Five years after the financial crisis of 2008, the economy struggles to move forward, yet corporations are hoarding more wealth than ever before. According to Audit Analytics, corporations currently have more than $2.1 trillion in cash overseas.
On top of hoarding wealth, many companies like Google hold cash overseas to leverage for a lower corporate tax rate. Obama already mentioned lowering the corporate tax rate during the State of the Union, which if passed, will exacerbate the wealth gap even further.
It’s disgusting to see wealthy companies ruling politics by financing politicians. As a result, they end up paying little or no taxes as in the cases of General Electric, Boeing and Verizon.
The recent Supreme Court rulings in 2010 and this year will exacerbate the problem with corporations gaining further influence in Washington. This in turn will lead to more loopholes and more corporate welfare for the rich and further cuts to social programs for the poor.
Corporate media pollute the public discourse on the subject of taxes and economic policies. Students exposed to corporate propaganda often hear the claim that companies already pay too much taxes. Although the nominal corporate tax rate is 35 percent, loopholes and subsidies drop the real tax rate down to about 12.6 percent.
The claim made by conservatives that lowering the corporate tax rate will create jobs is blatantly false. Corporations today have the lowest tax rate and lax regulations since the Jimmy Carter years, yet there is a jobs crisis.
If the right wing’s argument that cutting taxes leads to more jobs were remotely true, then we would be drowning in jobs. Instead of creating jobs as promised, corporations paid the extra earnings out as dividends and compensations.
Before Ronald Reagan, taxes were 70 percent on the highest income bracket, and corporate taxes were enforced. After the Reagan administration cut taxes, the wealth gap increased drastically, corporate profits soared, offshoring destroyed the middle class and the bottom 90 percent’s income stagnated.
The crisis that grinds Washington comes from market fundamentalists who seek to cut taxes and cut spending. The problem we have isn’t a spending problem as much as a revenue problem.
It’s time to take on the nonsensical arguments of the Tea Party and the Republicans who seek to destroy what’s left of the New Deal and Great Society programs that have benefited the poor and middle class for generations.
During the 1950s’ Golden Age of Capitalism, one-fourth of all government revenues came from corporate taxes. Fast forward to 2012 — only 7 percent came from corporate taxes because of tax loopholes and subsidies.
It’s a dark revelation to have corporations hoarding historic levels of wealth while millions in America are homeless, dependent on food stamps and struggling to find jobs.
While many conservatives despise welfare, they are often silent about the approximately $100 billion in corporate welfare annually received by big business.
This goes to show that there isn’t an issue with lack of wealth because clearly there is plenty of it; the issue is how it is distributed. If the Tea Party and the Republicans get what they want, our nation will start to look more like the third world where abject poverty exists side by side to extreme wealth.
It’s time to raise taxes on corporations and penalize companies that hide assets and cash overseas. If they want to do business in America, then they should pay taxes like everyone else. The working poor who pay payroll taxes literally paid more taxes than GE, Boeing and Verizon over the past five years.
It shouldn’t be controversial to have a conversation about raising taxes on corporations and the rich .who not only can afford it. but clearly benefited the most from our society to begin with.
Joshua Hajiakbarifini is a 24-year-old political science and economics senior from Baton Rouge.