Still Sliding

An interesting post from "Financial Armageddon" -- please follow link to original
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Still Sliding

Although I've written a number of posts over the past five years chronicling America's relentless slide from leader of the free world to leading banana republic -- see here, here, here, here, here, here, and here -- it isn't hard to find fresh material with each passing day.

For example, as is typical of those failed Latin American republics we keep trying to emulate, the rich keep finding ways to get richer --

"Many Companies Pay No Income Taxes, Study Finds" (CNNMoney)

The corporate tax rate is 35%. But an examination of 280 of the nation's largest corporations suggests that many aren't paying anything close to that.

The real tax rate paid by a slew of major corporations averages closer to 18.5%, according to a study released Thursday by two liberal tax research groups.

The report issued by Citizens for Tax Justice and the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy paints the corporate tax code as wildly inefficient, filled with loopholes and subject to the influence of lobbyists who carve out special provisions for the companies they represent.

The study looked at 280 companies in the Fortune 500 that were profitable for all three years between 2008 and 2010.

The results: 111 companies paid effective tax rates of less than 17.5% over the three-year period; 98 paid a rate between 17.5% and 30%; and 71 paid more than 30%.

The average rate? 18.5%.

Some companies paid zero. And 30 actually owed less than nothing in income taxes over the three years.

How does that happen?

At the root of the problem is a system of inverted incentives that encourages corporations to lobby for special tax breaks -- and politicians to insert them into the tax code.

Corporations pay lobbyists. Lobbyists convince lawmakers to add tax breaks. Lawmakers modify the tax code. --

while everyone else keeps getting poorer --

"Extreme Poverty Spikes in U.S., Study Finds" (New York Times)

The number of people living in neighborhoods of extreme poverty grew substantially, by one third, over the past decade, according to a new report, erasing most of the gains from the 1990’s when concentrated poverty declined.

More than 10 percent of America’s poor now live in such neighborhoods, up from 9.1 percent in the beginning of the decade, an addition of more than 2 million people, according to the report by the Brookings Institution, an independent research group.

More than 10 percent of America’s poor now live in such neighborhoods, up from 9.1 percent in the beginning of the decade, an addition of more than 2 million people, according to the report by the Brookings Institution, an independent research group.

Extreme poverty — defined as areas where at least 40 percent of the population lives below the federal poverty line, which in 2010, was $22,300 for a family of four — is still below its 1990 level, when 14 percent of poor people lived in such areas.

The report analyzed Census Bureau income data from 2000 to 2009, the most recent year for which there is comprehensive data.

We're #1...?