Simple, Intelligent Things We Need to do on Taxes

Republicans are frequently concerned about deficits and deficit spending. At least they are when there is a Democratic Party President like now. Herwith, 3 easy and intelligent things we could do to help solve this problem.

--Raise the corporate tax rate so they pay the same as small businesses. --Raise the tax rate on the rich so they pay the same as the middle-class. --Remove loopholes and increase enforcement. --Dan Price @DanPriceSeattle

America Needs a Wealth Tax -- Here's Why

Quote of the Day -- On the Rich and Poor

 

Robert Reich @RBReich

I will never accept a system that enables billionaires to add $1,100,000,000,000 to their wealth during a pandemic but doesn’t raise the $7.25 minimum wage for over a decade.

Tax the rich. Raise the wage. Now.

International, Killing Pandemic? The Rich Are Getting Richer

Important article more Americans need to see and read, from Forbes.

U.S. Billionaire Wealth Surged 

Since The Start Of The Pandemic

"Since the start of the pandemic, collective U.S. billionaire wealth has surged by more than $584 billion, while $6.5 trillion in household wealth has disappeared. That's according to an Institute for Policy Studies and Americans for Tax Fairness analysis published on Friday which stated that the U.S. billionaire class saw its wealth climb 20% between March 18 and June 17 with 29 new billionaires added to the total. Using Forbes data, the analysis found that the total net worth of the 643 U.S. billionaires climbed from $2.9 trillion to $3.5 trillion. During the same period, 45.5 million Americans filed for unemployment."

But tax the wealthy at a higher rate?

Fuggedaboudit!

Thanks, Mr. President!

Thanks Republicans!

If We Can But Learn From All This... And Then Change

A friend sent me this yesterday. Wonderful video.


Here's hoping.

Sprint, and Their Proposed Merger, Take a Hit Today

The Sprint company and the idea of its merger with T-Mobile takes a hit today in the New York Times.

Stop Creating Corporate Goliaths

A little of what they have to say.

Letting T-Mobile merge with Sprint would hurt consumers, workers and the economy

For years, T-Mobile’s chief executive, John Legere, has gleefully bad-mouthed his much larger mobile phone competitors, Verizon Wireless and AT&T, for their high prices and profit margins, and their low-quality service. Decked out in magenta sneakers and T-shirts, sporting long hair like an aging rocker, Mr. Legere promoted T-Mobile and himself to his 6.2 million Twitter followers as renegades — telephonic cool kids.

T-Mobile wooed customers by offering service plans with no long-term commitments, and by paying to free those customers from their old service plans. Rolling your unused data and minutes into the next month? T-Mobile did that, and AT&T and Verizon had no choice but to follow. More recently, T-Mobile vowed to match any discounts offered by competitors.

The fierce competition, and the march of technology, has rapidly reduced the cost of mobile phone service. Since 2009, the average cost of mobile service has fallen by roughly 28 percent, according to the Labor Department’s calculations. In 2017, at the peak of the mobile phone price wars, the Federal Reserve said prices were falling fast enough to meaningfully reduce inflation across the entire American economy.

That’s the beauty of competition. It’s been good for T-Mobile, too. Over the past five years, the company has added more subscribers than its larger rivals.

Now T-Mobile, the nation’s third-largest wireless company, wants to merge with Sprint, the No. 4 wireless carrier in the United States. The combined company would be in the same weight class as the two largest, AT&T and Verizon, with the three companies each controlling roughly a third of the market. Mr. Legere, who scorned the big guys, now wants to be one of them.

The Justice Department’s antitrust division staff has recommended that the federal government go to court to block the merger. That is good advice.

The proposed merger would harm American consumers. It would reduce the choice of service plans, and, over time, it is likely to result in higher prices and less innovation. It would also harm workers in the mobile phone industry, reducing competition for their labor. And it would increase the political power of the combined corporation...

On the one hand, this is coming from none other than The New York Times so it's going to carry some weight. It's certainly going to be on everyone's "radar", so to speak. 

On the other hand, boys will be boys and money buys all, especially in our current national government. This may be a conversation for a while--a few days?--but when all is said and done, the FCC and this administration will do what they will, customers and nation be damned.

Look for the Sprint-T-Mobile merger to go through. We hope not but these things usually don't go for the people.

But thanks, anyway, New York Times, for trying.

Stephen Hawking, 1942 - 2018

Rest in peace, sir.

May we try to live up to your guidance and advice.

The Only Way We'll Stop Polluting the Planet

I've worked at a couple huge, national corporations and noticed a continuing, repeated thread running through them.

Corporations and all the employees that work for them throw away and waste a great deal of plastics and papers and cardboard and aluminum cans and glass.

Corporations, with all those people, create and then throw away all these materials.

And they do it daily. Weekly. Month after month. Year after year.

And they have no desire nor motivation to reduce the amount of waste and wastes and what ends up as pollution, landfill.  It's what gets us these results:

Plastic Garbage Patch Bigger 

Than Mexico Found in Pacific

'Plastic in All Sizes' Found Everywhere 

in Once Pristine European Arctic

Nasa animation shows how ‘garbage islands’ have taken over the seas in the last 35 years

Corporations are all about profit and profits, of course. Because of that, they're also about cutting costs. They're about cutting costs at all costs. Recycling requires commitment. It requires spending. Those are costs they don't want to assume or commit to.

So let's face it. The only way we, as a nation and planet, can get them to start recycling and at least reduce, if not end polluting will be for government and governments, state by state and nation by nation, to require them to do so, to start and keep recycling.

Think about the waste.

Think about how much paper and plastic alone each McDonald's restaurant throws out. Daily. Then think of the entire company.

AT&T

GE

Alcoa

Dupont

Bayer

The list goes on. Company after company. All over the nation, continent and world.

We must do this. We must require this. We have to call them out on this. They won't do it on their own.

An upside to all this, besides that we'll clean up our planet is that it will also create jobs. Those are two huge wins for humanity and the planet.

The thing is, it must come from us, from the people.

Links:

Just 100 companies responsible for 71% 

of global emissions, study

Just 90 companies caused two-thirds 

of man-made global warming

Just 90 companies are to blame for most climate change

The Toxic 100: Top Corporate Air Polluters 

in the United States

The Oceans Are Drowning In Plastic -- 

And No One's Paying Attention

And it's not just the oceans, of course.

Landfill photos from six cities that highlight 

the global waste problem

Landfills: Are we running out of room for our garbage?

An Insightful Article, Dealing With Kansas City's Own Now-Gone Twinkies Plant

Remember Kansas City's Twinkies plant? The Hostess plant?

Sure you do.

And remember how, just before it closed and was sold off, the owners said it wasn't profitable because of the Unions and because of the workers' demands?

Yeah, well, bullshit.

How the Twinkie Made the Superrich 

Even Richer 

Here's your "class warfare" for you, folks. And I can tell you, the "upper class" is winning.

Again.

Some more.

If anyone, anyone is in the middle- or lower-class and against Unions, they're at least mistaken. Wildly mistaken.

If not stupid.

A Call For Corporate Taxation and a Required National Wage

An economist warns that "advances in technology and automation are set to wipe out up to half of all jobs in the developed world."

RBS Warns: Sell Everything

A small bit from the article:

RBS economists have urged investors to sell everything except high-quality bonds, warning of a “fairly cataclysmic year ahead.”

If that isn't a call for a national, base wage to all citizens, I don't know what is.

Also reason why all corporations should pay a minimum tax and not be able to deduct their way out of paying any taxes or, worse, get a rebate or, worse yet, offshore profits or be able to.

Another good, related article:

There will be chaos: Big Oil's collapse and the birth of a new world order

The current rout in oil prices has obvious implications for the giant oil firms and all the ancillary businesses — equipment suppliers, drill-rig operators, shipping companies, caterers, and so on — that depend on them for their existence. It also threatens a profound shift in the geopolitical fortunes of the major energy-producing countries. Many of them, including Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Russia, and Venezuela, are already experiencing economic and political turmoil as a result. (Think of this, for instance, as a boon for the terrorist group Boko Haram as Nigeria shudders under the weight of those falling prices.) The longer such price levels persist, the more devastating the consequences are likely to be.

If anything like or near these "worst case scenarios" take place, governments and corporations the world over may HAVE to give and require a minimum payout to their citizens, just to keep the economic world spinning.

Here's a perfect example and it's from a current article.

Chinese factory replaces 90% of humans 

with robots

A nation of more than 1.4 billion people and the companies, the corporations replaced, as the headline shows, the vast majority of the employees with machines.

If corporations and nations don't give a minimum payout to their citizens, who will be able to buy the  products that keep this whole merry go round turning?

Quote of the Day -- On Our Future

With corporations making record profits yet hiring fewer and fewer people and in lots of cases, transitioning to robots and machines to do the work, this becomes more and more not just possible but important.

Quote of the Day -- Thomas Jefferson

Happy birthday, Mr. President, born this day, 1743.

I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial by strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country.

--Thomas Jefferson

We can't say we weren't warned.  And we risk failure by not acting.

A Challenge -- to any and every American

Abraham Lincoln: On Corporations

“I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. . . . corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed.”

-President Abraham Lincoln, Nov. 21, 1864 (letter to Col. William F. Elkins)

These make no sense whatever

America, don't let these happen

There are two purchases that have been proposed, that are pending, that absolutely, without question, should not happen and that will only end up hurting you, hurting us, hurting America. These two purchases will do nothing but make extremely large, already-powerful companies even larger and do nothing but hurt competition here in the country and hurt you and me, hurt our pocketbooks.  They are:

Time Warner Cable to Merge with Comcast Corporation

AT&T pursues $50B DirecTV deal

There is already far too little competition for internet and TV services. These purchases, if allowed to occur, will shrink it down even further.

The only winners are the large corporations and the executives at them.

Fight these America.

If you know what's good for you.

For more information, read this:

Big Telecom: Proposed Mergers Will Test Companies' Relationships in Washington

Quote of the day -- on corporations, America, government and greed

Quote of the day -- on money in politics

It goes WAY back

From the "Things We Allow Corporations to Get Away With" file

Perhaps you saw some of these headlines in the last few days?

West Virginians to be without water for days because of chemical spill

Tap water fix in West Virginia still days away, official says

Thousands Without Water After Spill in West Virginia

West Virginia chemical spill frustrates residents for fourth day

Which brings up this thought I saw yesterday on Facebook:

"If a foreign terrorist group poisoned the water of an entire region in the U.S. we'd likely be going into another war, but since it's just an improperly regulated company, well, that's just the cost of doing business."

--From a post on Http://Fb.com/TheMarmelPage

Additional link:  The Steve Marmel Page

Quote of the day--on America