He said that one of the reasons that companies send work overseas is because the corporate tax rate here is 35% and in places like Ireland, it's 11%.

First, NOBODY is leaving to send jobs to Ireland.

Second, companies pay taxes on INCOME, not employee salaries.  The income a US company generates is taxable in the US, no matter where their employees are working.  Talking about the tax rate differences is utter bullshit in this context.

Aren't corporate taxes really just stealth taxes on consumers as the taxes are passed along to the consumer in the form of higher prices? I can't see how corporate taxes really are progressive - as a tax on investors and upper management - when they just pass the tax on to the customer. MRB, or anyone, am I wrong?

Let me try an illustration:

Company 1 sells clocks and operates at a profit.

Company 2 sells clocks and operates at a loss.

So, if you are correct, then Company 2 must sell their clocks at a lower price than Company 1.  I don't think this is true.  Moreover, if Company 1 starts to make even more money, then its price would go up.  I don't think that's true either.

In fact, I think (solely by anecdote) that the opposite is true.

to assure the long term wellbeing of the US. Capitalism and free markets are morally neutral in and of themselves. But left unregulated, wealth continues to concentrate in fewer and fewer hands, and since these fewer hands own the political parties, there is no meaningful regulation on  to promote our long term national interest. Laissez faire always sacrifices the common good for the wealth of a minority in the long term.

I think Obama has shown an ability to counter the norm.  He has been able to raise money from individuals with modest incomes.  In this way, he is not "owned" by the wealthy few.

Corporations are not individuals and could not exist without those they employ. With the uninsured at 47 million they have obviously broken thier word.

Im not for socializing medicine but to sacrifice people lives and retirement on the altar of profit is wrong in every way.

Its like a bad joke.IMO "Mr America your going to need new shoes" "Screw that cut those suckers off that'll teach 'em, new shoes my ass".  

The GOP has become dehumanized to the point where most dont even know what a republican is anymore even though we used to say it every day. We have all pledged an oath of allegiance. "To the republic for which it stands".

75 percent of Obama's donations have been from big fatcats ,a lot of them from Wall Street more then gave to MAC The rest was from the small donors .

I welcome you to try to provide evidence to the contrary.

yep MSNBC and CNN said it google it

I searched it.  I ran two searches and it seems like your figures are way off.  I present the results below.  You are welcome to verify my research.

http://search.yahoo.com/search;_ylt=A0geu9t88AVJugIAOVFXNyoA?p=what+percentage+of+obama%27s+contributors+are+individuals&y=Search&fr=yfp-t-501&ei=UTF-8

http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=who+are+obama%27s+contributors&fr=yfp-t-501&toggle=1&cop=mss&ei=UTF-8

The only thing Obama has at his back is $600 million, of which 75 percent comes from large donors, backing him

http://pundits.thehill.com/2008/10/23/obamas-%E2%80%98righteous-wind%E2%80%99-is-really-just-big-money/

CNN said it the other nite and MSNBC it is pretty recent news.

is countered by all the results of the two searches you asked me to do.  I realize the author of the article you site says it is true, I simply don't understand why should believe him in the face of evidence to the contrary.

I am saying I saw on TV MSNBC said it as well as CNN I will look when I get a chance

Lost in the attention given to Obama's Internet surge is that only a quarter of the $600 million he has raised has come from donors who made contributions of $200 or less


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/21/AR2008102102996.html


-- Modified on 10/27/2008 9:24:47 AM

First, I would encourage you to read Thomas Friedman's The World is Flat. Friedman writes for the NY Times, but is considered somewhat of a moderate. The days of protectionism is long gone. We are in a global interconnected world, where companies not only look for lower costs, but look for competencies and skill sets lacking in the U.S.

I'll give you one small example. I recently retired from a F100 technology company. Do they outsource to India, China, Poland, Ireland, Argentina, etc....you bet. One is the lower cost outlined in Friedman's book, where there is lower skill repetitive work, i.e. think call centers. On the flip side some of the higher end critical thinking jobs are being outsourced only because the skills (think math and science) do not exist in the required supply in this country. The company constantly scrambled against the likes of IBM, HP, Google, Microsoft on college campuses for finite resources. When they don't exist, your only choice is to seek those resource overseas. We try to use H1B visas, but they were shut down following 9/11, and have not increased to the pre 9/11 levels. The unemployment rate for someone with a college degree is 2%, and without exceeds 8%.

Back to outsourcing, look at the growth of the middle class in India and China, which from a geopolitical and economic perspective, is in our best interests.

Our national interest is education.

You hit the nail on the head.  I agree education is critical.  That is one of the reasons I back Obama.

Most liberals/populists are against outsourcing in any form. Since only 22% of our population has a college degree, it really leaves no choice for corporations to seek out educated resources, and I am not talking about repetitive manufacturing jobs, to fill certain gaps.

We can talk about education until the cows come home, but the fact is our colleges are running close to 100% occupancy. We have 16M students enrolled in 2 and 4 year colleges. Of that 4% are foreigners. There is no room for additional students unless we expand or build new campuses.

One option, is to strongly encourage the 4% foreign students to remain in the U.S. Plus begin an aggressive immigration plan that targets immigrants with specific education credentials, i.e. math and science. This sounds a bit like immigration racial profiling, but we can't wait 3 or 4 generations for hispanics to realize the importance of education. The right resources will be immediately targeted by a number of hi-tech F1000 companies, who generally pay excellent wages and benefits. This will have an immediate impact to fixing the housing crisis (they can actually afford to by one), plus they will be in the top 10% of wage earners, hence paying taxes.