Clueless CEOs at the Top

[eridani]

http://www.commondreams.org/views/2016/04/26/clueless-ceos-top

Clue #1: Pay Your Taxes: General Electric, Boeing, Verizon and 23 other profitable Fortune 500 firms paid no federal income taxes from 2008 through 2013, according to Citizens for Tax Justice. Show some love to the country that pays for the infrastructure upon which you transport your products, protects your intellectual property in global tribunals, and educates your workers and takes care of them when they are sick or retire.

Clue #2. Stop Squeezing Us. Your global business model seems to be focused on squeezing your workers, your customers and the communities where you are based. Verizon is hammering their workers for another health care cut. General Electric just squeezed $151 million in tax breaks in their relocation to Boston.

It seems like what passes for “innovation” in corporate America is an experiment in “how hard we squeeze customers and workers until these push back?” So are you really surprised that people are pushing back?

Have any of you luxury jet flying CEO’s been on a commercial airline flight in the last ten years? Talk about squeezing your customers, physically in seats and literally for every nickel and dime. This is the capitalism we are living through. Big corporations take things away (like legroom, checked bags, and snacks) and sell them back to us.

Clue #3. Support Young Workers. Have you talked to any college students lately who don’t have daddy CEOs to pay their tuition? Do you know what it’s like to graduate from college with $100,000 in debt? Imagine entering a workforce where, thanks to corporate lobbying, the minimum wage is insufficient to live on.

This populism isn’t anti-business. But people are enraged with disconnected business elites at global companies that use their considerable clout to shape the rules of the economy –like trade policy, minimum wage, deregulation – and don’t pay their fair share of taxes to continue basic services.

[LakeVermilion]

1. Corporations will always ask for more;

they are like water always seeking boundaries and pushing against them.

It is our (elected government) job to place the boundaries.

[Hiraeth]

2. and water always goes to the lowest point.

[Sherman A1]

3. They live in a world

in which most of us do not and they simply do not understand the plight (and I suspect care) about the plight of the working folks.

[sulphurdunn]

4. Someone should tell CEOs

that once upon a time these people called monarchs ruled the world. A couple of them still reign in very backward and despotic countries. A few others serve as national figureheads. Tell them we are about ready to unburdened ourselves of CEOs like we did kings and queens. Tell them that their fatal delusion is the same arrogant assumption unrestrained power always makes, which is that the pyramid is inverted and that the apex holds up the base.

[cantbeserious]

5. And Soon The CEOS Will Have A Partner In HRC

eom

[1939]

6. Reading Value Line which has no political axe to grind

Their data seems to differ wildly from CFTJ claims.

Effective corporate income tax rate

Verizon:
2006-33.3%
2007-35.6%
2008-34.4%
2009-33.1%
2010-19.5%
2011-2.7%
2012-Zero
2013-19.6%
2014-29.5%
2015-35.0% (estimated)

General Electric:
2006-16.1%
2007-15.5%
2008-5.5%
2009-Zero
2010-7.4%
2011-27.4%
2012-14.4%
2013-8.5%
2014-10.3%
2015-22.0% (estimated)

[JDPriestly]

8. Are they including the employer's portion of the payroll tax in those numbers?

What is included? Do you have a link on that?

[1939]

9. The line says "income tax rate" which is paid on profits

The employers share of the payroll tax is part of expenses as a cost of labor.

A business can deduct payroll taxes, real estate taxes, and sales taxes from their income in determining taxable profit. The corporate income tax applies to the taxable profit margin.

What it doesn't show is the amount of "tax credits" which reduce tax owed which might account for some of the difference though I do not see where Verizon would get much oin the way of tax credits though GE might benefit from quite a few of them.

.

[JDPriestly]

10. Do you have a link? I'd like to see the source of this if possible. Thanks.

[1939]

11. No, I read it in my Value Line book

You can get the info on line, but you have to be a subscriber to access their online data.

Since the info is for investors considering a stock, I would think they would be playing pretty straight with it.

I posted the info from the book so you can either believe or disbelieve that what I posted was an accurate and faithful repeat of what they have published.

I just don't see what they would have to gain by publishing false data (which they take from the published annual reports of the company in question.

Now the last time Sears Holdings (Sears and K-Mart) paid income taxes was 2010 because they have been running deficits since then.

[JDPriestly]

12. Thanks.

[Auggie]

7. They're not clueless. They answer to shareholders and know exactly what they're doing.

[ronnie624]

13. People shouldn't expect capitalists to police themselves.

Their goal is self-enrichment and their responsibility is to shareholders. It has been demonstrated over and over again, that they will do great harm to everyone, in pursuit of greedy desires. They are far from clueless.