Obama Seeks to Tax Multinational Corporations
Huey Long did a very similar thing to Obama in Louisiana when he became governor. He passed a 25cent per barrel tax on all oil refined in Louisiana when Standard Oil of New Jersey had huge investments in oil refineries in Louisiana. It created a gargantuan influx of revenue into the state that Huey used to build roads, bridges, the first charity hospital system of any state in the nation and, also a first in the nation, gave free school books to every student at every public school in the state, not to mention built LSU into a major University. The point is, government can pass taxes on business, get a lot of money and do a lot of good.
The economy is now a global economy and multinational corporations are not stuck in any particular political state. If they can’t get what they want from a political state they can move their operations elsewhere. Multinational corporations are really more powerful than most governments and the current organization of the world is numerous “sovereign” states with limited jurisdictional power inadequate to the task of regulating and taxing multinational corporations, who can just play one state off the other (sort of like our country does the countries in the middle east on a foreign policy level) because of their transnational existence they can avoid effective regulation and taxation by any one state or group of states.
Obama wants to change this situation and exert the power of the government to tax and regulate multinational corporations. This is what all the hooplah over “tax havens” at the recent meeting of the G-12 was all about. If government, both ours and other governments, can tax Exxon-Mobile and all the other behemoths that make up the Leviathan of transnational business, government will will get a shit load of money and can do a shit load of good if the political Will exists to do good after they get the money coming into the treasury. If this cannot be done on a global level, it will not happen at all.
The multinationals will not take it lying down because it is the secret of their power, both economic and political. Obama is picking a fight with the biggest most powerful animal on the planet.