Gary Markstein for June 12, 2024

That’s exactly what they do.

Pretty much sums it up. After all, the RW media will blame Biden for it.

Scummy tactics

This cartoon is at least two years old.

And, yeah, they — the patriotic multinational corporations — blame it on ‘inflation’ and MAGAts blame it on ’Biden’s policies’, which they cannot identify.

MAGAts are unable to discern ANY connection between higher prices and record corporate profits.

When Biden entered office the democrats in congress wanted to investigate this ‘’price fixing’’ but republicans wouldn’t hear of doing that. So, republicans have spent 3.5 years investigating democrats and found ’’nothing’’ but accusations and conspiracy theories. But they did manage to deflect attention away from their rich donors to allow them to make massive profits and avoid prosecution while they screwed everyone including their own supporters. But their supporters still cannot figure out why democrats say republicans’ supporters are stupid.

So should they cut profits to zero and pay no taxes? Will the government shrink in response to that scenario?

A rather stupid troll above thinks that corporations pay their proportionate share of taxes.

According to a study from the Government Accountability Office (GAO), 34 percent of large profitable corporations paid nothing in federal income taxes during the first year that the Trump tax cuts went into effect. Overall, the study found that large, profitable American corporations on average paid less than 9 percent of their profits in federal income taxes in 2018. Another study found that 109 large profitable corporations paid zero federal income tax in at least one of the last five years. For example, any American worker who paid a single dollar in income taxes, paid more than the below companies paid in corporate income taxes:

Amazon in 2017 and 2018Target in 2022AT&T in 2021Whirlpool in 2022T-Mobile in 2022 & 2018-2020Dish Network in 2022 & 2020

…and use some of those profits to propagandize through corporate media.

And they want to increase drilling for oil despite the fact that 1. the US is already the largest producer of oil in the world, producing record amounts, and 2. A glut of US oil will likely not affect the price much, especially at the pump because it’s a WORLD market.

Studies and earnings calls have shown this to be correct, and profits are set to soar even higher when SCOTUS blocks the government from enforcing any regulation, wiping out the EPA, FDA, and so forth. Coming in the next three weeks, likely on a Friday afternoon.

Don’t forget COVID supply chain issues. Or the latest one: “it’s on that ship in Baltimore harbor.”

Easy solution leftists, quit buying products & services from those evil corporations, many of which are run by Democrats. That will cut into their profits and make them suffer.

Any of you seen Zuckerberg‘s $300 million yacht recently? It’s powered by four large diesel engines, so much for climate change………

Time for a Wind Fall Profits Tax.

And I appreciate those dividends!

….of course, consumers could refuse to pay the higher prices and either do without or find alternatives – forcing corps to cut prices….but consumers don’t, they whine and keep buying (one of my stocks increased their dividend 15% :)

Right wing capitalism.

“Oh, and tell our lobbyists to push for tax-free repatriation of overseas profits, so we can do stock buy-backs and further juice the stock price and my executive compensation… then raise our prices and blame ‘over-regulation’.”

How to fix it? Cut taxes for corporations. It’s been working since the Reagan administration, and it will work again.

This cartoon should be on billboards nationwide.

Yep, they saw what the Saudis did in February of 2021 and followed their lead.

While employers squeeze workers and their unions for cuts to health care and other benefits, the CEOs of major corporations now make nearly 400 times more than their average employees, the largest employer-worker gap in our history. While 60 percent of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck– with three multi-billionaires owning more wealth than the bottom half.

If you are wondering why we continue to pay, by far, the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs, you should know that Pfizer has increased its profits by 42 percent so far this year to $26.4 billion.Gasoline? Profits of Exxon Mobil, Chevron, BP and Shell skyrocketed by 169 percent so far this year to $125 billion. They are spending over $73 billion not to reduce gas prices at the pump but to buy back their own stock and increase dividends to their wealthy stockholders.Groceries? Global food prices skyrocketed by over 33 percent last year and are expected to go up another 23 percent this year. Billionaires in the global food and agri-business industry became $382 billion richer during the pandemic.

Covid actually did cause problems that could be used as an excuse to raise prices. Once those prices were raised, they aren’t coming down unless people stop buying and there is a glut of product that has to be addressed by lowering them. Since people are going to buy groceries, meds and gas as long as they possibly can, the rich will get richer while the middle class gives up everything but these necessities. And the lower classes can’t even afford them.

Now, it is possible to regulate commerce to control prices, it is done in other countries, but that is the last thing the Republicans want to see happen. They fight against any regulation of capitalism, because it’s an American right to be free of government interference, except in your religious rights, your medical decisions, your choice of reading materials and your bedroom.

Not mentioned by any cartoonist, but I wonder about the MAGAt reaction of Trump’s solicitation of bribery by Oil Corporations: For a Billion dollar donation, he promises to make them even richer than they are now, by a significant amount.

I wonder if any MAGAt has even heard of this,

whether they believe it’s legal,

whether they believe it’s a perfectly normal and acceptable thing to solicit,

and if it’s just more evidence of how “smart” Their Messiah is.

Greed.

The invisible hand of the market is $0d0mi$ing us.

How much is enough? Infectious disease among certain classes. If you have more capital than a countries total gnp. What are you doing?

Gary, you’ve captured it perfectly! Brilliant ♥