Why reward bad corporate behavior with more tax breaks?

Here’s a question for our Trumpestuous President and his Trumpeteers in Congress: “Why are you even considering giving more tax breaks to corporate giants?”

First, the self-serving corporate class is wallowing in wealth, greedily hoarding it in offshore tax shelters and stock-buyback schemes, refusing to invest it to benefit the vast majority of people they’ve been knocking down and holding down.

Second, you shouldn’t give away our public treasury when our nation has a budget deficit and faces huge needs for public investment – from our deteriorating infrastructure to our disappearing middle class.

Third, our people’s sense of equality and social unity has been severely fractured by 30 years of gross wealth inequality, so intentionally widening the wealth gap is criminally stupid… and dangerous.

Fourth, why would you think over-paid, over-pampered CEOs deserve more pampering? They’ve become imperious potentates who feel entitled to gouge, cheat, defraud, lie, and otherwise run over us commoners.

Consider Jeff Immelt, the recently retired imperious CEO of General Electric. Not only was he a frequent flyer on GE’s corporate jets, but we now learn that he often took two jets at once! One carried him, while a second jet, called a “chase plane,” followed right behind him. Number Two Jet carried no passengers or equipment, it was just a spare in case his royal highness needed it for… well for what? GE offers no reasonable answer, for there isn’t one. Immelt says he never used the spare, but there it was tagging along behind him, costing GE shareholders thousands of dollars for every hour it flew.

This wasteful extravagance cost you and me, too, for GE got a tax deduction for every flight Jeff’s chase plane made. Why would Trump & Company reward such outrageous corporate ripoffs with more tax breaks?

***

Reposted from The Hightower Lowdown