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Dan P.'s avatar

Erik, for the Corporate Profits statistics and charts you have above, what is the group of companies? If it's large or publicly traded companies, I'm not surprised, although there are certainly losers in such a group - e.g. airlines, big hospitality. Much of the pain for business seems like it would be in small, and often privately held, companies such as local retail and small hospitality groups. I wonder if the impact to them is included.

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Erik Sherman's avatar

By the way, out of curiosity I calculated taxes as a percentage of profits, both current dollars and constant dollars. Jeez. I'll be doing something on that later.

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Erik Sherman's avatar

Dan, the data ultimately comes from the Bureau of Economic Analysis and is one of the details in the broader GDP reporting. So, it's an estimate, but one that would include all corporations within the GDP context. It wouldn't surprise me if small companies were hit much harder, or if there was a general upward transfer from small to large. Amazon, Walmart, Target, and others must have picked up a lot of business with so many independent stores closed.

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