Interestingly, the US Bureau of Census “Statistics of Small Business" provides verifiable proof that the U.S. economy has moved towards monopolization and oligarchization:
- Approximately 75% of all businesses in America have no payroll at all, none whatsoever.
- These 75% of the total number of all businesses (with no employees) account for only about 1/30th of the total revenue.
- If we look at business with 100 or more employees we see that we can account for .004% of the total number of firms in the US, yet, we see that this miniscule quantity represents nearly 75% of the total business income.
- Of this grouping of businesses that account for the vast majority of corporate revenue, we can see that .004% of the firms employ nearly 60% of all the workers in the US, and account for nearly 75% of the total revenue.
The accumulation of capital buys power which corrupts all governing/regulatory bodies and eventually and invariably lead to monopolies as can be seen today. Barry Lynn's book and lecture from last year illustrated this phenomenon quite well. Lynn has also pointed out how multinational corporations have weakend America's resiliency by outsourcing productions lines across the globe:
...According to Lynn’s groundbreaking book End of the Line, the essential problem is a basic shift in the way that American multinationals operate. In the 1980s, the competitive manufacturing threat from Japan led most large companies to eliminate waste in their production facilities. As a result, they stopped keeping spare parts on hand. Eventually, companies began outsourcing production itself, as profits came increasingly from extractive monopolistic power over an economic system. Walmart is an important example; its profits come from the power it can exert on its suppliers, telling them what to make and how to make it, while the company itself functions as a giant autocratic marketplace and trading operation. Increasingly, this is the model of success in our global economy. Boeing, Cisco, Apple—all of them rely on their power over an ecosystem of production facilities halfway around the world. They have become rent extractive profit-machines, which is a relatively new phenomenon.
It was in the 1990s that American multinationals, spurred by government policy, began outsourcing operations to China. At the same time, the Clinton administration steadily relaxed antitrust enforcement, leading to massive corporate consolidation and the creation of the virtual firm. By the early parts of the last decade, the ideal American multinational made its profits by using its market power to gut labor and supply prices and by using its political power to eliminate taxation. All of this turned giant American institutions against making things. This is why we rely on a British factory to make our flu vaccine, why global videotape production was knocked offline by a tsunami and why that same event slowed the gigantic auto industry. US corporate leaders now see the idea of making things as a cost of doing business, one best left to others. What has happened as a result is that much of the production for critical products and services that make our economy run is constructed by a patchwork global network of suppliers all over the world in unstable regions, over which we have very little control. An accident or political problem in any number of countries may deny us not just iPhones but food, medicine or critical machinery.
Now one would think that a country's ability to withstand supply chain shocks and possible economic collapse would be a top priority of political leadership, but what we have seen is actually just the opposite. Corporate welfare at the expense of the masses is continuing unabated and supported by both parties, as pointed out by Cenk Uygu in the following video:
Here is the Matt Taibbi article referred to by Cenk Uygu in the above video:
Matt Taibbi - Corporate Tax Holiday in Debt Ceiling Deal - Where's the Uproar?
For those who don’t know about it, tax repatriation is one of the all-time long cons and also one of the most supremely evil achievements of the Washington lobbying community, which has perhaps told more shameless lies about this one topic than about any other in modern history – which is saying a lot, considering the many absurd things that are said and done by lobbyists in our nation’s capital.
Here’s how it works: the tax laws say that companies can avoid paying taxes as long as they keep their profits overseas. Whenever that money comes back to the U.S., the companies have to pay taxes on it.
Think of it as a gigantic global IRA. Companies that put their profits in the offshore IRA can leave them there indefinitely with no tax consequence. Then, when they cash out, they pay the tax.
Only there’s a catch. In 2004, the corporate lobby got together and major employers like Cisco and Apple and GE begged congress to give them a “one-time” tax holiday, arguing that they would use the savings to create jobs. Congress, shamefully, relented, and a tax holiday was declared. Now companies paid about 5 percent in taxes, instead of 35-40 percent.
Money streamed back into America. But the companies did not use the savings to create jobs. Instead, they mostly just turned it into executive bonuses and ate the extra cash. Some of those companies promising waves of new hires have already committed to massive layoffs...
The law that says corporations do not have to pay taxes on profits overseas is one of the reason there has been a mass exodus of jobs out of the US to overseas locations, so that not only are labor costs lower but the profits made on that labor are not taxed.
Taibbi continues...
The madness that is the proposed tax repatriation holiday is continuing and gathering steam. More and more members of congress are coming out of the woodwork, scratching their chins in contemplative consideration as it were, pretending that they’ve just realized what a great day a corporate tax holiday would be – not that they’ve taken gazillions of dollars from the firms lobbying for it or anything.
The latest convert seems to be Nevada Democrat Shelley Berkley. Berkley’s plan is to offer a pseudo-holiday – not the full-fledged happy-ending massage the companies wanted (i.e. a reduction from 35 percent+ to 5.25 percent) but a mere ten-point shave:
Representative Shelley Berkley, a Nevada Democrat, is the latest lawmaker to consider legislation allowing multinational companies to send offshore profits to the U.S. at a reduced tax rate.
Her proposal, which was confirmed yesterday by Berkley’s communications director, David Cherry, would allow companies to return profits to the U.S. at a 25 percent tax rate, 10 percentage points below the maximum statutory rate. Most companies publicly supporting a holiday, such as Duke Energy Corp., have spoken favorably of the 5.25 percent rate that is being offered by Representative Kevin Brady, a Texas Republican.
One thing that people must understand about this tax repatriation business is that it’s a wholly bipartisan affair. It’s not solely the work of evil Republicans. This is a scheme that requires heavies in both parties to help ram the knotty, hard-to-sell legislation through. On the Democratic side, unsurprisingly, the main actor is going to be Chuck Schumer. John Kerry is also involved with this nastiness. Barbara Boxer led the 2004 effort and the failed 2009 campaign to get a holiday, and is rumored to be lurking somewhere in this business.
...
For another brief, easy-to-understand article on the corporation welfare scam, read
"How Do Corporations Dodge Taxes".
As was revealed recently, the end game for corporations is to entirely privatize the government which is seen by corporations as a barrier towards the further exploitation and control of people and resources. Just to explain the similarities with America that are occurring in Europe, the country of Greece is presently being privatized because of its debt. The corporations are buying off the lands and even the islands because of their indebtedness. This is an ideal situation for more predatory behavior by the likes of the Koch brothers and others in America. The real enemy of the American citizen will be a society completely dominated and controlled by corporations with only the facade of a 'government' left over. It's already bad enough that many of the influential government posts are handed over to former corporate executives; it's no different than having the wolf guarding the hen house. This will produce an oligarchic state no less similar to the foreign, puppet governments that the United States presently supports. These foreign governmental leaders, like those in Haiti and Honduras, are themselves run by oligarchies and are backed by the United States and its policies, which are essentially the business interests of U.S. corporations. They easily can disrupt democratic reform and outlaw majority parties that do not follow the interests of the United States. It is obvious that the bullies in the United States are doing the same thing to the American people as has been done by proxy with puppet governments and their citizens. In that respect, we are becoming a 'Banana Republic'!
