Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lizzie Tudor who wrote (14432)	10/29/2003 11:15:59 PM
From: Lazarus_Long	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 793619

Let's look at Personal Income Tax (PIT) receipts and corporate income tax receipts over this period. 1993: PIT $17.469B Corp $4.963B ftb.ca.gov 2002: PIT $37.6B Corp $7.3B lao.ca.gov Now as you can see, PIT has a bit more than doubled. Corporate taxes have not kept up. So in a proportional sense they are paying less, even though they are paying more. Rather interesting to say that more is less, though. Now the top state income tax rate has not increased during years. It is still 9.3%. The brackets are inflation-adjusted, so they change each year. Now this leads to the conclusion that you must have had a rather substantial increase in income between 1994 and 2002 for your taxes to increase five times. And you're complaining. About getting rich. We have no more money now than in the early 90s (another recession). That, of course, is nonsense. But we knew that, didn't we? The increase in corporate taxes collected shows that is quite clearly wrong. This shows it even more clearly: 216.239.41.104 In 1990 CA's Gross State Product was In 1990 CA's Gross State Product was In 1990 CA's Gross State Product was $799B In 1991 CA's Gross State Product was $815B In 1992 CA's Gross State Product was $832B In 1993 CA's Gross State Product was $848B In 2000 CA's Gross State Product was $1330B In 2001 CA's Gross State Product was $1359B Over those years, compensation of employees rose steadily from $448B to $763B. And state tax collections kept pace. If by "We have no more money now than in the early 90s" you mean that the state budget is a disaster, it has been shown quite clearly that it can be fixed with no new taxes and with not all that much pain (unless, of course, you're one of the state employees that was hired in Davis's wild spending spree).

To: Lizzie Tudor who wrote (14432)	10/30/2003 11:46:19 AM
From: Original Mad Dog	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 793619

My solution is for the corporate freeloaders to leave ... I pay 5x the taxes I did in 94. Corps must pay LESS. Amazing. That's a nice slogan. Corporations aren't human; they're easy to hate. But you could easily look up the facts and find out that what you said isn't true. Here are spreadsheets for California state revenues since the 1950's. In the upper right hand corner it will default to General Fund. I suggest clicking "(All)" in that box to get a more complete story about where California's money comes from and has come from over time: lao.ca.gov I also suggest bookmarking this link for discussion of the issue of California's tax structure. California, partly I think due to the legacy of Prop 13 and the high property values (esp. near the coast), has long relied on a tax structure with very low property taxes and very high income taxes. A good basis for comparison is Illinois, which I am familiar with because I live there. Illinois has a flat 3 percent income tax and in places an extremely high property taxes. For example, where I live a home worth $500,000 is assessed annual property taxes of more than $11,000. The result of this approach is that in California if you make a high income you will pay a LOT of taxes. If you make a high income in Illinois you won't pay any larger proportion than you would at a low income level, but if you buy an expensive house your property taxes (depending on the locale) can be very high. Back to California. It simply isn't the case that California corporations are "freeloaders", for a couple of reasons. First, let's trace the history of California state tax receipts from the Corporation Tax. If corporations are "freeloaders", one would expect those tax receipts to be trending downward. But they aren't. Here are the actual numbers: Corporation Tax (Fiscal year ending ... , in thousands) 1951: 98,245 1952: 120,127 1953: 119,127 1954: 125,026 1955: 133,661 1956: 157,088 1957: 167,431 1958: 173,599 1959: 174,003 1960: 240,735 1961: 272,718 1962: 290,870 1963: 311,251 1964: 405,431 1965: 416,247 1966: 435,597 1967: 453,292 1968: 576,874 1969: 592,303 1970: 587,013 1971: 532,091 1972: 662,522 1973: 866,117 1974: 1,057,191 1975: 1,253,673 1976: 1,286,515 1977: 1,641,500 1978: 2,082,208 1979: 2,381,223 1980: 2,510,039 1981: 2,730,624 1982: 2,648,735 1983: 2,536,011 1984: 3,231,281 1985: 3,664,593 1986: 3,843,024 1987: 4,800,843 1988: 4,776,388 1989: 5,138,009 1990: 4,964,842 1991: 4,545,384 1992: 4,537,964 1993: 4,777,319 1994: 4,787,474 1995: 5,716,603 1996: 5,862,327 1997: 5,788,774 1998: 5,837,426 1999: 5,724,035 2000: 6,638,762 2001: 6,899,302 2002: 5,333,036 2003: 6,700,011 2004: 7,035,011 California's revenue from the Corporation Tax has increased in 43 of the past 54 years. The average increase in the years it has gone up dwarfs the average decrease. It has increased by decade dramatically: 1951: $98,245,000 1960: $240,735,000 1970: $587,013,000 1980: $2,510,039,000 1990: $4,964,842,000 2000: $6,638,762,000 Incidentally, inflation is only a small part of the story of these increases. Using the CPI Inflation Calculator (http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl), $100 in 1951 is the equivalent of $712.31 in 2003, an increase of 712.31 percent. If you increase the California revenue from the Corporation Tax by the rate of inflation from 1951 to 2003, the revenue level from the corporation tax would be $699,808,960 in 2003. In fact, it was $6,700,011,000, or nearly ten times as high in real terms as it was in 1951. Paying ten times as much as you used to in real terms is not freeloading. Corporations are leaving because, far from freeloading, they are being much more heavily taxed. And corporations usually have a choice of location. I work for a company that has reduced from three California operations to one over the past decade, due in large part to the cost of doing business there versus other places in the U.S. Incidentally, if you are paying five times as much tax as you did in 1994 it must mean you are making a significantly higher income than you were, since California's personal income tax rate structure to my knowledge has not changed significantly in that time.

To: Lizzie Tudor who wrote (14432)	10/30/2003 3:53:42 PM
From: MulhollandDrive	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793619

i get the sense the editiorial writers of IBD are reading your anti california corp rants, lizzie Article Title: "Benign Neglect " Section: Issues & Insights Date: 10/29/2003 Manufacturing: Two of California's most precious resources - one natural, the other man-made - are under duress. Noteworthy? Apparently not. The first threat involves the 200-foot Washington Tree in Sequoia National Park. It's collapsed about 10% due to damage from a lightning-sparked fire that burned for months. That's about all we know from the one inch of coverage the old tree got in the state's largest newspaper. But that was an inch more than was given to the threat faced by the man-made resource - Intel Corp. CEO Craig Barrett told a conference in Florida the chipmaker is turning its back on California, the state in which it was founded, is based and employs 12,000 residents. Barrett shook his head when asked if Intel would be hiring or adding a plant there soon. Not without regulatory changes, he said. Twenty years of "anti-business legislation" had taken their toll. Neither the Los Angeles Times nor Intel's hometown newspaper reported Barrett's remarks. Or those of Carly Fiorina, CEO of Hewlett-Packard Co., who seconded them. But hey, what's the big deal about Intel (total employment: 78,700 in 2002) and H-P (141,000) when Butler Wire & Metal Products of Menomonee Falls, Wis., has problems of its own? Due to Chinese competition, Butler idled 19 of its 49 workers. This warranted a front-page story (with photos, charts and maps inside) in the Times two days after Barrett and Fiorina unloaded in Florida. Why the difference in coverage? We can only assume that Butler's problem fits nicely with the case that the left-leaning media are building against President Bush - namely that it's his fault there are fewer jobs in manufacturing. "George Bush had better get off his butt and start doing something," the Times quotes Cathy Schuldt, owner of Butler Wire. Schuldt says she's been a conservative Republican all her life, but would now vote for a Democrat who "saw the picture." Schuldt's not alone. Other small manufacturers in Wisconsin have formed a group called Save American Manufacturing Now and are evaluating candidates based on their positions on trade. It's already endorsed Sen. Russell Feingold, a liberal Democrat. We feel for Schuldt and other old-line manufacturers. They're caught in a worldwide, long-term economic trend marked by massive overcapacity that forces manufacturers to relentlessly cut costs and do more with fewer workers. They're also facing tougher competition from around the world, including heavily subsidized factories in Europe and low-wage havens from China to Mexico. But we're also concerned for Intel, H-P and the other California companies, large and small, high-tech or no, that keep complaining about the anti-business climate with which they have to deal. Problem is, no one - not even the media, let alone the politicians - seems to be listening. Instead, when a Barrett or Fiorina talks, it's like the proverbial tree falling in the forest when no one's around.