WM Essay #96 "U.S. Corporations Hoarding Profits"

        Capitalism is here defined as the creation of jobs, products, and services. This does not include the anti-capitalism practices of union-busting, off-shoring, asset-stripping, down-sizing, or cash hoarding that is claimed as the Divine Right of the Robber Barons who have the sheeple convinced that feudal economics is capitalism.
        George Dubya Bush's economic Great Recession continues to deplete America's net worth, while increasing the share of the Oligarchs (top one percent) and the Wealthy Class (top twenty percent) and shrinking the net worth of the rapidly-disappearing Middle Class.
        The Revolution is never over, the Class War is perpetual. And the Oligarchs are winning. (Because they lie and cheat, and it works.)
        The Master Class is intentionally hoarding their unearned profits, both within domestic corporations and in foreign bank accounts, because they already make plenty of money churning trades on the Stock Market Casino (40 percent of G.D.P.!). By keeping capital in short supply they can charge higher interest and also prevent the Middle Class small business person from producing anything (thus no profit to them) and also prevent small businesses from hiring fear-driven workers.

        One element of the Reason-Based Taxation proposal is that corporations be taxed at a rate of FIFTY percent for profits in excess of 10 percent of revenue. Reason-Based Taxation encourages actual Capitalism by providing the incentives of raising wages, lowering prices, domestic expansion, or buying treasury shares as simple methods to reduce profits below that 10 percent boundary. What you will see below is the extant of the greed that is today in violation of the Reason-Based Taxation proposal parameters.

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        This data is based on a January 2011 Atlantic Monthly article and other sources; revenue and profit figures are a consensus of projections for 2011. Notice that the Top Ten are made up of three banks, three computer companies, two oil companies, one drug company, and Wal-Mart.

Exxon Mobil
Projected 2011 profits of $32.3 billion on revenue of $417.6 billion equals 12.93%
Exxon Mobil also has $35 billion in untaxed foreign profit
Per Fortune Magazine, Exxon Mobil does so much international business that over 80% of its 2009 profit came from overseas. Due to excess profits at the pump, Exxon Mobil, while second to WalMart in total revenue, nonetheless managed a 2010 net profit nearly double that of Walmart's – $30.5 billion to $16.4 billion.

Microsoft, Inc.
Projected 2011 profits of $21 billion on revenue of $73.4 billion equals 28.6%
Microsoft also has $29.5 billion in untaxed foreign profit

Chevron
Projected 2011 profits of $19.8 billion on revenue of $247.23 billion equals 8%

JPMorgan Chase
Projected 2011 profits of $19.1 billion on revenue of $101.57 billion equals 18.8%

Pfizer
Projected 2011 profits of $18.3 billion on revenue of $66.09 billion equals 27.7%
Pfizer also has $48.2 billion in untaxed foreign profit

Apple, Inc.
Projected 2011 profits of $18.2 billion on revenue of $103.3 billion equals 17.6%

Bank of America
Projected 2011 profits of $16.3 billion on revenue of $109.7 billion equals 14.9%

Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.
Projected 2011 profits of $15.7 billion on revenue of $444.2 billion equals 3.53%

I.B.M.
Projected 2011 profits of $15.6 billion on revenue of $103.15 billion equals 15.12%
I.B.M. also has $31.1 billion in untaxed foreign profit

Wells Fargo & Co.
Projected 2011 profits of $15.3 billion on revenue of $84.8 billion equals 18%

* *          * *          * *          * *There are, of course, large and even smaller corporations that are making huge profits percentage-wise without being on this list. Such companies in the 'also ran' category include:

AT&T
AT&T had higher net profits than Wal-Mart in 2010
AT&T reported 2010 profits of $19.86 billion on revenue of $124.3 billion equals 16%

Cisco Systems
Cisco Systems is hoarding $31.6 billion in untaxed foreign profit

Citigroup
Citigroup is hoarding $32.1 billion in untaxed foreign profit

General Electric
General Electric paid NO U.S. corporate income tax for 2010 on revenue of $150.2 billion

Goldman Sachs
2010 profits of $8.4 billion on revenue of $39.16 billion equals 21.45%

Merck
Merck is hoarding $40.4 billion in untaxed foreign profit

Procter & Gamble
Procter & Gamble is hoarding $30 billion in untaxed foreign profit

* *          * *          * *          * *        There is right now a gigantic pile of cash stashed away by U.S. corporations in European banks and elsewhere, waiting for another 'free pass' like the Bush Administration set up for them in 2004. Instead of paying the then-current 35% corporate income tax rate, $362 billion was repatriated at a 5¼ percent tax rate, at a loss to tax payers of $70 billion. But, as is typical of shenanigans devised by the fascist Oligarchy, the stated purpose for the special rate of hiring more workers did not happen: virtually the entire low-tax repatriation of 2004 resulted in payouts to executives and shareholders (and a few purchases of treasury shares) - no jobs were created.
        The Oligarchs are singing the same song and dance this time; anyone who believes them is a fool. And since the hoard is much larger – estimated at one trillion dollars of the pharmaceutical industry, one trillion dollars of the banking & finance industry, and one trillion dollars of the insurance industry – the loss to taxpayers could be as much as $900 billion.

[copyright 2011 by Gary Edward Nordell, all rights reserved]

Snowjob and The Seven Dwarfs

The debate in Iowa this week between the eight Republican presidential candidates displayed what can only be described as 'Snowjob and The Seven Dwarfs'. On that same day, Texas Governor Rick Perry announced that he is running for the 2012 G.O.P. nomination – fellow Texans describe him as "dumber than George W. Bush". And Sarah Palin flits around the country, cheerleading for the Tea Party fools. Not one of the bunch can manage a two-year-old, much less a bankrupt country. This does not mean that Barack Obama will win a second term, because there are more idiots in America than there are sentient voters.

August 2011 Quotations

"What's the difference between Congress and the Boy Scouts? The Boy Scouts have adult supervision."
~~ variation on an old joke

"The United States has many problems at the moment: a high-and-stubborn unemployment rate, a foreclosure catastrophe, a slowing economy that has not recovered and will not recover from the Great Crisis, and the ongoing challenges of infrastructure, energy and climate change."
~~ James K. Galbraith

"The greatest beauty is organic wholeness, the wholeness of life and things, the divine beauty of the universe."
~~ Robinson Jeffers [1887-1962]

“In a rational society we would want our presidents to be teachers. In our actual society we insist [that] they be cheerleaders.”
~~ Steve Allen [1921-2000]

"Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself."
~~ John Dewey [1859-1952]

"The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet."
~~ Aristotle [384-322 B.C.E.]

"Women are not in love with me but with the picture of me on the screen. I am merely the canvas upon which the women paint their dreams."
~~ Rudolph Valentino [1895-1926]

"Education is what remains after one has forgotten what one has learned in school."
~~ Albert Einstein [1879-1955]

"He who opens a school door, closes a prison."
~~ Victor Hugo [1802-85]

"Education’s purpose is to replace an empty mind with an open one."
~~ Malcolm Forbes [1919-90]

"Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing worth knowing can be taught."
~~ Oscar Wilde [1854-1900]

"I learned that ruling poor men's hands is nothing. Ruling men's money [is] a wedge in the world. But after I'd split it open a crack I looked in and saw the trick inside it, the filthy nothing, the fooled and rotten faces of rich and successful men."
~~ Robinson Jeffers [1887-1962]

"The only ends for which governments are constituted, and obedience render'd to them, are the obtaining of justice and protection; and they who cannot provide for both give the people a right of taking such ways as best please themselves, in order to [affect] their own safety." ~~ Algernon Sidney [1623-83] in 1672

"A man who fears suffering is already suffering from what he fears."
~~ (Michel Eyquem de) Montaigne [1533-92]

"Falling out of love is chiefly a matter of forgetting how charming someone is."
~~ Iris Murdoch [1919-99]

"There are few things more liberating in life than having your worst fear realized."
~~ Conan O'Brien

"Progress is not created by contented people."
~~ cartoonist Frank Tyger

"There are people who want to be everywhere at once, and they get nowhere."
~~ Carl Sandburg [1878-1967]

"Life is the art of drawing without an eraser."
~~ John W. Gardner [1912-2002]

"Action speaks louder than words, but not nearly as often."
~~ Mark Twain [1835-1910]

“I think it’s bad to talk about one's present work, for it spoils something at the root of the creative act. It discharges the tension."
~~ Norman Mailer [1923-2007]

“You know who the critics are? The men who have failed in literature and art.”
~~ Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield [1804-81]

"A hunch is creativity trying to tell you something."
~~ Frank Capra [1897-1991]

"Take the course opposite to custom and you will always do well."
~~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau [1712-78]

"A pun is the lowest form of humor, unless you thought of it yourself."
~~ columnist Doug Larson

"The value of an idea lies in the using of it."
~~ Thomas Alva Edison [1847-1931]

"All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware."
~~ Martin Buber [1878-1965]

"Where men are the most sure and arrogant, they are commonly the most mistaken."
~~ David Hume [1711-76]

"All great innovation is built on rejection."
~~ Louis-Ferdinand Céline [1894-1961]

"All writing is a sin against speechlesssness."
~~ Samuel Beckett [1906-89]

"Corporations are people, my friend. Of course they are." ~~ leading fascist presidential candidate Mitt Romney, in August 2011

"A great deal more is known than has been proved."
~~ Richard P. Feynman [1918-88]

"The only problem with country music is that it kills plants."
~~ former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson, trailing presidential candidate

{each set of posted quotations are then posted at the Working Minds website, alphabetical by author}