The problem for them is that they got that tax break six years ago and they did nothing of the sort. In point of fact, they did just the opposite:
60 percent of the [tax break] benefits went to just 15 of the largest United States multinational companies — many of which laid off domestic workers, closed plants and shifted even more of their profits and resources abroad in hopes of cashing in on the next repatriation holiday.They also used the money to buy back stock and pay their executives even more lavishly. The end result for job creation and R&D was this: Not a frelling thing:
“For every dollar that was brought back, there were zero cents used for additional capital expenditures, research and development, or hiring and employees wages,” said Kristin J. Forbes, a professor of economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Sloan School of Management who was a member of President Bush’s council of economic advisers.Congress and the Administration should not fall for this bullshit now. But Congress will, as the Republicans will do whatever the corporations want and there are enough Democrats in the Senate who will do the same.
As it has been for the last thirty years, the rich get richer and the middle class and the working poor continue to bump along.
Lots more graphs here.
There is even an argument that technology is draining money from the wage-earning people. In 1980, there was one telephone line per household and maybe cable TV. Now, there is cable, internet (rapidly becoming mandatory for a decent education) and cell phones. A $75 phone bill in 1980 would be a cause for concern and parental screaming at whoever was making those calls, but families easily will spend over $200 a month now for all of that crap and possibly a lot more.
3 comments:
This is what the sheep want. To be lied to - screwed like a cheap hooker and not say a word except for endorsing more of the same from -your words-the party of Hoover - we are so screwed!
Totally agree with you, Comrade Misfit. When corporations ask Congress for money, it's really a tit-for-tat: "You give us money by legislation, and we'll give you money under the table".
Congress: the best legislators money can buy!
(Where's that spitting, vomiting smiley-face when I need it?)
They have the numbers in Congress now to begin taking the first steps in privatizing Social Security (no matter what the public's level of disapproval is), eviscerating the rest of the social safety nets, selling off major public assets (like in Chicago), and achieving just about all the rest of the long-term rightwing agenda.
Where are the people in the streets here like in Spain and Greece? (Anyone remember the pot banging in Iceland?)
How much worse will it get before actions against these outright thieves begin?
As there are no jobs on the horizon and earnest, hollow promises (as you report) of more "job-creating" special tax breaks for corporations (which now refuse to create them stateside), where will this end?
We know the wealthy have been moving large sums of money offshore for the last decade (witness Halliburton's long-ago move).
I despair of this situation that suggests that U.S. taxpayers (and I mean real taxpayers) no longer have much of a working logical faculty left after decades of lies from their "leaders" and the Murdoch/Koch/MSM propaganda onslaught of the last 30 years.
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