The graphs above need no more elaboration. What they show is that, at a time of soaring public debt, corporate and personal taxes are at historic lows, while wages are in the toilet but corporate profits, after tax, have never been as healthy as they currently are, as a share of the economy. Money quote from Floyd Norris:
Corporate profits after taxes were estimated to be $1.56 trillion, at an annual rate, during the quarter, or 10.3 percent of the size of the economy, up from 10.1 percent in the second quarter. Until 2010, the government had never reported even a single quarter in which the corporate share was as high as 9 percent, as can be seen in the accompanying charts.
The government began calculating the quarterly figures on corporate profits in 1947, but it has annual figures back to 1929. Until last year, the record annual share was 8.98 percent, set in 1929. For all of 2010, the figure was 9.56 percent.
Does this seem to you to be an era in which the president knows nothing about business and needs to get out of the way of the great American job-making machine by, er, cutting taxes even further? Or does it seem an era in which global corporations can make serious global money even when domestic workers are suffering, and where the obvious primary worry for any government would be the collapse of demand and risk of deflation at home?
I don't particularly like this set of facts; but what my ideology tells me should be put aside at all times by an engagement with reality. That reality suggests a country veering fast into two countries, and one party, the GOP, proposing to accelerate the shift. I'd lean on the rudder right now somewhat toward getting revenues from those currently enjoying a boom, while the rest try slowly to recover from excessive debt. Not because I hate the successful, or despise the wealthy. But because that's the obvious way to stabilize the polity and economy.
And, you know, I'm a conservative in part because I like political stability. Pity today's Republicans have never seen a stable politics they didn't want to smash up.
The Dish 