RE: "I gave you three examples."
I gave you two. Either a company is profitable, and passes ALL of their costs on to the consumer, or they are not and go out of business. There are no other examples. You can play, "Yeah, but...", or, "What if...", until the cows come home, but that's the bottom line.
In a normally competitive market place, and in the absence of anti trust type price fixing violations, lower costs will produce a tread toward lower prices to consumers and/or higher wages.
In addition, you may want to do a little research into the hoops many companies are willing to jump through in order to create off shore shells and tax shelters. Dig through the SEC filings on some of your favorite companies. You'll likely be surprised at how many of them incorporate off shore subsidiaries for that purpose. They generally show up as a Post Office box in the Cayman Islands.
In other words, we've long since reached a point where the tax burden on companies is so high, that in order to remain competitive and still pass on their costs to consumers, it has become necessary for them to conduct at least part of their business outside the United States.
In the mean time, your analogy comparing Social Security to insurance companies is seriously flawed. If you pull up the 13F forms filed quarterly by insurance companies, you will find that the premiums paid by those insured by the company have been invested in securities intended to show a return on that money. With Social Security, "premiums" collected in excess of current obligations simply disappear. There is no similarity between the two models. |
