Paying Corporate Taxes as a Prophylactic Measure Against U.S. Revenue Shrinkage

One cannot turn a TV channel or a newspaper page without hearing the rhetoric about taxes and how everyone including businesses is paying too much.  The Tea Party, Republican Party, and lobbyists are all on the same platform of lowering taxes.  The Democratic Party is on the teeter totter with raising taxes via the Bush tax cut sunsetting for the richest one tenth of 1 % while keeping it in place for those that earn $250,000 or less.  The reality is that either the U.S. citizens and businesses pay now when there are more people with greater taxable income or pay later when there are less people earning lower wages.

Levying taxes is an enumerated power for the Federal government granted by the U.S. Constitution.  State constitutions mirror the U.S. Constitution to varying degrees, but all grant the power to levy taxes.  Taxes on individuals and businesses are the greatest source of revenue for the Federal government accounting for almost 97% of monies raised - individual taxes account for 65% and corporate tax is 32%.  Taxes are shouldered by two parties and a change by one party such as lowering the tax rate necessarily shifts the responsibility to the other party.  The reality of unfunded liabilities for entitlement programs does not allow for the lowering of the size or cost of doing business for the Federal government while lowering taxes.  It is the "unfunded" descriptor that stymies said simplicity. 

The estimate for the medicare and social security unfunded liability is $107 trillion per the Social Security and Medicare trustees' report (2009).  The fiscal irresponsibility by the Federal government is at the minimum gross negligence, but more likely qualifies as pre-meditated because the Federal government knowingly used earmarked monies that carried a legal liability.  Even so, the problem cannot be avoided any longer or kicked down the road.  Just as student borrowers cannot reduce or discharge student loan debt unless severely disabled or dead, the Federal government cannot reduce the entitlements for the elderly at a point in their lives when alternatives and opportunities rarely exist.

Baby boomers, the tsunami of retirees, have not saved enough for retirement and those that did save are laboring under a loss of investment values.  That means shrinking disposable income to spend on consumer goods.  A shifting of the tax burden to individuals from businesses further shrinks disposable income.  The potential for greater reliance on government programs to fill gaps during retirement is a certainty.  Resource costs will continue to be driven higher with global demand increasing.  Retirees will move closer to city centers and live in smaller spaces to offset and manage higher resource costs.  Retirees will self impose austerity measures in order to keep a modest standard of living.  For those retirees that cannot bridge the gap, the burden then falls to the State or relatives so the depressed disposable income becomes generational and pernicious.

The U.S. offers businesses a qualified free market with strong intellectual property rights as evidenced by the rising patent infringement actions as the new corporate weaponry.  Federal and State governments rarely engage in direct competition with businesses unlike countries such as China.  Political grafting is more overt culturally and a condition of doing business in other countries unlike the U.S. where it is more connected to election campaigns and freebies or junkets.  The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act can be used as a competitive strategy by passing along evidence to the U.S. Justice Department.  So the U.S. market is ideal, albeit mature, and finding a substitute is highly unlikely, therefore contributing to Federal and State revenues via corporate tax rates is a strategy of ensuring that the disposable income of U.S. consumers is not overly burdened.

It is in the best interests of U.S. businesses to pay the corporate tax rate and continue to lobby for a reduction in the size as well as the cost of doing business for Federal and State governments.  The goal is to grow the disposable income of U.S. consumers and shifting the tax burden is counter-productive to revenue growth.  Furthermore, brand image or corporate image is at stake as this is a "corporate social responsibility" issue and those businesses that espouse the business philosophy, yet seek to reduce its responsibility to societal welfare courts hypocrisy.  It is about businesses as a "going concern" and U.S. consumers as a "going concern" otherwise neither concern will be had.    
     

How Russia Got It So Wrong with Syria

Aside from Russia's self interest in selling weaponry to Assad's Syrian government, it is Russian Prime Minister Putin's need to play chess with the U.S.  And PM Putin is no Bobby Fischer.  Russia a la PM Putin is making geo-political decisions that are counter-productive to its clandestine mission of power blocking the U.S.  The issue of Syria is unpopular within the global community as well as the regional Arab League.  Even though China also vetoed the U.N. Security Council resolution on Syria, China is not taking advantage of photo-ops - Russia is by inserting itself as a mediator.  Usually, mediators are neutral parties or the least self interested parties.  Russia is neither.  Russia, now that it has taken a much publicized stand, has a personal stake in keeping the Assad regime in place and successful - not just a business one.

Russia is preoccupied with the U.S., but the U.S. is not preoccupied with Russia to the dismay of PM Putin because PM Putin wants Russia to be relevant.  Consider the shirtless photo-op of PM Putin on a mountainside.  At the time, it was interpreted as a response to President Obama being photographed shirtless on a beach in Hawaii.  If German Chancellor Angela Merkel responded with her own photo-op in a swimsuit enjoying the Danube, it would seem completely out of character for her, but because it was PM Putin the photo-op received more attention from comedians than politicians.  For all the meddling in sovereign affairs that the U.S. is responsible for, PM Putin asserts it is Russia that the U.S. is most active in, the latest being the alleged voter fraud, not a result of PM Putin's command and control ruling party.

Since the strategy of blaming the U.S. for all sorts of evil has not had the desired effect, PM Putin is moving in a different direction with Syria.  What is a little bloodshed, atrocities, oppression, and delusion when the real issue is the influence of the U.S. as a global power.  Often speculated about, the sunsetting provision on the empire that is the U.S. has not been written, even if there are precepts for it.  Backing the Assad regime in Syria will not hasten the end of the U.S. as a global power, it will however shine a bright light on those global players that stand as an affront to democracy or advocacy.  Not the pre-packaged U.S. sold democracy, but the kind that has its origins in the grass beneath the feet of the oppressed - a place where the U.S. and its citizens once stood. 

So PM Putin, the strategy and focus of Russia should not be the U.S. because it has led you down a garden path laced with thorns.  Fundamental to being a global leader, outside of Russia, is the consent of those that are to be led and said confidence cannot be found in a country for whom bloodshed, atrocities, oppression, and delusion are minor violations.  Such a position, immediately calls for marginalization and Russia really cannot afford to be marginalized more than it has, especially when it seeks more than anything else - legitimacy.  And so Russia and PM Putin have become the "look at me" child making a mess to get attention - Syria, of course, being the mess.  The days of Gorbachev seem ever more distant in light of recent events.