Another reminder of why the two-party system, a front for the interests of the rich and powerful, has to go:
America’s 10 most profitable corporations paid an average corporate income tax rate of just 9 percent in 2011, according to a study from financial site NerdWallet reported by the Huffington Post. The 10 companies include Wall Street banks like Wells Fargo and JP Morgan Chase, oil companies like ExxonMobil and Chevron, and tech companies like Apple, IBM, and Microsoft.
The two companies with the lowest tax rates were both oil companies. ExxonMobil paid $1.5 billion in taxes on $73.3 billion in earnings, a tax rate of 2 percent. Chevron’s tax rate was just 4 percent. None of the companies paid anywhere near the 35 percent top corporate tax rate, providing more evidence to debunk claims that America’s corporate tax rate is stunting economic growth and job creation (Despite the high marginal rate, American corporations pay one of the lowest effective corporate tax rates in the world)…
“The two-party system…has to go.” And turn into what? We have a bicameral system and not a parliamentary system. And anyway the problem is NOT the makeup of the system. It’s how wealth is distributed in this country. When 1% of your citizens own 40% of your wealth they will buy ALL of the influence and power in that system. Regardless of whether you have two parties or one hundred and two parties. Our tax system is no longer ‘progressive’ and that’s the problem. The wealthy should be ‘forced’ to give back at least 90% of what they earn over $500 thousand ($500,000.) dollars each and every year. That would ‘fix’ the two-party system. All other solutions are so much bullshit.
Who, or what, will make the tax system progressive?
We are royally screwed.