Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye.

Don't quote Paul to me, he was the usurper of Christianity.

 

[Charles Kozierok]

Don't quote Paul to me, he was the usurper of Christianity.

That passage is from Matthew 7, and quotes Jesus from the Sermon on the Mount. It's the same chapter from which your sig line originates.

Yet another Christian who appears to know nothing about his own scriptures -- I will now fall over from shock.

 

[Hayabusa Rider]

Incorrect, the current effective tax rate on businesses is the lowest it's been since before World War 1 (roughly 100 years ago). The current effective tax rate is roughly 12.1% Compare this to the UK, which has an effective corporate tax rate of ~25%. source

The truth of the matter is that businesses pay twice or more taxes in almost every other first-world country and do just fine. Our current effective tax rate is not only low for 1st worlds, but it's low for America as we have to go back nearly 100 years to find a lower tax rate. And the effective numbers are artificially inflated as the most profitable American companies pay virtually no tax in the US. Google pays 2.4% taxes in the us, while at the same time paying 25% taxes in the UK

Why is it that the richer you are, the more you're able to afford higher taxes, the less you have to pay?

This money that almost every other nation except America gets would go a long ways towards balancing the budget and would be more effective at getting more money then cutting welfare off or stopping school lunches.




The funny thing is that data shows it's the opposite. The more well-off and educated women are, the less children they have. Therefore if we want to lower the birth rate we need to make more lower-class women well-off and educated.

This doesn't seem to agree with your statements.

 

[Onceler]

That passage is from Matthew 7, and quotes Jesus from the Sermon on the Mount. It's the same chapter from which your sig line originates.

Yet another Christian who appears to know nothing about his own scriptures -- I will now fall over from shock.

I am quoting Bardon quoting Jesus. I was thinking of changing my sig soon anyway.

 

[dank69]

This doesn't seem to agree with your statements.

You bring up effective tax rates, saying US is high. He gives you a source showing that effective tax rates in the US for corporations are not high, and you counter with a wiki page listing corporate tax rates? You know better than this.

 

[5150Joker]

OP is an idiot.

 

[Hayabusa Rider]

You bring up effective tax rates, saying US is high. He gives you a source showing that effective tax rates in the US for corporations are not high, and you counter with a wiki page listing corporate tax rates? You know better than this.

I know there are exceptions and I mentioned that before. Businesses pay local and state taxes not to mention other mandated fees Would you say 51% is high? Welcome to my neck of the woods. We have some paying that here. That's why we're dying economically.

 

[Charles Kozierok]

I am quoting Bardon quoting Jesus. I was thinking of changing my sig soon anyway.

You should really consider spending less time worrying about castrating poor people and more time educating yourself.

 

[Onceler]

they are poor by choice, if you can call it poor. I know people who work in convenience stores the night shift who make less money then them and have kids and still are working and manage to raise their kids right. The welfare bastards should be castrated and should not be allowed to vote.

 

[Charles Kozierok]

"Then Jesus beholding him loved him, and said unto him, One thing thou lackest: go thy way, sell whatsoever thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come, take up the cross, and follow me."

Mark 10:21

 

[LucJoe]

From another thread:

my dad is still alive and we live in his house

We can't leave because we have nowhere to go. I have money but not a lot of it.

I promised my dad that we would stay untill we are kicked out after he dies.

The problem with housing is that I do have money I'm just not shot in the butt with money, if we were forced out the money wouldn't last long.

Sounds like you are essentially on parental welfare.

 

[Argo]

That is a terrible solution for those who just need help "during a rough time" (which could be 1+ year in this economy).

The solution is caps on welfare- IE you can only be on a max of four years or something like that. That would get rid of the incentive to have kids just to collect welfare as you have to take care of them after year four.

This would have to be accompanied by some program to give tax breaks to employing those recently on welfare for employers.

You assume people who are on welfare can think that far ahead. Ultimately, society is left with a choice: support those who need it (which will always include people abusing it) or let people suffer.

I don't believe you can have it both ways (I.e. have social safety nets that don't get abused)

 

[kia75]

This doesn't seem to agree with your statements.

As Dank69 said, we were talking about effective corporate rates. You posted a link to marginal corporate rates. I'd also like to point out that you were the one that specifically mentioned effective rates in your first post.

The Federal Government has a marginal Corporate Tax rate of roughly ~35%. No business actually pays 35%, they take advantage of various tax breaks, tax incentives, and tax loopholes to lower their taxes. The effective rate, the amount they do pay averages out to about ~12.1%. I've provided sources in the previous post. If any business actually does pay a 35% tax rate then they need to hire better accountants.

Since extremely rich companies (such as Google, Microsoft, Apple, basically any billion+ company) pay insanely low 2% or 3% tax rates bringing the average down, I suspect the effective tax rate is higher for smaller businesses but can't find any sources saying so.

Not all countries are like the US. The link you posted shows the UK has a marginal rate of 20%-25%, but my previous link has an effective tax rate of 25% for the UK. This means in the UK, businesses tend to actually pay the full amount or near the full amount of corporate taxes, with the Corporate Payroll tax bumping things up to ~25%. But it also shows you how important it is to compare Effective taxes rather then marginal taxes. What the marginal rate is, and what corporations actually pay are two different things.

Like lots of things, taxes in the US are more complicated then they need to be. But the gist of it is that in the US, effective tax rates are lower then most 1st world countries and the lowest they've been in a hundred years.

I know there are exceptions and I mentioned that before. Businesses pay local and state taxes not to mention other mandated fees Would you say 51% is high? Welcome to my neck of the woods. We have some paying that here. That's why we're dying economically.

I don't doubt that if you add the Federal, State, and Local taxes up you might get a 51% marginal tax rate, but no business actually pays that much. State taxes and foreign taxes are deductible from federal taxes, so if the State of New York does have an insanely high 16% corporate tax then you've lowered your federal tax rate by 16%. And again, this is without any other deductions, which businesses have a lot of.

But let's go back to Google, Microsoft, Facebook, etc and how they pay insanely low rates by transferring money and companies to Ireland and the Cayman Islands. It's estimated that over 60 Billion dollars in tax revenue per year is lost through this legal scheme. The school lunch program only costs ~80 million dollars a year. Let's put that in perspective.

$80,000,000 vs
$60,000,000,000

How many lunch programs could we fund with $60 billion dollars? How many useless unwanted tanks could we buy with that money? How much more of the debt could we pay off with that money? We're arguing over scraps on the table when we should be looking at the expensive steak that is Corporate taxes that no one is talking about.

 

[Paul98]

How about instead look at the the things that are a waste and cost the country huge amounts of money.

 

[nehalem256]

Providing actual goods and services to the government, i.e (selling Dell computers to the ATF) is fine. Providing goods to the government it doesn't want but has to (i.e $500 million dollars in Tanks the army doesn't want) is corporate welfare. How many free school lunches do you have to cut to equal $500 million dollars? Since the School lunch program costs roughly ~80million, that order of useless tanks is roughly 6 times more expensive then the entire School lunch program.

Then there's Farming subsidies, in which farmers are paid to NOT farm, there's infrastructure improvements that are never done, there's 0 interest loans to banks. We're literally talking about billions of dollars worth of money spent every year for no benefit to the US. Cutting one of those programs would be more effective at balancing the budget then cutting the school lunch program. Or ensure the company actually does what it's supposed to do, I'm still waiting for Fibre to my premises.

I am sure that there are lots of stupid government programs. It is quite possible to consider them stupid and think they should be cut without needing to resort to calling them corporate welfare.

For you tank program. It would appear that is normally something called PORK SPENDING.

You're right, the Bank and Auto Bailouts are welfare, and they did pay for themselves. But there are many examples of welfare that vastly pay for themselves that we don't do.

They didn't indirectly pay for themselves. They were directly paid back by the firms benefiting from the "welfare".

The best example would be the GI bill of the 1940's. It's estimated that ~ 8.8 million people took part in the GI bill. I'm not seeing the total spent but I'm seeing an annual cap of ~$18,500. So assuming a 4 year college of every one of those people (which is using worst case, most use it for vocational training, and $18,500 was the max per year, not the average) then the GI bill, at it's worth cost us 645 Million dollars, or the cost of the tanks. Now how much more did we gain by that bit of welfare? Our economy after World War 2 was among the best of the world! And remember that certain effects are cumulative. Bill gate's Father went to college using the GI Bill. As a result he became well-to do and was able to get he son unique programming experiences. Bill Gates then went on to found Microsoft and become one of the World's richest men, which he might not have done without his father taking part in the GI bill. The more successful you're allowed to be, the more successful you become.

(1) 18,500 * 8,800,000 * 4 = $651,200,000,000. It looks like your math is off by a factor of 1000

(2) Earning benefits through providing services to the government through serving in the military isn't welfare.

 

[kia75]

I am sure that there are lots of stupid government programs. It is quite possible to consider them stupid and think they should be cut without needing to resort to calling them corporate welfare.

For you tank program. It would appear that is normally something called PORK SPENDING.

So it's called a tank program. and it's called Pork Spending. And it's called Corporate Welfare. Your point? A rose by any other name and such.

They didn't indirectly pay for themselves. They were directly paid back by the firms benefiting from the "welfare".

And a person on welfare who gets a job and becomes a productive member of society pays that welfare back in taxes. Most people filing for unemployment eventually get a job and pay taxes. They also pay unemployment insurance.

I agree, we should only do welfare that improves the nation. But you do have to admit we spend a lot of time arguing about small, less then 100 million dollar programs while completely ignoring a few hundred-million dollar programs, or a few billion dollar programs.

(1) 18,500 * 8,800,000 * 4 = $651,200,000,000. It looks like your math is off by a factor of 1000

(2) Earning benefits through providing services to the government through serving in the military isn't welfare.

(1) My bad. When I did my calculation it looks like I forgot 3 000's somewhere. Will be more careful making calculations in the future. The program was much more expensive then I calculated but I'd still say the price was worth it.

(2) Wellfare for the armed services is still wellfare.

If you say we should do things in return for welfare, i.e. if you join the peace corps, or teach in an inner city school, etc then the government will pay your student loans, then I'm for that.

But the GI bill wasn't party of the Army's pay, it wasn't signed untill 1944 when the majority of people entering the army had already been drafted. The bill was designed to preserve the welfare of servicemen returning home from the war, to improve their lives. It was argued as a welfare bill, it was fought for as a welfare bill and it was passed as a welfare bill. The fact that we now think of welfare as a dirty word doesn't changed the fact that welfare for the armed services is still welfare.

 

[Incorruptible]

There needs to be some serious welfare reform. If people are on welfare then they shouldn't be having kids. This is highly irresponsible and not fair to the baby and the taxpayer who has to subsidize them.

As well people on welfare shouldn't be able to vote since they can vote to keep the welfare.

Welfare should be abolished but that won't happen anytime soon so these restrictions should be implemented and would greatly improve the system.

 

[fskimospy]

From another thread:

Sounds like you are essentially on parental welfare.

Oh my god, the guy mooching off his parents wants to sterilize poor people.

Why am I not surprised.

 

[Hayabusa Rider]

As Dank69 said, we were talking about effective corporate rates. You posted a link to marginal corporate rates. I'd also like to point out that you were the one that specifically mentioned effective rates in your first post.

The Federal Government has a marginal Corporate Tax rate of roughly ~35%. No business actually pays 35%, they take advantage of various tax breaks, tax incentives, and tax loopholes to lower their taxes. The effective rate, the amount they do pay averages out to about ~12.1%. I've provided sources in the previous post. If any business actually does pay a 35% tax rate then they need to hire better accountants.

Since extremely rich companies (such as Google, Microsoft, Apple, basically any billion+ company) pay insanely low 2% or 3% tax rates bringing the average down, I suspect the effective tax rate is higher for smaller businesses but can't find any sources saying so.

Not all countries are like the US. The link you posted shows the UK has a marginal rate of 20%-25%, but my previous link has an effective tax rate of 25% for the UK. This means in the UK, businesses tend to actually pay the full amount or near the full amount of corporate taxes, with the Corporate Payroll tax bumping things up to ~25%. But it also shows you how important it is to compare Effective taxes rather then marginal taxes. What the marginal rate is, and what corporations actually pay are two different things.

Like lots of things, taxes in the US are more complicated then they need to be. But the gist of it is that in the US, effective tax rates are lower then most 1st world countries and the lowest they've been in a hundred years.



I don't doubt that if you add the Federal, State, and Local taxes up you might get a 51% marginal tax rate, but no business actually pays that much. State taxes and foreign taxes are deductible from federal taxes, so if the State of New York does have an insanely high 16% corporate tax then you've lowered your federal tax rate by 16%. And again, this is without any other deductions, which businesses have a lot of.

But let's go back to Google, Microsoft, Facebook, etc and how they pay insanely low rates by transferring money and companies to Ireland and the Cayman Islands. It's estimated that over 60 Billion dollars in tax revenue per year is lost through this legal scheme. The school lunch program only costs ~80 million dollars a year. Let's put that in perspective.

$80,000,000 vs
$60,000,000,000

How many lunch programs could we fund with $60 billion dollars? How many useless unwanted tanks could we buy with that money? How much more of the debt could we pay off with that money? We're arguing over scraps on the table when we should be looking at the expensive steak that is Corporate taxes that no one is talking about.

My mistake with "effective". The link you provided was subscription btw.

A couple points. Google and others get big breaks. Smaller businesses do not. I live in NY so our situation isn't universal, however as I said Western NY is pretty much dead. Why would one stay here rather than go to cheaper Canada? I'm sure that quantifying the TCO of business isn't easy, but US tax rates aren't all. That 51% is about right though. Where I live we pay about 1k in property taxes per month on a 200k home.

More later.