The Facebook Effect

-Companies in the US spend up to $2 Billion a year to collect personal data.

-Facebook made $3.2 Billion in advertising revenue in 2011, 85% of its total income.

-Google made an estimated $36.5 Billion in advertising revenue in 2011 by analyzing what people sent in Gmail and what they searched for on the Web.

-Mark Zuckerberg's wealth is estimated at more than $23 Billion.

-Zuckerberg owns more than than 413 million B shares of Facebook stock. Shares are currently valued at $40 a share.

-In documents for his company's public stock offering, Zuckerberg plans to exercise stock options worth an estimated $5 Billion. $2 Billion of which will be paid in state and federal income taxes and paid at the ordinary compensation rate of 35%.

-Warren Buffett paid less than $7 Million in taxes in 2010 at a rate of 17%.

-The taxes Zuckerberg and other shareholders pay on exercised stock options will translate into a big tax benefit for Facebook. The IRS allows companies to take a mirror deduction for employees option compensation and this deduction will eliminate Facebook's tax of $1 Billion in profits in 2011.

-According to the Joint Committee on Taxation, this tax policy will cost the US Treasury at least $20 Billion in lost revenue over the next decade.

-The CBO's projected 2012 budget deficit is $1.2 Trillion, as a result of "disappointingly low corporate tax receipts of the sort that's a little puzzling," said CBO director Douglas Elmendorf.

-Corporate taxes as a share of profits are at their lowest level in 40 years.

-Corporate taxes paid on profits fell to 12.1% in fiscal 2011. Companies on average paid 25.6% from 1987-2008.

-Apple has nearly $100 Billion in cash and is one of the most profitable companies ever. It employs 43,000 people in the US.

-In 1990 China represented 2% of global gross domestic product. It has quadrupled and is now at 8%. By most estimates China's economy will become the world's largest between 2016-2018.

-In the US the average worker wages have only climbed by 1.9% in the last year, which is not enough to keep up with inflation.

-The median compensation for CEO's of Standard & Poor's 500 companies was $9.1 Million in 2010.

-Circuit City paid $2.3 Million in bonuses to top executives for overseeing the company's liquidation during the height of the financial crisis. The company's demise eliminated more than 39,000 jobs.