Jimmy Cefalo WIOD – 610AM

March 28, 2011

Jimmy Cefalo
WIOD – 610AM
7601 Riviera Drive
Miramar, FL 33022

RE: Corporate taxes and that horizon-like thing called “fairness”, or so you said at ca.6:10AM today – Tutorial #3

Jimmy,

This may shock and amaze you but corporations don’t – repeat – don’t pay taxes. Never have. Never will.

Listen carefully. I’ll write slowly.

Taxes are but a cost of doing business, just like salaries, the gas and electric bill, the 3 martini lunches, the donation to the United Way and to the PAC most likely to help the donor. Also included, but not limited to, are mortgage payments, R & D, bribes, employee benefits, interest on debt, SEC and IRS settlements, acquisition of raw materials, lottery tickets, and fresh paint at World HQ.

At the end of the day the above is put into a pot labeled costs. It gets stirred around, perhaps a soupcon of saffron, maybe a truffle or two, some garnishes may be added, and it comes out on a serving platter called price. It is what the company charges for its goods and services. The proof of the pudding is always in the eating.

If enough people buy it is good. If not enough people buy it is bad. In the real world, the world not made up of US Post Offices or the Educational/Poverty complex, one is rewarded and the other is punished. That there is a higher percentage of unemployed high school football coaches rather than unemployed high school biology teachers is self evident proof that the boobies are running the hatch.

Winston Churchill once said of a pudding that “It had no theme”.

Jeffrey Immelt, CEO of GE, has produced a pudding that is rich in “theme”. He seems to have survived the misfortune of succeeding Jack Welch. [Who remembers Phil Bengston or Henry the Ninth?] His “theme” is simple. He has decided that it would be in the best interests of his company to partner up with the Federal government in as many ways as possible. He does this in a manner that is both complimentary and complementary. His acceptance of the President’s invitation to serve on an advisory was so quick that the Guinness Book of Records will probably have a new category for it. If the President asked him to cut the White House lawn he would have produced a dozen goats by the afternoon to show how “green” he is.

He cares not a whit about the controversy surrounding the curly fries light bulb. He just wants his company to make them.

History teaches us that government and business shouldn’t resemble a cartel of copulating cobras. That puts us on the “slippery slope” to Fascism.

Further, if corporate time machines were available, I have no doubt that GE would have been the low bidder on the gas ovens at Auschwitz.

Is it “fair” to ask what you mean by “fairness”?

Can you define “fairness” in a simple declarative sentence? You are forbidden to use “unfairness” to explain “fairness”. Justice Stewart’s definition of obscenity was good for a sound bite but it was invalid in its Logical constructs. Aristotle said that “something can not be what it is not”.

What is “fair” for you need not be “fair” for me.

Other than “fair catch” or “I’m showing my organic endives at the state fair” can we not agree on a moratorium on the word “fair”? Let’s just ban it from adult conversations.

I mentioned the horizon in my introduction. It is a metaphor for something unreachable, unattainable, “like man’s grasp”. The tax code, an instrument that involves A taking money from B to benefit C, can never be “fair”. B complains that it is too much while C complains that it is not enough.

Like the drunk whose defense is “I was overserved” the problem is not that we are taxed – forgive me – “unfairly”. The problem is that we spend too much.





Kevin Smith