LIES, DAMN LIES AND STATISTICS

expat: 80% in US will have some kind of cancer within 3 years and 60% of these 80% will die off within 5 to 10

Here are my forecast-figures from the World Health Organization, which show nothing of the kind.

The forecast shows a slight growth from 12 to 13% for 2015 and 2030 respectively.

Playing with numbers is a dangerous game. I’ve justified my forecast by citing its source; now you justify yours.

“Today we go to China, we go to India, because that’s where the customers are.”
  Some of this sounds a lot like a worldwide
“levelling up” process—or a “levelling
down” depending on the point of view.
  Considering their present behavior, is it even imaginable, let alone remotely possible,
that the managers of “international capital” are smart enough to maintain a system of world-management?
  Even the U.S. power structure, which considers itself to be the best and smartest in the world, doesn’t even have common sense enough to listen to criticism and self-correct its own mistakes. Instead, it puts its critics in jail.

Lafayette’s first “My Point” is well-taken. To
understand the crazy pay/bonus ratio of the CEO to the
pay/investment of the corporation, it cost CBS News $7
million/year to run its entire Baghdad bureau while it
was paying its CEO $40 million/year.

Thank you, Mr. Scheer, for not using the term “free market” in your piece. It’s important to move away from the idea that our current power structure (essentially a state-corporate command economy) in any way represents a free market. The plutocracy has never been in favor of the free market and never will.

If the left truly cared about freedom, opportunity and social justice, it would embrace genuine free market principles (deregulating micro-business, lowering barriers to market entry, busting IP and capital monopolies, etc.) that would put more power directly into the hands of the real people at the bottom of the ladder. But, then, that would involve trusting and allowing the unwashed to run our own affairs…and neither the corporate elite nor the liberal elite want that to happen. How else could they continue to keep their positions of authority?

Unfortunately, instead, the mainstream left seems intent not on distributing power to the people, but simply on replacing the “free market” window dressing of our state-corporate command economy with socialist window dressing and replacing our corporate CEO masters with state technocrat masters (for our own good, of course).

The article lays it out pretty well. Taxes are for the little people. Geithner is a tax cheat and run the Treasury, GE pays no taxes and is bailed out by the little taxpayers so it can continue to reap BILLIONS in private profits. Obama hires Larry Rubin, who after losing over a BILIION dollars for the Harvard endowment fund, as someone to be on his economic advisory team. America is but an idea whose time has come and gone. We live with an organized crime network to run this country into the ground. The sooner this country implodes the better.

ABOUT MNC’S

As the WSJ put it, the multinational companies “cut their work forces in the U.S. by 2.9 million during the 2000s while increasing employment overseas by 2.4 million, new data from the U.S. Commerce Department show.”

Before we start railing against Big Bad Business, let us understand our so-called enemy.

First, you are the manager of a large MNC (Multi-National Corporation). You are paid so schmooze with politicians and corporate chieftains like yourself. You are paid, however, first and foremost to run a company profitably.

Now presume that you take your job very seriously. And your domestic market moribund? Where do you go to get sales, because you are measured on that metric as well as profit.  A company is in business for only one reason, to make profits.

So, you take a look at those markets that are functioning best. See here.

And it hits you right between the eyes – there are a lot of global markets out there that are doing a lot better than the US. So, you go for them. You are obliged to do so, because it makes sense for a number or reasons - and not just profits.

What then happens? Presume that you are like Boeing, really ‘n truly wedded to world markets without which you cannot make your profit schedules. Your domestic production you keep humming in the US but another part you put abroad. Because there are tariff barriers and you must build abroad often to enter local/regional markets in a competitive manner.

So, what happens then? Well, even if you have built plants and hired people for their production lines abroad there are a significant number of component parts that must come from stateside. (It can be as high as 75% of the total.)

Because those components are better built in the US (or not at all built locally) and when shipped into the foreign facility they enjoy lower tariff barriers. Caterpillar is an example. Pratt&Whitney; is another. GE is an another. Compaq & Dell are others. I could go on, but you get the point.

Given the volume sales potential in a region, it is often best to manufacture there as well and import some components from the YS. (Ask anyone who works for a US company in Ireland or Scotland - both inside the European Union.)

So, it is not all one way. Expanding abroad to foreign markets is a way to keep production lines humming very well in the US. That strategy works, believe me.

Let’s leave international trade alone. It benefits everyone. It always has and it always will. If it benefits American MNC’s, it also benefits the production lines in America of those MNCs and the Americans who work on them.

MY POINT

If we don’t like the partiality of BigBusiness’ Corporate Chieftains then let’s get them where it hurts most, on their personal bottom-line - meaning bonuses and stock-options cashed-in. There is the place to put the heat on by taxing the piss outta them.

Let’s raise significantly marginal income and capital gains tax-rates above specific thresholds.

Not to worry, America will continue to make multi-millionaires. Billionaires it doesn’t really need.

POST SCRIPTUM

Yes, corporations did cut workforces in the US by dislocating jobs offshore. It was that or lose markets entirely. You can’t sell a Made-in-USA kitchen-robot for twice the price of its Far East version. You just can’t, not in the US. American consumers will buy the cheaper version.

So what do you do? You close the business, or you keep the brand-name and its distribution organization in the US, whilst manufacturing its products abroad. That saves jobs in the US that would otherwise have been lost.

I agree 100% with Bob here. End the bailout culture and elect liberty minded candidates.

US Federal Budget (2009):

All US Military Expense:      $1,450 billion dollars.

US Corporate Income Tax Revenue:  $395 billion dollars.

US Corporate taxes should increase by at least one trillion dollars per year, in order to pay for their protection around the world.

All the corporations want is to keep on stealing from the people. The only thing new is
that Obama has given them the seal of government approval.

Looks like our Mother Earth’s “straight flush” (Here in Indian Country we say Her Purification Ceremony) is far-and-away “the winning hand”....again.

HokaHey!

@expat

Glad your’re loving life overseas…

unfortunately, most Americans don’t have that option unless they were shipped abroad in a crate. and then there’s that whole language thing - you must be multi-lingual, or you’re just in Canada.

i wouldn’t be suprised at your cancer stats, but they would have a bit more weight behind them with a source. care to share?

and if one were to default on even 100k in credit debt - it’s pretty puny when we think in billions and trillions, which are the numbers that bankers are dealing in… your screwing nobody over - yr just on the run.

If GE need pay no income tax, how about charging these multi-national corporations a fee for service. Have the multi-national corporations pay the entire “defense” budget, with the possible exception of the coast guard. As General Smedley Butler pointed out decades ago, when it was more honestly called the war department, that is what it is for, to support multinational corporations.

Where is the ‘new’ here?

DLC Corporate New Democrat Obama is just as guilty as DLC
Corporate New Democrat Clinton and all the Right-Wingers for the
past 40 years in the destruction of the economy for the majority
population of the United States.  The 1st sign was Obama’s failure to
put good people around him that would protect the majority
population, instead put the most corrupt leaders of the mega
bankers in his cabinet as his counselors—it was never a plan to
protect the majority population from the beginning, and as long as a
Republican,  DLC Corporate New Democrat Obama, or any DLC
Corporate New Democrat is in office or allowed to be in Congress,
they will work to keep the United States with corporate business as
usual with usury and the outsourcing of jobs that
has destroyed and continues to destroy the
majority population of the United States.

I guess Americans would rather watch their sports and movie star celebrities than care about their own welfare. But I ask you: you spend so much time fussing over celebs when they need you for movie roll outs and sports events - how come they don’t fuss over you when you need them to address these issues that affect your lives?

How come Americans aren’t rising up like they are in the middle East against these corporate and government thugs who are eroding your rights, taking your jobs away and making you pay to bail them out? What are you waiting for?

The corporations have already decided they don’t need Americans, just the government. They need us to pay for it though. Time to cut them loose. If they are not going to be good citizens, with their newly endowed supercitizenship, cut ‘em loose. They are only American by registration, no longer by loyalty or certainly place. We have a right to limit citizenship of people, why not corporations? Any multinational with more employees overseas than in US should not be allowed to influence elections or lobby Congress. It is a start on limiting influence for all corporations, which must come if e are to survive in any recognizable form.

And so it has been for thousands of years.  The guys with the gold make the rules until the hoi poloi get tired of being screwed, haul out the guillotines and we start over.  When will the jerks at the top figure it out and create equity for all ... never, greed and hubris triumph.  Now, where’s my guillotine?

In the USA there are three Houses of Congress and two Executive Branches:

1. Three Houses of Congress: The House of Corporate Lobbyists and the other
two. The House of Lobbyists writes the laws, the other two give their assent.

2. Two Executive Branches: The Goldman Sachs/US Treasury/Federal Reserve
Executive Branch and the other one. The Goldman Sachs/Etc. Executive Branch
make policy, the other one makes war.

“Those in power are blind devotees to private
enterprise. They accept that degree of socialism
implicit in the vast subsidies to the military-
industrial-complex, but not that type of socialism
which maintains public projects for the disemployed and
the unemployed alike.”
(William O. Douglas, former U.S. Supreme Court Justice,
1969)

Good column, Scheer. You’ve laid it all out clearly and concisely, you’ve quit making excuses for Obama’s corporate ass-kissing, and you’ve tied the wars to corporate profit.
Who do these people think they are? I’m talking about Obama and how he’s twisted everything, including the arms of all the compliant lawmakers to do the corporations’ bidding. How he’s debased our justice system and chosen not to prosecute criminal CEO’s and treasonous politicians. I’m talking about Supreme Court justices who make obscene and amoral decisions. The occupants of all three branches should be run out of government, and I mean literally. Voting isn’t going to correct anything.
We have to imagine what a revolution will look like. First, we have to quit justifying their sociopathic behavior and thinking one party is “better” than the other. Next, we have to quit feeling powerless. Finally, we have to get angry and take to the streets, each of us with our own grievances expressed on signs and mocking images of politicians and CEO’s, angrily ridiculing them and threatening them and telling them this will no longer stand. Frighten them in order to chase them out. Stand together against the evil and greed.
The corporations will leave, and we’ll be a better country for it. I’m tired of paying for their wars, their screw-ups, and their greed.
We can do it. All we have to do is walk out our front doors and stand in the streets together, carrying a sign.

Yes!  Very powerful piece, Mr. Scheer.

The US government is run by and for the large corporations. Can there be any doubt left as to the truth of that statement?

Obama has filled his administration with current and former CEO’s, mostly from corporations that have offshored our jobs, and with members of the financial community that contributed so much to our current economic crisis.

That Jeffrey Immelt, whose GE pays no taxes, gets a three billion dollar rebate on top of that, and has off-shored many, many jobs is rewarded by being given a post supposedly to work on job creation. This is definitely the twilight zone redux.

These continual wars we now see fought “in our names” can be reduced to corporate welfare for our military industrial sector. We give a few billion to some tyrant, he ,in return, spends it on tanks, planes, guns, all the accoutrements that enrich our weapons manufacturers.

We the people must remember that adage that states: Power concedes nothing without demand. This nation will never willingly return to government of the people, by the people and for the people until and unless we the people force it to do so.

I care not whether you believe the key is reformation of the Democratic Party or the creation of a new third party, my own choice frankly. Regardless of your personal choice the only thing that will succeed is mass demonstrations, continual and with great numbers. From such will come dedicated groups moving to make change. From that will come to our elected representatives a renewed responsibility to the people whose votes elected them, either by moving leftward or moving out of government, replaced by better candidates.