Apple Plans $1 Billion iDataCenter

1sockchuck writes "Apple is planning a major East Coast data center to boost the capacity of its online operations, and may invest more than $1 billion in building and operating the huge server farm. That's nearly twice what Google and Microsoft typically invest in their massive cloud computing centers. The scope of the project raises interesting questions about Apple's plans, and has politicians in North Carolina jumping through hoops to pass incentives to win the project. The proposed NC incentives build on a package for Google that later proved controversial."

Comments

Re:Tax breaks for the rich?

[TubeSteak]

Business taxes should be the first to go, because businesses don't pay taxes. Their customers do. The only thing governments accomplish when they tax businesses is they raise the cost of goods and services.

A) Why not abolish personal income taxes first?
B) What makes you think that corporations won't just keep prices the same and use the difference to pad their profit margin?

Re:Tax breaks for the rich?

[TubeSteak]

You can complain all you want, but if you look at the numbers you'll find the top 1% of earners pay 40% (or more) of income taxes.

And to put things in perspective, the top 1% nationally earn *440 times more than the avg person in the bottom 50%.
Not to mention that Maryland has some of the richest counties in the country.

*in 2007, I'm not sure what the 2008 number is

Re:Tax breaks for the rich?

[jcr]

Are you implying that many millions in Maryland left for other states because of the tax? Have you considered that perhaps there were many millionaires who lost a lot of money, and therefore were no longer millionaires?

I'm sure that the crash was a big factor, but it's quite easy for anyone in Maryland who wants to pay less taxes to just move across the border into Delaware, Virginia, or Pennsylvania.

I know several people who've moved out of California for that reason.

-jcr

Re:let me guess

[drquoz]

I'm in NC! *raises hand* Don't ask about the other hand....

that doesn't make any sense

[Trepidity]

If taxes were on revenue, and prices followed the idealistic supply/demand curve model, that would be true, because taxes would in effect be costs.

However, corporate taxes are generally on profits, i.e. on instances where the idealized model fails to hold, because the market price set by demand is significantly above the cost of production, but for one reason or another this has failed to stimulate an increase in supply to offset it, as classical theory would predict it should. In such markets, you already have a significant deviation from classical price theory, which assumes prices in a competitive market should approach the cost of production. Instead, prices are primarily being set from the demand side without much impact from the cost side. In those cases, which are the only ones in which profit taxes apply, a tax is unlikely to significantly change prices.