Corporate Profits After Tax in Canada
Published on 20-10-2019
Let’s have a look how well corporations fared in Canada in the last 60 years that we have data for. As we can see on the chart, the profit after tax is growing year after year steadily.
Almost as if there were no recessions. Capitalism is known for its periodic downturns, every 4 to 7 years there is a crisis, downturn, recession, however you want to name it. The second biggest crash was in 2008. Any budge in profits? Yeah, some, but it quickly resumed to its “normal” growth rate. Did you recover after 2008? I did not think so. You are still “recovering”. But, of course, this chart hides very important characteristics of profit after tax of corporations in Canada. We don’t have numbers of corporations’ profit grouped by the number of employees. Not all businesses are alike. In Alberta 80 percent of businesses are small businesses. During crashes, many go bankrupt. But soon others form. We, people, can not die and reborn after crises, starting fresh. Our “mobility” is NOT like capital’s mobility. We have to live through them.
Now, let’s have a look at the next chart. It shows the rate of the same growth of profit of corporations, small and large, in percentage. It is stupendous!
111.89 % year after year in average! In the last 60 or so years. When was the last time your savings (income minus cost of living) grew 12% year after year? My guess is that not in the past 13.8 billion years.
And in government policies what we see is the catering to the needs of businesses. The rationality of our current economic system is tilted one way, not your way. Something to think about.