The Tax Advantage of Big Business: How the Structure of Corporate Taxation Fuels Concentration and Inequality

Corporate concentration in the United States has been on the rise in recent years, sparking a heated debate about its causes, consequences, and potential remedies. In this study, we examine a facet of public policy that has been largely neglected in current debates about concentration: corporate taxation. As part of our analysis we develop the first empirical mapping of the effective tax rates (ETRs) of nonfinancial corporations disaggregated by size and broken down by jurisdiction. Our findings reveal a striking and persistent tax advantage for big business. Since the mid-1980s, large corporations have faced lower worldwide ETRs relative to their smaller counterparts. The regressive worldwide ETR is driven by persistent regressivity in the domestic ETR and a marked drop in the progressivity of the foreign ETR over the past decade. We go on to show how persistent regressivity in the worldwide tax structure is bound up with the increasing relative power of large corporations within the corporate universe, as well as a shift in firm-level power relations. As large corporations become less disposed to investments that may indirectly benefit ordinary workers, they become more disposed to shareholder value enhancement that directly benefits the asset-rich. What this means is that the corporate tax structure is connected not only to rising corporate concentration, but also to widening household inequality

Volunteering for all? Explaining patterns of volunteering and identifying strategies to promote it

In policy terms in the UK, as elsewhere, volunteering has become increasingly associated with training for the workplace; a view which offers little to individuals ‘beyond’ the labour market because of age, disability or care commitments. Applying a neo-Durkheimian framework to a study of volunteers we examine how far the patterns of volunteering can be explained by the underlying institutional factors of strong and weak social regulation and social integration. This framework can offer insights into a range of possible policy levers for individuals rather than a ‘one size fits all’ emphasis on volunteering for personal gain for the workplace

Lack of static lattice distortion in Tb2Ti2O7Tb_2 Ti_2 O_7

We investigated the possibility of temperature dependent lattice distortions in the pyrochlore compound Tb$_{2}$Ti$_{2}$O$_{7}$ by measuring the internal magnetic field distribution, using muon spin resonance, and comparing it to the susceptibility. The measurements are done at temperatures as low as 70 mK and external fields up to 6 kG. We find that the evolution of the width of the field distribution can be explained by spin susceptibility only, thus ruling out a temperature dependent hyperfine coupling. We conclude that lattice deformations are absent in Tb$_{2}$Ti$_{2}$O$_{7}$.Comment: 8 pages, 5 figures, accepted for publication in J. Phys. Condens. Matter. (Proceedings of Highly Frustrated Magnetism 2006); Corrections of various typo

Separating God\u27s Two Kingdoms: Regular Baptists in Maine, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick, 1780 to 1815

The trans-national Regular Baptist tradition in the northeastern borderlands of Maine, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick grew rapidly from 1780 to 1815. The spiritual imperatives of this Calvinistic group with its commitment to believer’s baptism of adults and closed communion churches made them distinctive, and a central argument here is that the worldly implications of “Two Kingdom” theology, founded on the strict separation of religious and civil realms, was central to Regular Baptists’ success in the region in this period. Three leading ministers whose actions as authors, itinerants, and as organizational leaders receive especially close attention: Maine-based ministers Daniel Merrill and Isaac Case (whose important manuscript diary is little known), and Edward Manning, a leading figure in the Maritimes, who cooperated closely with Merrill. Regular Baptists were dissenters to both the Standing Order and Anglican establishments in Maine and the Maritimes, which often sparked strong conflict with religious authorities. Moreover, the rigorous Calvinism of Regular Baptists that required adult baptism and only sanctioned closed-communion churches made high demands on members, making the tradition’s expansion in this period especially notable. While these high standards might seem to isolate Regular Baptists as an exclusive group, active itinerancy, mission work, congregational organization, and associational efforts were key to the tradition’s expansion in this time and place. Regular Baptists were distinct from free-will evangelical groups that have been closely studied as central to the Second Great Awakening in the United States and were also quite different from adherents to the New Light Stir led by Henry Alline in the Maritimes in the 1770s and 1780s. Struggles over the proper function of associationalism (how to balance congregational autonomy with broader denominational cooperation) and the rigor of the closed communion standard are especially important worldly implications of Two Kingdoms theology that need to be understood to achieve a full view of Regular Baptist success during their foundational period of growth in the northeastern borderlands

'White knuckle care work' : violence, gender and new public management in the voluntary sector

Drawing on comparative data from Canada and Scotland, this article explores reasons why violence is tolerated in non-profit care settings. This article will provide insights into how workers' orientations to work, the desire to care and the intrinsic rewards from working in a non-profit context interact with the organization of work and managerially constructed workplace norms and cultures (Burawoy, 1979) to offset the tensions in an environment characterized by scarce resources and poor working conditions. This article will also outline how the same environment of scarce resources causes strains in management's efforts to establish such cultures. Working with highly excluded service users with problems that do not respond to easy interventions, workers find themselves working at the edge of their endurance, hanging on by their fingernails, and beginning to participate in various forms of resistance; suggesting that even among the most highly committed, 'white knuckle care' may be unsustainable

A Study of Social Network Interactions amongst Women with Dysthymia

The aim of this work was to study the higher incidence of dysthymia amongst women and to further explore the theory of gender inequality from the point of the sufferer's difference to other women. This is in contrast to the majority of health studies which have considered women as a homogenous group with little regard for individual characteristic differences. The thesis considered, `What are the mental health implications of women socialised to be different to men, but the same as other women, in a male dominated society?' Four women (21-49 years) with a diagnosis of dysthymia receiving psychodynamic short-term psychotherapy (as out-patients) were subjected to four semi-structured interviews, that ran concurrent to, but without collaboration with, their psychotherapeutic treatment. Social network graphs were compiled to produce a systematic account of how women differentiated themselves from each other within their social networks and to determine whether these individual differences could be developed as independent variables with regards the onset, maintenance and recovery from dysthymia. Data was compiled into a series of exploratory case studies and discussed in relationship to social network constellations. The emerging patterns of social interactions between social network members were then matched to feminist theory. The findings suggested that respondents' were socialised by their mothers to be stereotypical men within the context of highly dense, isolated and achievement orientated social networks. These social networks served to equate both mother and respondent with male power and differentiated them from other women. The subsequent social isolation and their ability to live up to their mother's ambitions for them generated loss and anxiety associated with dysthymia (Arieti & Bemporad, 1978). Recovery from dysthymia was directly related to the formulation of secondary and previously unidentified independent `weblet' constellations, that simultaneously reinforced respondents similarities to other women while accommodating their individual characteristic differences

Financial Crisis, Inequality, and Capitalist Diversity: A Critique of the Capital as Power Model of the Stock Market

The relationship between inequality and financial instability has become a thriving topic of research in heterodox political economy. This article offers the first critical engagement with one framework within this wider literature: the Capital as Power (CasP) model of the stock market developed by Shimshon Bichler and Jonathan Nitzan. Specifically, we extend the CasP model to other advanced capitalist countries, including Germany, France, the United Kingdom, and Japan. Our findings affirm the core prediction of the CasP model, showing that unequal power relations reliably predict future stock market performance. Yet when it comes to the CasP model’s explanation of why power relations predict stock market returns, our findings are more ambiguous. We find little empirical support for the claims that capitalist power is dialectically intertwined with systemic fear, and that systemic fear and capitalised power are mediated through strategic sabotage. The main lesson of our analysis is that any model of the stock market must be attentive to the geographical unevenness and continued national diversity in capitalist development

Muon-spin rotation measurements of the vortex state in Sr2_2RuO4_4: type-1.5 superconductivity, vortex clustering and a crossover from a triangular to a square vortex lattice

Muon-spin rotation has been used to probe vortex state in Sr$_2$RuO$_4$. At moderate fields and temperatures a lattice of triangular symmetry is observed, crossing over to a lattice of square symmetry with increasing field and temperature. At lower fields it is found that there are large regions of the sample that are completely free from vortices which grow in volume as the temperature falls. Importantly this is accompanied by {\it increasing} vortex density and increasing disorder within the vortex-cluster containing regions. Both effects are expected to result from the strongly temperature-dependent long-range vortex attractive forces arising from the multi-band chiral-order superconductivity.Comment: 13 pages, 4 figure

How capabilities in operations can influence green production:exploring the issues

This research presents case material of companies within the UK that are attempting to be “Green” in their operations processes. We assess their aspirations by plotting capabilities through their supply networks under five key headings: Strategy; Production planning and procurement; In-house production; Logistics; and Human resource management within operations. We build upon the work of Azzone and Noci, 1998 and Azzone et al., 1997 and we present insights into companies whose commitment to Green Production ranges from “the company tries to delay the adoption of green programs” through to the company adopts a “radical approach to environmental issues.” In doing so we see how operations capabilities in a range of parameters can play a central and pivotal role in achieving some of the aspirations of Green Production within companies