[corporate profits are] shoveled out to shareholders who either pocketing the money in the form of capital gains or in portfolio management fees; so it’s an enormous racket in which very very flush corporations rather than investing in hiring like you’re suppose to are giving all their money to their shareholders or stashing it overseas in tax havens to avoid paying taxes here in the US... literally trillions of dollars stashed abroad… companies would rather let it sit there in some offshore account rather than bringing home because companies just hate paying taxes.
When corporations depress the economy by not expanding their hiring and increasing wages to avoid paying taxes, they depress the wellbeing of workers. Barter might be a way for workers to get around corporate driven economic activity. The primary reason barter is not a legal mechanism of exchange is the difficulty for government to levy and collect tax. But when corporations stash money in tax havens, the government is also not collecting taxes. In this case, barter would allow workers to (1) retain the value of their work in physical form (goods and services) without a corporation claiming a share as profit and (2) spur greater economic activity because workers have more income to spend. In a capitalist system skewed the way of modern capitalism, workers have few methods to oppose corporate/capitalist/owner power. Corporations have power over wages, hours, promotion opportunities and additional training. Aside from accepting and/or declining a job, workers have almost no ways to negotiate decisions passed down from above. Barter may enable a worker to worker driven economy that competes with corporations for workers. The tax situation doesn't change for the government; they aren't collecting from corporations anyway. Barter would never work as the primary means of economic exchange in modern economies, but it might be a good way to stimulate the economy at the grassroots.
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