I get the impression that the highly self-actualized kinds of people who don’t much care about money, and who don’t much care about “success” – at least the way it’s commonly defined – don’t much care about the rich or the successful, either. It’s the people who care about money, but not enough to actually go out and do what it takes to make some more of it that tend to be unhappy that anyone else has more than they do.
That isn’t most people, or at least, it isn’t most people here: The politics of class warfare have very little traction in the US, since so many of us think that, given a little bit of luck, a modicum of talent and a whole lot of determination, we might just make it too. This kind of thinking drives politics-of-envy populists such as Michael Moore into a jiggling passion, since his whole schtick revolves around getting people to vote “in their own self-interest.” Which, as it turns out, aligns very neatly with his self-interest, but never mind.
What goes for individuals goes double for successful companies – the corporate facade allows us to decry “Big Pharma,” or “Big Oil” or whatever market service it is that we decide is getting rather too successful for the neighborhood, while conveniently forgetting that the market – that’s all of us, by the way, voting with our pocketbooks – has a way of dealing with companies that get too big, and that big companies tend to employ (and pay) actual people. Lots of them.
Halliburton is a great example of a successful company that a lot of people, for various reasons of their own, love to hate. But never so much more than when the company decided to pull chocks and seek their filthy lucre elsewhere. And it’s just then, when the expected response would be applause that the neighborhood is improved now that there’s one less neighbor’s ass to covet, that you hear the class warriors really howl.
What did they expect?
For them, here’s a little lesson about the dangers of soaking the rich:
Think about it the next time someone complains that the rich people get the lion’s share of a tax cut. Let’s put tax cuts in terms everyone can understand.
Suppose that every day, ten men go out for beer and the bill for all ten comes to $100. If they paid their bill the way we pay our taxes, it would go something like this:
The first four men (the poorest) would pay nothing.
The fifth would pay $1.
The sixth would pay $3.
The seventh would pay $7.
The eighth would pay $12.
The ninth would pay $18.
The tenth man (the richest) would pay $59.So, that’s what they decided to do.
The ten men drank in the bar every day and seemed quite happy with the arrangement, until one day, the owner threw them a curve. ” Since you are all such good customers,” he said, “I’m going to reduce the cost of your daily beer by $20.” Drinks for the ten now cost just $80.
The group still wanted to pay their bill the way we pay our taxes so the first four men were unaffected. They would still drink for free.
But what about the other six men – the paying customers? How could they divide the $20 windfall so that everyone would get his ‘fair share?’ They realized that $20 divided by six is $3.33. But if they subtracted that from everybody’s share, then the fifth man and the sixth man would each end up being paid to drink his beer. So, the bar owner suggested that it would be fair to reduce each man’s bill by roughly the same amount, and he proceeded to work out the amounts each should pay.
And so:
The fifth man, like the first four, now paid nothing (100% savings).
The sixth now paid $2 instead of $3 (33%savings).
The seventh now pay $5 instead of $7 (28%savings).
The eighth now paid $9 instead of $12 (25% savings).
The ninth now paid $14 instead of $18 (22% savings).
The tenth now paid $49 instead of $59 (16% savings).Each of the six was better off than before. And the first four continued to drink for free. But once outside the restaurant, the men began to compare their savings.
“I only got a dollar out of the $20,”declared the sixth man. He pointed to the tenth man,” but he got $10!”
“Yeah, that’s right,” exclaimed the fifth man. “I only saved a dollar, too. It’s unfair that he got ten times more than I!”
“That’s true!!” shouted the seventh man. “Why should he get $10 back when I got only two? The wealthy get all the breaks!”
“Wait a minute,” yelled the first four men in unison. “We didn’t get anything at all. The system exploits the poor!”
The nine men surrounded the tenth and beat him up.
The next night the tenth man didn’t show up for drinks, so the nine sat down and had beers without him. But when it came time to pay the bill, they discovered something important. They didn’t have enough money between all of them for even half of the bill!
And that, boys and girls, journalists and college professors, is how our tax system works. The people who pay the highest taxes get the most benefit from a tax reduction. Tax them too much, attack them for being wealthy, and they just may not show up anymore. In fact, they might start drinking overseas where the atmosphere is somewhat friendlier.
Although, I have to tell you, if it was me and I was Halliburton? I’d have picked some place a little less, you know: Hot.
The dilemna for the US and for Halliburton is that in order to “buy American” they have done the worst form of hair splitting. Moving their corporate offices over to Dubai and yet still remaining a US registered company. Its deceitful at worst, double talk at best.
Its not that Halliburton moved overseas, which makes sense from a business standpoint. It is that they will slowly but surely follow the global trend of localization hiring outsiders instead of US citizens. They already do that with KBR to a great degree.Its no good unless it opens up opportunites for Expat Americans to work over there.
Of course not a lot of people have noticed the changes to the tax code of late that have made it tougher for Americans to work overseas………
Which does not jive with a company that purports to be defending America.
Haliburton is an oil services company. Guess where most of the oil, and thus their customers are?
Makes sense to me.
I love the beer story!
Except for “…Halliburton moved overseas, which makes sense from a business standpoint,” Skippy-San either missed Lex’ point or dodged it. There’s probably Lawyer-Latin for that.
Skippy-san,
Corporations are, from a legal standpoint, equivalent to “persons.” So from your standpoint, would it be bad for a US citizen to live overseas as an expat, while still retaining his citizenship? Even if he was ostensibly defending America? Because if true, that comment must have been something of a wrenching experience for you.
Which, speaking of defending America, I thought that’s what we were for, but anyway.
Your logical error is to believe that is the function of companies to employ citizens, either at home or overseas. But that isn’t what companies, at least not directly – you’re mistaking the process for the goal.
The reason that businesses exist is to create and exchange value in a market. They often use people to do so, and the people gain from that corporate need for their labor, thereby allowing them to be participants in the market.
Nifty, innit?
It is an odd twist of the ad hominem I think, to make a point by quoting the rants of one of minimal if any, credibility ?
It is an odd twist of the ad hominem I think, to make a point by quoting the rants of one of minimal if any, credibility – Michael Moore. Nevertheless, the growing disparity and divergence between workers’ and executives’ incomes, our disturbingly waning middle-class, and the recurring problems with lax corporate governance are indeed the legitimate concerns of a broad cross-section of much more trusted minds.
Fortunately, Sarbannes Oxley and stockholder revolts have slapped some sense into excessively permissive corporate boards for their previous inattention regarding executive compensation. But little has been done to help our upward economic class mobility, which is much less today than it was 50 years ago. And that is not good.
Halliburton makes an easy target to dislike because its success epitomizes much of what is wrong with today’s military-industrial complex. It has become the poster child of war profiteering, by too often providing substandard goods and services at inflated prices. (How could it lose $8 billion in cash bills in Iraq?) Halliburton has really thrived in an environment of K Street lobbyists, revolving doors of public sector/private sector key personnel at the highest levels, the Cunningham appropriation scandal that highlighted “earmarks” abuse and hinted at black projects contract awards corruption, etc. In fact, it is former Halliburton executives, now with IAP Worldwide that gained the controversial Walter Reed $120 million contract, and primarily contributed to Walter Reed’s current scandal.
But I do not believe Halliburton’s move affects its US taxes. It is an odd move, with only the CEO moving. It remains a Delaware registered corporation with most all of its top executives remaining in Houston. And it will continue to pay taxes here . . . for now.
However it is never good for any of us when any large corporation that employs many US workers and pays US taxes ever leaves the country, regardless of reasons.
Lex,
Here’s my uncalled-for 2-cent’s: Why should corporations be granted the rights of citizens? Corporations are allowed to donate to, and support, political candidates. They are allowed to lobby for legilative favours. And yet, the Constitution enumerates rights only for citizens. It only allows citizens to vote. Why them should a non-citizen be granted the rights of citizenship to sponsor candidates?
Why not re-write our tax codes and laws to eliminate all taxes on corporations, prohibit any non-citizen involvement in politics (unions, corporations, associations, etc) and rather than tax corporations, charge them a user’s fee for the right to operate within the borders?
Am I missing something here?
Respects,
fliterman, I know you view the world through a different political lens than I do, and I don’t have a problem with that. Really I don’t.
I do take certain exception though towards your distressing tendency to fling about the term “ad hominem” as it applies to one of my posts whose substance you disagree with, especially when in, as in the case in question, I cite what a person has actually said to illustrate the point I’m trying to make about what people who think like him actually think.
You’re clever enough to understand that that’s not what the term means, so I take it that you’re being deliberately offensive – that you are, in other words, accusing me of arguing a logical fallacy when in fact you know, you must know, that that’s not true. I mean, sure, it’s a cool sounding word, but cool sounding or not, you don’t get to make it mean what you’d like it to mean. There is an accepted meaning. In return then, I would – a great deal more precisely than you – label your point as being an argument in bad faith. It’s off-putting.
To move past that and in to the substance – such as it is – of your point, it seems to me that you object to the fact that middle class is not advancing as rapidly up the economic ladder as are the people on the very highest rung. Since it’s undeniably true that, apart from the most irreconcilably dysfunctional elements of society, everyone at every tier has markedly improved their lot over the last 25 years, I’d be fascinated to hear what sort of government-enforced remedy mechanism you would endorse to determine what the maximum pay an executive at a given company – based on sales, or market cap, or what have you, should earn.
All of us are vastly more wealthy than our parents’ generation was at an equivalent step. People do continue to improve not just their relative condition compared to previous generations, but also in absolute terms as contrasted to their peers. Your complaint appears to be that some are doing better than others and that you, or people who think like you, are not in charge of picking the winners.
For my own part, I think that’s a horrible idea. Markets work, government wage controls do not. Our market economy values both competence and innovation, and rewards the combination to great good fortune of the rest of us.
Free minds and free markets, fliterman.
Tim, the way I understand it – and I’m no lawyer – corporations aren’t citizens in the eyes of the law, but persons, at least as it affects statutory treatment. I remember reading why, and it appeared to make sense, but my eyes quickly glazed over and nothing of it was retained except that for the fact that this is what courts label “settled law.”
In politics, it’s also settled law that donations are a form of constitutionally protected “speech.” As for the issue of corporate donations, someone will speak for industry in the political realm – after all, the regulatory environment is one of their chief risk domains – and it’s just as well (from my perspective) that that “speech” is transparent and attributable rather than filtered through degrees of separation.
And the last thing I’d want to do, in a knowledge-based economy, is to dissuade – taxation, even in the form of a fee is a form of dissuasion – a company to do business here as a matter of policy.
The fact remains that Halliburton is an oil company. They have subdivisions handling logistics and who’ve been surpassed by five other contractors in terms of DoD lucre (those five apparently not having the gravitas or name recognition to deserve mention in the article) but if you’re an oil company and over a third of your revenue comes from the Middle East, why stay in Houston?
The whole complaint about taxes, about the middle class, etc… strikes me as the old fox and grapes story. When you fill the tax code to the point it takes thousands of pages just to print it out, when you deliberately add exemptions and catch-22′s into it, it takes a rather large cache of hubris to then complain that your intended victims are taking their ball and going home. You know, to a more level playing field.
– Max
I was flippin’ through the channels, thought I’d check out old Lex for a bit, a low an behold, its turned into WWF Wrestling meets UFC in the Pentagon, err octagon…
Funny, seems Haliburton is the corporate punch bag du juer (sic? I’m not French), when there are bigger fish to fry that fly under the radar of Cheney haters (say, oh, …SAIC for starters…).
[Let me preface my insolent response by saying I was initially wrong about you lex. When I first burst brashly upon your blog, I mistakenly took you for an arrogant and unthinking zealot. I later learned, quite to my surprise, nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, I was surprised to see an adversary embracing - in addition to some naturally expected heresy - some of the things and concepts as I hold dear. ]
But I do not comment on those. This is not kumbaya. However I do acknowledge – though being somewhat of a troll – to being kindly tolerated here.
Thank you. Nevertheless?
[Let me preface my insolent response by saying I was initially wrong about you lex. When I first burst brashly upon your blog, I mistakenly took you for an arrogant and unthinking zealot. I later learned, quite to my surprise, nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, I was surprised to see an adversary embracing - in addition to some naturally expected heresy - some of the things and concepts as I hold dear. ]
But I do not comment on those. This is not kumbaya. However I do acknowledge – though being somewhat of a troll – to being kindly tolerated here.
Thank you. Nevertheless…. the fight’s on:
You may take all the exception you want at my twisted, “ad hominem” reference. But when one as you attaches a legitimate argument to a known fool (Moore), I believe the intent is to make the argument a foolish one, regardless of its validity. (Yes, I am “clever” enough to understand the term and how I knowingly and “offensively” used it. That is precisely why I labeled it an “odd” use of the debating fallacy.) I believe your basing a legitimate argument upon a less-than-legitimate spokesman (Moore) is in “bad faith”. Therefore, I only reciprocated in kind. . In similar bad faith.
————–
I am indeed far wealthier than my successful parents. The problem is, without inheritance, my children and grandchildren will never be as well off. I could and did easily work my way through an expensive private college, paying my tuition with a combination of part-time jobs and loans without any parental assistance. (Although my parents could fund college, they thought it was “character building” that I did by myself…and they were right.)
But with the divergence of tuition and McDonald wages today, I could never even begin to do that. Nor can my progeny.
I also bought a home in San Diego in my twenties, without parental help. Few can do that today. Also, many of my friends established successful small businesses in the ’70′s. They couldn’t do that today because of mega-corporation competition, excessive regulation, and foreign competition. Times have changed…. And they are more than ever, unrelentingly changing for the worse.
Although a liberal, I really do believe as you in free markets…within reason. But I also understand the double edge sword of that philosophy.
When the free market and our reliance on it results in a migration of business to third world countries, whose wages and regulations are a mere shadow of ours, we Americans all lose. We lose our middle class, we lose jobs to those who most oppress their workers, we lose our national security by reliance on other countries, we lose our middle class, and we lose our former, higher standard of living.
———-
For the other commenters: In the old days, SAIC was populated with dedicated people who truly believed. Along the way, greed got in the way.
And Halliburton is hardly an “oil services” company. I’ve read where less than 30% of their revenues are derived from oil. There’s more money apparently in war profiteering than oil, as incredible as that may seem.
Lex,
Corporations may be persons, but they are also entities that are supposed to produce for the greater good. If they are a public corporation than they have public obligations.
Halliburton is more than an oil company. It is the parent company for a whole host of defense related industries. It will quickly discover that it can employ a whole host of talent who do not have blue passports for less money than it would pay for an American. From a purely selfish standpoint that’s a bad thing. I’m not concerned about Halliburton’s welfare one bit. I am concerned about opportunities opening up that further my personal goals.
There is a security aspect as they do this though-their info could change hands with people who do not need it.
Finally-regardless of where their CEO lives they have substantiated charges of financial wrongdoing. The Army has substaniated charges that it has overcharged it on several porjects-including withholding payment because of that.
My point about taxes was for Halliburtons individual employees will the ones being hosed by the change in this years tax laws-which have dramatically changed the way you can exclude income earned overseas-and not for the better.
I know someone who works for Halliburton-she says it is a good company to work for. If it had had a different former CEO they would not be getting the scrutiny they are.
This is an excellent discussion…
I was listening to NPR the afternoon that Haliberton. announced their move. There seemed to be much breathless huffing and puffing about this until it was noted that: a) HQ was staying in TX and only the CEO was going to be nearer the business opportunities (which made sense to me – business comms being what they are nowadays); and b) a tax expert came on and calmly explained to the reporter that current tax law made it quite difficult for Haliberton to “move offshore” to avoid taxes.
The war profiteering issue notwithstanding (I’ll leave that alone for now), I don’t have much argument with their move.
Brian
Halliburton is a great example of a successful company that a lot of people, for various reasons of their own, love to hate.
Now why would that be so? Well, you only need to read the first sentence:
US oil services giant Halliburton, formerly led by vice president Dick Cheney…
This whining about companies off-shoring is the same thing we get here in Ohio, only on a grander scale. We get constant complaining about Ohio not sharing the economic revovery and growth as most of the rest of the country, but no one wants to publicly tie that to the fact that we have the third highest tax burden in the country.
“Cause, meet effect. Effect, please allow me to introduce cause.”
I think would be instructive (albeit not instructive enough for me to actually research it or anything) to compare economic growth in blue states as compared to red states. My guess is that red states are outperforming blue states to an appreciable degree.
Daveg,
There is a similar situation up here in Maine. We have some of the highest taxes in the nation, yet the state always seems to be running a deficit.
Why? well, there are numerous issues, but the main one is high taxes. This state has made it difficult for business to relocate and be profitable. As a result, we not only do NOT get many new businesses, but many here relocate out of state or just close.
Maine nickles and dimes businesses with permits, fees, licences, and various taxes. I ran a retail business of my own for 6 years before calling it wuits. I simply could not afford to hire anyone to help me out. It’s not that I couldn’t afford to pay the salary, it was the added burden to that salary that the state demanded.
Maine tries to lure new businesses by offering various tax incentives, and yet those same lost revenues are then placed upon the taxpayers, rather than through eliminating budget items, or reducing the budget accordingly. As a result, taxpayers here tend to be retirees of a wealthier sort who can afford the new taxes, whereas the young, and thus the good workers are moving out of state to friendlier climes.
As a result, it’s harder to find skilled workers in Maine, and the cycle continues. Eventually we will be a retirement state, and have to import workers for the burgeoning health care industry to take care of the retirees.
I am probably going to be moving away as well. The property taxes are going up again, and I can only afford so much. Additional taxes on services and other non-taxed items are being introduced by the legislature as well.
Ah well, if you want a classic example of cause/effect, just examine Maine. Beautiful state, bad laws and lawmakers.
Respects,
AW1 Tim,
I agree with you wholeheartedly about the tax issue. When I retired from the Air Force, my wife and I had to decide whether to move back to upstate N.Y. or out to Colorado Springs (where I had once been stationed, and we both loved). We started looking at properties in N.Y. and found that the taxes were outrageous. We were looking at annual property taxes of about $8,000 to $9,000 (plus school taxes, which are seperate). That pretty much sealed the deal; we took our last move to Colorado. Our taxes on a comparable house are only $2,000 a year (including school taxes).
I am confused about the argument. There seems to be the belief that just because you are based in Houston that you are obligated to employ U.S citizens. Nothing could be farther from the truth. They can hire qualified persons from Europe, the Near East, Far East, etc… Their location in Dubai merely places them closer to the oil, closer to the combat personnel they profess to support and in a more favorable tax position for their stock holders. The U.S citizens involved in the company still have to pay taxes, as does the company. They minimize their losses though by not having to pay state as well as federal taxes and are free to negotiate a more favorable position. God Bless capitalism!!
fliterman,
While I welcome the fact that you have gained over the course of our association a more thorough appreciation for the unexpectedly complex and multi-faceted elements of my persona, does it not, in your moments of deepest introspection, reveal something worth pondering about your own that you presumed a host of unsavory things about me merely because my political alignment differed from your own?
And while I welcome thoughtful debate, you have been around long enough to know that I also treasure civility, believing that it is possible for people of good will to disagree without being disagreable. You shouldn’t be surprised therefore when I take offense at someone who is being deliberately offensive. Nor should it surprise you that such a tactic makes it more difficult – human nature being what it is – to take the rest of what you say, (even the substantive bits) at all seriously, although I will strain to do so because you have chiseled in to the core of the matter and it is an important point about which I have a strong theoretical conviction but practical concerns.
Before getting to the matter, let me share with you why it is that I value the opinions of those who disagree with me, like occasional commenter Eric, whose opinions I respect not least because he grants a respectful audience in return to the countervailing perspective even as he remains unpersuaded of its merits: As someone of a differing opinion whose opinion I respect, he serves as a kind of conscience for me even when sufficient time has elapsed for me to wonder whether or not he’s still reading here. That conscience forces me to challenge underlying assumptions, think carefully about what I am writing and to choose my words with some degree of precision, at least on potentially controversial topics.
Therefore when I write a line about “This kind of thinking drives politics-of-envy populists such as Michael Moore into a jiggling passion” you can imagine my surprise to find you taking that as an ad hominem directed at you, since it was not I but you who has chosen to associate your self with the “politics-of-envy populists such as Michael Moore.” Now there may be people who think similar things to Moore but do not share in his larger world view, but it wasn’t them – or you, until you snatched at the mantle of aggrieved victimhood – whom I was writing about.
And just as an aside, Moore can’t be nearly as marginal as you would prefer him to be for the sake of this discussion, seeing that he sat in a place of honor with a past president at the last Democratic National Convention.
Gah, I’ve wasted so much time of the preliminaries – fruitlessly, I imagine – that I’ve left no room for interest in the heart of the matter, but here goes: Globalization extends the benefits of the market systems to more and more markets. Companies – especially publicly held companies, utilities partially excepted – cannot sit pat on annual profits, their responsibility to shareholders commits them to revenue growth. This they accomplish partly through cost efficiencies (for mature industries) but preferably through developing more markets. The “off shoring” phenomenon which has people all twisted around in fear of Korean laborers, or Indian call center operators or Guatamalan wool weavers is nothing more than an extension of Adam Smith’s lesson on Comparative Advantage, meaning that while low skill labor flows to low wage countries, this serves to reduce costs for everyone (and frees up capital to be invested more efficiently elsewhere) it also develops new markets for the high tech, high value things that we create with advantage. It’s true that increasingly high tech jobs are moving to other places, but we don’t get to dictate that market forces, or globalization for that matter, stops at a convenient intersection. That bus will keep moving with or without us, and I suppose that’s the thanks we get for winning the Cold War and creating a world of 4 billion capitalists.
That does come with a degree of labor pool instability and requires a societal commitment to an enthusiastically competive economy, but that’s an arena we have always excelled in and the moment we as a nation shirk from that challenge we have become France, without the lovely scenery.
Alternatively, I suppose, we could go back to a philosophy of protecting the jobs of buggy-whip manufacturers. See how that works out.
I also take issue with the idea that we are inevitably sliding towards some dystopian future for our children – when I graduated from college, the interest rate on a home loan was 17% and there was something like a 12% unemployment rate – neither of those things seems remotely possible now. My children will probably not be able to have our advantages of home ownership in San Diego straight away, but that is as much as anything a market driven supply and demand issue: It’s a lovely place to live, and lots of people – many of them with quite a bit of money – tend to agree with us, driving up housing prices. But, if our children work hard in school and at work, they will eventually be able to afford the houses here, especially considering the fact that neither you nor I will live forever, and when we die we will not only pass down to them the fruits of the equity gains we’ve realized (hopefully, Dubya’s “inheritance tax” easement sunsets soon, and prospects for renewal in the current Congress are grim), but also open up a nice house in San Diego for someone just like them to move into.
Courage, fliterman – we’re good at this.
Web Reconnaissance for 03/14/2007…
A short recon of what?ǂ
Web Reconnaissance for 03/14/2007…
A short recon of whats out there that might draw your attention….
Hey!”Attacking SAIC was ad hominem. I resent that remark! Ahhh. Bought your own home in SD in your 20′s eh? Feeling sorta special at that pinnacle o’capitalism eh fliterman?
Gee Lex. You give ‘em a little “Economics of Taxation” 201 lecture using “beer” of all things as the commodity (something we all need) and they bite the hand that feeds ‘em!
You know what is ironic? I bought my first home in San Diego when that mortgage interest was fixed at about 15%! Capitalism = opportunity fliterman. Never forget it.
b2
I bought my first home in Norfolk when the rate was 15.5%. I was on cruise at the time, and frantically trying to get my ex to back out of the deal. She did not and closed on the house leaving us with a crushing house payment for several years…………….
Then again house prices in Norfolk were still reasonable then-in San Diego they were less but still a lot higher than on the east coast.
Lex,
When you state the purpose of a business is to create and exchange value in a market, is that the same as saying the purpose is to provide quality products or service to their customers and provide jobs to provide those items…? Sorry if I seem slow at grasping concepts, I was an aviator in the old days..
Bill,
The blanket term “value” is an umbrella term that covers the goods or services which a company makes which they sell, barter or exchange for other people’s goods or services, either individually or collectively. They often employ – at market prices – labor to create that value, and in sharing with them the fruits of their labor via salary or stock options or what have you they create additional market capacity, but that is not in itself value creation from the company’s perspective. Labor is a cost rather than a product for most corporations, the US government and military somewhat excepted.
Generally speaking, corporations provide a good or service in the hopes of being able to entice you to pay more for it than what it cost them to provide. They’re selling something, you’re buying, without a profit or an enticement to sell at a loss there’s no reason for the transaction to take place.
Corporations do so because the owners, stakeholders, who’ve sunk much time and treasure into the operation, would like to see a return on that investment. In a publicly-owned company the shareholders would like to see that return, and a Board of Directors and upper management is held accountable that the shareholders do see a return or have a Really Good Excuse for underperforming.
Bottom line, corporations don’t provide jobs, they hire people to help them bring that return on investment. They don’t provide goods or services, they provide them so long as doing so generates shareholder value.
They are treated as entities under law precisely because holding the company accountable for the single accountant skimming the books is unfair and that accountant can be targeted directly. Likewise, if the business fails and is dissolved why take the personal assets of the folks who managed it to cover the debts?
Many a person has mortgaged his house and gone into private business, becoming a corporation requires a few more hurdles and is meant to be a method of limiting the liability a small businessman must take to grow his company.
Corporations and Limited Liability Corporations are formed precisely so people can invest in risk without the risk being their ability to feed their family. Folks are all about a safety net for the poor, corporations are merely a safety net to ensure a person who just purchased stock isn’t held liable for the actions of another he was in business with. There are other laws that ensure malfeasance and fraud can still be prosecuted against, but those results do not have to affect everybody who invested in the corporation.
— Max
Shipmates,
All I know is that the Constitution was designed to delineate the rights of the citizen. Nowhere does it mention corporations.
I only want the political playing field restricted to those who get to vote. Dorporations, Unions, etc, don’t get to vote. Their people do, and that’s the way it should be.
However, what i would dearly like to see is a set of laws that prohibit anyone but private citizens from contributing to anyone running for public office, that makes it a capital crime for anyone NOT an individual citizen to donate to any candidate, elected official, or governmental agency anything of value, in any form whatsover, for any purpose.
Elections should be for and by the people. When anything other than an individual citizen is allowed to participate, in any capacity, it diminishes the righjts of the citizens, and cheapens my vote.
Respects,
When anything other than an individual citizen is allowed to participate, in any capacity, it diminishes the righjts of the citizens, and cheapens my vote.
Yes, but it also avoids a mob mentality that would cause sentiments like “I’m going to take away Evil, Incs. profits for the greater good of all you voters.” (See Clinton, Hillary)
Next thing you know, your economy is in ruins, and no one is well served by that other than bankruptcy lawyers.
AW1Tim
I confess complete ignorance as to how political contributions are handled in the US. Here it would vary by the province but would the following be something along the lines of what you are thinking? I assume you would likely take it further since this doesn’t specifically touch corporations but just curious if this is at all heading in your direction.
Warning: The following was written by one of those damm leftist Canuck government types………. Do not shoot the messenger!
An Act to Amend the Members and Public Employees Disclosure Act
The Act is amended to put monetary limits on how much an official agent can accept as cash contributions from any person in a calender year and how much an individual or organization can contribute to one or more candidates, electoral district associations or recognized parties. In the case of an excess contribution being made, the party, candidate or association must return the excess amount to the individual or organization. Rules are also put in place regarding the lending of funds to a candidate, party or association; it is prohibited for a candidate to lend a contribution to any person.
Every person who makes a contribution except as permitted in the Act and every candidate, party or association who accepts such a contribution is liable on summary conviction to a fine of not more than five thousand dollars for an individual or fifty thousand dollars for an organization.
Ah, campaign financing here is a hideous coil, and it’s been made all the more so by attempts such as you’ve quoted to limit the capacity of people – either individually or in aggregate – to express their free speech rights by contributing to the debate. We have always had a limit ($2000, I believe) on what is called “hard money,” or individual donations to individual candidates at the national level. “Soft money” is that money given by individuals, corporations, unions, etc. to political action committees, and – since the debut of the McCain-Feingold regulations – 527 groups.
I’m nothing like as smart on this as I ought to be I suppose, but the way I understand it, PACs can funnel money to individuals or parties, and parties can redistribute to candidates, thereby avoiding the limits on individual donations, while 527′s ostensibly support a “point of view” without directly or indirectly supporting a candidate. The “Swift Boat Veterans for the Truth” is one such 527, and I believe “MoveOn.org” is another.
But every law written on the topic not only impinges upon free speech rights, it also creates endless opportunities for ever-more crafty layers of deception and opacity.
Rather than try to regulate political speech, I’d much prefer it to be transparent who’s giving what to who, and let the rest of us draw our own conclusions.
Thanks Lex.
Two comments on rights:
1. With each right comes a corresponding responsibility. In an ideal world, that would be kind of self-obvious, I know. But unfortunately it seems to be rarely recognized in the real world. Too bad. Because if it was, you probably wouldn’t be forced to read my second statement.
2. Like it or not (and I know you prefer it wasn’t so) all rights have to be limited. So try this one – “subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstratably justified in a free and democratic society”. Works for me but I know, I’m biased. And following the law of unintended consequences, it does create more employment for those lawyer-types.
well, seeing as Lex is more genteel than this, and since free speech is free, how about i just call fliterman a dick and be done with it?
i got yer ad hominem right here, pal
[...] Globalization won’t stop because we get tired. No argument there. [...]
Sheesh. He wasn’t even in this thread.
“…how about i just call fliterman a dick and be done with it?”
No problem, bubba. I’ve been called far worse, and for far better reasons.
But perhaps maybe we should honor lex’s gifted turf here, and step outside elsewhere?
“…how about i just call fliterman a dick and be done with it?”
No problem, bubba. I’ve been called far worse, and for far better reasons.
But perhaps maybe we should honor lex’s gifted turf here, and step outside elsewhere…..where we can do some real damage, huh, bubba? Then I’ll see your ad hominem, and then raise you with a BS and a hard right cross, sucka.
You ever call me a dick to my face, and I’ll rip your face off.
Copy that bubba? ……….Then read back.
Lex-
re- “The ?
Lex-
re- “The “Swift Boat Veterans for the Truth” is one such 527, and I believe “MoveOn.org” is another.’
That’s a fact Jack- however, like Adolph hitler and Abraham Lincoln were both leaders…
b2
i copy.
and i call.
No brawling in my house, gentlemen.
wilco
[...] Lex explains the Democrat approach to taxation, and shows where it must inevitably [...]