A Tax Holiday Wouldn’t Create U.S. Jobs
With Big Business pushing Congress to pass legislation granting a “tax holiday” for hundreds of U.S. corporations, a new study shows that despite a similar tax holiday in 2004, corporations slashed nearly 600,000 jobs through layoffs even as they collectively saved $64 billion from what they otherwise would have owed in taxes. Under a tax holiday, corporations could bring trillions in overseas proft back to the United States in exchange for a hugely reduced tax rate on that profit.
The Institute for Policy Studies report shows the 2004 tax holiday enabled 843 companies to reduce their tax rate from 35 percent to just over 5 percent. These companies repatriated $312 billion in profits—and avoided $92 billion in federal taxes. The corporations include Big Banks like Citigroup and Bank of America.
Wall Street firms currently are lobbying for another tax holiday on an up to $1.5 trillion in overseas profits. Legislation in the Republican-controlled House would let them repatriate Read the rest of this entry »
Bailed-out CEOs Pocket Millions, Lay off Hundreds of Thousands
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Executives of banks that were bailed out with taxpayer dollars have pulled down stock options that guarantee them mega-million-dollar windfalls for years to come.
Worse, they’re using our taxpayer money to line their own pockets while laying off workers. Since Jan. 1, 2008, the top 20 financial industry recipients of bailout aid have together laid off more than 160,000 employees. In 2008, the 20 CEOs at these firms each averaged $13.8 million in compensation, for a collective total of over $250 million.
According to a report by the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS), the top five executives at 10 of the top 20 banks that have accepted the most federal bailout dollars received a combined increase in the value of their stock options of nearly $90 million.
Says Sarah Anderson, lead author of “America’s Bailout Barons,” part of IPS’s Executive Excess series:
America’s executive pay bubble remains unpopped. And these outrageous rewards give executives an incentive to behave outrageously, putting the rest of us at risk.
$3 Million for Super Bowl Ad. $3 for Workers Who Paid For It
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| Liberian rubber workers walk for miles with heavy metal buckets of rubber on their backs. |
Nearly 100 million football fans across the country will be tuning in to watch Bruce Springsteen belt out his trademark songs celebrating America’s workers during halftime at the Super Bowl this evening. They also will see two new 30-second commercials—estimated to cost at least $3 million each—from Bridgestone Firestone, the world’s largest tire company and the halftime sponsor.
But none of the viewers will see Austin Natee and his fellow workers. Natee is president of the union that represents the thousands of Liberian rubber workers who earn $3 on a good day, but whose hard labor creates the profits that Bridgestone Firestone uses to pay for the halftime spectacular.
When he was in Washington, D.C., last year to accept the 2007 Meany-Kirkland Human Rights Award on behalf of the rubber workers, Natee explained how Bridgestone Firestone continually exploits workers and pollutes the environment. Saying the workers live in modern-day slavery, he explained that rubber tappers work 14 hours a day and must tap 750 rubber trees and accumulate 150 pounds of latex daily—all for little more than $3 a day and a monthly 100-pound bag of subsidized rice if quotas are met.
