Forum Post: Of Corporate Theft and the Chicago School
Posted 11 years ago on March 23, 2013, 11:01 a.m. EST by shoozTroll
(17632)
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"Let me give you a stunning number I reported the other day. From 1966 – when Lyndon Johnson was president -- to 2011, 45 years later, the bottom 90 percent of Americans’ average income, as reported on tax returns, went up by a stunning $59 -- almost no change at all. If you measure that $59 increase for the vast majority of Americans as one inch, then on the same scale, the incomes of those in the top ten percent went up by 168 feet. The top one percent, 888 feet. The plutocrats -- the Mitt Romney crowd, the top one percent of the top one percent? Their incomes rose by almost five miles relative to that one inch. "
I know it's from alternet, and some have said we should hate them, but I don't and this a telling interview.
I have seen DCJ on MSNBC many times
he is a brilliant economist
I'd never heard of him before this.
He must not be too popular among the Austrian/Chicago School crowd.
wow... I heard an interview w/ DCJ on Npr recently ... didn't hear this part... thx
DCJ: It’s now up to 21 states. In 21 states, they’ve passed a law that says that taxes withheld from your paycheck, for the state, can be kept by the company. Now, every employer doesn’t get this windfall -- you have to have to get a deal from the government to do it -- 2,700 big companies, every big company you’ve ever heard of, General Electric, Procter and Gamble, Deutsche Bank, you name it, they’ve got these deals, where they get to keep the taxes. Billions of dollars are diverted this way. You know the best thing for the companies about this?
JH: What’s that?
DCJ: The workers don’t know, because once the taxes are withheld, the state government treats you as having paid your taxes. You paid your taxes. They just then give a credit to let the company keep the taxes. I’ve called journalists. I’ve called union people who negotiate union contracts. And they say, “What are you talking about?” I showed them the work I’ve done. They go, “Oh my God!” They have no idea that this is what’s happening, and the fact that it’s spread from the 16 states when I first wrote about this and it’s now grown to 21 – eventually, all of the 44 states with income taxes are going to allow this, if we don’t put a stop to it.
I really, seriously hope people read The Fine Print . I wrote this so you’d know about these things. If you don’t read it, you’re not going to know.
Very telling.
It was an enlightening article.......................:)
I guess that's why it keeps dropping.
Destroying Democracy, one State at a time.
Of course that's why it is dropping.
The information here, couldn't possibly be as important as the latest whine about the twinkle team.
We should actually start one and show them what it could do.
Nice Article. "...Under the Chicago School theories, we get new rules that encourage lying, cheating, stealing and fraud. In fact, one of the leading professors from that school, Dean Daniel Fischel, has written the bestselling textbook on securities law in America. You know what that book tells law students? That there is no need for a fraud statute in the securities markets. By the way, his clients were Enron, Michael Milken and Charles Keating of the Keating Five -- three of the biggest fraudsters of our time. Yet, that’s the number-one selling textbook for law students on securities law. And it says there’s no need in the securities to have a fraud statute. Think about all the trouble we're in because of the frauds that went on in the dot-con era -- not “dot-com,” but dot-con era -- in the late ’90s...."
What Corruption. What Nerve. What Gall. What a total Disaster for the USA.
What a wonderfully Randian way to do business.
I liked the interview so much, I may have to buy the book.
Yeah, I spent time with his books. The latest one seems thinner than the other two to me. I'd suggest either of the first two... although somehow I misplaced the book Free Lunch before I got too far into it. It's here somewhere....
Lying, cheating, stealing and fraud!!
It's the WallStreet playbook!
Yes, you can make a career out reporting on it. Unfortunately.
Matt Taibbi is the only one I can think of offhand.
No, thats the obama playbook.
Actually, it started with Nixon, but on the other hand this article describes the Chicago school, so your comment is WAY off base, as it's more about business/economic principles that it is about politics...
It's impossible to value jobs efficiently without sime marketplace " survival of the fittest."
A McDonalds fry cook can't earn what a data science wizard can, and the market reflects that. There are 10 spots going unfilled in data science for everyone filled because so few know data science. I know this woman who bills herself at $210/hr and has contracts as far as the eye can see because she is a DS wizard. Fry cooks are a dime a dozen.
It was "data science wizards" that wrote the program that WallStreet used to extract the economy of the World and caused the biggest economic crash in almost 100 years.
A wizard, I might add, that can't cook worth beans.
PS, The "program" is still running, still extracting.
bump