[lbo-talk] Kerry's Tax Cut Makes Me Wanna Ralph

Shane Mage shmage at pipeline.com
Thu Apr 1 10:23:43 PST 2004


Doug Henwood wrote:


>Max B. Sawicky wrote:
>
>>Why have a CIT?
>>
>>* There's good evidence that the CIT is the only progressive
>>component of the tax system.
>
>Sez who? Corporations are legal fictions. Either their customers,
>workers, or shareholders have to pay the tax ultimately. What's the
>evidence that shareholders rather than customers or workers pay?

Elementary economic theory. CIT, like ground rent, is paid out of realized profit. Almost all CIT comes from big corporations who hold a monopoly or oligopoly (shared monopoly) market dominance. Again, by elementary theory, these monopolists have set their prices, wages, and supply costs at the level they calculated to produce maximum profit. Therefore they have very little (at best) ability to pass through a tax on profit to their workers or consumers.

Shane Mage

"When we read on a printed page the doctrine of Pythagoras that all things are made of numbers, it seems mystical, mystifying, even downright silly.

When we read on a computer screen the doctrine of Pythagoras that all things are made of numbers, it seems self-evidently true." (N. Weiner)



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