You may have heard about this already, but there is a movement called US UnCut that I think we should all support. We have many U.S. corporations that are profiting in the billions and paying little to no income tax.

They will tell you that if you tax them, they will stop bringing jobs to America. They will be forced to go to friendlier countries.

Then we must stop buying from them.  We must force them to pay their share.

My dear readers, we have to stop buying into this Ayn Rand inspired nonsense. The corporations are not taking care of you and me. They are not interested in anything except our hard-earned cash. And, they will not stop selling to us as long as we are buying. Vote with your dollars! Buy from companies that pay their taxes!  You see, in Atlas Shrugged, Rand puts forth this idea that the businessmen and women of America are holding the rest of us on their backs.  They are carrying us.  And, the welfare state is destroying them.  We are just parasites to them, the producers.  Right, because without large corporations, America was nothing and would never exist.  The problem with that line of thinking is that America DID exist prior to large corporations.

The truth is, the corporations have become the parasites.  A corporation, especially a publicly held corporation, exists for one reason: profit.  If a corporation does anything that is not directly related to increasing profits then it opens it’s board of directors up to liability.  So, corporations will do anything they need to do in order to increase profits.  They will lay off expensive workers, cut benefits, lower the cost of components in their products (and thereby, often, lowering the quality of the product), move to a less expensive country, and so on.  Corporations use workers the same way they use electricity.  They burn it and move on.

Rand, and her disciples would have you believe that we have make sure that the businesses get what the want so they don’t leave us.  Because, what would we do without them?  Are you really that helpless?  Do you think that if the corporations and Wall Street bankers all left that we would all disintegrate into a hopeless mass of humanity?  Are we all children that need the parental care of Goldman Sachs, Koch Industries, GE, and so on?  It’s total silliness.  America would survive because it is full of Americans.  You may find this laughable, but, think about it before you dismiss it.  There is a show called Swamp People that I think a lot of people would initially pass off as stupid and not worth watching.  Well, being that my relatives are Cajuns, I found myself interested in the show.  It depicts people who make their livings in the swamps of Louisiana.  They hunt dangerous creatures like alligators and snakes.  They eat shrimp, frogs and crawdads that they find in the swamp.  And, they survive.  Do you think that if the corporations left that the “swamp people” would pause for a second to think about it?  Nope.

America does not need the corporations as badly as they need Americans.  We have to wake the sleeping giant.  It’s us.  It is you and I.  America is not the army.  It’s not Fed Ex and Ford.  America is the people and we have been sleeping too long, allowing corporations and Wall Street to feed off of our labor.

Look, no one likes to pay taxes. We all want free stuff. But, there is no such thing as a free lunch. If you cut taxes then you have no choice but to cut services as well. Ask yourself, which is more important: tax free profits for multinational corporations or providing a quality education for the children of America? Why are we laying off teachers, cutting funding for school supplies and then handing tax credits to companies like GE who are posting record profits while the rest of us suffer through this double dip recession?

Do you like to pay bank fees?  How often have you gone to the ATM only to find you got docked $2 for the convenience of taking out money?  Or NSF fees during a hard month?  What about interest rates on your credit cards?  That’s the price of doing business, right?  Well, the price of doing business in America is called taxes and Bank of America doesn’t like paying them.  Does that seem right to you?  They can charge you fees and then they don’t have to pay income tax?  Or worse, they get TARP funds AND a tax credit!?

We have to find a balance in which the owners of business get paid for their work but they compensate and care for their workers as well.  Do you really want to continue living in a country where we have to victimize each other to make money?  Scarcity is a lie they feed us to make us feel hungry when we are not!  There is enough money, enough land, enough food for all of us to live comfortably.  But, some are too greedy and they are stealing from us.

People need to pay their fair share.  Don’t you hate it when you go out to eat with friends and some knucklehead looks at the bill and throws in a ten for their $9.95 entree?  They totally ignore the $2 soft drink and the $2 tip.  As a result, the bill is short and someone else has to pay it.  And, meanwhile, that knucklehead sits there like they don’t know what they’re doing.  They are stealing.  Because when you force someone else to pay for you, it’s stealing.  We are all paying for companies like Apple, Verizon, and BP because they don’t want to pay their share.

Join US Uncut.  Tell the corporations that the free ride is over.  If you like doing business in America and having American customers, you need to be part of American society, and that means paying your fair share of the tax bill.