An Unexpected Error: corporations

Tuesday, April 26, 2011

Why corporations should pay taxes

"General Electric, the Nation's biggest corporation, had a very good year in 2010. The company reported worldwide profits of $14.2 billion, and said $5.1 billion of the total came from its operations in the United States. Its American tax bill? None. In fact, G.E. claimed a tax benefit of $3.2 billion."

"So what? Why should corporations pay taxes in the first place?

"Why shoudn't they?"

"They're not people."

"They are according to the US Supreme Court. That's why they can contribute lots of money to politicians they like."

"If corporations have to pay taxes, they'll just pass the cost on to consumers."

"Maybe, maybe not. It depends on their competition. In any case, corporations pay taxes on their profits. They can afford to do that. In addition, corporations must be regulated or, as we know too well, they'd screw over everybody. Who's going to regulate corporations? Government, that's who. It costs money to regulate. Corporations should pay their fair share. And it ain't zero."

Sunday, April 4, 2010

Toxic 100 Air Polluters

The Toxic 100 Air Polluters index identifies the top U.S. air polluters among the world's largest corporations. The index relies on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Risk Screening Environmental Indicators (RSEI), which assesses the chronic human health risk from industrial toxic releases. The underlying data for RSEI is the EPA’s Toxics Release Inventory (TRI), in which facilities across the U.S. report their releases of toxic chemicals. In addition to the amount of toxic chemicals released, RSEI also includes the degree of toxicity and population exposure. The Toxic 100 Air Polluters ranks corporations based on the chronic human health risk from all of their U.S. polluting facilities. The top ten polluters are listed below.