The Rot Within, Part III: Our Political Order Is Defined by Favoritism and Extortion   (July 24, 2014)


What's the difference between the U.S. Congress and corrupt petty officials taking bribes at a Third-World border crossing? Only one of scale.

Corruption ceases to be corruption when it becomes the Status Quo; what was once recognized as corruption is seen as just another cost of doing business. Our political order is structurally corrupt: the key dynamic in every level of governance is favoritism and extortion.

Favors must be bought: those foolish enough not to spend freely on lobbyists and campaign contributions find their competitors have gained the upper hand by buying favors such as tax breaks, federal subsidies, no-bid contracts, cost-plus contracts, backroom deals, regulations that exclude competition and so on.

Politicos must extort campaign contributions from the maximum number of supplicants seeking favors to maintain their perquisites and power.

Here's how the system works.

There was much mainstream media hand-wringing and outrage in response to corporations moving their place of business offshore to lower their taxes. This outrage is completely misplaced--and indeed, seems designed to misdirect attention away from the systemic corruption that is the beating heart of the American political order.

Let me explain how favoritism becomes the Status Quo. There are two key dynamics at work.

1. Onerous, uncompetitive taxes and/or regulations. The U.S. corporate tax rate is 35%, the highest in the world, and various observers estimate the average state corporate tax tacks on another 4.1% for a total corporate tax rate of 39.1%.

This is roughly three or four times the nominal and effective corporate tax rates in competing nations.

The heavier and more asymmetrical the burden, the greater the incentive to find a way to lighten the load. This is why nations with asymmetrical tax rates and collection practices are inevitably hotbeds of black market activity, as those few chumps who actually pay the official tax rate go out of business or struggle to make ends meet while their black market competitors are living high on the hog.

The injustice of such a system fuels the need and desire to buy favors to escape the burden that virtually nobody actually pays.

2. Once a significant percentage of participants have eased their burden by buying political favors, everyone else is forced to wonder why they should continue paying the high taxes when others are avoiding them.

This system is not accidental. The asymmetry feeds the need to buy political favors, and is thus a form of systemic extortion. If you refuse to pay the bribe at a Third-World border crossing, the Powers That Be will make sure your life becomes increasingly miserable; while those who ponied up the bribe breeze through the paperwork, you wait and wait and wait, and are told to fill out more paperwork.

In precisely the same fashion, those who refuse to bribe legislators and key political players find their tax rates are crushing and life is miserable indeed. This is known as pay to play, and it defines the U.S. political order.

Those who don't pay the extortion to congresspeople and lobbyists are punished by a system designed to force every participant to pony up the bribe or suffer the consequences.

In other words, U.S. corporate taxes are extortionist and unfairly applied by design, to guarantee every corporation has to buy favors from politicos intent on stripmining billions of dollars in pay to play "contributions."

I know many people feel corporations should pay high taxes because they did so in the 1950s, but this historical precedent is blind to the realities of a global economy. Given global sales and workforces, why should a company headquartered in the U.S. pay punishing U.S. tax rates on its global operations?

Is it good policy to burden our corporations with absurdly complex tax codes and rates so far above global norms that every U.S.-based company is forced to seek tax avoidance schemes just to remain competitive and meet shareholder demands to be as profitable as others in the same global space?

It's easy for pundits protected by academic tenure to criticize corporate management, but put yourself in the shoes of a pension fund that owns stock in a company that actually paid the full 35% while competitors used strategies bought by political favors to eliminate that burden: your dividends and capital gains would be significantly lower as a result of the corporation's refusal to use pay to play tax avoidance strategies.

The reality is the pension fund manager and the corporate managers would both be fired for underperformance if they were stupid enough to pay the full corporate tax rate or insist on the company doing so.

We have a double standard: as individuals, we seek every possible avenue to escape high Federal taxes, and the wealthier you are, the more avenues are open due to favors bought from an always willing to wheel-and-deal Congress.

Yet we publicly demand corporations pay absurdly asymmetric tax rates to qualify as "good corporate citizens."

Corporations don't exist to be good citizens. As noted above, anyone clueless enough to pay the 35% federal tax rate on all net earnings will have failed the shareholders, who naturally demand the same payout in dividends and capital gains as those earned by competitors who paid to play and avoided most or all U.S. taxes.

Systems of good governance make exceptions and favors difficult to gain and the process transparent.

Corrupt governance makes exceptions and favoritism the unspoken rule and the process of buying them hidden from public view. That defines the U.S. political order perfectly.

Soaring corporate profits make juicy targets for taxes:

Soaring profits are the engine of a rising stock market:

Wages have stagnated while profits have soared:

It's easy to see why people want to tax corporations heavily, but in thinking this they are playing right into the extortionist/pay to play political order.

A fairer, good-governance system would lower corporate tax rates to the equivalent of an excise tax and exclude favors and exemptions. A corporate tax rate of 5% that was applied to all corporate sales and earnings in the U.S. regardless of where the company was nominally based would raise more money than the current corrupt system in which many corporations pay almost nothing and chumps who failed to pay the required bribes pay a globally asymmetric rate as punishment for their failure to 'contribute" to the campaigns of incumbents.

A low, evenly applied corporate tax rate would destroy the pay to play system of extortion/bribery, and as a result it will never be adopted. The U.S. political order is systemically corrupt and is incapable of self-reform. The rot has seeped into every nook and cranny of the political order, to the point that it's now accepted as "the way we do business here."

What's the difference between the U.S. Congress and corrupt petty officials taking bribes at a Third-World border crossing? Only one of scale. The corrupt petty officials can only look with envy on the Congressional extortion machine.








Get a Job, Build a Real Career and Defy a Bewildering Economy (Kindle, $9.95)(print, $20)
go to Kindle edition
Are you like me?
Ever since my first summer job decades ago, I've been chasing financial security. Not win-the-lottery, Bill Gates riches (although it would be nice!), but simply a feeling of financial control. I want my financial worries to if not disappear at least be manageable and comprehensible.

And like most of you, the way I've moved toward my goal has always hinged not just on having a job but a career.

You don't have to be a financial blogger to know that "having a job" and "having a career" do not mean the same thing today as they did when I first started swinging a hammer for a paycheck.

Even the basic concept "getting a job" has changed so radically that jobs--getting and keeping them, and the perceived lack of them--is the number one financial topic among friends, family and for that matter, complete strangers.

So I sat down and wrote this book: Get a Job, Build a Real Career and Defy a Bewildering Economy.

It details everything I've verified about employment and the economy, and lays out an action plan to get you employed.

I am proud of this book. It is the culmination of both my practical work experiences and my financial analysis, and it is a useful, practical, and clarifying read.

Test drive the first section and see for yourself.     Kindle, $9.95     print, $20

"I want to thank you for creating your book Get a Job, Build a Real Career and Defy a Bewildering Economy. It is rare to find a person with a mind like yours, who can take a holistic systems view of things without being captured by specific perspectives or agendas. Your contribution to humanity is much appreciated."
Laura Y.

Gordon Long and I discuss The New Nature of Work: Jobs, Occupations & Careers (25 minutes, YouTube)



NOTE: Contributions/subscriptions are acknowledged in the order received. Your name and email remain confidential and will not be given to any other individual, company or agency.

Thank you, Kathy S. ($10/month), for your outrageously generous subscription to this site -- I am greatly honored by your steadfast support and readership.   Thank you, Advanced Download ($25), for your extremely generous contribution to this site -- I am greatly honored by your steadfast support and readership.


"This guy is THE leading visionary on reality. He routinely discusses things which no one else has talked about, yet, turn out to be quite relevant months later."
--Walt Howard, commenting about CHS on another blog.

"You shine a bright and piercing light out into an ever-darkening world."
Jeremy Beck


Contributors and subscribers enable Of Two Minds to post 275+ free essays annually. It is for this reason they are Heroes and Heroines of New Media. Without your financial support, the free content would disappear for the simple reason that I cannot keep body and soul together on my meager book sales alone.

Or send coins, stamps or quatloos via mail--please request P.O. Box address.

Subscribers ($5/mo) and those who have contributed $50 or more annually (or made multiple contributions totalling $50 or more) receive weekly exclusive Musings Reports via email ($50/year is about 96 cents a week).

Each weekly Musings Report offers six features:
1. Exclusive essay on a diverse range of topics
2. Summary of the blog this week
3. Best thing that happened to me this week
4. Market Musings--commentary on the economy & global markets
5. Cultcha/Culture: selected links to the arts, performances, music, etc.
6. From Left Field (a limited selection of interesting links)

At readers' request, there is also a $10/month option.

What subscribers are saying about the Musings (Musings samples here):

The "unsubscribe" link is for when you find the usual drivel here insufferable.

 
 
Dwolla members can subscribe to the Musings Reports with a one-time $50 payment; please email me if you use Dwolla, as Dwolla does not provide me with your email.



The Heroes & Heroines of New Media:
oftwominds.com contributors and subscribers



All content, HTML coding, format design, design elements and images copyright © 2014 Charles Hugh Smith, All global rights reserved in all media, unless otherwise credited or noted.

I am honored if you link to this essay, or print a copy for your own use.

Terms of Service:
All content on this blog is provided by Trewe LLC for informational purposes only. The owner of this blog makes no representations as to the accuracy or completeness of any information on this site or found by following any link on this site. The owner will not be liable for any errors or omissions in this information nor for the availability of this information. The owner will not be liable for any losses, injuries, or damages from the display or use of this information. These terms and conditions of use are subject to change at anytime and without notice.


                                                                         
blog     My Books     Archives     Books/Films     home


 

Add oftwominds.com
to your reader:



Making your Amazon purchases through this Search Box helps support oftwominds.com at no cost to you:



search my site: