There is a current of opinion going around that says tax to death and otherwise emasculate the greedy damn corporations of this Country. Well, that’s a wonderful idea but before we take that plunge, let’s look at the issue from a slightly different perspective. Here’s a portion of an article in today’s NWI The Times which, in large part, reports the findings of a professor of economics at Indiana University Northwest. For those of you not from the Region, ArcelorMittal is the world’s largest steel producer. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ArcelorMittal It operates the former Inland Steel, Republic Steel, Acme Steel and Bethlehem Steel plants here in northwest Indiana. To quote from the article – “Employees are expensive. ArcelorMittal USA estimates its average worker earned $72.53 per hour, from wages, benefits and social insurance programs. Thats more than twice as much as the $34.18 per hour the average manufacturing worker made last year. The steelmaker, based in Luxembourg internationally and Chicago in the United States, spent $162,134 on each workers salary, benefits and pension last year, a 12 percent increase over the cost in 2008. Labor is far and away the biggest cost ArcelorMittal USA has, followed by power, gas and utilities. The biggest areas for improvement remain labor costs and retiree obligations, the company noted in the annual report. ArcelorMittal USAs labor costs account for 39 percent of the total conversion cost of steel, or the cost to transform raw materials into finished steel products, minus the cost of raw materials. The company, which made 16.2 million tons of steel last year, employs around 18,000 workers nationally, including around 12,000 in Northwest Indiana. Its overall employee costs added up to $1.98 billion in 2013.†nwitimes/business/local/steel-jobs-have-plummeted-by-a-third-since/article_0d464389-7561-51d9-aa95-739747088c74.html The story reports that there are now 17,900 steel jobs here in NWI, 91,000 in the Country. Those numbers tell me that if the rest of the steel corporations have comparable employee costs, then, together, they pay out $13,728,478,400.00 into this Country’s economy by paying out the various components of the average employee cost. That’s 13 billion Dollars a year, folks. And that cost component doesn’t even include the real estate taxes those companies pay into local economies or the income taxes they pay into the federal and state governments. Perhaps we should be a bit more than a bit skeptical of those who decry these beasts, the corporations, the detractors who portray these corporations as the very essence of evil personified and the root of all that is bad in this great Nation. Like it or not, those corporations are a good part of the economic engine that drives the train that is the economy of the United States of America. Thats the fact or the matter, folks.
Posted on: Sun, 27 Jul 2014 12:42:50 +0000
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