Monday, March 1, 2010

Random Incoherent Ranting

Back in late 2008, when Wall Street was collapsing under the weight of its own greed and incompetence, among the corporations who went whimpering to the government tin cup in hand was Citibank. According to reports they received hundreds of billions of our tax dollars to bail them out of the self-created mess.

Fast forward to 2010: I receive a letter in the mail informing me I am to be charged an annual $60 fee for the privilege of having their credit card in my wallet whether I use it or not. Leanne and I decided that was bullshit and resolved to cancel our account with Citibank.

We then called the customer support number for Citibank to cancel the credit card and were greeted on the phone by a man with a thick Indian accent who insisted his name was “Steve”. (Yeah… right.)

And that’s another thing that really gets me. Conservatives generally argue for tax cuts for corporations on the grounds that doing so will allow them to hire more workers. That may have been true at one time, but now any service and manufacturing jobs created by additional tax cuts would almost certainly go to Asia. Personally, I think any company that outsources their jobs overseas should be taxed at a 90% rate. If they hire American workers, their taxes would then be decreased considerably. Not that anybody in power is listening.

Even a cursory look at economic history shows a nation's prosperity is closely tied to its manufacturing base. It seems that many corporations are screwing America in the name of short-term profits and are enriching other nations in the process. Corporations that outsource are, in my opinion, committing economic treason. Am I the only one who feels this way?

Things have got to change soon or they're going to get ugly. The American people are usually patient, but that patience isn’t infinite. The status quo should not – indeed I think it cannot – last. The next few years could get interesting.

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