Your argument would work, except for the fact that (aside from the current issue of tax evasion) corporate taxes affect all companies in a given market fairly uniformly. This provides a mechanism for all prices to creep up, and the market actually does bear a higher price when there is no alternative, to a point. This absolutely does happen. And the reverse is true as well: if the corporate tax were set to zero, many companies would lower the price of their products overnight, and the rest would be forced to follow, or lose business.

Of course as other posters have pointed out, the tax is not paid totally by the consumer, but rather by a combination of consumer and investor. It doesn't change the fact that no matter how you figure it, corporate taxes end up being paid by individuals, whether consumers or investors. And this doesn't even consider the enormous cost and burden of complying with a tax code that's as complex as ours (67,000 pages and counting!).

My point is that it's silly to argue for higher corporate taxes, because however you figure it, it increases the tax burden on individuals, except it's hidden so they don't even realize they're being taxed - and that's not a good thing.

I agree with everything you said. I was being overly simplistic for the sake of brevity. In truth it's as you say: corporate taxes are paid in part by the customers, and in part by the shareholders. Either way, it's paid by individuals. I would argue that customers pay a significantly larger burden than shareholders (aside from the fact that these groups do overlap).

Also note those shareholders aren't the millionaires you make them out to be. They're ordinary people, anyone with a retirement or pension fund, anyone with an investment of almost any kind. I'm a poor graduate student and I own shares in several companies. I think for the average Fortune 500 company, millionaire execs own only about 2% of the shares.

I'm sure we do, somehow...

Of course it's simplistic, this is a Slashdot post, not a treatise on economics.

And they do. That's why higher corporate taxes put American businesses at a competitive disadvantage.

Of course, but, this current issue of tax shelters aside, corporate taxes affect businesses fairly uniformly across-the-board, so every product in the market is affected by price creep.

And technically I should be separating the issues of profits and profit margins to take into account the higher demand for products from companies that buck the trend and let their shareholders take the hit rather than their customers (or companies that flee to tax havens). And of course a huge issue is the global economy, in which we have foreign companies that have lower tax burdens competing against American companies, and are therefore generally able to price their products lower, or with higher profit margins.

So while my suggestion of a direct correlation between product prices and corporate taxes was over-simplified for the sake of brevity, it doesn't change the point I'm making, with which I think you agree: that one way or another, corporate taxes are paid by individuals - either the consumers or the investors.

That would be a much better solution, if your objective is to tax investors rather than consumers. From the perspective of liberty, it's better to tax individuals directly rather than through "hidden" taxes like corporate taxes, that way they are informed of the amount of tax they are actually paying, and can make better decisions about who to vote for and what government policies to support.

Sigh. I really didn't want to give a lesson in economics here, but... Who owns the corporation? As I said, a corporation does not pay taxes, because all its wealth is owned by the individual shareholders. The corporation is just a place-holder. So when a corporation is taxed, the money to pay for it comes from two possible sources: the wallets of the shareholders, or the wallets of the customers. Either way, the tax is paid by individual Americans. It just so happens that corporations roll the cost of taxes into the price of their products rather than reduce the wealth of their shareholders.

Here's a simple analogy. Everyone in your community decides to pool their money together to buy food in bulk and then distribute it evenly amongst each other. To do so they form a "company", put someone in charge of the operation, and hire people to buy the food and deliver it to everyone's front door. Then the government comes along and decides to tax your company. Who pays the tax?

In this very simple case, the shareholders and the customers are the same people: the members of your community. They pay the tax. The situation would be no different if the shareholders and customers were different groups of people; one or both groups would pay the tax.

You seem to have missed my entire point. Corporations do not pay taxes, at all! If we impose a 75% tax on every corporation and eliminate all loopholes and tax havens, corporations still won't pay a cent in taxes. All wealth is held by individuals. When a corporation is taxed, you and I pay that tax when we buy their products. I don't know how to make this more simple. If only they'd teach economics in school these days, maybe people wouldn't be so easily duped.

When you argue for higher taxes on corporations, you're actually arguing for higher taxes on yourself. Think about it for a few minutes. It may feel like social justice to raise taxes on a mega-corporation, but your emotions are wrong. No matter what they call it, the money always comes out of the same pocket: the individual American taxpayer.

Explain to me how corporations pay taxes. Please. You do realize that all private wealth is held by individuals, don't you? When a tax is levied on a corporation, it is paid by one of two groups of individuals: its shareholders, or its customers. Considering that a corporation's biggest responsibility is to generate wealth for its shareholders, who do you think ends up paying the taxes?

By going after these "corporate tax cheats", what Obama is really doing is raising taxes on the American public - the hidden taxes that are embedded in the price of everything we purchase. But it gets worse, because we live in a global economy: when the price of American-made goods are increased because of taxation, those goods become less competitive relative to goods produced overseas. Thus American companies suffer, go out of business, or move overseas taking their wealth with them.

Funny. Social programs account for 60% of the federal budget, while military spending accounts for 20%. The combined cost of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars from 2001-2008 accounted for 4% of federal spending. This is all from Wikipedia. Also note that if you read the Constitution, maintaining the military is one of the enumerated powers of the federal government, while providing social welfare programs is not.

I'll assume you are too. You know, attacking the poster rather than the merits of his argument and all.

A 37% increase in the concentration of a trace gas is still a small increase. A 4-degree mean temperature increase, given historic temperature trends and the amount of energy involved, is a large increase. You seem to be confusing percentages, which can be misleading, with absolute amounts, which are scientifically relevant. Yes, my field is mathematical.

You mean this data?

http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/Fig.D.lrg.gif

Or this one?

http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/Fig.C.lrg.gif

In my opinion, any evidence based on "global temperature" that includes data from more than just recent years should be viewed with scepticism, because our worldwide measurement and calculation techniques have changed dramatically, which likely skews the results in one direction or another. NASA presents data on mean global temperature extending from today back to 1880 as a single line graph with no error bars, which is ridiculous.

Instead, look at the temperature trends I linked to above, based only on direct measurements made in the United States since 1880, or "mean global temperature" using modern measurement techniques (since 1996). These datasets are, IMO, the only ones we can believe with any confidence. Is there a dramatic warming trend? The answer is as likely no as yes, or a resounding "we don't know".

Here's another interesting way to look at the data:

http://www.uoguelph.ca/~rmckitri/research/nvst.html

Mean global temperature versus number of measuring stations. In the 1990s the dramatic temperature increase coincides with the loss of thousands of Russian measuring stations when the Soviet Union collapsed. My point is that arriving at a "mean global temperature" is a very difficult calculation to make.

I'm a scientist too, and I judge theories based on merit, not popular opinion.

As a rule, scientific theories are not accepted by the scientific community until they have done two things: (1) explained known observations in a more simple or fundamental way than alternative theories, and (2) made a prediction about something that is currently unknown and that other theories don't predict, which is then confirmed by observation.

Global Warming theory has met neither of those requirements. The main statement of Global Warming is something like this: "small changes in the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere cause large changes in global temperature". Despite this theory, there is absolutely no evidence that a change in CO2 has ever caused the temperature to change, over the entire billions-years history of the planet. So GW theory doesn't explain past observations.

It doesn't explain current observations either: CO2 concentration has steadily increased over the past 100 years, while temperatures have gone up, then down, then up again, then down again (as they are currently). There is no dramatic warming trend as predicted by GW theory.

Finally, GW has not made any unique predictions that have later been confirmed as true. It predicted more and bigger hurricanes; that hasn't happened. It predicted significant temperature increases; that hasn't happened. In fact, the theory seems totally based on computer models that have failed to make a single correct prediction about the climate ever since I first started following the issue, in 1998.

To summarize, GW theory does not meet the standards of scientific acceptance, not by a long shot.

The problem with earmarks isn't their monetary value - although 2% was still a huge amount of money. The problem is that earmarks are a tool for corruption. Saying we shouldn't reject a bill that contains 8,000 earmarks is like saying we shouldn't reject a bill that contains 8,000 bribes.

If you've reached the point in your life where you've been elected to public office, and you're still scoring 44% on a basic civics test, it's more likely that you really are "stupid", rather than simply "ignorant".

Does it really? This report begs to differ. Elected officials are actually dumber than the general public, at least when it comes to civic literacy: Elected Officials Score Lower than the General Public In Civic Literacy Test