The ongoing squabble between Bernie and Jeff Immelt, CEO of GE
Ten days or so ago, Bernie cited GE as an example of a company that has been outsourcing jobs from the U.S. and paying little or no corporate income taxes in the U.S.
Immelt responded with an Op-Ed piece in the Washington Post.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/ge-ceo-bernie-sanders-says-were-destroying-the-moral-fabric-of-america-hes-wrong/2016/04/06/8499bc8c-fc23-11e5-80e4-c381214de1a3_story.html
Bernie responded to Immelt's piece and continued to be critical of GE:
http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2016-04-10/sanders-says-greedy-ge-not-telling-the-truth-on-factory-visit
<“General Electric is a company that is well known for negotiating contracts with its workers which call for concessions, sending jobs outside of this country, and not paying their fair share of taxes,” Sanders said Sunday on CNN’s State of the Union program. “That is, I think, a greedy corporation.”>
Here is a link to an article on Jeff Immelt's total compensation package of $37 million in 2014, despite GE continuing to underperform the S&P 500 as it has during Immelt's entire tenure:
http://www.thestreet.com/story/13075964/1/immelts-37-million-pay-package-shows-hes-still-the-boss.html
>The announcement of Immelt's pay package comes as some followers of the company are showing increasing signs of restlessness. GE shares have underperformed the S&P 500 by a wide margin since Immelt took over leadership of GE from legendary executive Jack Welch, and last year was no exception. GE shares lost more than 9% as the index gained nearly 12%. Since Immelt took over, GE shareholders who reinvested all their dividends lost 1%, while the S&P 500 posted a total return of 146%.>
Here's a link on GE's recent corporate relocation from Connecticut to the Boston area and how much corporate welfare they received from the taxpayers of Massachusetts (including relocation expenses for GE executives including Immelt). The article also notes that GE is notorious not just for not paying federal income taxes, but for ducking state taxes as well.
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/01/ge-boston-taxpayers/424938/
<Unfortunately, that future comes with a stiff price tag. Together, the city and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts offered up an estimated $145 million in business incentives ($120 million in grants and other programs from the state, and another $25 million in property-tax relief from the city) to secure the deal. By my calculations, that means that the city and state are doling out a whopping $181,250 in public subsidies per job, given GE’s own statement that its new headquarters will employ 800 people (200 corporate staff members and another 600 so-called digital industrial product managers, designers, and developers). And that doesn’t even include additional incentives such as grants for workforce training (another $1 million or so), a new “innovation center” designed to better tie GE to local universities and research institutes ($5 million more), assistance for employees to relocate to Boston, and transportation improvements in the Seaport District.>
<Another reason for the move, hinted at by the company itself, is to allow GE to continue avoiding state corporate income tax. In fact, The Boston Globe reports that GE essentially pays no, or at least minimal, corporate income tax to any state.>
<GE is also one of the largest recipients of incentives in the country, numbering already among the top 20 recipients of corporate welfare subsidies after hauling in a total of $1.5 billion since 1992 (with the majority of that accruing in just the last five years). In 2014 alone, GE received nearly $100 million in subsidies from Cincinnati and the state of Ohio, where its U.S. Global Operations Center is located.>
Somewhere along the way, it seems to have become accepted by most that our government and citizens exist to serve the needs of business, but business has no obligations back to society, only to its executives and shareholders.
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