<p>Lol…</p>
<p>How many jobs were created over the last 10 years in the private sector? The years of a 15 percent capital gains tax and a top income tax rate of 35%. Those are the lowest rates in 60 years. You would think the job creators would have created a record amount of jobs.</p>
<p>Zero private sector jobs were created in the United States. In fact, there was a loss of private sector jobs. How can that be?</p>
<p>Real GDP is up…although not as much as past decades…
Corporate After tax profits are up. Corporate taxes as a share of gdp is at lows…</p>
<p>Jobs? What are those?</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2011/06/2011-private-employment-is-2-below-2001-levels/[/url]”>http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2011/06/2011-private-employment-is-2-below-2001-levels/</a>
From the Liscio Report, via Alan Abelson, May Employment data shows that a limp recovery is growing limper.</p>
<p>“As our friends and astute data scanners at the Liscio Report, Philippa Dunne and Doug Henwood, observe, disappointments were scattered throughout the report, And while they don’t think May is “an overture to a double dip,” it does plainly reflect accelerating erosion on the job front . . .</p>
<p>More than a little shocking to Philippa and Doug (and to us as well) is that private employment today is 2% below where it stood 10 years ago and, as they’ve noted before, job loss over a 10-year period is unprecedented since the advent of something resembling reliable tallies began in 1890. So far, they point out somewhat grimly, “we’ve regained just 1.8 million jobs lost in the Great Recession and its aftermath, or about one in five.”</p>
<p>That is a truly astonishing datapoint: An unprecedented 10 Year loss of private sector jobs going back as far as reliable data has been available."</p>
<p>"</p>
<p>I think this is simple. If the private sector won’t create jobs, then tax the hell out of it, and let the public sector do it. </p>
<p>Start with the Bush/Obama tax giveaways to my mother the job creator.</p>
<p>"America’s CEOs are truly in a league of their own when it comes to pay and power.*</p>
<p>Total CEO pay at the largest 292 corporations averaged 325 times what the average worker made in 2010, a far higher ratio than in any other Western nation. This figure had actually declined from an incredible 525 times the typical worker’s wage in 2000. But the CEOs of the Top 100 are truly in another stratosphere. They averaged an astounding 1,723 times what their workers earned in 2007, according to Les Leopold’s excellent book, The Looting of America.</p>
<p>The Washington, D.C.-based think tank Institute for Policy Studies has
come up with a different, but equally stunning, way of gauging CEO pay by making a simple comparison. For its new report, Executive Excess 2011, the IPS placed the compensation packages of America’s Top 100 CEOs alongside the tax bills of their corporations, and discovered that</p>
<p><em>Of last year’s 100 highest-paid U.S. corporate chief executives, 25 took</em>home more in CEO pay than their company paid in 2010 federal
corporate income taxes.</p>
<p>U.S. corporations and their stooges in Congress, including some Democrats, frequently whine that the U.S. corporate tax rate is far too high for U.S. firms to remain competitive. In fact, the multitude of
loopholes mean that the official 35% tax rate is almost never imposed. Corporate tax rates for U.S. firms are actually among the lowest among
the 30 advanced nations belonging to the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development, reports Citizens for Tax Justice:</p>
<p>According to a 2007 study by the Bush Treasury Department, between 2000-2005 US corporations paid only 13.4% of their profits in corporate income taxes, well below the Organization of Economic Cooperation and
Development (OECD) average of 16.1%.</p>
<p>Just in case those figures are too complex for the average congressperson to comprehend, the IPS study offers some very memorable facts:</p>
<p>• ZERO OR LESS TAX BILL:<em>Fully 25 of the 100 firms paid no U.S. corporate taxes for last year, and in fact gained tax refunds.</em></p>
<p>• MORE ON LOBBYING THAN TAXES: No less than 20 of the 25 firms spent*more on lobbying than they paid in taxes, no doubt because in some cases the lobbyists helped craft the obscure language of the tax legislation and regulations. The “investment” of these giant corporations thus paid off very handsomely."</p>
<p><a href=“http://inthesetimes.com/working/entry/11880/select_firms_pay_less_in_taxes_than_they_pay_ceo_lobbyists_and_candida/[/url]”>http://inthesetimes.com/working/entry/11880/select_firms_pay_less_in_taxes_than_they_pay_ceo_lobbyists_and_candida/</a></p>
<p>“I think this is simple. If the private sector won’t create jobs, then tax the hell out of it, and let the public sector do it.”</p>
<p>Yay, great idea! Just tax all the private companies out of business, and then we can have everything controlled by the government. Wouldn’t that be wonderful? Because we certainly know there is no corruption or inefficiency in countries where the government controls everything. You don’t like it and speak up against it, you go to jail, what’s not to like? Great system. If we’re lucky, we could end up like Cuba or the good old Soviet Union.</p>
<p>Or Mexico…</p>
<p>That’s just trash-talk and you know it. Those big companies reaping in trillions of dollars of profit are not going out of business. Why should they? They’re living high off the hog, with the lowest “effective” tax rate in the world of all major developed economies, and have turned worker-productivity into a weapon against workers themselves. You saw the chart of corporate taxes as a percentage of GDP above. Well, just put the tax rate to generate the percentage of GDP that they did 30 years ago.</p>
<p>We’ve tried this strategy. It doesn’t work. For the vast majority of us. If they don’t want to create jobs, they don’t have to. There are plenty of other ways short of the Soviet Union, and your trash-talking doesn’t change that.</p>
<p>[Top</a> CEOs Earn More Than Their Firms Pay in Taxes - DailyFinance](<a href=“Stock Portfolio & Tracker - Yahoo Finance”>Stock Portfolio & Tracker - Yahoo Finance)</p>
<p>Some of these firms pay less in income taxes than we do…</p>
<p>Some get paid…they pay a negative tax…</p>
<p>“Companies on the list include Verizon (VZ), International Paper (IP), Prudential Financial (PRU), GE (GE), BNY Mellon (BK), Boeing (BA), Marsh & McLennan (MMC), Stanley Black & Decker (SWK), Chesapeake Energy (CHK), and Ebay (EBAY). (See the gallery below for the report’s full list of compensation and refund details.)”</p>
<p>[Airline</a> Pilot Salaries: How Much Does Your Captain Earn? - The Middle Seat Terminal - WSJ](<a href=“Airline Pilot Salaries: How Much Does Your Captain Earn? - WSJ”>Airline Pilot Salaries: How Much Does Your Captain Earn? - WSJ)</p>
<p>How much does your pilot make? Those starting salaries are shocking…
If you get what you pay for…</p>
<p>"Congress expressed shock and dismay to learn that regional airline pilots start at very low salaries after the NTSB said the co-pilot on the Colgan Air commuter plane that crashed near Buffalo on Feb. 12 earned only $16,000 a year. (The company later said she earned $23,900.)</p>
<p>That situation has existed for decades, though the financial difficulties of the industry have clearly driven pilot salaries lower. But regional airline pilots are essentially paid in hours of experience, not cash. They build jet flight time that gets them higher-paying positions as captains, and eventually, they hope, jobs at major airlines. They accept low pay in order to get a big payday later in their flying careers. Right or wrong, that’s how the industry has worked.</p>
<p>Of course, major airlines have been furloughing pilots more than hiring them, so it’s been increasingly difficult for regional airline pilots to get on the seniority track at big airlines, which leads to high salaries. But even the high salaries aren’t nearly as high as they used to be. There was a time when wide-body international captains worked a few trips a month and earned $300,000 or more a year. Economic pressures have choked that golden goose.</p>
<p>Just how much do pilots at major airlines earn these days? FltOps.com, an information source for pilots, recently released a salary survey. On the low end, first-year pilots at US Airways would, theoretically, earn a minimum $21,600 a year. For that, they would work 72 hours a month at the controls of a plane (lots more hours are involved in flight preparations, overnights and sitting around waiting)."</p>
<p>As I recall, the rationale back in 2001 for cutting taxes on the highest earners was that it would unleash their job-creating impulses. Of course, the promised jobs have not materialized. And yet that tax cut has now been extended. Why?</p>
<p>Supply-side economics has NEVER worked. That is, it’s never improved the economy as a whole. It does work very nicely for the high-income earners, but they don’t seem to care much about the other 98% of us. </p>
<p>Why do we continue to buy this snake oil?</p>
<p>Of course, we are better off than some third world countries. Oh, wait, malnutrition in the U.S. is now higher than in Tamil Nadu, and in great swathes of China. But at least we don’t curtail people’s liberties - Oh, wait, imprisonment rates are between 10 and 50 times higher than in India or China. </p>
<p>But at least our young college graduates are finding jobs…</p>
<p>How are college graduates doing?</p>
<p>[For</a> Recent Graduates, Starting Salaries Declined Over Past Decade](<a href=“HuffPost - Breaking News, U.S. and World News | HuffPost”>For Recent Graduates, Starting Salaries Declined Over Past Decade | HuffPost College)</p>
<p>"While the EPI report hardly indicated that it’s no longer worth going to college, Mishel cautioned that a college degree is increasingly looking like less of a guaranteed ticket to the middle class.</p>
<p>In terms of duration, the report’s conclusion didn’t mince words: “With unemployment expected to remain above 8 percent well into 2014, it will likely be many years before young college graduates – or any workers – see substantial wage growth.”</p>
<p>Mishel mentioned that graduates who finish college during periods of economic recession tend to earn less not just in their first jobs out of school, but over the duration of their entire working lives.</p>
<p>“Given the high, persistent unemployment rate, this is going to create a permanent scar for these young people,” said Mishel. “We’re looking at a whole generation beset by these problems.”</p>
<p>How can that be? Taxes as a percentage of gdp at 60 year lows. Capital gains tax rates of 15%</p>
<p>Who pays the inheritance tax? I read that family farms are lost so we should get rid of it. How many farms are subject to the inheritance tax?</p>
<p>50? This must be a joke? $10 million. That’s it? Well…that is more than many of the largest corporations in the US pay in taxes.</p>
<p>[Who</a> pays the estate tax?](<a href=“http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/briefing-book/key-elements/estate/who.cfm]Who”>Who pays the estate tax? | Tax Policy Center)</p>
<p>“TPC estimates that 8,600 individuals dying in 2011 will leave estates large enough to require fil-ing an estate tax return (estates with a gross value under $5 million need not file a return in 2011). After allowing for deductions and credits, an estimated 3,270 estates will owe tax. Roughly 90 percent of these taxable estates will come from the top ten percent of income earn-ers and nearly half will come from the top one percent alone (see table).
Estate tax liability will total an estimated $10.6 billion in 2011. The top ten percent of income earners will pay 98 percent of this total. The richest 1 in 1,000 will pay $5.4 billion or 51 percent of the total.
Less than 50 small farms and businesses - estates with farm and business assets making up at least half of gross estate and totaling $5 million or less - will pay any estate tax in 2011. Such estates will represent just 1.2 percent of all taxable estate tax returns.
TPC estimates that small farms and businesses will pay under $10 million in estate tax in 2011, less than one tenth of 1 percent point of the total revenue the tax will collect.”</p>
<p>The estate tax is an excellent example of bumper-sticker policy-making. It has been called the “death tax” to great effect. People naturally don’t want to get taxed on dying, so they think the estate tax is a horrible idea, not realizing that neither they nor anyone they know will ever come close to paying it. </p>
<p>And it’s just one more example of how the ultra-wealthy avoid paying their fair share, to the detriment of the rest of us.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>“Fair share” is subjective and hence controversial, but the ultra-wealthy, such as the Buffets and Gates, get away far more so than the merely-wealthy who may not have invested sufficiently in the kind of estate planning that the 3-comma crowd seems to do.</p>
<p>How many Americans die each year?</p>
<p>[FASTSTATS</a> - Deaths and Mortality](<a href=“NCHS - 404 Error - Resource Not Available”>FastStats - Deaths and Mortality)</p>
<p>Approximately 2.4 million…</p>
<p>How many are subject to a federal estate tax?</p>
<p>Approximately 3300.</p>
<p>How much is collected from federal estate taxes?</p>
<p>Approximately $10 billion.</p>
<p>OK–
[Visualizing</a> Booming Profits - NYTimes.com](<a href=“http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/11/23/visualizing-booming-profits/]Visualizing”>Visualizing Booming Profits - The New York Times)</p>
<p>As you can see, corporate profits as a percentage of GDP are actually unchanged or lower than 50 or so years ago. Also note that corporate profits are much LOWER after taxes than before. It also does not indicate whether these corporate profits are only their US profits. The article says the chart shows profits are NOT inflation adjusted.</p>
<p>Corporations are not just big salaried CEO’s. They employ millions of people with good jobs who want their corporation to make profits. The stocks can also increase the value of retirement and investment funds. You can’t just like them when your portfolio is making money, but hate them when it is not. Products, businesses, economies go through cycles. There is a risk. There is a real problem in this world when we thinking things can only be good or go up and never down. </p>
<p>Maybe Mother Nature is trying to show us that no matter our technology and moral ism, we are not in control.</p>
<p>gdp is not inflation adjusted either…</p>
<p>Your chart only goes up to the beginning of 2010.</p>
<p>True… A large part of corporate profits comes from overseas.</p>
<p>Corporate Profits were up 38% in 2010.</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/03/27/111113/strong-corporate-profits-amid.html[/url]”>http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/03/27/111113/strong-corporate-profits-amid.html</a></p>
<p>As far as your post about airline pilots salary, dstark, it is nothing new at all that pilots starting with commuter airlines earn next to nothing. They are building hours, not a bank account. It has always been that way. Some people prefer that to serving the now required 10 years in the military after pilot training. But some of these old guys are finally going to have to retire (hopefully before they drop dead in the cockpit), and they are actually projecting a pilot shortage.</p>
<p>But you missed the conclusion of the article, which is: “The obvious lesson: A profitable company, whether UPS, FedEx or Southwest, can pay its workers more.” There still are some airlines making money, who pay their pilots very well. But if a company doesn’t make money, the employees get laid off, their salaries and benefits cut. The company makes money, they give raises, profit sharing, and employees keep the benefits they have. Do I want the government to tax the daylights out of my company so their profit is minimal? Absolutely not. I want my company to be as solid and profitable as possible, so they can expand, keep hiring and not threaten anyone’s jobs or income.</p>