More Proof Corporate Tax Cuts Have Done More Harm Than Good

[xchrom]

https://www.commondreams.org/view/2014/03/28-7



The taxes paid by corporations today are near record lows as a percentage of the United States’ total tax bill, even as they are recording massive profits. Yet the unemployment rate is still high. However, if we turned back the clock on corporate tax rates and returned to Nixon-era levels and closed loopholes, millions of American jobs would be created, according to The Disappearing Corporate Tax Base, a new report released today.

The study, produced by the Center for Effective Government and National People’s Action, highlights the damage done by hewing to a central conservative tenet, that “cutting corporate taxes will stimulate job creation and grow the economy.” The report shows the aftermath of a lower corporate tax rate on state budgets, and argues that a slight increase in the corporate share of federal revenues would restore cuts to education and public services and add an additional 3.2 million jobs.

With the onset of the Great Recession came budget cuts in the states. While states were buoyed somewhat by the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act, those dollars have stopped flowing, based on the belief that the one shot of stimulus in 2009 would be enough to kickstart our economy. For a few people it was; looking to Wall Street, the stock market has never been healthier. Corporate profits are booming and executives are receiving huge bonuses for the success of their products. Yet 10 million Americans remain jobless. A new Washington political class forced caps and cuts on the budget, but shielded corporate loopholes. This has led to decreased spending in many areas, including education, in the years after the stimulus was enacted.

As federal aid to states declined, many Republican-led states have rolled back taxes, on the theory that doing so would benefit their state’s economy and create jobs. One such state, Kansas, has been considered to be a model for business-friendly tax policy, with Governor Sam Brownback receiving an “A” from the Cato Institute on his bold tax cut initiative in 2012. Fast-forward two years and the impact of these cuts can be seen more clearly.

[octoberlib]

1. K&R!

[MisterP]

2. we've known that since 1981! from the WH itself!

despite the "rebel" anarcho-capitalists, supply-side and tax cuts have been openly admitted to *not* be about improving the economy (and thus employment) nor improving revenue (Laffer was wrong--but the 70s was full of cocktail-napkin crap we poured tens of billions into because it was "new"--the Shuttle, PRT), but simply about giving the rich more money and power

and by the time we started worrying in '84 it was too late: the neocons had seized the Baptists, the gun clubs, the astrophysicists' clubs, the Pentagon, State, and so on

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1981/12/the-education-of-david-stockman/305760/