Tuesday, June 21, 2011

Free Money For Rich People



That is how Atrios named his post about this proposal:
FORTUNE -- The campaign by U.S. multinationals to sell Congress on a corporate tax break for their overseas profits has looked so far like tilting at windmills. Even backers of the so-called repatriation tax holiday have quietly acknowledged it's a political stinker that faces long odds in the Senate.
That may be about to change. Senate sources tell Fortune that Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), the No. 3 Democrat in the chamber and a one-time opponent of the holiday, is testing his colleagues' interest in marrying the proposal to a new infrastructure program.
The idea is to encourage corporations keeping a collective total of more than $1 trillion parked abroad to bring it home by temporarily lowering the tax rate to about 5% from 35%. The tax receipts from that holiday then would be dedicated to an infrastructure bank that would help fund new building projects.
My title for this post might have been "They got us by the short and curly," the "they" being those who have power in this country. The increasing inequalities in the income distribution also mean that the power gets concentrated into fewer and fewer hands. And the same hands in different arenas of public life.

Now contrast and compare all this with what is happening to the less fortunate in this country. No, the women of Wal-Mart don't get bribes while being told that ten dollars an hour is a fair wage after decades of experience and good performance.