Corporations could save America

Although I have been racing to update old ideas and to think of new ones, it is unlikely that my ideas will even make it into the public debate, so that voters can decide which ones they like, and if the ideas did make it into the national debate, voters might well not be able to get their favorites through.

However, the corporations could save the American economy, if they only would.

Corporations now have vast assets and profits outside the United States, so they could bring enough dollars back into the United States to keep our private and public debt to foreign nations from increasing further.

Then corporations could sponsor the immigration of artists and craftspersons from around the world. Artists need freedom to do their most creative work, rather than hack work, but corporations could subsidize the artists and craftspersons to develop new designs within their everyday work. Then, the corporations could select the best new designs each year and incorporate them into new versions of their products. Corporations should pay a small royalty to the artists and craftspersons when they select a new design for their product lines.

 

I'm not sure I understand from an economic perspective. Demand drives businesses to respond with either higher output to meet the new demand or higher prices that naturally hold down demand if it can't be met within the markets. New competition to meet the demand brings down prices as consumers find more choices within the market from which to procure their good or service.

What of your idea creates consumer or business demand sufficient to drive corporate investment to meet the demand? They're holding vast assets, both here and abroad, within corporations, but just having high quantities of cash won't incentivize them to invest it without a demand to be met that would produce a subsequent profit. And creating a demand for immigrant labor within domestic corporations only makes the struggles of current citizens more difficult as the market is further diluted with workers.

Do you have figures that estimate the holdings outside the US that you suggested could be repatriated, and then taxed at a level that incentivizes the repatriation and brings enough tax revenue to hold off debt?

 

Most the vast profits shielded overseas are going to be from companies like Apple, Google, and Facebook. The hipsters who will boycott Hobby Lobby where they don't shop would suffer too greatly without a new iPhone every 6-8 months or give up youtube to effect change, so, best of luck with your idea.

 

I'm desperate of course, so I'm exploring all avenues. I've already posted a number of other ideas on the message board, and to try to repeat this here would create would produce so long a message the message board computer wouldn't post it, nor would very many people want to read that much, nor do I have the time to just repeat everything.

You should be desperate too, so if you care about the United States, you will go back and read those messages where the ideas were placed. Foreign readers would find some ideas useful for their nations.

Now in terms of the corporations, top executives may be narrow, but they have many business skills. When they have to, they can figure out the wildest gyrations to adapt to a difficult change in their corporations' fortunes. That ability is enough for them to be able to figure out how to counter the problems and save the United States, if they would. The top executives of corporations are not dummies.

I don't think there would be only one tactic. Each corporations would be able to find a way to help, given their businesses and the individual situations of their businesses.

Also, there is serious motivation for the corporations to do just that. After all, if the American economy shatters, that will seriously damage the corporations themselves.

Furthermore, there is the China problem. China wants to bring down the United States so that China would be the world's only superpower and the new leader of the new world order. It was silly to give China the idea of "a leader of the new world order, but that is done now."


China has no excuse at this time to seize all American corporate assets in China to pay the creditors of America, and to pressure other nations to also seize American corporate assets to pay the creditors. However, if our foreign debt problem reaches a tipping point, China will have the excuse to do just that, to seize American corporate assets to pay the creditors. It was mostly ourselves which worked America into that trap, but the trap is there, and nothing adequate is being done to get us out of the trap in time.

But rather than depending on the Federal government to somehow save them, corporations could become self-motivated in this crisis and save America themselves.

 

If none of my ideas are accepted, and no adequate alternative idea is thought up by someone else, then this is the end game for America.

 

Putting the economic recovery into the hands and control of corporations goes against everything corporate leaders do. Their job is to be accountable to shareholders and their boards for driving the business direction in a way that continues to provide a profit, and preferably a growing profit. It's contrary to a business leader's purvue to consider using a corporation's assets in a way that benefits the overall economy, in effect strengthening the corporations of their competitors. I do understand where your intentions lie and they're commendable, but businesses and government leaders, along with poor decision making on the part of the citizens, got us here in the first place. Businesses buy their way through political influence bought with donated dollars, so trusting them to have your or my best interest in mind is like building a bed for the fox inside the chicken house.

At some point the country does have to face reality. Our citizens are stretched very thin for discretionary spending. So much gets consumed just to get by that whatever is left for so many goes to payments on their personal debt, whether mortgages (even though that's an investment), credit cards and loans. We've taken on far too much debt as citizens to allow us to prop up consumer demand, which would drive business growth. And the items not considered in the consumer price index are the very things that are further choking demand in the economy - food and energy (utility and gasoline) prices. And we've added on the affordable care act, further energy regulation on coal plants, and a host of other things that sap buying power away from citizens. A continuous decline in consumer demand will only make unemployment and corporate performance worse, while the country pays more and more in social programs to support an ever increasing struggle among our citizens. Tax dollars are being uses to cover for so much that is missing from the private sector that it perpetuates the problem by forcing a greater amount of deficit spending to cover the lost tax revenue from higher unemployment and underemployment.

I think at some point we'll have to have some form of national debt forgiveness, whether through mortgages, credit card relief or total personal debt forgiveness. That will require substantial action on the part of the federal reserve to prop up all the lenders who would lose massive sums in carrying that out, but the jump in consumer spending would be massive and on a scale we've probably never seen before. It would threaten the dollar and maybe even force the creation of a new currency system altogether, but we're looking down a tunnel with no light in it at all, at least into the near future.

I don't at all disagree something drastic needs to happen, but I wish I knew what it was. We have to get money into the hands of the working class, from poor all the way up to the higher percentiles (but not the top levels) in order to induce consumer demand that is sustainable long-term. I think that would include some tighter controls on what banks can allow a consumer to take on in debt, as much as I hate to say anything about more regulation because it usually just makes things worse. But we'd have to keep consumers from taking the bait often thrown out by banks to swallow more debt than they can reasonably afford. That got us here and we're at debt levels (private debt) we've never had before, and that is not just here in the US.

 

It needs to be the end of the game for capitalism (and probably the US as we know it).

Two links for your consideration:

http://www.theecologist.org/blogs_a...n_growth_cannot_make_a_sustainable_world.html

and I suspect based on some of the things you have posted that the following related article would be of interest to you as they go hand in hand

http://www.opendemocracy.net/ourkingdom/adrian-pabst/building-civil-economy-0

 

Corporations won't save America with all the welfare they keep getting at taxpayer expense:



http://www.forwardprogressives.com/10-companies-paid-taxes-despite-earning-billion-revenue/










There’s always a lot of talk from conservatives about those “lazy welfare moochers abusing the system.” Republicans like to pretend as if it’s these people who are responsible for all of our country’s problems. That somehow the financial crash that led to trillions being added to our national debt was the fault of the poor and not the fault of the greedy bastards who Republicans often protect.
And while I don’t deny that there are those who abuse our welfare programs, their abuse pales in comparison to these companies who do everything they possibly can to avoid paying taxes. See, while Republicans love to use the line that the United States has one of the highest corporate tax rates in the world, the effective tax rate (what these companies actually pay after taking advantage of loopholes in the tax code) is often much lower.
Take for instance a great top 10 list put together by Mother Jones that shows some of the worst tax evaders in this country.



Here they are:



Verizon Communications: Profits: $19.8 billion Effective tax rate: -3.8%
General Electric: Profits: $19.6 billion Effective tax rate: -18.9%
Boeing: Profits: $14.8 billion Effective tax rate: -5.5%
NextEra Energy (North America’s largest solar and wind power operator, based in Florida): Profits: $8.8 billion Effective tax rate: -2%
American Electric Power (Electric utility based in Columbus, Ohio): Profits: $8.2 billion Effective tax rate: -6.4%
Pacific Gas & Electric (California electrical utility): Profits: $6 billion Effective tax rate: -8.4%
Apache: (Houston-based oil and gas company): Profits: $6 billion Effective tax rate: -0.3%
Consolidated Edison: (New York energy company): Profits: $5.9 billion Effective tax rate: -1.3%
El Paso: (Houston-based energy company that operates the country’s largest natural gas pipeline): Profits: $4.6 billion Effective tax rate: -0.9%
CenterPoint Energy (Electric and gas utility company based in Houston): Profits: $3.1 billion Effective tax rate: -11.3%
That’s a combined $96.8 billion in revenue from these ten companies that didn’t pay any net federal income taxes between 2008-20011. Yet you don’t hear much of anything from the Republican party about this rampant abuse. Paul Ryan’s budget doesn’t go after this tax evasion. Oh, no. It attacks programs that help the poor, sick and elderly while cutting taxes further for corporations like these.