Good enough for me, good enough for GE

The alternative minimum tax (or AMT) is an extra tax some people have to pay on top of the regular income tax. The original idea behind this tax was to prevent people with very high incomes from using special tax benefits to pay little or no tax. The AMT has increased its reach, however, and now applies to some people who don't have very high income or who don't claim lots of special tax benefits. Proposals to repeal or reform the AMT have languished in Congress for years, but effective action does not appear to be on the horizon. Until Congress acts, almost anyone is a potential target for this tax.  fairmark.com 

Pre-retirement, I was subject to the Alternative Minimum Tax a few times.  (I don't enjoy paying taxes any more than you do, but I recognize them as the price to pay for living in a civilized society.)  But if we are going to treat our individual citizens that way, it seems only fair to me that our corporate citizens be subject to the same system.  There were 30 corporations that paid no income tax from 2008-2010, on total profits that exceeded $160 billion.  In fact, they actually got refunds of over $10 billion. That amounts to a negative rate of 6.7%.

Don't get me wrong.  I'm happy that these companies did well.  They employ lots of people and make valuable things or provide important services.  But outside of that I'm just not aware of what enormous contribution to the greater public good General Electric made to justify us all writing checks to them totaling $4.7 billion over the past three years. Or $681 million to Wells Fargo, $951 million to Verizon, and $9 million to Mattell.  And it did come out of our pockets.

I see no reason why corporations shouldn't have to play by somewhat the same rules as the rest of us citizens do.  So let's see what a corporate AMT might look like.
We can continue with GE as our example. Let's say the trigger level for a corporate AMT was profits of $1 billion, (That's surely high enough to exempt any small business, by any definition) and the AMT rate on profits above this figure was just 2%.  On their 2010 profits of $11.7 billion, GE would owe a minimum of $214 million.

One hears the phrase "no skin in the game" from some folks when the topic of income taxes for persons with low incomes is discussed.  Stated in those terms, a corporate AMT seems more than fair to me.

Don't blame the bus

Not surprisingly, given the current situation in Washington DC, I am hearing comments again about how the system is broken.  Some even say it is beyond repair.  I disagree with this notion.  I think blaming "the system" for our current troubles is like blaming the bus for being late when the driver oversleeps.

I listened to an interview today of a historian of government policy (whose name unfortunately escaped me).  He said the USA is apparently unique in the world in its ability to put itself in the situation of shutting down the government almost completely, which greatly puzzles his friends around the world.  When asked how he explains this oddity, he said he tells his friends that the government in America was, in a way, designed not to work.  Our founders were so afraid of centralized power after their escape from the clutches of King George that the government they formed would be extremely difficult to command entirely by one person or faction.  This makes it fairly likely that situations like today's would crop up now and again.

Sounds about right to me.
Which brings me back to our bus.  When we hire responsible, intelligent drivers the bus gets us where we need to go pretty nicely.  But it would seem we haven't been careful enough about who we've put behind the wheel lately.  And so if there's anything in or system that needs some examination I think it would be how we go about deciding which gals and guys we let drive.  I hope to have moron more on that subject before the bus gets much further.

An Open Letter to The President

(It is with great hope that this letter reaches the person I voted for in 2008.  I am not at all certain of his whereabouts, but the last address I had was 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. NW)

The Honorable Barack Obama,
  With all due respect Mr. President, it is time to stop trying to win the hearts and minds of the Republican leadership.  There are proposals afoot that would have been laughed at as the ravings of the lunatic fringe not so long ago.  Your response has been to seek compromise and to work around the edges, instead of calling "Bu##sh##", and laying out a clear and strong counterpoint.
  I applaud your instinct to seek bipartisan solutions to our problems. In the long run that is the only way to make real, lasting progress.  But what you don't seem to understand is that the people in charge on the other side of the aisle right now are not interested at all in compromise and bipartisanship.  To put it bluntly, they hate you. There is nothing you can do or say to change their minds or to convince them that working with you in any way might help the country move forward.  So it's time to stop trying to get them on your side, even a little bit.  Forget about trying to win over the minority of people in this country that reflexively scream "Socialism!" at every word you say. It's time to say to Mitch McConnell, John Boehner, Paul Ryan, Michelle Bachmann and Rand Paul, "You are just dead wrong."  It's time, Mr. President, to stand up for the millions and millions of people who voted for you.  It's time, Mr. President, to remind us that you are on our side.

Loony Tune Party System

  One of my original reasons for starting this blog was to stop forcing my friends to endure my politically motivated posts and links on Facebook.  Once I got started here though I decided to limit what appears here as much as I can to my own thoughts and creative efforts.  There are so many others that already do the political links and commentary thing that to concentrate my efforts along those lines would be just adding another snowflake to the blizzard.  So that leaves Facebook as my current outlet for those political urges. I have tried to cut back, but sometimes I just can't help myself.  And when that happens I can usually count on a response from one of my good friends whose political leanings don't exactly line up with mine.  In fact we've taken to bantering back and forth quite a bit lately about this that and the other.  That we can do this and remain good friends is, I think, a bit of an unusual situation in today's climate of win-at-all-costs hyper-partisanship.  My friend says our back and forth reminds him of these two characters:

It's an apt comparison.  No matter how hard we fight our little battles, in the end we remain pals.  One thing though. I think my friend sees me as the wolf, and himself as the sheepdog, the defender of the flock.  Can't wait to tell him he's wrong.  :-)