Are corporations suffering along with the rest of us in this brave new world of austerity? Hahahahaha of course not. Suffering is for peasants.
This is why the economy sucks. It has nothing to do with tax rates or regulations, it has everything to do with corporations refusing to pay wages and be "job creators" so they can pocket the difference.
1) Corporate profit margins just hit another all-time high. Companies are making more per dollar of sales than they ever have before. (And some people are still saying that companies are suffering from "too much regulation" and "too many taxes." Maybe little companies are, but big ones certainly aren't. What they're suffering from is a myopic obsession with short-term profits at the expense of long-term value creation).
2) Wages as a percent of the economy just hit another all-time low. Why are corporate profits so high? One reason is that companies are paying employees less than they ever have as a share of GDP. And that, in turn, is one reason the economy is so weak: Those "wages" are represent spending power for consumers. And consumer spending is "revenue" for other companies. So the profit obsession is actually starving the rest of the economy of revenue growth.
~snip~
In short, our current obsessed-with-profits philosophy is creating a country of a few million overlords and 300+ million serfs.
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/...
The economy is actually doing quite nicely as long as you aren't paid in wages. If you are paid in wages like the vast majority of Americans then this economy sucks nards. The plutonomy that exists within the greater economy is doing great, kinda like a stomach worm that feeds while the host it inhabits starves to death. As corporations continue to feed the rest of us are starving to death on 30 + years of stagnant wages.
More below the fold . . .
Corporations are doing great, better than ever. Humans, on the other hand, look pretty screwed. The two charts above prove that trickle down is pure bullshit, as it is obvious that rising corporate profits do NOT trickle down, in fact the lack of trickle down allows corporate profits to continue to soar because the money that isn't trickling down is going right back into the profit margin of the corporations themselves. The two graphs above show that every time corporate profits go up wages paid to workers go down, the opposite of trickle down. We have a "Suck Up" economy where all of the wealth created by workers is sucked up into the plutonomy of 1%ers. It's wealth redistribution all right, another massive transfer of wealth from the working class and poor into the hands of the super rich.
So with Corporate Profits at an all time high, where is the "Trickle Down"?
Republicans and supply-siders don't even bother bullshitting us about trickle down, they don't even bother to mention it anymore. They moved right into austerity and continue to moan about the economy when in fact the economy HAS recovered, you just aren't noticing it because you're still fucking peasants as far as I can see. And I am a peasant too.
If corporate profits are at an all time high why are we being asked to sacrifice anything? Shouldn't that wealth be trickling down right about now?
Oh but there isn't any money said every horrible boss ever, so there won't be any raises this year (Except for upper management and shareholders, of course)
And another year goes by and prices rise and your wages stay stagnant or declining, and the rich get richer and the gap between the rich and everyone else grows wider. You earn less in real dollars than your parents did thirty years ago.
. . . our current obsessed-with-profits philosophy is creating a country of a few million overlords and 300+ million serfs.
So here is a thought, if Corporations aren't creating jobs (they aren't) but enjoying record profits (they are) while paying the lowest tax rate in the industrialized world America could do two things immediately to force corporations to pay better wages, which would infuse some much needed disposable income into the economy which would then fuel demand. We could A) raise corporate taxes and use the money to fix the deficit without starving anyone's grandma, or we could B) Raise the minimum wage, which corporations could easily afford since they are enjoying record profits right now.
Or we could go with C), mindless austerity that punishes everyone except the very, very wealthy.
A working class hero is something to be. America desperately needs some working class heroes right about now.
