So, GE (General Electric) kept $108 billion outside of the U.S. last year so they wouldn’t have to pay taxes on it. I don’t really blame them. For all people’s talk, nobody really pays taxes because they are patriotic. People pay taxes because it’s illegal not to, and if they were big enough to take advantage of a legal dodge, like GE, they probably would.
Based on an actual character
So, this blog is not about how evil, greedy corporations should be forced to pay their taxes, although I believe they should. My blog is about the amount involved: $108 billion (that’s 108,000,000,000). That’s not their net worth. That’s 1 year’s profit. It’s not even 100% of one years profit. This is just the amount they kept out, to keep their tax burden down.
Some people are saying GE paid no tax last year. GE says that’s not true – they paid over a billion dollars in taxes (i.e. 1%). GE is just 1 of 83 company’s which were being investigated, most of whom had huge amounts of money (like over a billion) stashed overseas, so they wouldn’t have to pay American taxes on it.
My point is, HOW MUCH FUCKING MONEY IS THERE IN THE WORLD, ANYWAY? I mean, we’re just talking 83 of the top U.S. corporations (Japanese and European corporations likely pull the same shit, hiding their money in the U.S., as Adam Smith’s invisible hand continues to pick everybody’s pocket), and we’re already well into the trillions of dollars. And, as I said before, this is not their total worth. This is what they took in in the last 12 months.
What do you even call a thousand trillion, anyway? Because any realistic calculation of the world’s total wealth would have to be more than that, given these figures.
But, I’m not begrudging them their profits. I’m all in favor of people being able to get massively wealthy. But I’m even more in favor of everybody being able to eat, and having a roof over their heads. And it’s pretty clear there’s enough money in the world to guarantee that, for all the world’s citizens. Easily.
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