Most conservatives in between cashing their subsidy checks and collecting government health care benefits like to blab endlessly about how Democrats are turning the country into a socialist utopia. Socialism has been defined as "Socialism is an economic and political theory advocating public or common ownership and cooperative management of the means of production and allocation of resources." According to recent economic reports Obama and Democrats are thus either the worse socialists ever or Republicans are the same old lying scumbags they have always been - Corporations Post Record Profits As Republicans Call For Eliminating The ‘Insidious’ Corporate Income Tax
Conservatives’ attempts to portray corporations as victims in this economy is dubious for two reasons. First, despite right-wing misinformation, American corporations actually already pay far less in taxes than those in other industrialized nations:Republicans are lying about the healthy profits of corporate America and Obama because they lack integrity - that is a given - but also because since they have no ideas and proved they cannot govern ( remember the anemic job growth of 2000 to 2008) they must rule by fear. Even more pathetic is they have to manufacture the lies to create the fear. What America should fear is the truth about the contempt with which Republican hold Democracy and a modern regulated capitalism that works instead of crashes.
In fact, because of tax havens and other loopholes, many mega-corporations actually pay little to no taxes. The most recent high-profile example is Google, which has used income shifting and other tactics to reduce its effective tax rate to 2.4 percent. General Electric went a step even further. The company not only avoided all corporate income taxes last year, but actually recorded a tax benefit of $1.1 billion.
Secondly, despite the myths that corporate taxes are “strangling” business, and that President Obama is “anti-business,” a report released today from the Commerce Department shows that American companies actually brought in record profits during the last quarter. With an annual profit rate of $1.66 trillion, the third quarter of this year produced “the highest figure recorded since the government began keeping track over 60 years ago.”
Still record profits are likely not enough to convince conservatives that corporations have it just fine in the U.S.. Even apologizing to mega-corporations that just dumped millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico isn’t enough. Right-wingers like Gohmert and Ryan will not be satisfied until we give tax-free status to all corporations.
