Does it really? Please expand on that...

Why are you bringing up "groceries"?

because you wrote: and ALL 225 MILLION of the rest of us get our groceries and dry goods 50% cheaper than before!. Are you not paying attention to what you write?

You're right, I cannot provide statistical proof that 'ALL liberals hate Sam Walton'. I Googled it, and it turns out only 99.999 percent. So, is the .0001 just you, or is there one other? .

When talking out your ass, does it make a fart sound?

Why are you bringing up "groceries"? When debating the benefits/merits of free trade (outsourcing), there isn't much use in discussing groceries, as only a tiny percentage of the food consumed in the USofA comes from Asia. That's why I mentioned 'shirts and shoes' in my theoretical example and not meat, eggs or veggies, right?

You're right, I cannot provide statistical proof that 'ALL liberals hate Sam Walton'. I Googled it, and it turns out only 99.999 percent. So, is the .0001 just you, or is there one other? .

Right back at you. It's your pompous bullshit attitude that because I'm a liberal I am some how an idiot that can't understand economics and because you are conservative that somehow that makes you an expert that I am rallying against. I went college, I studied this shit and what I don't know I can come up to speed relatively quickly. One of those neat skills they teach you in higher education. And I am far from the only one on this board with those qualifications or better. On the other hand I have tossed basic questions at you and so far have gotten mostly crickets in response. I have to assume that is because you don't understand the subject well enough to incorporate additional factors in to your simplified spiel. So, unless you can tell me where you got an advanced degree in economics and point me to your published papers, cut the pompous act and back your arguments up instead of just pontificating rudimentary republican economic theory, and insulting our collective intelligence in the process. If you honestly want to talk tax policy or general economics, I and others around here are happy to oblige, but drop the BS attitude, it just makes you look like a fool.

Aside from the fact that you are pretty obviously pulling numbers out of your ass, my point was Walmart was one of the first large companies to outsource manufacturing to Asia. Though their overall numbers are low, the entire movement to Asian manufacturing is high in total jobs lost/Asian manufacturing output. Some of this is positive and some is negative. Why do you insist on ignoring the latter?

The benefits however, in the form of lower prices for high quality goods, accrue to ALL 225 MILLION AMERICANS each of whom can now buy a new shirt or pair of shoes for $25 that formerly cost $50 when made by those now unemployed Americans. Bottom line, the benefits of free trade (aka outsourcing) VASTLY outweigh the negatives!

Have you compared the price of a new pair of Nikes to the price of a new pair of New Balance sneaks lately? Not to mention Walmart is known for pushing so hard for low prices that many companies produce special lower quality items that look just like their higher quality counterparts specifically for Walmart.

Then when Sam uses those "benefits of scale" to "push out the little guy" (presumably the Mom'n'Pops) same thing!! A couple thousand people have to retire or find another way to make a living, and ALL 225 MILLION of the rest of us get our groceries and dry goods 50% cheaper than before!

All 225 million and 50% cheaper eh? Lets see you back that one up, heh. What cross section of the over 300 million Americans are you talking about? And please do point out where Walmart is charging 50% cheaper than other stores for groceries? Sounds like numbers are not the only thing you are pulling from where the sun don't shine...

So, the liberals all hate Sam Walton, but the vast majority of them all shop at Walmart, right?? Amazing, who could possibly figure that out?

All liberals? Really? Can you back up this overly wide brush you are painting with?

One more try, against my better judgement.

When Sam Walton (or anybody for that matter) "Undercuts American labor by outsourcing to Asia ", it normally results in the loss of a tiny percentage of American jobs, like maybe .002%. That results in a few hundred Americans becoming unemployed, for which the system provides at least some rescue in the form of unemployment insurance.

The benefits however, in the form of lower prices for high quality goods, accrue to ALL 225 MILLION AMERICANS each of whom can now buy a new shirt or pair of shoes for $25 that formerly cost $50 when made by those now unemployed Americans. Bottom line, the benefits of free trade (aka outsourcing) VASTLY outweigh the negatives!

Then when Sam uses those "benefits of scale" to "push out the little guy" (presumably the Mom'n'Pops) same thing!! A couple thousand people have to retire or find another way to make a living, and ALL 225 MILLION of the rest of us get our groceries and dry goods 50% cheaper than before!

So, the liberals all hate Sam Walton, but the vast majority of them all shop at Walmart, right?? Amazing, who could possibly figure that out?

DECREED: It is heretofore required on this page that everyone must incorporate the words "60 million of us traipse through their stores every single day, showering our money upon them" into every single comment.

:)

By undercutting American labor by outsourcing to Asia. By using the economy of scale to push out the little guy. All sprinkled with with dam good business sense.

By offering consumers more and better deals, thereby raising the living standards of every American consumer.

Look at small towns dominated by Walmart today and compare them to how the towns were before Walmart came in. In many cases that is just not true.

Henry Ford was a thousand times worse than Sam. He put MILLIONS of harness makers, buggy whip makers, wagon makers and farriers out of business. Do your really think we'd be better off if Sam and Henry hadn't done what they did??

Henry Ford invented the modern assembly line. So no we would not be better off without Ford or someone like him. Sam Walton? Not so much. But to worship these two and hold up only the good with looking at the bad for a complete picture seems like you don't really know what you are talking about.

Sorry, you're WAY over your head in this discussion. I probably wont bother you again. (Oops, I suppose there's another "idiotic partisan insult", right?)

Yawn...

We're not communicating. I don't want "businesses to be able to use gov't services without paying income taxes."

My tax plan would be to require 100% of corporate income to be assigned to some individual person (normally a shareholder - think 100% of corporate profit as dividends basically), who would then pay taxes on that income at whatever bracket rate he happens to be in.

Then fine, go ahead and tax corporate income at whatever rate makes you happy, because since every corporation's profit would be zero, their corporate income tax would also be zero. But surely you can understand that this would be a far more equitable, and more economically sound, system than what we now have. Every cent of net income/profit would be taxed at whatever rate society has decided is the most fair.

Re "Think of how much less businesses would have to pay their employees if the employees didn't have to pay taxes." Wow, just WOW, that is a scary statement! No man's wage/salary income has ANY connection whatsoever to how much tax he has to pay! A person's income (in a competitive labor market) is the market value in dollars of whatever his contribution is to the creation of the goods or services the venture produces. Doesn't matter in the slightest how much his tax bill is, how many dependents he's got, how much his grocery bill or whatever is.

Of course the Walton kids are rich "Because the Dad left them a huge fortune". But how did Sam create that fortune? As some wise man (OH, that was me!!) recently wrote, "By doing such a good job of distributing goods to customers at the best possible price that each and every day, 60 million people traipse thru his stores showering their money on him", right? And if you think the retail stores are not still immensely profitable, check the stock price.

Yeah, Walmart put a lot of Mom'n'Pop operations out of business. And how did he do it? By offering consumers more and better deals, thereby raising the living standards of every American consumer.

Henry Ford was a thousand times worse than Sam. He put MILLIONS of harness makers, buggy whip makers, wagon makers and farriers out of business. Do your really think we'd be better off if Sam and Henry hadn't done what they did??

Sorry, you're WAY over your head in this discussion. I probably wont bother you again. (Oops, I suppose there's another "idiotic partisan insult", right?)

So at the end of the day this will result in a tax increase for the working joe which will and will encourage corporate flight to states that have lower tax bases or better incentives.... No matter how you slice it certain states will suffer while others will continue to be reliant on handouts from the federal government.

Which interestingly enough tend to be red states....

Always? I would love to see you back that up...

The Walton family (just as one example) is rich because they do such a good job of distributing products to consumers at the best possible prices that 60 million of us traipse through their stores every single day, showering our money upon them.

The Walton family is rich because Sam Walton left them a huge fortune. I think most of any increases of wealth comes from capital gains and not day to day running of Walmart. You conveniently leave out Walmart's role in both the devastation of the merchants of Small Town USA as well as being one of the early innovators of moving manufacturing jobs to Asia.

And don't bother responding that they are rich because they underpay their employees. I personally know many people who work or have worked at Walmart, and not a single one of them was ever there against his will.

Don't bother because you can't handle the reply? Yes, no one at Walmart holds a gun to someone's head forcing them to work. On the other hand, if they are the only major employer in the area there is very little difference...

That's just how the real world works, regardless of how much you all hate it to be so.

So far what I have seen from you is a grossly over simplified version of how the world works sprinkled with idiotic partisan insults...

The problem with your corporate income tax is really just tax collection is corporations generally charge what the market can bear modified by what the competition is able to charge. Sure they would love to pass along any taxes, and some times they do. Other times the market has different ideas depending on what other competitors in that space are doing and the corporation has to just take the hit to their bottom line.

Your third paragraph raises serious concerns about the validity of the opening sentence of your first paragraph.

Perhaps I'm in error for assuming that everybody understands that at the level of the national debate over 'tax reform' (the subject of Chris's piece), that we're only discussing income tax.

Nobody, least of all this writer, would suggest that corporations/producers be exempted from paying local taxes, nor does anybody advocate that they be allowed to steal the property of others ("materials, equipment, buildings and energy", as you put it.) Give me a break!

What I'm saying is that producers (corporations) should be exempted from paying corporate income tax. Corporate income should all be taxed at the individual level, same as wages and capital gains, after being distributed to the shareholders, the way the portion of it distributed currently as dividends is taxed

FAR more reasonable and far more efficient system than the way we do it now, without the potential of handicapping domestic corporations vis-a-vis foreign corporations.

When liberals decry the "Immense concentration of wealth at the top", their implication is always that all that wealth was stolen from the poor people.

The Walton family (just as one example) is rich because they do such a good job of distributing products to consumers at the best possible prices that 60 million of us traipse through their stores every single day, showering our money upon them.

And don't bother responding that they are rich because they underpay their employees. I personally know many people who work or have worked at Walmart, and not a single one of them was ever there against his will.

Any employee who thinks he is underpaid has the obligation to either offer his time and talents to other employers, or alternatively to go into business himself. If he is not successful in earning more by that means, it pretty much indicates that he most likely was NOT underpaid, right?

That's just how the real world works, regardless of how much you all hate it to be so.

Yeah, especially since we've provided them so many ways to get out of paying their share in the first place - lower capital gains rates, generous deductions, etc., etc. Trouble is, Republicans (C.R. included, I guess) fail to understand the true dimensions of, or ramifications of, the immense concentration of this country's wealth at the very top. Even conservatives estimate that those in the top 1% control better than 70% of all American assets.

And yet, the new tax rate tops at 39.6% for single filers making $500K, and married making $1M, but those making one hundred times that much (multi-millionaires), and one thousand times that much (billionaires) will also pay that same historically low rate.

And that's all, of course, before their tax accountants get their crack at it.

Say what you will, Robert Mercer won't have to pony up anywhere near the percentage of his income and assets this year as my 85 year-old widowed mother will have to - nor will his home and life be on the line if he doesn't, as hers will.

How is she in such jeopardy? State taxes, which under the new GOP plan, would no longer be deductible, combined with a (taxed) generous military widow's benefit. School taxes alone account for two thirds of her local tax burden, and that cost is likely to rise, not fall, in the coming years.

What an impressive steaming pile of bullshit you have written.

Unfortunately, that philosophy is founded on 1), normal, universal selfishness/greed,

So is capitalism.

an egregious level of ignorance-cum-stupidity.

Projecting your foibles?

Liberals wouldn't be nearly so hot on taxing producers if they understood two eternal truths about the laws of economics.

Are these really truths or just a recanting of the readers digest version of conservative economics 101?

Most liberals have no objection to that, because they're too dumb to understand it

Ad hominems do not improve your argument...

The 2nd truth is that not ALL governments are run by idiots. Some governments are smart enough to realize that if they do not tax their producers, and we do, that their corporations will have a competitive advantage in the marketplace compared to our corporations, meaning that their workers will get the jobs, and ours will not.

And yet, any list of the worlds most profitable corporations will be dominated by American corporations. How do you explain that?

And finally, liberals also do not comprehend that the burden of government cannot possibly be borne exclusively by the "super rich" simply because there are not enough of them.

I have paid a net yearly income tax for every year I have worked, some years that total income was quite low and have never seen any mainstream liberal politician propose that I should not pay any tax. I think you need to back this claim up.

The super rich should pay their fair share including income both earned and unearned, the latter part being a real problem...

There's the best I can do on the 'education' part, but experience tells me it likely wont register.

That you wrote education in quotation marks is definitely appropriate...

As I said, "It likely wont register". Almost nobody today understands economics, so we continue to pay the price of our collective ignorance, and likely will forever.

That is trickle-down and it is a failure. We've had trickle-down for 30+ years and what's happened is very wealthy people and people running corporations have used all their extra money to ensure, in different ways, that wages remain stuck, benefits go down, and as much profit as possible accrues to fewer and fewer people. Furthermore, those people who benefit are not "producers" they are mostly parasites. Additionally, "producers" are dependent on the people they exploit -- the victims are necessary for there to be money/profit at all. Just how will "producers" make money if there aren't billions of -- to use your false analogy -- "takers"-- to buy/use/need their products and services? (Including products shoved down their throats like fees to protect their personal information from Credit Reporting Bureaus who's existence is almost entirely exploitative.)

There are arguments against taxation, but yours is a fantasy. Those of you who believe it repeat it a lot as though repetition makes it true. You're wrong.

And finally, liberals also do not comprehend that the burden of government cannot possibly be borne exclusively by the "super rich" simply because there are not enough of them.

I'm a liberal and I have never, at any time, said that "the burden of gov should be borne exclusively by the super-rich". Who's making that argument? Which liberals are saying that? That's a straw-man.

Unfortunately, that philosophy is founded on 1), normal, universal selfishness/greed, and 2), an egregious level of ignorance-cum-stupidity.

The greed part you simply have to live with, it's part of the human condition, and it ain't never goin' away. The stupidity part is almost equally as intractable as the 'selfishness', but there is some modest hope for at least an amelioration thereof, through education.

Liberals wouldn't be nearly so hot on taxing producers if they understood two eternal truths about the laws of economics. The first of those truths is that in the final analysis, corporations do not pay taxes, they simply function as collectors of taxes, pretty much equivalent to the IRS. Taxes collected at the production level are simply passed along to consumers in the form of higher prices for the things they purchase. Most liberals have no objection to that, because they're too dumb to understand it. If a tax is hidden from them, they don't even realize they're paying it.

The 2nd truth is that not ALL governments are run by idiots. Some governments are smart enough to realize that if they do not tax their producers, and we do, that their corporations will have a competitive advantage in the marketplace compared to our corporations, meaning that their workers will get the jobs, and ours will not.

And finally, liberals also do not comprehend that the burden of government cannot possibly be borne exclusively by the "super rich" simply because there are not enough of them.

There's the best I can do on the 'education' part, but experience tells me it likely wont register.