Larry,
According to published and freely available government data, taxes from business accounted for approximately 49% of government revenues in 1950. Today that number stands around 16%. I don't know precisely how to evaluate that. It states there has been a serious restructuring of the U.S. economic unit. The question it poses for me is how has the indicated taxation differential been redistributed across income groups?

In 1950 and up to perhaps 1960 the typical American famly had a single wage earner and it seemed to have been enough to get by. That is all but impossible today. Not being an economist I don't know why this is or why it has occurred. I am inclined though to draw a relationship between the first and second parts of my comment. There is a strong argument to be made for the purchasing power of our dollars having significantly declined without a comensurate adjustment in wages to offset that decline.

For the last eight years I sense this income deterioration for working class Americans is accelerating. I am also inclined to make what I feel is a logical connection to the general consolidation of finacial and business interests within the U.S. economy.

Posted at May 13, 2008 1:51 PM in response to Republicans, Democrats, and Inequality

I stand corrected. I should have said did not support...

Posted at May 11, 2008 4:10 AM in response to Know When to Fold'em

You reveal yourself.

...and, even, Obama.

That should have read especially Obama. The posting suggests disunity among democrats. Of the names mentioned Obama is the least likely to be promoting the theme you suggest.

Your liberal credentials sir, are much in question.

Posted at May 11, 2008 4:00 AM in response to DEMOCRATIC PARTY IMPLOSION!!! DISASTER LOOMS!

The inescapable and singularly most formative element of U.S. foreign policy in a post WWII era has been what is good for U.S. corporate interests. Not only is this true but the condition has grown more flagrant over time and shows no sign of abating. This matches precisely domestic policy where the interests of the majority working class and consumer has suffered decidedly one-sided legislative defeats too numerous to count.

The ruling political and financial elite of this nation have usurped and abused power in every way possible. At the heart of this is total financial control of the entire U.S. economic unit. Virtually everything congress does is about centralization of U.S., and where possible, global economic power. Because of this the U.S. bears little or no resemblance to the U.S. of 1950.

However we are fast approaching a global economic reckoning that I suspect will soundly and uncomfortably rebuke the manner in which our government has improperly conducted itself in this regard. It is one thing to do this to an unsuspecting and all too trusting (stupid) American public. That won't work anymore on a global scale. Do you really think the price of oil is about anything more than the fact that the Bush WH has pissed off most, if not all, Arab states? Do you think China is going to stand idly by while Americans trash Chinese manufacturers without acknowledging that U.S. corporate interests willingly play a part in the production of substandard products?

Wake up America!!! It's just not possible to look down our noses at the rest of the world without there being some consequence.

Posted at May 10, 2008 7:04 AM in response to Is Neoconservatism the American Mainstream?

This is the one thing that I most liked about Obama from the start. He wasn't afraid to tell the truth. And the reason he is able to do this is because he wasn't as reliant on Wall Street and other major corporate donors as was his competition. Yes he gets donations from those groups. And yes it has the odor of an old fish barrell. It's just not as smelly as the others. And frankly, Americans are starved for the truth. Most Americans know in their hearts that we have let 4067 Americans die in Iraq because we didn't have someone in the WH who was interested in the truth. That gives us 4067 reasons to elect Barack Obama. Barack examined all the same facts as every other senator and he voted not to go to war with Iraq because the truth of those facts didn't warrant it. So at the very least I have to conclude Obama isn't going to let Americans die needlessly. Considering where George Bush and some other senators have taken us that's good enough for me.

Posted at May 7, 2008 9:39 AM in response to Thomas Friedman: "we need a president tough enough to tell the truth"

Yes on both counts and I'll throw in a delusional for good measure.

Posted at May 7, 2008 5:23 AM in response to Ultra Super Nuclear Option?

The military folks who have given so much and been so poorly treated by Bush have decided they want no more of republicans. This shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone. What remains to be seen is how this translates across other constituencies. November is going to be an unhappy time for republicans. The severity of the beating voters will administer is the only remaining detail. History will record the person having lost as McCain but the footnotes will lay it squarely on Bush. I sure hope we never have a president who is so widely recognized as a failure as Bush. I have difficulty dealing with how bad he is. But then I thought the same of Nixon and republicans managed to one up themselves.

Posted at May 7, 2008 5:19 AM in response to Military Counties in NC vote Obama

I like Edwards for the VP spot. I think between Obama and Edwards we'd have a good mix of ideals and pragmatism. They both have a brain and actually use it. I suspect they'd make good sound decisions for the country in a time when they'll be facing some difficult choices.

Posted at May 7, 2008 2:42 AM in response to VP speculation?

It's a sure bet that most Americans as well as persons in other parts of the world feel the producers, refiners, and distributors of oil have made quite enough money. It is ridiculous to provide them an opportunity to make even more. The windfall profits tax that has supposedly been made part of the plan should have been done already without any consideration of this goofy idea. No industry or company is properly entitled to the stratospheric profits registered by oil companies in the last year or two. Every individual and every other industry has been harmed by these prices and at the very least this gross imbalance needs to be addressed via an appropriately levied tax. At a minimum it would at least marginally address the appearance if not the fact that the industry has actively sought to obtain this result in the interest of profits.

If it were my call I'd have probably frozen oil at $75 or something like that. There is a point at which it becomes obvious things are out of hand and somebody has to step in and correct it. If this president, as he has repeatedly proposed, has the authority to do the things he has done then he sure as hell has the authority to put a stop to something that is very clearly harming the nation. That assumes of course that he actually cares about this country. NOT!!

Posted at May 6, 2008 6:23 PM in response to The Gas Tax Holiday: A Rare Teaching Moment in American Politics

All the issues releative to China and other non-U.S. manufacturing centers is about the profits of U.S. corporate interests and other global conglomerates. Shifting production to other nations is only feasible because such things as labor costs and energy subsidies make those locales attractive alternatives to producing products in the U.S.

The reality is the U.S. could have long ago adjusted import taxes and more properly taxes on corporate profits that would make that alternative a non-starter. If there existed a condition whereby there was global equity in the cost of producing goods and the profits those goods generated there would have been no need for so many U.S. jobs to have gone away. The only reason this has occurred is because the government of the United States and especially the executive and legislative branches have been unduly influenced by their relationship with corporate America. Rather than adjust import taxes and taxes on profits to create a condition of equity in global manufacturing, our lawmakers abandoned the U.S. workforce to gain political advantage and to line the pockets of their campaign donors. And just to further understand how this is being globally manipulated, China and India for instance, which are subsidizing energy costs, are doing so at the behest of these same global financial interests while the workforce of these offshore countries are in fact finacing the subsidies. The major beneficiaries of this energy subsidation are again the same corporate interests who have so thorougly compromised our lawmakers and have raped U.S. consumers with record fuel prices while generating record profits.

The reality is that the U.S. workforce has been the whipping boy of corporate America and our lawmakers have been party to the beating we have taken. American labor is in fact subsidizing the corporate profits being generated in other countries while simulatneously being raped by those same corporations by way of consumer unfriendly practices that are the product of corporate lobbyists having a level of access to our representaives that the average citizen can only dream about.

We should not be afraid of China or any other nation. Given a chance, and allowing for the fact it costs serious money to live in freedom, American workers can compete with any other nation on earth.

We should be afraid of our own congresspersons. They can control this if they so desire but they have chosen to represent a scant one or two percent of the citizens of this country and have decided all the rest of us can go to hell.

I think we need to give the bean counters and finacial types throughout corporate America a new job. Instead of conspiring ways to screw Americans and their global customers we need to have them figuring out the calculations necessary to make the cost of producing goods consistent across the entire global manufacturing sector. That way we would alleviate an awful lot of the incentive for countries to try and screw their global neighbors and likely have a lot fewer wars as well.

Posted at May 5, 2008 6:27 PM in response to The Other Side of the Glass