this won't shock many here :uhuh:

Oh, no Bubba...say it ain't so!!!

Bill Clinton calls for corporate tax cut
ASPEN, Colo. — President Bill Clinton says the nation’s corporate tax rate is “uncompetitive” and called for a lower rate as part of a “mega-deal” to raise the debt ceiling.

You missed an important part of Clinton's speech...

Lower the top rate, remove deductions and let the companies still pay about the same in taxes...pretty much what Reagan did in '86. It sure sounds good for the Norquist disciples and might help negotiate a settlement in the debt ceiling game of chicken that Congress is playing.

-spence

no...THE important part is Bill Clinton says the nation’s corporate tax rate is “uncompetitive” and called for a lower rate

and it completely refutes your statements and the idea, your statement "we can justify higher corporate tax rates" that higher taxes on corporations is valid a way to increase revenue, particularly right now

..........................

“When I was president, we raised the corporate income-tax rates on corporations that made over $10 million [a year],” the former president told the Aspen Ideas Festival on Saturday evening.

“It made sense when I did it. It doesn’t make sense anymore — we’ve got an uncompetitive rate."

not ambiguous



Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories...#ixzz1RDwXxqrJ

I've never said we can justify having the highest taxes, but that we can justify having higher taxes as the US is a desirable place to do business for many industries. Certainly taxes are a factor (one factor of many) in where companies operate, but right now the effective corporate rate in the US is just over 25%, putting us lower than many industrialized nations including Canada, India, China, Brazil, Japan, Italy and Germany.

Source: http://www.pwc.com/gx/en/paying-taxe...taxes_2009.pdf

Clinton is throwing the GOP a bone in an attempt to be a deal maker and at the same time take away a key Republican talking point. Lowering the Tax rate from 35% to 25% while removing deductions will produce nearly the same tax revenue according to the GAO.

If it will even out how taxes are collected it's probably a good thing to do. These stories of corporations paying little or 1/2 the statutory rate is silly.

-spence

The jobless rate is not 9.4. Anybody who lost their job when things went critical in late 08 to early 09 have all dropped off the jobless statistics. The 99'ers (those who exhausted their unemployment benefits) do not exist according to how the jobless rate is determined. The jobless rate in above 20 percent IMO and many say as high as 25% .

The source that you linked is lengthy with not a lot of reference to U.S. stats. Admittedly, I read speadily, missing a lot, but found some interesting bits.:

"Where taxes are high and commensurate gains seem low, many businesses simply choose to stay informal. A recent study found that higher tax rates are associated with less private investment, fewer formal businesses per capita and lower rates of business entry. The analysis suggests for example, that a 10% increase in the effective corporate tax rate reduces the investment-to-GDP ratio by 2 percentage points."

"36 economies made it easier to pay taxes in 2007/2008. As in previous years, the most popular reform feature was reducing the profit tax rate which happened in no fewer than 21 economies."

Eastern Europe and Central Asia had most reforms in 2007/2008--nine reformed; four reduced profit tax to 10%, one from 20% to 15% and abolished the social tax, Czech Republic reduced it to 21%.

Five OECD high-income economies reduced Corporate income tax rates. Canada is gradually reducing the corp. income tax to 15% by 2012 and will abolish the 1.12% surtax and introduce accelerated depreciation for buildings. Canada already had reduced, in 2007/2008 its corp. tax rate to 19.5%. Also reducing the corp. tax rate were Denmark 28% to 25%, and Germany 25% to 15%.

"Countries can increase revenue by lowering rates and persuading more businesses to comply with more favorable rules."

The top 5 reform features in this study were:
1--REDUCED profit tax (71%)
2--Simplified process of paying taxes (22%)
3. Revised tax code (19%)
4. ELIMINATED taxes (17%)
5. Reduced labour taxes or contributions (14%)

In the United States "taxes on profit as a share of profits before total taxes rank in the 72nd percentile (23.5%) and thus quite high by global standards. Other taxes as a share of profits before tax also are quite high in the United States primarily due to property taxes."

"In 2008, the combined U.S. Federal and average State/local corporate income tax rate is 39.3%, 50% higher than the 26.2% average for the other 29 OECD countries." This is slightly offset by the DPAD . . . reducing the effective federal corp. tax rate on qualified income to 32.9%.

Beyond the comparisons, for me, it begs the question "What's it for?" Granted that taxes are necessary to run necessary and Constitutionally granted power. But if higher taxes simply are dumped into programs that are bloated, less effective than needed and are not even Constitutionally blessed, thus distancing us even further from our foundation toward uncharted, undefined whims to garner votes, are they good?

I just linked to the doc I saw the stats referenced from...I didn't read the entire thing.

It's perfectly fair to ask how tax revenue is being used. I think we'd all agree that if Congress was more careful with our money they'd need less of it.

But the point of it all is that the US doesn't seem to be that out of line when it comes to corporate taxes when compared to our peers.

-spence

The official unemployment number is a measurement taken using one method of accounting. It doesn't reflect just people losing their jobs or the total number not working.

To jump between 9% and 20% isn't good for much beyond rhetoric, unless the argument is that the 9% method isn't accurately modeling the right trends.

There was a CATO article from last year that put the unemployment rate at less than 7% when focusing on people who had actually just become unemployed.

Perhaps more important is to use a consistent methodology. I'm more concerned with the trend...

-spence

Funny thing with the gov, they come out with a number weekly for first time unemployment, usually stating this number has dropped from the previous week. Then an hour or two later they backtrack because they find out it is up or the same as the previous week..

Rhetoric? It just shows that another 9% of the population is unemployed, and I am sure that the total of the population unemployed by now is closer to 30%

hey Spence...Sowell posted a great article about you today...you should read it....:uhuh:

Politics vs. Reality
The facts are there, but they mean nothing if they are ignored.

It is hard to understand politics if you are hung up on reality. Politicians leave reality to others. What matters in politics is what you can get the voters to believe, whether it bears any resemblance to reality or not.

Not only among politicians, but also among much of the media, and even among some of the public, the quest is not for truth about reality but for talking points that fit a vision or advance an agenda. Some seem to see it as a personal contest about who is best at fencing with words.


Politics vs. Reality - Thomas Sowell - National Review Online

there is no recovery and it's gonna get worse before it gets better

For the most part, the doc you linked trends to a more Reaganesc approach to taxation--lower taxes and easier methods of compliance, the combination leading to greater government revenue.

The study has little or nothing to do with U.S. economic problems or the loss of jobs to other countries. The cost of labor probably has more to do with "shipping jobs overseas" than corporate tax burdens. Most of those jobs did not go to our high income "peers," but to where the cost of doing business was sufficiently lower to make expensive moves feasible. The total tax rate borne by business is part of its cost and is passed on to the consumer in the price of the product. So U.S. business taxes, to a point, affect the American consumer more than the seller. Taxes raised beyond a point, as the study states, have a negative impact on investment and growth.

Taxes are necessary to fund the existence of government and are good so long as the government is unobtrusive to the growth and function of an economy and to the liberty of the individual. When taxes are collected to fund government expansion into what should be private sector responsibilities, the government power grows and the citizen's power shrinks. This is contrary to the intent of this country's founding.

Yup, upto 9.2% today. Bad news always released before the
weekend hoping people won't pay that much attention.

Stimulus a complete failure.

Wake up and start cutting taxes for private industry so they know where they stand and can plan and start expansion.

Time for some genuine critical thinking and common sense, theory isn't working.

oy vey

Home Depot founder Bernie Marcus did not mince words speaking with Investor's Business Daily:

Having built a small business into a big one, I can tell you that today the impediments that the government imposes are impossible to deal with. Home Depot would never have succeeded if we'd tried to start it today. Every day you see rules and regulations from a group of Washington bureaucrats who know nothing about running a business. And I mean every day. It's become stifling.

If you're a small businessman, the only way to deal with it is to work harder, put in more hours, and let people go. When you consider that something like 70% of the American people work for small businesses, you are talking about a big economic impact.

and

[Washington piles on regulations and mandates, the impact is tremendous. I don't think he's a bad guy. I just think he has no knowledge of this.Obama has] never really worked a day outside the political or legal area. He doesn't know how to make a payroll, he doesn't understand the problems businesses face. I would try to explain that the plight of the businessman is very reactive to Washington.

Meanwhile, IBD tallies the magnates, including billionaire Steve Wynn and non-founder CEOs, who are blasting Obama's economy.

Wynn has been a staunch supporter of the Obama administration from the beginning and still considers himself a Democrat. But even more remarkable, it's been out of character for CEOs such as Wynn to express their views in such blunt terms on political matters.

"A lot of people don't want to say that," he said. "They'll say, 'Oh God, don't be attacking Obama.' Well, this is Obama's deal, and it's Obama that's responsible for this fear in America," said Wynn. "The guy keeps making speeches about redistribution, and maybe 'we ought to do something to businesses that don't invest or (are) holding too much money.' We haven't heard that kind of talk except from pure socialists."[/B]

Business is being hammered, he said. "And I'm telling you that the business community in this country is frightened to death of the weird political philosophy of the president of the United States."

Others speaking out include:

•3M's George Buckley, who blasted Obama last February as anti-business. "We know what his instincts are," Buckley said. "We've got a real choice between manufacturing in Canada or Mexico - which tends to be more pro-business - and America," he told the Financial Times.

•Boeing's Jim McNerney, who in the Wall Street Journal last May called Obama's handpicked National Labor Relations Board's suit against his company a "fundamental assault on the capitalist principles that have sustained America's competitiveness since it became the world's largest economy nearly 140 years ago."

•Intel's Paul Otellini, who told CNET last August that the U.S. legal environment has become so hostile to business that there is likely to be "an inevitable erosion and shift of wealth, much like we're seeing today in Europe - this is the bitter truth."


just a sample, there are more.....

__________________________________________________ ___________
And there in lies the problem with Obama and most of congress.
Did he or anyone of them,deliever papers and cut lawns at 10 yrs old,
work as a janitor in a school when they got their working papers, work
on farms in the summer, work in a drugstore, start their own small business,
work whie going to college and work for a large corporation?

They don't have an inkling of what hard work,saving money and sacrifice are and therefore have no clue as to the workings of business.

Community Organizer, pfft. What the H???

[QUOTE=spence;869785]I wonder if your author even bothered to read the actual report. You certainly didn't...
SEVENTH QUARTERLY REPORT
JULY 1, 2011:rtfm:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/defa...rra_report.pdf


Quote:
The analysis indicates that the Recovery Act has played a significant role in the turnaround of the economy that has occurred over the past two years.???? Real GDP reached its low point in the second quarter of 2009 and has been growing solidly since then???????, in large part because of the tax cuts and spending increases included in the Act. Employment, after falling dramatically, began to grow again on a sustained basis through 2010?????. As of the first quarter of 2011, the report estimates that the Recovery Act raised employment(JUNE 2011 UNEMPLOYMENT DATA*
(U.S. BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS) OFFICIAL UNEMPLOYMENT: 9.2% ??????????) by 2.4 to 3.6 million jobs relative to what it otherwise would have been.

-spence

.................................................. ........................

let's compare the report...that ultimately was not worth reading... to reality

By Samuel R. Staley
The U.S. Department of Commerce released its economic growth estimates for the second quarter of 2011 and they are, well, dismal. And depressing. The economy grew just 1.3 percent from April to June of this year, well below the 2.5 percent necessary to chip away at unemployment. What’s worse, estimates of growth for the first quarter were revised downward to just 0.4 percent.

According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis press release:

The increase in real GDP in the second quarter primarily reflected positive contributions from exports, nonresidential fixed investment, private inventory investment, and federal government spending that were partly offset by a negative contribution from state and local government spending. Imports, which are a subtraction in the calculation of GDP, increased.

The acceleration in real GDP in the second quarter primarily reflected a deceleration in imports, an upturn in federal government spending, and an acceleration in nonresidential fixed investment that were partly offset by a sharp deceleration in personal consumption expenditures.

The deceleration of personal consumer spending is particularly troubling for the Obama administration, since the entire stimulus package assumed that consumer spending was the key to reviving the economy. Goosing consumers would lead to long-term growth.

Moreover, a look at GDP growth since Obama took office surely has the president and his advisers worried:

2009 2nd Qtr: -0.7%
2009 3rd Qtr: 1.7%
2009 4th Qtr 3.8%
2010 1st Qtr: 3.9%
2010 2nd Qtr: 3.8%
2010 3rd Qtr: 2.5%
2010 4th Qtr: 2.3%
2011 1st Qtr: 0.4%
2011 2nd Qtr: 1.3%
first quarter 2011 were revised downward and if you follow along at all you know that the 2nd quarter will likely follow suit

Most of the growth in 2009 was independent of the government spending stimulus (and likely reflected the benefits of monetary policy and tax cuts). The economy began to sputter out around the time federal spending peaked. The emperor has no clothes.

The recent numbers are not good, but when you factor in continued high gas prices and global disruption caused by the nuke disaster and other events this spring there's reason for numbers to be where they are.

The same report by the government also indicated that business investment continuing to be up as companies seek to increase productivity. Hell, the North East is seeing a lot of growth in the aerospace industry keeps cranking out the orders for more aircraft. Parts suppliers in CT are experiencing record earnings.

So the GDP alone isn't reassuring but it's also not all bad.

To be honest I haven't seen anyone this giddy over bad news since Moveon.org mocked Gen. Petraeus.

-spence

Where are the manufacturing plants though Spence? Off-shore?

Good news, but how will this continue when Obama wants to put more taxes
on Jet owning companies and individuals?

How will that help the little growth we are seeing in that industry. :huh:

A lot of aero manufacturing is done in CT, PA, NY. Some also have offshore plants but the engineering is done in the US. A huge % of the entire aero supply chain is US based...Granted, it's one industry of many, but they're doing well.

The good/bad element is that companies want to increase throughput without adding burden (i.e. staff) so they're investing in technology to make their existing workforce more productive. There are manufacturing jobs being added, but not at the rate required before.

-spence

time to start coding more.

not giddy...just realistic.... and having to constantly point out that when you, Obama or the administration claim something...the opposite is usually true :uhuh:

It's interesting to look at the history...

Back in the day a machinist would pretty much do everything by hand. I remember a plant one time (they made aftermarket piston aircraft engines) had all these old lathes from WW2 used to turn tank cam shafts...wow, these things were big.

Then NC programming came about and you'd program a routine by tape.

Then even that got computerized (CNC) but the machinist still has final control. This is how most stuff is done today.

The trend in more tightly regulated industries is now to do everything in CAM software and not modify the code at the machine. It makes sense in some applications (for instance you may be required to know exactly which program made which part years later) but also really takes away from the artistry of the job.

So even though the factory isn't a bunch of robots, the job functions have shifted and become more technical as a result. The technology also allows companies to get better utilization from their production equipment so more parts can be cut without adding a lot of people.

Again, this is just one example, but I think a part of the unemployment problem we have right now is simply a correction as technology is becoming more advanced.

-spence

any actual evidence of this and whether it wll have any real impact? Who is "they"? I did a little searching and...maybe in your little sphere this is true and makes you giddy, but there is nothing to support that this is any kind of positive sign of either a turn around in the economy or a signal that jobs are being or will be created....I'm sure there's a pastry business out there doing well too...but it doesn't mean much in the overall scheme of things...

from the list of top 6 "industries hiring" in 2011


number two....

2. Federal government
While local and state governments have seen their budgets slashed, there's no recession at the federal level. Between new government programs and a wave of baby-boomer civil servants who are retiring, hiring will be huge in government for the next couple of years. It's forecast that 600,000 need to be hired by 2013.

Uncertainty is one factor.

The bigger picture is a global economy that's bringing tens of millions into the middle class. A lot of those manufacturing and white collar jobs aren't being shipped to China because it's cheaper...it's just that's now where the customer is.

Be it Obama or McCain as POTUS the picture would look pretty much the same on most fronts.

I work across manufacturing industries and have a pretty good position to see what's going on. Innovative companies are doing well, those that sit still are just getting by.

-spence

this economy will not turn around until Americans have the confidence in the economic and political environment to invest their time and treasure into entreprenurial endeavuors..it will be small business...very small businesses, that provide the jobs...not your cronie capitalists on a sugar rush from Bernanke that currently bouy your IRA