Uh oh: one of Rapid City’s corporate shills is getting off message!
Tom Johnson, president of Rapid City’s business-propaganda operation “Elevate Rapid City,” says President Joe Biden’s partial reversal of the reckless 2017 corporate tax cuts to invest in infrastructure not only isn’t that bad…
Tom Johnson, President of Elevate Rapid City, said that this marginal increase is a lot lower than some business owners feared.
”What businesses seem to want more than anything, is that they don’t want excessive taxes, and this 28% is not that,” Johnson said. “When we talk to businesses, they want to just make sure that they can plan accordingly so that you’re not getting policies that affect you that you can’t plan for” [Nick Nelson, “Corporate Tax Rate Would Marginally Increase Under Biden Infrastructure Proposal,” KOTA-TV, 2021.04.18].
…but could help South Dakota businesses:
Johnson said that while a low tax rate attracts a stronger workforce, investments in infrastructure can also boost the economy.
He said that growth in the economy is entirely dependent on how the federal government decides to use this extra money.
”Do you put those revenues into infrastructure? If you do that, the thinking is that infrastructure benefits lots of businesses,” Johnson said. “So, if you invest in workforce and infrastructure, then those investments should make more businesses more productive overall” [Nelson, 2021.04.18].
Did I hear that right? Low taxes aren’t everything? And some money might do more good if we invest it in public works instead of leaving it in corporate CEOs’ pockets?
Man, Elevate Rapid City was already pushing its luck joining other corporate boosters in challenging the Governor’s bullying orthodoxy on transgender sports policy. Add pushing back on her reckless Grover Norquistian fiscal policy, and Elevate Rapid City may find the Governor trying to withhold funding for the Rapid City Airport.
Sure wish Tom would get to work on Rapid’s COSTCO (and maybe a Hy-Vee too)!
F*ckin Koch Industries (and right wing SD propaganda bastards) and CC all want to go to the moon and mine it, of course b/c Homestake got tired and Indians stand up to Koch tar sands KXL pipelines.
That’s where RCCC’s heart is at.
So public funded , rah/rah, exciting hype of PBS’s NOVA (Geo Sowers, CO School of Mines propagandist) so that little people will “vote” for their new mine pollution aspirations. Excitedly.
Imagine a polluted full moonrise.
SCIENCE: mapping the moon searching for landing sites (read ore bodies!); perfecting earths polar and antarctic ice sheet drilling techniques.
Pump oil/gas and pollute the last wildernesses. Then move to the moon! But extractive slave labor would remain on the warming earth in crisis.
We are doing this for the billionaires and soon to be trillionaires. Their money is taking us for a ride with no return. Leaving earth with their extractive mess for the public to live with, die with and clean up after.
Search for life? B.S.
ATLAS mapping of the moon? Exploration?
B.S. Search for water ice. To sustain mining.
Rocketry is weapons research. Rocket fuel source: hydrogen from lunar ice too! Sowers: “Game changer.”
Crashing spent rocket stages (toxic junk) into the moon detects elements and minerals, and mapping is research all for ownership of extractive resources for unsustainable greed of the 1%;
and we taxpayers pay for their research;
and those miserable uneducated sob insurrectionists are their drivers, ditch diggers, etc. And why are robots being developed? To do what kills the little guys in Carhart and camouflage caps!
Any question why David Lust pushes the quiet secretive legislatively constructed billionaire’s trust industry on a street in Sioux Falls? No regulation!
NASA has become coopted by octogenarian billionaire Charles Koch, a propagandist not unlike Rupert Murdoch (Fox News).
The billionaires are essentially saying: “We become the space utility.” (read, monopoly).
Pence: “We shall return to the moon”, 2019. Big thinker! Not.
It is amazing, definitely a rhino. Real repubs always talk about our children’s debt whenever there’s a Democratic president.
Well…don’t kid yourself, there do exist Liberals in the Corporate World. In fact, many are very successful as they understand the consumer driven economy. Economic Development professionals have to be inclusive in their thinking, if they are going to be successful. Don’t confuse economic development with the usual Chamber of Commerce line of reasoning. Economic Development can, and should, be quite different.
This could also be thought of as a user fee rather than a tax. Infrastructure is a benefit to business. People must be able to get to places of employment and to businesses to purchase items. Utilities are essential to businesses even more than homes. Communication is also critical to businesses. Yes, infrastructure helps individuals, but mostly it helps them engage business either as an employee or customer.
The other tax that can use increase is on the rich. Capital gains exemption should disappear. Personal rates should be the same as Europe. The idea that tax rates on the rich affect the economy is false. A person making ten million after tax dollars per year finds it almost impossible to spend it. Spending a million is a challenge. The rest often goes to the Cayman Islands or other tax haven.
Note also the LeBron James probably increased his take home pay by $5 million from the Trump tax cuts. He did NOT hire twenty additional chauffeurs or fifteen additional maids and cooks. It went somewhere else.
The other point is that the best economy ever was the 1950’s with a marginal rate over 90% for incomes over $200,000. Taxes just don’t have the impact that politicians believe.
John F is spot on. Delighted he brought up the Ike-era 90% tax rate that stimulated the US economy.
Continuing the infrastructure consideration, zoom out more with Felix Zulauf. His relevant take-aways here include:
-First rate infrastructure is essential for leading robust economic activity.
-First rate educational infrastructure is essential for leading economic activity.
https://themarket.ch/meinung/felix-zulauf-the-new-cold-war-ld.4036?mc_cid=45e89898dc&mc_eid=52dc28df2c