It takes years of education to understand and explore complicated arithmetic. It also takes years of refining critical thinking to decipher how institutions use complicated such arithmetic. But once the numbers are simplified deductions are clear. Complex and near unfathomable situations become so easy to understand a caveman could do it or a five year old could understand.
Recognition of suspect situations is innate. Wrongdoing is immediately recognizable by even a five year old, just like in the commercial. Is representing my idea through a contemporary commercials proof that my thinking has been steered by corporate mediation? You bet it is. I get most of my news from corporate media operations. These corporate media operations largely make their money from other corporations' advertising dollars.
I like to stay informed on current events and get half my news from General Electric Company. GE owns (decent resource to see what media GE and other corporations own is: http://www.cjr.org/resources/index.php?c=ge) NBC and MSNBC after all. To be fair Comcast proposed to buy 51% of NBC which would hence make it the controlling owner and through complex arithmetic, surely provide both corporations advantages. GE is a global corporation and not only owns major media, but manufactures appliances for households and is involved in industries of health care, oil and gas, coal, water treatment, finance, aviation just to name a few. GE is responsible for the pollution of multiple areas and bodies of water, including the Hudson River. So many bodies of water in fact, that it is no wonder the company is involved in the water treatment industry, it arguably made the industry profitable.
At least the company is that: an institutional formation that provides goods and services and pays taxes towards the greater good. They do provide goods and services that is certain, and technically do pay taxes, only not to the U.S.A. In 2009 GE actually recorded a tax benefit of over one billion dollars from the IRS. Don't worry, GE is still profitable to investors, it's just that the company lost money in the U.S.A. and only earned money throughout the rest of the world. GE performed no extraordinary manipulation of the arithmetic. At least not so extraordinary that it is the only major corporation that did not pay taxes to the IRS in 2009. Exxon Mobil paid nothing in taxes in 2009, again using complex arithmetic to keep their gains.
The greatest conundrum and perhaps as sure a factor in life as death and taxes, is such institutional conning of systems to benefit the few. Institutions like GE and Exxon Mobil operate global corporate business machines with global impact on wealth and health. The fact they do not pay taxes is legalized robbery. The greatest conundrum is not how to pay my taxes, but how do they con us?
Throughout recorded time the most prodigious philosophers have noted the greatest conundrum, as well as prophets. A simple answer to how they got away with it is through using complex arithmetic, but of course it is more than that. It is oligarchical institutional collaboration involving the exclusion of the majority of individuals from the benefits, in this case tax benefits.
It is nearly impossible to understand the arithmetic and outright tricks such corporate institutions use to continue their cons. It requires harvesting information from news sources owned by corporations not necessarily interested solely in distribution of information. It requires looking at history and what great philosophers and thinkers thought and said. Deciphering how they can is a difficult procedure. But even a caveman can tell when something is wrong. Even a five year old knows when institutions and individuals are taking advantage of other individuals.
The hardest thing to understand in the world is the income tax.
~Albert Einstein
Certainty? Nothing in this world is certain except death and taxes.
~Benjamin Franklin
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
