Corporations Are People, Too. Actually, That’s All They Are.

Image by AFP/Getty Images via Daylife

The state of Oregon, where I used to live (and long to move back to), has suffered terribly in the recession. The unemployment rate stands at a catastrophic 11%, state revenues are plummeting, and The Decembrists have still not broken up. As a result of the dire state budget, Oregon voters will soon consider two measures aimed at raising taxes on the wealthy and on corporations.

Oregon’s leading “alternative” publication – and a redoubt of allegedly “liberal” politics (misanthropic environmental attitudes, higher taxes on the poor) – the Willamette Week, has editorialized in favor of the tax hikes. The venerable weekly, striking a rather conspiratorial tone, wrote in reference to the proposed corporate tax hikes that, “unsurprisingly, many of those most opposed to the new taxes face a bite from the new tax on sales.” Meanwhile, longtime Oregon political activist and former senate candidate Steve Novick (who is most famous for producing this ad) has sent an email to his supporters in favor of the higher taxes. Novick writes, “if it were not for Measures 66 and 67, we would be facing exactly the same scenario this time around. Don’t believe people who say ‘oh, they could just cut the fat.’ Ninety percent of the State general fund budget goes to education, health care and public safety. It pays for in-home care workers who help frail seniors get dressed, and make sure they don’t fall in the bathtub . . .Those are the services Measures 66 and 67 are designed to protect – by asking corporations and rich folks to pay a little more.”

As the above indicates, arguments like Novick’s and the Willamette Week’s setup up a bizarre and ultimately nonsensical dichotomy between “corporations” on one side, and “people” on the other. But what, pray tell, are these nefarious “corporations” made up of, if not people? Corporations are simply groups of people organized to produce a good or service and turn a profit. Higher taxes on “corporations” are, ultimately, higher taxes on what, in common parlance, are known as “people.” So let’s call these proposed measures exactly what they are: taxes on the rich, and taxes on people who work for companies. Adopting higher “corporate” taxes will cut into the profits and salaries of those who work for corporations, and likely stifle new hiring.

Oregon is one the five enlightened states that does not punish its most vulnerable citizens with a sales tax. Let’s hope the state doesn’t now decide to punish its citizens who happen to work in the private sector. It would give all new meaning to the term, “corporate crime.”