How About Taxpayer Appreciation Day?
April 15 is around the corner.
Could the corporate executives of this country please stand up and show a little appreciation?
To the taxpayers who subsidize them? And bail them out?
How about the $30 billion bailout of reckless Bear Stearns as the most recent and egregious example?
I’m going to go out on a limb here and suggest that April 15th of each year be designated Taxpayer Appreciation Day, a day when corporations receiving taxpayer subsidies, bailouts, handouts and other forms of corporate welfare can express their thanks to the citizens who provide them.
Taxpayer dollars have often funded discoveries made by NASA, the Department of Defense, and the National Institutes of Health and other federal agencies.
In many instances the rights to those discoveries were later given away to companies that brag about them as though they were the fruits of their own investments.
Taxpayer dollars have played a major role in the growth of the aviation and aerospace, biotechnology, computer, pharmaceutical, and telecommunications industries - to name only a few.
Though corporate America insists it must file yearly income taxes just like everyone else, it is responsible for a sharply decreasing portion of federal tax dollars - despite record profits.
Corporate tax contributions to the federal budget have been steadily declining for fifty years, while the major burden falls on the back of the average taxpayer.
Clearly corporations that believe they are self-reliant are often, in fact, dependent on taxpayer funds to maintain their financial viability.
The least they could do is thank us.
To the employee taxpayers in these giant corporations - make your bosses toast you before leaving for home on April 15.
Which is why we need something like Taxpayer Appreciation Day - if only for the irony of it all, if only to galvanize our sense of just plain wrong.
If you agree with the Nader/Gonzalez platform of going after the corporate welfare kings and launching a campaign for a national Taxpayer Appreciation Day, please donate now to our campaign.
Thank you for your ongoing and generous support.
Onward
Ralph Nader
PS We invite your comments to the blog.
