US corporate taxes paid verses Federal support for 50 largest corporations

Presented without much comment:

From Oxfam’s latest report “Broken At The Top”

The gap between rich and poor is reaching new extremes. The richest 1% have accumulated more wealth than the rest of the world put together. Meanwhile, the wealth owned by the bottom half of humanity has fallen by a trillion dollars in the past five years. Just 62 individuals now have the same wealth as 3.6 billion people – half of humanity.

This figure is down from 388 individuals as recently as 2010. These dramatic statistics are just the latest evidence that today we live in a world with dangerous and growing levels of inequality.

This inequality is fueled by an economic and political system that benefits the rich and powerful at expense of the rest, causing the gains of economic growth over the last several decades to go disproportionately to the already wealthy. Among the most damning examples of this rigged system is the way large, profitable companies use offshore tax havens, and other aggressive and secretive methods, to dramatically lower their corporate tax rates in the United States and developing countries alike. This practice is called “tax avoidance” or “tax dodging.” Ironically, these same companies, which retain a multibillion dollar army of lobbyists to influence federal policy, are among the largest beneficiaries of taxpayer funded support.

Read Oxfam’s full report Broken at the Top HERE

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