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Bernie Sanders HQ! *A decent human being. (2 Viewers)

Bernie's first car

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bananafish said:
I do. What's your beef?

Pfizer also had and EBIDTA of almost 18 billion last year if it makes you feel more comfortable.
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My beef is that the only reason to bring up the numbers that have been brought up is if you have an agenda. They made 50 billion!!!!!! Ummmmm....Those are revenues. 40 billion!!! Ummm.... No they didn't. Fine 18 billion!!!!! You guys act like their 10k isnt public information and grab onto the highest number possible because you want the number to be as big as possible.

What would be an acceptable number for you guys? 8 bucks in total profit? Should corporations really just serve the people? 

 
parasaurolophus said:
My beef is that the only reason to bring up the numbers that have been brought up is if you have an agenda. They made 50 billion!!!!!! Ummmmm....Those are revenues. 40 billion!!! Ummm.... No they didn't. Fine 18 billion!!!!! You guys act like their 10k isnt public information and grab onto the highest number possible because you want the number to be as big as possible.

What would be an acceptable number for you guys? 8 bucks in total profit? Should corporations really just serve the people? 
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The government should serve the people.  To the extent that corporations are acting in a way that is to the detriment of the people, the government should act in opposition to those corporations.

 
fatguyinalittlecoat said:
The government should serve the people.  To the extent that corporations are acting in a way that is to the detriment of the people, the government should act in opposition to those corporations.
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So what are the guidelines you would put in place for a corporation's profits then? Should there be a cap? 

Your statement here is pretty broad. What defines acting against the people? I would rather people just be honest about this stuff. 1 billion? 5 million? How about you guys just come out and state what you want corporations to be able to make. Caps for CEO pay. Caps for corporate profits. NFL style revenue sharing where employees are guaranteed 66%. Gotta protect the little people!

Pfizer paid like 2 billion in taxes. What should they have paid? 9 billion?  Is that enough to not be acting against the people?

 
parasaurolophus said:
So what are the guidelines you would put in place for a corporation's profits then? Should there be a cap? 

Your statement here is pretty broad. What defines acting against the people? I would rather people just be honest about this stuff. 1 billion? 5 million? How about you guys just come out and state what you want corporations to be able to make. Caps for CEO pay. Caps for corporate profits. NFL style revenue sharing where employees are guaranteed 66%. Gotta protect the little people!

Pfizer paid like 2 billion in taxes. What should they have paid? 9 billion?  Is that enough to not be acting against the people?
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How about we start with not allowing them to park their profits overseas.

 
The amount they pay in taxes and the amount of profit they make aren't necessarily acting against the people.

However, charging Americans ten times as much for drugs as other countries pay (for the exact same drugs) is acting against the people.  Lobbying Congress to make it illegal for Americans to buy and import those same drugs from other countries is acting against the people.  As fgialc notes, government should act in opposition to that.

 
Rich Conway said:
The amount they pay in taxes and the amount of profit they make aren't necessarily acting against the people.

However, charging Americans ten times as much for drugs as other countries pay (for the exact same drugs) is acting against the people.  Lobbying Congress to make it illegal for Americans to buy and import those same drugs from other countries is acting against the people.  As fgialc notes, government should act in opposition to that.
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It is if they are proactively avoiding paying taxes by not repatriating their profits.  If you or I do this we get our passports revoked and charged with evasion on re-entry.

 
There is something very BS about allowing corporations to benefit from all the good that comes from being a US corporation and then depriving the US, including We The People, of the fruits we are supposed to receive from the US corporations as part of the quid pro quo. 

You want to hide all your money in Ireland?  Maybe you should just be an Irish corporation then. 

:shrug:  

 
Otis said:
There is something very BS about allowing corporations to benefit from all the good that comes from being a US corporation and then depriving the US, including We The People, of the fruits we are supposed to receive from the US corporations as part of the quid pro quo. 

You want to hide all your money in Ireland?  Maybe you should just be an Irish corporation then. 

:shrug:  
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Corporations have a fiduciary responsibility to their shareholders.  They are legally obligated to maximize shareholder return within the confines of the law.  

 
Sinn Fein said:
And therein lies one of the problems, and the solution...
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So you propose taking away a corporation's duty to its shareholders? If so, that is the difference between someone who supports Bernie and someone who doesn't.  Very interested to hear how you'd handle the ensuing massive selloff in the capital markets and the depression that would follow.  Your explanation to the millions of displaced workers would also be one to watch.

 
chet said:
So you propose taking away a corporation's duty to its shareholders? If so, that is the difference between someone who supports Bernie and someone who doesn't.  Very interested to hear how you'd handle the ensuing massive selloff in the capital markets and the depression that would follow.  Your explanation to the millions of displaced workers would also be one to watch.
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I don't want to speak for Sinn, but I think he was talking about the "within the confines of the law" part of your sentence.

 
chet said:
So you propose taking away a corporation's duty to its shareholders? If so, that is the difference between someone who supports Bernie and someone who doesn't.  Very interested to hear how you'd handle the ensuing massive selloff in the capital markets and the depression that would follow.  Your explanation to the millions of displaced workers would also be one to watch.
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:whoosh:

 


cstu said:
Corporations have a fiduciary responsibility to their shareholders.  They are legally obligated to maximize shareholder return within the confines of the law.  
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A far less controversial way of dealing with drug prices is to go single payer

 
fatguyinalittlecoat said:
I don't want to speak for Sinn, but I think he was talking about the "within the confines of the law" part of your sentence.
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Yes - through policy, laws and regulations, we encourage building shareholder value.  We need to look at that more closely to determine if that is the best overall policy, or if there are ways to blend shareholder value with labor value - higher wages - and/or general welfare value - higher taxes - to pay for public goods/services like infrastructure upgrades, higher speed internet access for everyone, education, etc.

The reason why we value shareholder value is because most of the laws, tax codes, regulations, etc, are written and paid for by large shareholders.  Its time we gave a voice to others when deciding policy. 

 
chet said:
Corporations have a fiduciary responsibility to their shareholders.  They are legally obligated to maximize shareholder return within the confines of the law.  
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Right.  I'm not criticizing the corporations, but the Congress that has, at the urging of those corporations, enacted laws that incentivize this corporate behavior.  That's not a good idea for anyone here other than the corporations.

 
renesauz said:
humpback said:
I agree with the stuff about buying influence and pharmaceutical prices, but you (and/or whoever wrote the petition) don't seem to have a great grasp on the business side of things.  For starters, that number is revenues, which is very different from profits.  Also, they will pay "our" taxes on the products they sell here, but now they won't have to also pay our high rates on the profits from the products they sell around the world.  We're one of the few countries that uses a worldwide system of taxation, and that combined with our very high corporate tax rates is what is driving these inversions.  

There are two basic paths to change that- we can try and shame them to death and pass more tariffs/laws/restrictions on what they can and can not do, or we can finally reform the tax code to be more competitive in the global marketplace, which will make it more attractive for companies to stay, grow, and move to the US.
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Fair enough. True profits are not usually stated as a round number, but according to Nasdaq http://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/pfe/stock-report, they are clearing around 3 billion a qtr before taxes. That's including expenses like marketing and bloated upper executive salaries, as well as whatever else Pfizer decided to purchase or invest elsewhere.

This site, http://www.wikinvest.com/stock/Pfizer_%28PFE%29/Data/Gross_Profit

claims that they made about 40 billion in gross profits last year.

Phizer claims profits of about 2 bucks a share for the year...and according to the NASDAQ link there are about 4.5 BILLION shares out there. About 10 billion in profits they actually claimed.

Lot of hocus pocus in corporate accounting, but pretty obvious the profits are in the multi-billions.
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I'm certainly not saying anyone should feel bad for them, just pointing out the obvious error.  There is a very real (and large) difference between sales, gross profits, and net profits, and it seems many either don't realize that, or they purposely misrepresent the numbers to fit an agenda (I'm not sure which is worse).

In any event, my main point is, how do we change it?  I'd argue that removing the incentives to engage in these activities would make more sense and be more effective than vilifying corporations and trying to legislate them to stop doing what is in their best interest.

 
humpback said:
There is a very real (and large) difference between sales, gross profits, and net profits, and it seems many either don't realize that, or they purposely misrepresent the numbers to fit an agenda (I'm not sure which is worse).

In any event, my main point is, how do we change it?  I'd argue that removing the incentives to engage in these activities would make more sense and be more effective than vilifying corporations and trying to legislate them to stop doing what is in their best interest.
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I think the distinction between those numbers is understood, it just seems like the OP wasn't able to find net profit numbers, so they're approaching it from different directions as surrogates. Not accurate, but I don't think it was intended to be manipulative either.

As for the latter, if corporations want to take advantage of the stability, infrastructure and markets in the U.S. then they need to pay an appropriate amount of taxes for operating within this country. If they don't, eventually the infrastructure will wear out, the markets will dry up because all the wealth has been sucked out of the people they're trying to sell to, which will lead to instability in the country. Less loopholes would be a great start.

 
Another vote for Bernie. The ladies said the turnout was high for a primary but it was hard to say right now how big it would be.

 
Gr00vus said:
I think the distinction between those numbers is understood, it just seems like the OP wasn't able to find net profit numbers, so they're approaching it from different directions as surrogates. Not accurate, but I don't think it was intended to be manipulative either.

As for the latter, if corporations want to take advantage of the stability, infrastructure and markets in the U.S. then they need to pay an appropriate amount of taxes for operating within this country. If they don't, eventually the infrastructure will wear out, the markets will dry up because all the wealth has been sucked out of the people they're trying to sell to, which will lead to instability in the country. Less loopholes would be a great start.
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Yeah I'm not buying the "it's hard to find" excuse.  It's just as easy to find as revenues- every income statement has those numbers on there as well, you just have to look at a different line.  People who do this either don't understand the difference or they want to be misleading.

I tend to agree with the last paragraph, but what do you think is "an appropriate amount" of taxes?  We have the highest corporate tax rate in the world, and are one of the very few countries that still uses the worldwide model of taxation (none of the largest economies do).  If we were more in line with the rest of the world, most of this problem goes away.

 
Today is such a huge day, if Bernie could somehow pull off the trifecta and win OH, IL & MO it would be huge.  I was just reading an article on 538 that showed Bernie is favored in 7 of the next 8 contests.  The Clinton folks can continue to talk about delegate totals but if Bernie wins 3 out of 5 states today and 7 out of the next 8 it is horrible optics for the Clinton campaign regardless of what the delegate count shakes out to at the end of those votes.

 
Baloney Sandwich said:
Today is such a huge day, if Bernie could somehow pull off the trifecta and win OH, IL & MO it would be huge.  I was just reading an article on 538 that showed Bernie is favored in 7 of the next 8 contests.  The Clinton folks can continue to talk about delegate totals but if Bernie wins 3 out of 5 states today and 7 out of the next 8 it is horrible optics for the Clinton campaign regardless of what the delegate count shakes out to at the end of those votes.
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Losing any of these states today by a landslide would be very un-good no matter the optics.

 
So Bernie folks, what are your predictions?

Hilary with big wins in NC and FL

I think Bernie takes Missouri and Illinois (where the Rahm stuff was great).

Not feeling it in Ohio, though. I don't think free trade plays as big there as it did in Michigan, and southern Ohio is practically the deep south, where Hillary has been running so strong. I'll say she takes Ohio 52-47.

 
The_Man said:
So Bernie folks, what are your predictions?

Hilary with big wins in NC and FL

I think Bernie takes Missouri and Illinois (where the Rahm stuff was great).

Not feeling it in Ohio, though. I don't think free trade plays as big there as it did in Michigan, and southern Ohio is practically the deep south, where Hillary has been running so strong. I'll say she takes Ohio 52-47.
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I haven't followed the details but apparently 17 year olds can vote in Ohio. Probably not a huge number of votes there but a small bump for Bernie.

 
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