Time to Declaw the Tiger

[Sukerkin]

It is long past time that national governments took the painful action of starting to stand up to the deceitful and duplicitous behaviour of corporations. Why there is pain is that in some cases these corporations have such reserves of money at their command that they can simply threaten to go elsewhere if they are made to honour such things as their legitimate tax obligations. But that pain has to be faced sometime and as our economies are hurting anyway a few more wounds now will save more trouble further on down the line.

If the barriers to entry that corporations present in the market place are removed by their relocating elsewhere, then perhaps smaller, more efficient and more locally wealth generating businesses will get a chance to emerge? It's a dream, aye, I realise that. But it is an economic truth that multinationals tend to be a net drain on the wealth of the country they inhabit; the size of the numbers they post in terms of jobs or investment masks that sometimes but then you add in the tax evasion and resource exporting values and it gets a little clearer.

There is a small amount of yipping going on from the Treasury at present about tax evasion and putting measures in place to deal with it. This story mentions Starbucks, who are small in absolute terms but this quote exemplifies well the modus operandi of corporate thinking


"the coffee company reported sales of nearly £400m in the UK last year, but paid no corporation tax at all.
Much of the money it earns in this country is transferred to a sister company in the Netherlands in the form of royalty payments, leaving the UK division to report regular annual losses,"

Such chicanery has to be brought under control or soon, if it is not already too late, the dystopian future of the world run by the corporations rather than elected governments will come to pass

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-20573208

 

[GrandmasterP]

Capitalism has its upside too.
OK maybe more so for the haves than the have-nots but wealth circulates.
Places where everybody is the same were always, and are still; pretty grim.
People in the barrios are there so as to be close to the money in the city.
If you don't have money, go where money is and , with luck; then some will come your way.
There was a study of top earners in Sunday Times recently and it was good to see how many of those had come up from very little. That you don't get in socialist utopias where only the party faithful and apparatchiks get a taste of what cream there might be.

 

[Sukerkin]

Sadly wealth does not circulate very well under the system currently in operation. Capitalism is not a law of nature, it is an emergent property of chaotic interactions between individuals en mass and it is prone to going very wrong.

It works best when the players are small and many; it works worst when the market is dominated by a few large entities that, like gravity, warp the 'rules' around themselves.

 

[shesulsa]

Governor Jerry Brown has taken this cause under wing for some time.

Folks who believe in "trickle-down" or "circulation" are blind to what's going on today. We are giving bonuses to people who are recklessly running business - we're talking about infrastructure - into the ground as though they deserve it, justifying outrageous salaries and the lopping of jobs (overhead) with the common conception of "capitalism" ... when we all forget that there is a system that supports capitalism.

For this system to survive, there must be a large majority of the population that must be able to *consume.* It's really quite simple - when you reduce income to the government so drastically as it has been (deep tax cuts to the top earners) and allow the top earners to shelter income beyond what everyone else can and actually pay them whether they do good jobs or not, you are allowing white collar thievery.

This is not good business. We have a legal system that *should* prevent such a thing, but our lobby and election systems are so damn corrupt, it's doubtful we will pull out of this, especially with folks who believe in making money this way.

If you do not have the intention for your business to be part of a community infrastructure and intend to destroy it and everyone who relies on your business for the sake of padding your wallet, then you're a crook, plain and simple. Legal or not, it's wrong and the devastation it is wreaking on the nation is undeniable.

I fear the future. I'm also quite disenamored with the likes of Obamasiah who will likely do nothing to spearhead or encourage any movements against this kind of crap.

 

[Bill Mattocks]

Folks who believe in "trickle-down" or "circulation" are blind to what's going on today. We are giving bonuses to people who are recklessly running business - we're talking about infrastructure - into the ground as though they deserve it, justifying outrageous salaries and the lopping of jobs (overhead) with the common conception of "capitalism" ... when we all forget that there is a system that supports capitalism.

For this system to survive, there must be a large majority of the population that must be able to *consume.* It's really quite simple - when you reduce income to the government so drastically as it has been (deep tax cuts to the top earners) and allow the top earners to shelter income beyond what everyone else can and actually pay them whether they do good jobs or not, you are allowing white collar thievery.

This is not good business. We have a legal system that *should* prevent such a thing, but our lobby and election systems are so damn corrupt, it's doubtful we will pull out of this, especially with folks who believe in making money this way.

If you do not have the intention for your business to be part of a community infrastructure and intend to destroy it and everyone who relies on your business for the sake of padding your wallet, then you're a crook, plain and simple. Legal or not, it's wrong and the devastation it is wreaking on the nation is undeniable.

I fear the future. I'm also quite disenamored with the likes of Obamasiah who will likely do nothing to spearhead or encourage any movements against this kind of crap.

Whilst I agree that taxation in general needs a complete overhaul, I can't agree with any of this.

"We" are not giving bonuses to CEOs and the like. That is something their own corporations do. "We," as in we the people, have no say in it. Nor should we. It's none of our business, unless "we" are a stockholder, in which case "we" can try to take action as a stockholder. The public in general has absolutely no say in how corporations reward their employees, and I would not want to live in a nation where they did.

We do NOT have a legal system that is intended to prevent CEOs from making huge salaries or bonuses. There is no such system in place, and again, there should not be one.

What does need to happen is meaningful tax reform. How corporations pay their employees, including their CEOs, is of no concern to me. I frankly don't think it's any concern of yours, either.

 

[Cryozombie]

If you do not have the intention for your business to be part of a community infrastructure and intend to destroy it and everyone who relies on your business for the sake of padding your wallet, then you're a crook, plain and simple. Legal or not, it's wrong and the devastation it is wreaking on the nation is undeniable.

Help me out with this, I'm trying to understand what you mean here. I'm reading it about three different ways, and don't want to assume what you mean.

 

[Big Don]

Governor Jerry Brown has taken this cause under wing for some time.

Sorry, no. The only cause under Jerry Brown's wing is rightly called TAX AND SPEND.

For this system to survive, there must be a large majority of the population that must be able to *consume.* It's really quite simple - when you reduce income to the government so drastically as it has been (deep tax cuts to the top earners) and allow the top earners to shelter income beyond what everyone else can and actually pay them whether they do good jobs or not, you are allowing white collar thievery.

Then why not rework the tax code with a goal of simplicity? No one owes accountants and tax attorneys a job, but, if you earn much money at all, you simply have to pay someone else to prepare your taxes just to ensure you haven't committed a crime.

This is not good business. We have a legal system that *should* prevent such a thing, but our lobby and election systems are so damn corrupt, it's doubtful we will pull out of this, especially with folks who believe in making money this way.

If you do not have the intention for your business to be part of a community infrastructure and intend to destroy it and everyone who relies on your business for the sake of padding your wallet, then you're a crook, plain and simple.

By that definition every single entrepanuer is a crook, as is every corporation, and by the way, every child with a lemonade stand.

Legal or not, it's wrong and the devastation it is wreaking on the nation is undeniable.

I fear the future. I'm also quite disenamored with the likes of Obamasiah who will likely do nothing to spearhead or encourage any movements against this kind of crap.

As long as you are intent on taking money that you didn't earn, may I suggest you also take a hard look at College Endowments, schools such as Harvard with a $32 BILLION dollar endowment shouldn't have one student receiving any form of financial aid...

 

[Big Don]

​

 

[GrandmasterP]

The person who sits down to the table with the most money usually leaves it with more.
Small might be beautiful but it gets eaten.

 

[Sukerkin]

Why is it that it is not possible to have a sensible, educated, discussion about economics on this board? I think I am not the only Economics graduate here (tho' I may be the only trained trader?) but whenever I try to broach an economics based topic within half a dozen posts the Republican vs Democrat silly-go-round starts spinning.

Economics is NOT politics but theories of it's use are tools wielded by politicians to attempt to control what is tantamount to uncontrollable (usually with lesser rather than greater success). It is hard not to conflate the two but it is necessary to try because if you entangle economics with politics and ideology you have next to zero chance of being able to understand what is happening and what the likely consequences of change are.

Economics IS a best-guess description of the environment in which business happens and, intelligent self-interest suggests, that business has to take care that it's aggregate actions do not destroy the environment that is needed for fruitful economic activity to occur.

That environment is also the place where most of us, the non-entrepreneurial consumers also dwell. If business is not guided by principles that care for that environment then it all falls like a house of cards for demand collapses and you enter a recessive spiral - at first it is only the consumers that suffer but soon those that rely upon our expenditure (to turn 'wants' into actual consumption of goods and services) also begin to starve.

The problem we face after a couple of centuries of capitalist based economic activity is that businesses are not being run in the main by tenets of rational self-interest. Overly cheap money from over-extended fractional reserve banking, combined with the globalisation of labour, has allowed corporate businesses to run on the basis of next quarters profit margin rather than next years or the next decades.

That short termism has lead to a position in which hire-and-fire policies are triggered, not by the long term needs of the company but by the short term need to generate enough profit to pay share-holders. Investments in infrastructure are seen as costs through such a lens, rather than a laying down of foundations for future profits. That drive of 'profit now' is what is also behind the Grail Quest to exploit loop-holes in tax law to avoid 'losing' any money that could be used to make the next quarterly report look rosier.

There are signs that some executives see that the position is not long term tenable (I've heard some very interesting discourses between high-fliers on the BBC radio series The Bottom Line, for example) but they are at as much of a loss as anyone as to how to steer the 'super-tanker' onto the longer but eventually more productive course - the culture has become ingrained and culture takes time to change. But if noone makes a start at changing things then the ship'll be on the rocks for a good long time one day.

 

[Cryozombie]

Why is it that it is not possible to have a sensible, educated, discussion about economics on this board?

Why? I think it's Because every time we turn around we are hearing the far Left screaming about how Corporations are Evil, Corporations are Greedy, Corporations need to lose their status as people, Corporations never pay fair wages, and the people on the far right screaming about how everyone wants a war on corporations, everyone wants to tax corporations at 90%, everyone just wants socialism to take over...

So whenever the subject comes up, its like OMG, this again? And only the aforementioned people chime in.

 

[Big Don]

Why is it that it is not possible to have a sensible, educated, discussion about economics on this board?

How much education is required to comprehend that you cannot continue to spend what you do not have?
How sensible is it to blame everything on corporations and let government policies escape notice?

 

[Sukerkin]

It is a shame that things have come to such a pass, Cryo - economics is a fascinating and essential branch of the study of the human condition and for people to not engage their brains in a tussle with it's complexities and subtleties is a real loss. I suppose it is the not thinking about it objectively, allowing political emotion to lead, that promotes to all the banner-headline political stance-taking.

The circular flow of income does not care one whit what your politics are - an IS-LM analysis or a Phillips Curve is exactly the same whether you vote left or right or centre. Examine the data; peruse the actual results of decision making and (try) to extrapolate from those what the consequences of changing something will be. Where ideology can come in is deciding whether that outcome is one you consider desirable or not but the effects on the economy (on our actual lives) will be the same regardless.

 

[Sukerkin]

How much education is required to comprehend that you cannot continue to spend what you do not have?
How sensible is it to blame everything on corporations and let government policies escape notice?

How sensible is it to draw such a line in the sand, Don, when noone (well not me) is saying such a thing? That's what I mean by the Silly-go-Round - people stop thinking and instead 'speak' in political terms about something that is, in the end, an attempt to mathematically define the accumulated behaviour of millions of economically active people.

I'm a Liberal voter by inclination but my economics 'head' is the one that tries to determine whether something is a good idea or not. In the case of dealing with corporate tax avoidance/evasion, it most definitely is a good idea - it's scale dwarfs any other losses from the public purse (for example, the taxes that Vodaphone did not pay here in the UK more than covered the extent of all the 'austerity' cuts that have been happening for the past four years).

 

[Bill Mattocks]

I'm really not casting this in a left-right political framework, I think. I am not an economist, and don't claim to be one. But I do understand some of the basics about how publicly-traded for-profit corporations operate, and I don't understand demands by those not part of the governance of that corporation that they 'not be greedy' or 'be mindful of the earth' or 'consider the holistic world-view' and such. Demands that corporations not pay their CEO more than a certain amount mystify me. On what basis does anyone demand this? And how would this be enforced, if such could be instituted in the first place? I presume one would have to have the large hand of government regulating what corporations can pay their employees and executives, what they must and can do in terms of being kind to Mother Earth, and so on. Is that it? If so, I'm afraid that's not a world I want to live in.

Capitalism has a downside. It's also the best system going, in my opinion. Publicly-traded for-profit corporations have a fiduciary responsibility to their stockholders. Not their employees, not Mother Earth, and definitely not those who stand outside the gates and complain that their executives make 'too much money'.

As with politics (sorry, have to draw an analogy here, but not trying to make this political), those who feel corporations are doing the wrong thing have options now. They can become stockholders if they wish; and then they have a vote in the governance of the corporation. As employees, they may have the ability to raise issues with management. As consumers, they can vote with their wallets. This is not unlike the power of the ballot box. One can complain about one's elected officials and the party in power, but only by voting does one get results, and then no promise that one's voice represents the will of the majority.

Let me just throw this back in your court. You seem upset with the actions of corporations. What is it you would do, given the authority? Tell us.

 

[Sukerkin]

Not wanting to sound like Robert Di Nero in Taxi Driver, Bill, but are you talking to me?

If so, a cogent reply will have to wait - I am falling into my keyboard .

The single most important thing that can be done as a first step, altho' the effects will take a while to be felt, is to remove the legal fiction of the corporations existence as an immortal individual. The second is to make the executives of a corporation liable for the actions of that corporation - that will have a greater impact on misdeeds than you might initially imagine.

 

[Bill Mattocks]

Not wanting to sound like Robert Di Nero in Taxi Driver, Bill, but are you talking to me?

Yes.

If so, a cogent reply will have to wait - I am falling into my keyboard .

No problem! Talk to you later.

The single most important thing that can be done as a first step, altho' the effects will take a while to be felt, is to remove the legal fiction of the corporations existence as an immortal individual. The second is to make the executives of a corporation liable for the actions of that corporation - that will have a greater impact on misdeeds than you might initially imagine.

In the USA, that will be difficult, since the Supreme Court has already ruled. But I can accept that a corporation's legal entity is only a fictional human.

However, it can be a useful fiction. For example, BP, the corporation, just plead guilty to felony criminal charges in the US stemming from the recent Gulf of Mexico oil spill. Not only civil charges, but criminal.

Several of their supervisors are to be tried for various felonies as well, I understand.

And as I'm sure you know, executives of corporations are not shielded from all liability.

If you wanted some of those laws re-combobulated in some fashion, I might could go along with you. Seems a far cry from the initial broadside you launched, however, where you seemed about to hoist high the Jolly Roger and begin slitting corporate executive throats.

 

[Sukerkin]

A quick "as to your last" before I must away to bed - that was not the impression I meant to give.

I was speaking to the broad problem of corporate power riding rough-shod over governmental regulation and how if that 'freedom' of action was not soon curtailed then it never will be, leading to the dark futures in which elected governments are subordinate to companies rather than vice versa.

 

[billc]

The biggest problem is too much power concentrated in the hands of the government.

http://pjmedia.com/blog/the-roots-of-our-economic-trouble/

On the contrary, in nations where the government absorbs and directs a lot of the resources and interferes widely with people’s incentives, the standard of living will necessarily be lower than otherwise. Rulers (elected or not) will use land, labor, and capital for their purposes. The more they do so, the poorer the people will be, because political decisions tend to be short-sighted and if they turn out badly, the loss falls on the taxpayers, not on them.

Growing government means more people working at government jobs, often producing little or no value, except to the politicians and special interest groups. Growing government means more land used (or often kept from use) according to the wishes of the politicians. Growing government means that more capital is siphoned away from the competitive process and allocated according to political pull.
Growing government also means that people will put more of their efforts into trying to obtain favors through lobbying or bribery.

In many ways, government undermines productivity.

The problem is that this cost of government is unseen. The great French economist and philosopher Frederic Bastiat famously said that the difference between a good economist and a bad one is that the good economist considers not just the immediate and visible results of an action, but also the long-run and often hidden results. Americans would be far better off, wealthier but also less fractious, if it weren’t for the relentless expansion of the federal government over the last century, but few of them ever think about the production (and innovation) that has not happened because government obstructed it. The lost benefits are unseen.

Unfortunately, later liberals figured out that they could control the state and thereby enjoy power and wealth. That was when they turned from liberals into authoritarians and began an ongoing campaign to hoodwink people into believing that government was their friend and protector. That campaign has been extremely successful. Millions of Americans have been conditioned to focus solely on the crumbs the state hands them and never to think that they would live better if it weren’t a millstone around the neck of productive people.

The higher taxes Obama demands that “the rich” pay will mean that they will have less to spend, invest, or donate to charity as they think best. Instead, federal officials will get to decide how to use the funds. Will that trade-off help to restore economic vitality? No. It will further depress it as more resources will be wasted and incentives to produce take a battering.

To solve this problem, the ties between government and business need to be weakened, not made stronger. The more the government controls in the economy, the more incentive it creates for corporations to buy politicians, to protect themselves from the government, to punish their competitors and to get the politicians to give them money. Sever those ties, cut government power and you will go a long way to "declawing the tiger."

 

[Sukerkin]

More rumblings from within Whitehall:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-20559791



A quick reaction from the naming of names:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-20580980

We shall see if this amounts to anything other than window dressing or whether the con-tricks continue.



And a cursory look at the net contribution of the corporation as compared to the smaller business:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-20579264