Thats a bit simplistic.
We started imposing income taxes with the 16th amendment and at the time corporate taxes were a much larger percentage of the federal revenue than it is today.
We then started imposing payroll taxes and now personal income taxes and payroll taxes combined account fro more than 80% of our revenues.
There once was a time when corporate taxes accounted for 30% of federal revenue, they now account for less than 10%.
Of course, when the rich are taxed it is an inconvenience. When the poor and middle class are taxed it is a struggle.
Just to correct you, we started imposing federal income taxes with the Revenue Act of 1861. Corporate income taxes were first introduced by the Revenue Act of 1894, aka the Wilson-Gorman Tariff, and it was both the individual and corporate income taxes introduced by the Revenue Act of 1894 that were struck down as unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in Pollock v Farmers Loan and Trust, leading to the 16th Amendment being proposed.
Thanks, I kinda sorta knew that, but the details always escape me. i knew we imposed income taxes (and i thought wealth taxes as well) during the civil war).
But you agree that corporate taxes were once a much mroe significant portion of our revenue, right?
You have to understand here that emacknight has mentioned in other threads that he goes full-on devil’s advocacy in this kind of discussion. And when you’re trying that hard to figure out what the least popular position is and cling to it like a great white eating a side of beef, you can’t be arsed to address your replies properly.
Perhaps there is a simpler way of looking at all this: Mosquitoes
Like it or not mosquitoes are a part of the ecosystem and they also have a direct negative impact on my life. So I’m about to go gas the fuck out of my back yard to kill the mosquitoes in the hopes of making my life better.
But that action has consequences. The gas itself is toxic and may make me sick. It will most likely kill all the butterflies and bees, both of which benefit me. And without the mosquitoes the stuff that eats them (and the other bugs I kill) will die/leave.
So, someone might try to make a case for not spraying, suggesting that the net negatives outweigh the net positives, and that we might all be better off with the mosquitoes. That person might even go so far as to suggest alternatives to spraying such as {gasp} individuals taking it upon themselves to wear bug spray. Or might simply try to suggest spraying a little bit less.
Does that person have a hardon for mosquitoes? Are they shills to the mosquitoes mafia? Are they implying that we should have MORE mosquitoes?
No, they are trying to present an alternative perspective. One that is neither evil nor corrupt.
Here’s your other problem.
Every damn day, we get a cavalcade of political beasts who claim a ideology and a set of positions. For example, in my home state, we have Gov. Corbett who claims fiscal conservatism and then bends over backwards to benefit Marcellus shale extraction companies, primarily the one that donates a lot of money to PA Republicans.
It’s not a stretch to say the vast, vast majority of elected politicians who claim the “fiscal conservative” label are using it to mean “we don’t want to pay for things that don’t benefit big business, and we don’t want to pay for things based on our own moral viewpoints regarding homosexuality and poverty”.
Thus, from a purely usage standpoint, you’re staking out a claim on a possibly-correct prescriptivist definition of a phrase that’s sinking rapidly in a mire of daily use that indicates it means something closer to how most people on this board use it.
Your blood pressure would probably lower a few points if you mentally inserted “self-claimed” in front of “fiscal conservative” almost everywhere you see it in today’s usage.
No you fucking moron, you replied to me, see:
You’ll notice that time stamp was BEFORE Shodan appeared.
So now, why would you respond to a question directed at Wesley Clark? And then later get all bent out of shape when you got included in that conversation? You’ll notice that question you quoted wasn’t directed at you.
This is a good example, probably better than mosquitoes.
Gov. Corbett is presented with two opposing options:
Increase the corporate taxes on Marcellus shale extraction companies, and give that money to the poor in the form of cash, food, assisted living, and medical care. This will effectively raise the cost of doing business, and make the gas extraction more expensive.
Do things that encourage gas extraction, making it cheaper, so corporations hire more Pennsylvanians. The income they earn can provide them with cash, food, living expenses, and medical care.
Two sides of the same coin.
If it costs too much to extract the natural gas the companies won’t bother. They close up shop and go looking for more profitable extraction sites. They only reason they are there is because they can make profit. Remove the profit and you remove the companies.
If you remove the natural gas companies, are the people of Pennsylvania better off?
ETA If Gov. Corbett believes that helping the corporations is in the best interest of the people, who is he a shill for?
ETA2 If the opposing governor hates corporations and plans to shut down the extraction sites, why would the corporations donate to his campaign?
Seriously? We’re fucking arguing about this? Still?
You’re chastising me about how a message board works when you seem to be lost on the whole concept. Let me explain.
As a member of the message board, I’m allowed to respond to an ongoing conversation even if it’s not directed to me. If you didn’t want this, you should have used the private messaging tools available to everyone (even guests).
But then you turn around and quote me, and your response has fuck all to do with what I said or implied or even hinted at. When called on it, you said that your reply to me, quoting me, had nothing to do with me.
I think this can be solved with this suggestion: stop pressing buttons.
You are just typifying the ignorance I started this thread to fight. So thanks.
A Republican governor does something and you say “see, just like I told ya, he just loves him some corporations.”
A few practical problems with this in the real world:
The shale companies right now are negotiating contracts and extraction rights payments based on a very low production cost, and then not actually extracting the gas. It’s not actually feasible to do this extraction from a profit standpoint right now, this is all about muscling in resource easements/leases while the market is bottomed out. Thus, no one is making money now, and the only people who are in a favorable negotiating position are the shale companies.
No one plans to shut down the extraction sites. The most that has been proposed is taxing the shale extraction process enough to pay for the known environmental risks of the process, which (in the few places it’s operating) have already polluted the Chesapeake and Ohio River watersheds severely, so much so that many county governments are requiring the shale extractors to process their wastewater as toxic waste rather than pushing it into the various county authority water treatment plants. Negative externalities are one of the things that always SHOULD be taxed, to account for the economic harm done indirectly due to damage of other people’s capital resources.
And finally, add to that the idea that there are proposals for much more environmentally friendly methods of leveraging the energy inherent in the shale deposits that are already being implemented elsewhere, that are being shut out by the conditions in PA being set up to favor the immediate companies using inefficient and polluting hydraulic fracturing technology.
So yes, PA would be far better off if shale exploitation were taxed in line with the negative externalities generated by any given method of extracting the energy from it.
Take your dog and pony show somewhere else–I have put up with your bullshit in GD but I’m not obligated to pretend respect for your weak, flaccid blend of devil’s advocacy and concern trolling in the Pit.
Uh, no. See my last post. He’s specifically lowered the taxes to nothing to favor one set of shale extraction technologies that has a massive amount of negative externalities, and specifically ordered the state department of environmental protection to run all reported violations past his appointees before acting on them, and those companies using that set of technologies have donated a lot of money to his campaign.
So yes, when a specific industry gives him money, and he turns around and makes fiscally irresponsible decisions that benefit that industry specifically at my expense, yeah I’ll say he is not acting in a fiscally conservative way.
The coal industry doesn’t get a fast-track option to bypass the state DER, nor does the nuclear industry.
Also, please don’t conflate “Republican” and “fiscally conservative”, it undermines your entire argument. I mean, unless that’s what you want to do.
So you and the Governor have different opinions on policy issues. Why can’t you just advocate for your opinion? Why do you have to say that the Governor has a hardon for “the corporations” (a concept that you have no independent evidence for)?
So, pray tell, how many policies must Governor Corbett extend that specifically support a subset of industries that are contributing a lot of money to his war chest before I am allowed to conclude that he might possibly be in their pocket?
How much wastewater from hydraulic fracturing has to end up in my drinking water before it becomes a case of Corbett favoring said gas extraction companies over me by not taxing them sufficiently to pay for the cleanup of said wastewater?
It’s really that last bit that has the most force. The combination of “no tax on shale gas extraction” and “the State DER is hamstrung (by executive order!) from dealing with environmental violations resulting from gas extraction” means that I’m literally paying with my own health for the costs of shale gas extraction. Is that a “policy difference”, really?
Here’s what I think Rand is getting at.
I don’t think he necessarily denies that Corbett or any politician is favoring corporations. What he is denying is that this means Corbett is in their pocket and the policies are self-serving at the expense of the environment or non-wealthy individuals. His contention is that this favoring is an honest attempt at bettering people’s lives.
How many times am I going to have to ask for some evidence that the Governer has a hardon for corporations before you produce any?
Governor Corbett won re-election easily. So the answer to your question is, “when about 300,000 Pennsylvanians decide they care about hydraulic fracturing more than abortion.”
Governor Corbett isn’t doing what the corporations want, he’s doing what the voting public want.
I fully understand his contention, but I’ve provided evidence that said policies ARE at the expense of both the environment and the non-wealthy. If he’s arguing I need to reach into Corbett’s mind and prove how the man feels in any way other than the evidence of the policies he supports, I might as well just start ignoring him too.
What are you going to accept as evidence, then? I’ve given evidence where he has specifically, to use your phrase style from upthread, said “Bob, it’s okay for you to hurt Zeriel, and I’m not going to punish you for it.” Is it your contention, as Bosstone seems to think, that that’s NOT evidence he favors Bob over me?
Yeah, that’s it. Pretty simple, really. I’m not pretending to say anything grandiose or awe-inspiring.
Zeriel has no evidence that the Governor is favoring these corporations intentionally–that the Governor advocates the policy positions he does out of a conscious intent to benefit these corporations. The Governor’s advocacy of these positions is also perfectly consistent with the fiscal conservative mindset of reducing unnecessary government burden on business (which those who aren’t fiscal conservatives are free to agree with).
Really this thread is a how-to for certain fiscal liberals on how not to sound like a complete dumbass when they step outside their echo chambers.