I think the stations that do best with syndicated shows tend to have at least a local morning show.
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Where is the Center
- Thread starter Goat Rodeo Cowboy
- Start date
I think the stations that do best with syndicated shows tend to have at least a local morning show.
You can try to minimize it any way you want. it's still around $100 billion.
In fairness to Flybynight, $100 billion is about one seventh of the US military budget. It's a significant chunk of money.
On the other hand, if that $100 billion figure is accurate, it's about the same as what the US pays out to people in the form of earned income credits and child tax credits every year (about $110 billion), and not much more than the mortgage deduction, which costs the government about $80 billion a year according to the NY Times.
As for corporate taxes -- which were mentioned earlier here -- the rates are higher than many other countries, but because of deductions and credits many of the biggest corporations in the US pay 1% or less in income taxes. So, although the nominal rates are high, the effective rates are exceptionally low.
It was also mentioned here that the economy is much better than it was in 2008. For the top 10%, that is very true. For the bottom 90%, it's still abysmal. We have the lowest labor participation rate in history for US men. For women, it's the lowest since the 1970's. There was testimony in Congress by the Dept of Labor last year that we have 102 million unemployed working age Americans -- a very large number. Even NPR reported last month that the labor force is still dropping in numbers, and its not due to retirement, because retirement statistics are counted separately from the workforce.
And they may be right. In April, for example, the US added about 277,000 new jobs, which was hailed by some as a triumph. Meanwhile, that same month there was an average of 300,000 initial jobless claims every week. Unless I"m not understanding those statistics properly, that appears to be a net loss, not a net gain.
Although the public sector workforce has taken a bit hit, there is a reason for that. Much of the public sector is state and local, supported by state sales and income taxes. Across the country those revenues are down, because the private sector is still down, and half of the new jobs created are low wage or part time. To get more public sector hiring, the private sector needs to be hiring also. And it's just not happening.
To relate this to radio: I don't hear these stats bandied about much, even on conservative talk radio. Sometimes the talk hosts mention some of them, but I hear more talk about the economy on Bloomberg or business/money talk shows, than conservative talk shows. Conservative talk hosts seem to concentrate more on the hot button issues, instead of talking about the economy. Maybe it's because talking about the economy isn't exciting enough, or because stats are boring.
Now and then the Wall St. Journal radio news show mentions some of them; I did hear some of them mentioned once on NPR, but because I don't listen to NPR much I don't know how deeply they are covered. The local newspaper either buries them at the bottom of stories on the business page, or doesn't mention them at all. You'd think it was morning in America the way some of the news media reports on the economy.
I realise you can't have it all. News media people are only human. But I get the feeling that they are just not getting the entire picture out to the American public.
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I suspect that the biggest problem is that everyone blames (or credits) the President, yet Congress holds the real power.
Depends on the market, but sports, ethnic, or religion are obvious choices.
Well,not exactly...Apple is "officially" headquartered in Ireland and pays zero US taxes. But I'm sure they are in line for all the corporate handouts they can get their lunch hooks on.
Not quite true either... Apple paid at over a 30% rate on its US profits. What is quasi-sheltered is the profit from non-domestic operations. Under current US tax laws, that money would be taxed again if brought to the US... since the US is one of very few nations that taxes foreign profits that have already been taxed in the country where those profits originated.
And the billions distributed in the special dividend had been taxed as they were paid from the US (where non-US resident shareholders have US taxes deducted no matter what).
With a GDP of nearly $14 trillion, this is not a significant number in the US economy.
It is 1/175th of the national debt.
Considering the debt this country is in, I'd say adding another $100 billion to it for corporate welfare is obscene.
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They may be "obvious", but they are already over represented and struggling themselves to stay afloat. How many sports stations can survive in one market?
Please stop the name calling and focus on the original subject.
Depends on the market. There's no shortage of content, no shortage of interest, and lots of ways to attract advertising without negativity.
Many of the "corporate welfare" items are related to government initiated programs, such as subsidies for ethanol and other green energy projects. Even the oil depletion allowances contemplate the declining value of a developed asset. And some of the "welfare" programs were developed to keep jobs in the USA in an era of globalization.
Nearly all those programs were designed to produce a quid pro quo based on reduced corporate taxes which would, in turn, promote employment which is taxed at an even higher rate. Like most Federal programs, they work better on paper than in practice.
And it still leaves the issues that, even with the very limited "corporate welfare" deductions, US corporations pay a much higher tax on profits than do companies operating in other developed and semi-developed economies. And we tax the money a second time when it is distributed to shareholders.
Of course the companies getting corporate welfare like corn subsidies aren't paying taxes anyway. The president's favorite evil corporation, GE, has actually paid a negative tax rate a few times.
How about we close the loopholes and lower the rates? The only people being harmed right now by corporate tax rates being so high are the medium sized companies that can't buy the White House and Congress.
Of course that would piss off a lot of people on the gravy train and cost politicians in both parties jobs, so it'll never happen.
How about we close the loopholes and lower the rates? The only people being harmed right now by corporate tax rates being so high are the medium sized companies that can't buy the White House and Congress.
Of course that would piss off a lot of people on the gravy train and cost politicians in both parties jobs, so it'll never happen.
And if you look at GE, you can see that they had extreme "damage" to a major division, GE Capital, during the recession. This not only created operating losses, but also triggered impairment charges where assets are revalued at their current levels.
In radio, we have seen nearly every publicly traded company take impairment charges on stations. Most come from the declining value of AM properties, but others come from the current valuations of FMs that were bought in the 1996-2005 peak of the market.
I think this is something of a first. To watch you and TheBigA have differing opinions on something like this is amazing. However, at the end of the day, as usual, when everyone agrees on the definitions for terms we are using, I think the two of you are still singing in the same choir.
But the tension between the points the two of you are making is an excellent illustration of how Talk Radio has dumbed-down-our-nation and has sensitized us to evaluate the forest by looking ONLY at the health of our own favorite trees while ignoring the health of trees standing next to our own trees.
One cannot evaluate the taxes of doing business in a given country or continent by looking only at ONE form of taxation. In addition to the 'corporate income tax' of a given country, what are the other taxes paid by companies in each country. In this country corporations also pay Social Security and other taxes and mandatory fees like the cost of employee on-the-job injuries. What do corporations in other countries pay in similar costs. Four decades ago I got into a tax-law fight which taught me something about international differences. The U.S. has had a very strong petroleum lobby and they have been tough-as-nails to see to it that petroleum is taxed ONLY to pay for roads, while European countries at that time were adding a whole collection of taxes on petroleum: help pay for teacher's retirement with a tax on gasoline. Help pay for city parks with a tax on gasoline. and on and on and on.
You never hear about that on Talk Radio.
Much of the "Western Industrial" family of nations have a medical system that in this country we just sneer and write-off as "Socialized Medicine". So who pays what kind of tax in Sweden or England or Italy to pay for medical care? Is it all paid by a personal income tax, or is it paid for by a corporate tax that is separate from a corporate income tax.
You never hear about that on Talk Radio.
Do other countries of the world make a big distinction between the taxation of PROFITS as compared to the taxation of CAPITAL GAINS. In this country we do. In this country much of the corporate world could care less about Corporate Income Tax. They operate in such a way as to minimize REPORTABLE taxable income while structuring the business to that when they merge with other corporations, they find ways to reap the stored up, untaxed profits as a capital gain. What do other countries around the world do in this area of tax avoidance?
You never hear about that on Talk Radio.
Those of us who have our retirement savings invested in various forms of stock market funds may be getting ripped off because the companies we are invested in are short changing us through such tax maneuvers, while the billionaires of the world are making out like bandits on "The Texas Two-Step" of corporate taxation.
You never hear about that on Talk Radio.
How Good are things right now? How Bad are things right now?
If you read through the 300 plus entries in this topic, there are a significant number of posts where the poster was less interested in discussion how radio works, and what the attitudes of people are and what the political leanings of listeners might be, but simply wanted to make a grand political statement on the order of just had bad things are in this country.
Some of us need to slow down and look around us. It was announced last Friday that with 138.4 million Americans currently employed, that is the highest number EVER! And the Unemployment rate is down to 6.3%. When you pull up the table cloth to see what is hiding under there, you come to realize that the weakness in that employment number is that the population of employable people has risen by about SEVEN MILLION during the last 6 to 8 years, so we still hear reports of a lot of hurting people. Part of that is immigration. Part of that is the population bulge the Baby Boomer generation.
Mrs. Cowboy ran up a $20,000 emergency room visit a couple of weeks ago, so today we went for a medical check-up by the doctor. And here is what I saw in my little country seat town of 6,000 people: A recently vacated Kroger store will soon open as a JoAnn Fabrics. We drove past the new Honda dealership opened in the last year. We drove by the new COSTCO which will open by the end of Summer. We drove by the new Medical Office Building on the hospital campus which will be opening sometime this Summer. This will be M-O-B number four on a hospital campus that is only 12 or 13 years old and the hospital has been expanded three times since being built. We drove by the new Panera that just opened this year. We drove by the new 5 story court house now under construction along with the new jail across the street. And I am seeing truckloads of lumber going to residential construction sites for the first time in 6 to eight years.
But if I listen to Talk Radio, and read a number of posts in this thread, the economy is flat on it's back and is nearing death.
Something does not compute. One of the ways I made a living in recent years is my ability to reach into the computer of a business, pull out the data and put it into my own database and start sorting and organizing. I have this ability to seemingly just stumble into data patterns that no one ever spotted before. There were trends and facts hiding in plain sight. But management only had the standard formatted reports designed by some programmer 10 or 15 years ago who was told to create tax records and the ability to pay bills when due and print the payroll or payday. Colorful trends in the sloshing flow of data were hidden away until I lined them up like a group of high school bands getting ready for the News Years Day Parade.
About the only thing you hear that is colorful and sloshing on Talk Radio today sounds and smells like a toilet doing it's job.
I guess the listeners who COULD make up the middle of the political spectrum do not get any kind of orgasm from listening to a toilet flush.
If you read through the 300 plus entries in this topic, there are a significant number of posts where the poster was less interested in discussion how radio works, and what the attitudes of people are and what the political leanings of listeners might be, but simply wanted to make a grand political statement on the order of just had bad things are in this country.
Some of us need to slow down and look around us. It was announced last Friday that with 138.4 million Americans currently employed, that is the highest number EVER! And the Unemployment rate is down to 6.3%. When you pull up the table cloth to see what is hiding under there, you come to realize that the weakness in that employment number is that the population of employable people has risen by about SEVEN MILLION during the last 6 to 8 years, so we still hear reports of a lot of hurting people. Part of that is immigration. Part of that is the population bulge the Baby Boomer generation.
Mrs. Cowboy ran up a $20,000 emergency room visit a couple of weeks ago, so today we went for a medical check-up by the doctor. And here is what I saw in my little country seat town of 6,000 people: A recently vacated Kroger store will soon open as a JoAnn Fabrics. We drove past the new Honda dealership opened in the last year. We drove by the new COSTCO which will open by the end of Summer. We drove by the new Medical Office Building on the hospital campus which will be opening sometime this Summer. This will be M-O-B number four on a hospital campus that is only 12 or 13 years old and the hospital has been expanded three times since being built. We drove by the new Panera that just opened this year. We drove by the new 5 story court house now under construction along with the new jail across the street. And I am seeing truckloads of lumber going to residential construction sites for the first time in 6 to eight years.
But if I listen to Talk Radio, and read a number of posts in this thread, the economy is flat on it's back and is nearing death.
Something does not compute. One of the ways I made a living in recent years is my ability to reach into the computer of a business, pull out the data and put it into my own database and start sorting and organizing. I have this ability to seemingly just stumble into data patterns that no one ever spotted before. There were trends and facts hiding in plain sight. But management only had the standard formatted reports designed by some programmer 10 or 15 years ago who was told to create tax records and the ability to pay bills when due and print the payroll or payday. Colorful trends in the sloshing flow of data were hidden away until I lined them up like a group of high school bands getting ready for the News Years Day Parade.
About the only thing you hear that is colorful and sloshing on Talk Radio today sounds and smells like a toilet doing it's job.
I guess the listeners who COULD make up the middle of the political spectrum do not get any kind of orgasm from listening to a toilet flush.
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I hope that Mrs. Cowboy is doing well. Medical care is expensive. I'm fortunate. I'm retired and I have great medical insurance from my former employer.
I think it was Rush who said, "I am equal time."
That's the mentality of someone who has no problem incurring debt. Very telling.
The more you owe, the more egregious your excessive spending is. Reckless attitude about debt.
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