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Which Company Is the Largest?
Fudge Factor 3000 writes "Apple and Exxon are fighting it out to be the company with the largest market cap. Tuesday, Apple pulled ahead. It is hard to believe a tech company can beat out an oil giant, but is the market cap really the measure of the size/influence of a company? It is certainly the simplest metric to consider. Ars is running an excellent article on how to measure the size of a company. They discuss different metrics such as cash balance, revenue, number of employees, etc."
Would Steve Jobs be considered a genius if he was an oil company CEO?
Yes they did. They just called it cash flow, and explained why this was the best measure of profits.
...except for the entire 3rd page. http://arstechnica.com/apple/guides/2011/08/does-this-metric-make-my-company-look-big.ars/3
People gotta live outside the west too.
Congrats! You have beaten The Libs, and have won the Douchebag of the Day award!
Does it really matter? Honestly, who gives a shit what company is the biggest?
I only care about the products/services they produce.
what is the future of a civilisation whose most capitalised stock is gadget manufacturer?
...Apple was dying...
I've heard that for the last 20 years from dozens of tech magazines and from numerous Slashdotters...
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Of course it isn't. If it were, then the gyrations of the DJIA would mean that the total size of the representative corporations in the stock market have grown and shrunk across a 10% margin over the past couple of weeks. Those companies, and by extension the rest of publicly traded corps, and indeed business in general, have clearly not been growing and shrinking that much in any size except solely their market cap. The market cap is undeniably a contrived measure that is primarily an artifact of nothing but finance. Which in the past generation has become almost completely independent of underlying business, and even independent of any underlying reality except preferential treatment by the powerful.
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This company makes Apple, Google, MS et al look silly.
Market cap is a completely nonsensical way of saying "what's the largest company". Market cap is simply whatever irrational price the market has placed upon a company, and has zilch to do with its actual value as a cash generating engine.
For that, one has to look at book value or intrinsic value, as defined by Graham, Dodd, Buffett and others in the value investing fold. Book value (or carrying value) is simply assets minus liabilities minus intangibles (e.g. goodwill, the paid in capital during acquisition of other companies in excess of their book value). Intrinsic value, more or less, includes the net present value of discounted cash flows looking probably five or six quarters forward (any more than that is pure speculation as companies tend not to forecast out more than a year or two from the known inputs into their business).
A third way of looking at it is net working capital plus net operating cash flows... paring it down to inventories on the balance sheet side (working capital) and cash flows related directly to the sale of their goods/services, and not via financing activities, acquisition, etc. This is a really strong measure of how powerful a business is. By almost all of these measures, Apple is pretty strong, but their market capitalization seems to have them overvalued several times relative to what their future cash generating ability truly is.... which is why you won't see any offers for acquisition any time soon, not that Apple would entertain any of them anyway.
Although Apple is on top at the moment, they have a very volatile stock. This tend to discourage long-term investments generally accounts for less than 15% of a well balanced portfolio. Microsoft and also Exxon on the other hand have a stable stock price and they both tend to play it generally safe. It might not please stock holders who were looking to make money quickly but perhaps is how a company can achieve more maturity.
So yeah, they are big now but they might be tiny in a few months.
Views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of the author.
It's not the "making too much money" part that needs investigation, and really just correction. It's the "not paying taxes" part. Corporations, including rich tech corps, don't pay the costs the public pays for them to operate. In 2010, corporations paid only $176B in taxes; individuals paid over 100x that much. Corporations cost the public far more than 1% of our 2010 expenses. The $TRILLIONS spent by the public bailing them out of their failures, and of the failures of other corps they depend upon, is the bulk of our financial problems.
That they don't pay what they cost is the problem. That only about 50% of voters, the "liberals", even realize that's the problem is what keeps the problem getting worse. It's you Republicans who are to blame, which is why you're corporations' favorite suckers.
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Size is interesting, but stability is too. The oil company doesn't depend on short term technological fads...they're practically selling toilet paper. Sure, you could go without it...but you'll always be spending a fixed portion of your income to make sure you don't! After the sloooow shifts in transportation energy infrastructure change to some other technology, we might see them shrink a bit...but that's not going to happen in any significant way for a while. I highly doubt a jump from 35mpg to 50mpg is enough of a fuel saving to compete with the number of new drivers from China, India, and all of the commercial 8mpg trucks that come with their growth.
Yes, that is why most companies do it.
You are doing it wrong. If you have 1001 shares, you must sell 1 for 1.000USD and your company is suddenly worth 1.000.000USD
Now you sell the whole company for 800.000.This means you won 800.000 and the person who bought it made 200.000.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Cash flow is not profit. It is a derived measure of revenues, mismatched to costs.
The best measure of profits is the actual net revenue return after expenses invested are subtracted.
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Is that SJ and Tillerson duking it out, mano a mano?
Are they launching missiles at each other's corporate HQs?
No, I didn't think so. They're just minding their businesses and the stock market is setting a price on their shares. Hardly what I'd call battling it out. Strange metaphor.
Here is another way to think about it.
What if the company disappeared over night? How "important" are these companies?
If Apple disappeared, people wouldn't have their toys and music anymore and people who actually get work done with Apple products (like designers or movie editors) would have to migrate to other platforms like Linux or Windows.
If Exxon disappeared, the world would have a temporarily huge reduction in the available oil until competitors could pick up the slack which could take a long time in which case the whole world will fall apart (only slightly exaggerating).
So I say that Exxon is way more important than Apple.
By that metric, Microsoft, IBM, and Oracle are also way more important than Apple.
Interesting that Microsoft is above Apple on that page. I guess the fanbois didn't think that was terribly important...
No sig today...
With the recent spurt in the stock price, Microsoft's market capitalization has reached nearly $600 billion, putting it back in first place ahead of General Electric's $475 billion market cap.
Tech stocks are a bit more volatile than that of oil companies. Back then, Microsoft looked even better than Apple does today, virtually unstoppable.
C'mon, this is a repackaged duplication. http://apple.slashdot.org/story/11/08/10/1928206/Wall-Street-Software-More-Valuable-Than-Oil
And THAT one was really not adding much to this. http://slashdot.org/index2.pl?fhfilter=apple+exxon Slashdot, make another pot of coffee.
Gently reply
This sentence from the last page sums it up nicely:
Most pundits would say that Exxon is the larger company by far in every comparison that matters, particularly when you're thinking about who does or does not drive the American economy.
I would go a step further and say that fossil fuel extraction is the most important sector of the economy, at least from the perspective of what makes industrial civilization possible and allows human beings to number over 7 billion. After all, the last few centuries of technological progress and human biomass growth can largely be attributed to how we've creatively employed the vast armies of energy slaves liberated by the combustion of fossil fuels to do things like power generators, run combines and tractors, and make plastics and fertilizers. And human biomass proliferated in the 20th century largely due to our ability to convert stocks of low entropy stored solar energy into edible calories and fertilizers. The energy sector (which is dominated by fossil fuels) subsidizes other service and production sectors and makes our highly complex society possible (1).
So Apple or some bank may be largest or "most important" based on some metric employing fiat currency (that's being inflated away by the Federal Reserve) or the Wall Street casino's latest valuation based on pixie dust, but energy (or more precisely, exergy) is what really matters for civilization; everything else is just playing with your food.
(1) Joseph Tainter, "Complexity, Problem Solving, and Complex Societies."
http://www.oilcrash.com/articles/complex.htm
See also:
Ayres and Warr, "Accounting for Growth: The Role of Physical Work."
http://www.fraw.org.uk/files/economics/ayres_2005.pdf
For computers and for a share of stock. When Steve finally moves on (one way or the other), the company will go the same route it did the last time he left. He's an example of a driven visionary that jumps right through all the middle management to directly manipulate products, services and the marketing messages. How often does your CEO drop into your product meetings to tell you how to make it work or what not to do?
Oh yeah, and stress causes cancer.
In other news I completely frustrated several of my Apple buying friends by taking a 4 year old 17" laptop and spending 2 hours hackintoshing it. Its as good or better than the $2000-3000 apple laptops they've bought recently. When they said "Well, but thats not the same" I challenged them to tell me what was deficient about it or what the extra money bought them. They couldnt come up with a thing. In fact, my laptop runs faster in benchmarks than similar apple laptops, because it has a faster disk drive and ram than Apple put in them. It also runs cooler because the fan runs more than the fan does in the macbook.
The message here is that when you have a huge cost/profit built into a product that appear to be based entirely on perception, when the chief influencer of that perception goes away...so does the profit.
Unless of course you can find another really smart, really driven leader willing to kill himself stomping around Apple trying to out-do what Steve Jobs did. Good luck with that.
So yah a tech company making shiny things for the masses will be on top till the masses revolt.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
Out of interest, which $50 product are Apple selling for $500?
Or, to be more general, which product are they selling at 10 times the market price, assuming you were using 50/500 as an example?
Okay then, which one pays/evades/avoids the most corporate taxes?
Visa/Mastercard > Exxon >= {Oracle|IBM|HP} > Microsoft > Apple.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
The important thing is the profits, not how 'big' they are. If you doubt it, imagine if the country of Congo were a company. Clearly Congo would be bigger than any company in the world (what company has land holdings the size of Congo?), but they would be making $11 billion a year (GDP). Not really good.
The fundamental reason for a stock having a particular price is the profit (or, future profit.....no one wants to hold stock in a company that makes less each year).
There is no doubt that Exxon is bigger, look at its revenue! (370billion vs 65 billion for Apple). But it doesn't matter which is bigger, it matters which will be making more profit. Their current profit is a lot closer, with 30 billion for Exxon and 14 billion for Apple, and on current trend, Apple will close that distance within three years.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Cash flow isn't the same as profit. And it is somewhat tempered by the comparison that MS has twice the number of employees as Apple. Bear in mind Apple counts their employees slightly differently than MS. Apple has lots of part-time retail employees while MS has far fewer. Apple uses the equivalent employee hours where it counts 40 hours of a part timer as a full time employee. It is not completely 1:1 as full time employees normally receive benefits that part-time ones; however, this may be offset by other overhead in hiring and maintaining a part-time labor force.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
I would rather own a firm that has a net worth of $10 billion and zero profit than a firm with a net worth of $0 and, say, fifty million in annual profit.
From the perspective of the owner, the firm's profit is not the only thing that matters. It is one metric among many--albeit it an important one.
-- IANAL, this isn't legal advice, and definitely isn't legal advice for you. Also, Squee!
First of all, would it have killed them to update their fucking metrics? Hello? Does anybody in journalism do anything other than repeat old articles anymore? This is ridiculous.
Second of all, this:
is bullshit. The banks have all the money because they designed our financial system that way! They are important on paper because they are the ones writing the papers. But is what they do really that complicated? or difficult? or important? That's a different question entirely. Our society is run by mindless penny-penching bureaucrats, but they're not the ones doing the work, keeping the lights on, and inventing new things. And after looking at all the shenanigans they've pulled over the last decade, it's hard for me to believe that we'd really all be worse off if they all went out of business tomorrow.
He didn't say they are the same, just that they DID in fact mention net profit, and argued in detail how FCF was a better metric (which of course is debatable, but many do agree with that claim).
The real problem with the article is not that claim, though, but the fact that they listed completely wrong free cash flow numbers for some of the companies in their chart. Even thinking Barclays could have $177B of free cash flow in a year is absurd, and makes me question the rest of the author's analysis. That number was their TOTAL cash on hand as of this year. Their free cash flow was closer to $26B. Not bad, but off by 7x. Doh!
Largest, in terms of average belt size.
Have gnu, will travel.
"Market cap" of bid shares is bogus. What happens after the first 10% (or 1% or less) of shares get sold? The price goes down. This is especially true for volatile, speculative, or foward-looking stocks where there are comparatively few buyers who are willing to bid a high price, as opposed to a company like Exxon that has reserves in the ground and the price is more readily and more universally agreed upon and the bids have "depth" that strongly support a price not much less than the highest bid price, which is the only thing that gets reported on Yahoo! Finance and even the vast majority of brokerage accounts.
This distinction between reporting highest bid only and the full depth of bids (e.g. NASDAQ Level II Quotes) is ignored by the mass media (e.g. in stories such as this one) and is one of the ways that Wall Street and also the Plunge Protection Team can manipulate markets -- naked shorts are another and can be used in conjunction.
A truer market cap calculation would take into account the dynamic price and would use the full depth of bids as an indicator and input into a model.
In 2010, corporations paid only $176B in taxes [fool.com]; individuals paid over 100x that much.
Individuals paid 17.6 trillion dollars in taxes? The link said it was $1.8 trillion, which would make 10x, not 100x.
Which CEO thinks he has the biggest dick? It's about as relevant.
Hypothetically, what if it was GM? And what would change if GM was just a holding company and Chevrolet, Buick and Cadillac were listed separately?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
The measure of cash flow as profits is fundamentally wrong. The fact that profit accounting can be rigged doesn't make cash flow a better profit measure, since cash flow also can be (and is) rigged to cook the books. Hiding debt from profits or cash flow is done all the time by corrupt corporations.
There's no accounting trick that makes any accounting technique more resistant to book cooking. Only audits by parties with overriding access, the interest in catching fake books, and the power to report them make for reliable profits reporting. Keeping "profits" defined simply and accurately as "revenue from expenses, minus the expenses" is the only way to meaningfully report profits.
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Corporations don't pay taxes, people pay taxes.
Corporations shouldn't have to pay taxes, any money that corporations have in profits are either reused to grow the business or the money are paid out in dividends or salaries/bonuses and then again, the people who receive this money pay taxes.
Corporate taxes make 0 sense. It's pure nonsense.
I am not going to forget to mention that people should be against paying income taxes as well, and that government must stay out of subsidizing and regulating businesses and labor, because that's what destroys the economy.
You can't handle the truth.
and distribute the proceeds to shareholders.
That's really old news - if anyone should liquidate and distribute the proceeds to its shareholders at this point, it's Dell. Hey that sounds like an Onion article I read long ago (unfortunately The Onion has a problem with deep linking).
BTW Dell now sells smartphones and tablets, too.
Dell has tried to be the Windows version of Apple many times, and failed each time. Dell was somewhat innovative in terms of PC manufacturing, but they rode that particular horse into the ground long ago - and Mr. Dell seems to be a bit of an idiot savant, unable to do most anything else successfully.
#DeleteChrome
I don't think there is an overriding means of detecting book cooking in the short term. Auditors can be - and prominently have been - compromised. Accountants can pretty much manipulate the results any way they want. That may be what accountants are for. In the longer term - say, a decade or more - if a company reports year after year that they had vast profits and cash flows and don't still have the cash but didn't pay it out as dividends and stock buybacks it might be appropriate to ask "where did it go?" Apple appears to be pretty square on this measure, but at least one major tech company makes me curious on this metric.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
The corps that move overseas lose the benefits of being US corps. Or at least they should - that's the other part of the rigged game corps have set up in the USA in the past couple of generations. Those of us who are actually Americans should protect ourselves from those foreign corps that just exploit us.
But the threat you cite is not a real one. The corps don't move overseas now to avoid taxes, though there are places where they could. Because those places have other expenses and threats to corporations. Reduced transparency, corruption, productivity caps of suppressed labor, environmental exhaustion, etc. And the people who own and run these corps don't want to live places where society isn't protected at expenses fairly carried by those cause it.
The entire flow is that corporations have floated these threats, but cannot exercise them. Meanwhile they've inhibited the American people from discussing the counterthreats, and therefore from exercising them. Charging the corps their carrying cost is long overdue, and far more practical than the reverse that the corps have pushed us into.
You and I aren't the only ones discussing the real effects of taxing corporations (and their owners) more. Many of us are discussing it. The more of us posting it to the Web and each other the sooner we"ll do the reasonable thing and fix it>
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When a company has a huge holding of treasury stock it can use that as power in the market to pay for mergers in stock at approximately the current market value. The bigger the market cap, the less the dilution and the bigger the entity that can be acquired. So yes, size does matter. This is how AOL "acquired" Time-Warner, becoming the minnow that swallowed the whale.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Put the crackpipe down, Republican loafer.
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tl;dr anarchy; I'll have a private militia to protect me until others loot the precious gold I'm using to pay my soldiers; most militarily powerful families consolidate power; feudalism; rinse; repeat.
If corps paid more taxes, more would move overseas taking jobs away.
That's debatable. At any rate, I'd rather err on the side of not allowing them to parasite off us any longer, even if we lose some jobs in the process. GP did a fine job explaining how it's not doing us any favors.
Any solid proposal needs to have a lot of thought and a lot of real economic brain power behind it. Not just some random dude's posting on a web site (mine included as I am certainly no economic giant).
Considering most of the decisions that we make in this country are based off of "what do my cable news network/friends/pastor say I should vote for," or "Which side of the argument has the most effective PR campaign," I'd say that's an impossibly tall order. Plus, this is all academic here. Slashdot is, for a few good reasons, not the deciding factor, though I think we could do a better job than the public at large. "Raise taxes on corporations Y/N" is never going to go before a public vote anyway. Again, probably a good thing, since that's essentially flipping a coin.
> They did not mention the most important metric of all. Profit.
Oh please. Try age. Come back to me when any _one_ of those companies has been around for 300+ years.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hudson's_Bay_Company
Corporations/Companies are based on the greed of creating artificial separations of liability in order to maximize profit. Before they were created in 1347, people used "Trusts" to do business for the past few thousand years...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporation
Even more unusual is the summary.
"Apple and Exxon are fighting it out to be the company with the largest market cap.
Market cap is one measure that is almost totally out of control of the company, because its essentially the value (at current market price) of all the stock issued by the company. Market cap is set by the market's estimation of the value of holding the stock, and is only indirectly a measure of the actual assets or profit potential of the underlying company.
There is almost nothing a company itself can do to directly affect Market Cap, its a measure of market opinion at best.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Saying profits was mentioned, but called "cash flow", does say that they are the same.
This story and its discussion have wrong just oozing out of every one of their many cracks.
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you are replying in the wrong thread.
You can't handle the truth.
Corporations cost the public a lot of money. They should pay taxes. The people who profit from them also cost the public a lot of money, which is why they should pay taxes.
Corporations pay lots of their income after operating expenses on lots of material benefits to their people, especially their executives and those people's associated staff.
Government business subsidies sometimes have necessary strategic benefits, though usually the subsidies are just corruption. The government regulating businesses is one of the most important jobs of government. Unregulated business has a perfectly unbroken record of destroying economies and people. You "libertarians" are really totally out of your minds.
Now income tax is a somewhat nonsensical basis for taxation. It's exceeded in nonsense only by residential property taxes, which are a legacy of centuries ago when land owned was roughly proportional to potential income - a way to pressure landowners to produce from their land, and to collect taxes without poormouth excuses - but that has long been false for the large majority of landowners. The sensible tax is a consumption tax, a sales tax that excludes necessities (cost of 20%ile residence in a zipcode, heat/power/telecom of that 20%ile mark, public education and transit, minimum healthcare expenses). People should pay proportional to the material benefit they get from the government that protects and enables that benefit, beyond the mere subsistence that government should take no credit for leaving people at. A 20% sales tax on non-necessities, plus a 0.1% tax on all equity sales that don't transfer control of the asset (at which 50%+1 point all cumulative sales tax is paid at 20%), would pay the US Federal budget, with a surplus paying down the debt left from the days of nonsensical taxation. Of course the military/intel waste would have to be cut from $1.5T+ to under $300B, but there's plenty of nonsense to eliminate.
If you "Libertarians" would get a grip on reality, your vocal energy would be well used getting us off income and property taxes and onto a pure sales tax. But when you say government has no business regulating business, you just discredit any good ideas you touched in your random walk outside the mainstream.
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No they are not. They just responded sarcastically to your libertarian assertions. Libertarians like you are corporate anarchists, and the Greater Somalia they described is what your ideas would get us. As they always have everywhere they've been practiced.
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I think you have some outdated concept confused with management bonuses and remuneration.
May the Maths Be with you!
No, corporations are privileged groups that own assets themselves. And spend on benefits for privileged people, like their executives, that are consumed without taxation. Groups that add many additional expenses to the public, like policing, investigations, courts, wars, trade diplomacy and bailouts. They are taxed at under 1% the total rate that humans are taxed in this country, but consume much more than half the expensive operations.
Money they don't pay in taxes they spend in foreign economies more than they spend here, and on Americans who are much less productive (bankers, lawyers, consultants, media spinners) than people to whom they must pay for their core operations.
The current corporate profits are higher than ever before in American history. Corporations are spending on neither current nor future employees (as we've seen for going on 3-5 years now). They aren't even investing in other corporate equity. With the exception of pure financial speculation, which keeps crashing the stock market and destroying real assets with every cycle. And the new exception of unlimited, secret and anonymous bribes, er, donations to politicians and their henchmen, er, henchcorps.
Somehow when getting government benefits corporations are people, but when facing liabilities like convictions and taxes corporations are not people. That is an obvious scam, that has brought this country just past the brink of catastrophe several times in just the past decade.
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You're right. That's why I have an accountant do my taxes :).
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Corporations cost the public a lot of money. They should pay taxes.
- corporations are businesses that find a way to serve the public and if they did not find a way to do so for public benefit, then their existence can only continue if a government gets involved and subsidizes the company, like it's obviously happening with various "alternative energy" companies.
Corporate taxes make 0 sense, because the money that company makes either ends up reinvested, in which case the company is serving the market's needs or the money is taken out and the salaries/bonuses/dividends are paid, in which case the people who get this money are paying income taxes.
Thus all corporate profits either end up growing the economy or end up as income to individuals, and then income taxes are applied.
All of this means that government cutting into profits of a corporation distorts the market place and hurts the economy. The customers are better served when companies re-invest the money.
Government business subsidies sometimes have necessary strategic benefits, though usually the subsidies are just corruption.
- replace 'usually' with 'always', and we'll find something to agree upon.
The government regulating businesses is one of the most important jobs of government.
- in USA it is unconstitutional for government to meddle with people's private affairs without a court order, so all of this is complete nonsense. The only role that government ends up playing while regulating businesses is to ensure that the there is less competition than otherwise would have been, and this distorts the market and mis-allocates resources.
Unregulated business has a perfectly unbroken record of destroying economies and people.
- nonsense. There is no business that destroys economies or people unless government is involved in it.
You "libertarians" are really totally out of your minds.
- worthless ad-hominem.
Now income tax is a somewhat nonsensical basis for taxation ... The sensible tax is a consumption tax
- I only agree in terms that income tax must not be and consumption tax is the only correct way for gov't to raise revenues, but I only agree nominally, because the reason for my disagreement comes from a different place - Constitution of USA. Forcing people to testify against themselves to report their business income and doing unreasonable search and confiscation of private property, all without a court order. Income tax disregards human rights.
People should pay proportional to the material benefit they get from the government that protects and enables that benefit
- nonsense.
Any tax is an exercise in forceful coercion and confiscation of private property, but at least with consumption taxes nobody is violating a person's right not to be searched/violated/confiscated and have to testify against self.
As to the rest of your calculations - none of it means anything. What can be done is this: if a person is making little money, he can then FREELY provide his income information to the tax office and have a refund/credit for the amount of consumption tax he paid based on some minimum amount of income that he is earning.
So if a person provides his/her information to the government on voluntary basis in exchange for a tax refund, than he should be refunded if he makes below certain amount. Any other scheme that has people taxed more for consumption based on their income bracket is unconstitutional and it is discriminatory.
If you "Libertarians" would get a grip on reality, your vocal energy would be well used getting us off income and property taxes and onto a pure sales tax. But when you say government has no business regulating business, you just discredit any good ideas you touched in your random walk outside the mainstream.
- Ron Paul 2012.
You can't handle the truth.
Corporate taxes are just a way for the government to hide taxes from the people who actually pay them. Any funds you raise by taxing corporations will actually come out of the pockets of the individual, either by raising the costs of goods they purchase, or by lowering the wages they earn, or by reducing the amount of money they earn on investments (and the associated fallout from that). People who advocate corporate taxes, and know this fact, typically are advocating them as a way to tax the wealthy by proxy. But the reality is that the government has little say in who will end up actually paying for government services, because that is ultimately driven my market forces.
Somehow when getting government benefits corporations are people, but when facing liabilities like convictions and taxes corporations are not people.
- you have your government to thank for it, because corporation as a legal entity only exists due to special government protections from liability.
Of-course at that point the corporations must have their 1st amendment rights, because otherwise they could be destroyed by government force by denying the corporation freedom of speech, which is needed for example for commercials.
Obviously all of this is wrong, the correct solution is to prevent government from meddling in businesses altogether, deny the government ability to create such entities, which limit liability from the management/owners.
This would be the correct solution, it would put the pressure on the management/owners to behave in a more responsible manner, while all of the first amendment rights would be also provided not to a 'faceless corporation', but specifically by the virtue of a person/persons who are pushing the message.
You can't handle the truth.
It's possible to lie about anything, but it's a lot easier to invent fake profits than fake cash[1].
Turnover is vanity, profit is sanity - but cash is reality.
[1] Unless you're a central bank ;-)
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
No, you've got it all mixed together like a standard-issue "libertarian".
Corporations are indeed government creations of limited liability by the people who control the corporation. But that doesn't make it a "person". What made a corporation a person was a fraud perpetrated by Southern Pacific Railroad corporation after it sued Santa Clara County to evade taxes. The judge did not rule at all on SPR's claims of corporate personhood, but the law clerk (who also worked for SPR) created a fraudulent headline reporting (in an SPR monopoly newspaper) the case's decision, claiming the court recognized SPR's corporation to be a person. A century of legal frauds have been perpetrated by corporations and the legal system they've bought referencing that headline. Corporations have only recently become bold enough to claim "rights" like "free speech", only after a century in which they perpetrated the accompanying fraud that spending money is speech.
Corporations don't have 1st Amendment rights, any more than a corporation formed in 1996 has the right to vote for Romney in Delaware next year, or one formed in 1977 has the right to challenge him and Bachmann for the Republican nomination next year. Otherwise Romney would have formed dozens of millions of corps across the country to vote for him in 2012.
The solution is not to remove government's power to protect people from corporations (or from other people who use corporations against them). That kind of extreme nonsense is the kind of binary thinking that only libertarians and corporate boards can tolerate. The solution is to properly regulate businesses, just as all government powers and actions must be proportionate and reasonable. "No regulations" means corporations have all the power and none of the liabilities, the makings of corporate anarchy. The rights of people to be protected from corporations, and basic sanity, makes this perfectly clear. That you even think corporations should be immune to government regulation means that you're not going to understand that obvious fact. But anyone else reading this might benefit from seeing it simply put.
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Profits are the money left from revenues after expenses are paid. Those expenses include taxes. Corporations own vast assets that deliver ample benefits to corporate executives and their associates, paid out of profits. When taxes rise, the corporation can choose to cut dividends to pay them. If it chooses to raise prices, that increased income would pay more taxes, so raising prices is the last way a reasonable corporation would try to make a tax neutral in effect. And raising prices means its competitors which lower profits instead have an advantage. You should also learn about price elasticity, since those competitors with lower prices will sell more units, and make a larger total profit than the high-priced one refusing to give up its high profit margins.
The market forces corporations to lower prices closer to the cost of production. That is what you free marketeers are always saying about the market finding efficiency. But when the same economics means taxing corporations, suddenly the market is powerless. Or sometimes it's the government, that all-powerful enemy of all business and all consumers, that is suddenly powerless, when it suits the cause of corporate tax evasion.
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Corporations are indeed government creations of limited liability by the people who control the corporation. But that doesn't make it a "person". What made a corporation a person was a fraud perpetrated by Southern Pacific Railroad corporation after it sued Santa Clara County to evade taxes.
- I am acutely aware of specifics of this case.
No, you've got it all mixed together like a standard-issue "libertarian".
- more worthless ad-hominem drivel.
Corporations don't have 1st Amendment rights
Except they do
The Court has recognized that First Amendment protection extends to corporations. ... This protection has been extended by explicit holdings to the context of political speech. ... Under the rationale of these precedents, political speech does not lose First Amendment protection âoesimply because its source is a corporation.â The Court has thus rejected the argument that political speech of corporations or other associations should be treated differently under the First Amendment simply because such associations are not âoenatural persons.â
So with all this ad-hominem that you are throwing around, you getting such an important detail wrong, it's not good for you, because it's easy to reference this for future /. commentary.
You can't handle the truth.
You Ron Paul libertarians are completely nuts:
- You think that a corporation's public benefit is the only way for it to survive other than government subsidy, but you're busy preventing corporations from exploiting and damaging people - the other way they survive, and thrive.
- You think that corporations don't buy assets they let their privileged elites use rather than let those elites buy them after taxes.
- You think those people pay the same taxes on their capital gains with which they're paid as their labor pays on their cash.
- You think corporations spend their money in local or even the American economy at the rate that their labor does, rather than spending it in foreign economies or just exclusively inside the old-boy network that has little to no multiplier effect in America.
- You think that government actions that "distort the marketplace" are always bad, ignoring the ways in which the abuses of people an unregulated market always perpetrates are the primary government distortions.
- You think that government subsidies that force innovations and lead private investment are damaging interference, though they're time and again the necessary leadership that put and kept this country on top, even as corporations usually tried stopping, and eventually just leeched off of, the resulting American success.
- You think that the Constitution's statement that Congress has the right to raise taxes doesn't mean Congress has the right to raise taxes.
- You think that reporting income for taxation is "self incrimination", though "incrimination" means "implicated in a crime".
- You think taxes are "seizures", though only when tax evasion crimes are proven in a court can a court issue instructions for a seizure.
- You think that "forceful coercion" is always wrong, even when people create public expenses but evade the bills in violation of the law.
- You think chanting "Ron Paul 2012" does anything but discredit any good ideas that happened to stick to you.
And you think calling you nuts is "worthless". Yes, it's an ad hominem, but I have amply and repeatedly backed it up. You're totally nuts, and there's no reason to keep offering you helpful insights into how you're insane. That's worth a lot. Not to you, maybe, but to others who have to read your nutso assertions and think "is this just another crazy libertarian?" The answer is yes: you're nuts, and these are the reasons why. Just because someone calls you a name doesn't mean you haven't earned it. You have.
Goodbye.
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Which would be where? Kind of like your comment below about "Unregulated business has a perfectly unbroken record of destroying economies and people." Where? Mind you, fraud is still illegal, so you're going to have to do better than just citing companies whose executives broke the law and bribed their way out of it - I mean cases where the business itself being "unregulated" is the reason that the disaster occurred.
Due to insufficient regulation:
Of course, you live in a libertard fairy land of self manufactured delusion, so it hardly matters to you what is actually happening on this planet.
Cash flow is riggable by hiding debts and defaults on them, or just endlessly rolling them over into new debt instruments (with higher deferred interest). Which is an essential part of most "post"-Enron corporate finance, and of most outstanding debt.
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Where business fraud is illegal, businesses are regulated. You do understand that "illegal" requires a regulation, right?
Besides, there's a vast array of examples. Just look at the businesses operating in North America before the USA and its states were established and regulated them. Those unregulated businesses genocided whole societies, ruined whole ecosystems, and of course destroyed whole economies with them. Look across Africa and any other post-colonial region where law doesn't rule, but rather corporations do: their economies are devastated. Hell, I even mentioned Somalia by name. The warlords there fight over who gets to be the top broke-ass filth dweller.
Why do you even have to ask for examples? Can't you think clearly for yourself about the overwhelming content of human history?
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Corporations don't get compensated fully for the benefits the public receives? So they do their work out of the selfless goodness of their hearts?
Corporations own assets their elites use, and spend to consume all kinds of non-assets for them to use. None of which is taxed, because it's deducted from profits.
You're unable to even notice that I said "It's not the "making too much money" part that needs investigation, and really just correction. It's the "not paying taxes" part. ".
You Republicans are really the most self-parodying people of all time.
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Well, Carnac you ain't. I am a proud card carrying communist and voted for Obama hoping he would go after both groups equally and get rid of this capitalism BS.
No, they don't have First Amendment rights. They do have such protections assigned them by the courts, but they don't have rights. As I explained. You'll probably say they have the right to vote and run for president when the courts say they do.
You're completely nuts, in a libertarian way. Future reference? Your future is corporate anarchy. Nobody will care that you're nuts then. You'll probably be happy, because you'll think you're right. Just like a completely nuts libertarian. A libertarian who's found some excuse to ignore being called what you are, based on something some other autistic libertarian told you.
Goodbye.
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You're either a liar, completely insane for believing that, or both. Either way what you said about Jobs and GE is inane.
Goodbye.
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How many people they fuck over per year?
That might liven up the morning biz reports....
And then they're standing around scratching their heads as the market fails, because nobody has the money to buy their shit.
But yeah, outsource away! Looks good on paper.
No, they don't have First Amendment rights. They do have such protections assigned them by the courts, but they don't have rights.
again
The Court has recognized that First Amendment protection extends to corporations. ... This protection has been extended by explicit holdings to the context of political speech. ... Under the rationale of these precedents, political speech does not lose First Amendment protection Ãoesimply because its source is a corporation.Ã The Court has thus rejected the argument that political speech of corporations or other associations should be treated differently under the First Amendment simply because such associations are not natural persons.
So the courts found that the same rights are extended to the 'not natural persons', so you are arguing semantics.
You'll probably say they have the right to vote and run for president when the courts say they do.
- actually they must have the right to vote for president since they are regulated by the government while they shouldn't be. The excellent thing is that corporations did find a way to 'vote' with money. This is the unintended consequence of regulating business and it is right in your face, as another reason why government must not attempt to regulate business, because then business becomes government.
You're completely nuts, in a libertarian way.
- more worthless ad-hominem.
Your future is corporate anarchy.
- well, I am counting on it, I am working towards that goal and I moved to where this goal is closer to reality (away from the socialist united states of America).
Nobody will care that you're nuts then.
- more worthless ad-hominem.
You'll probably be happy, because you'll think you're right
- I know I am right.
Just like a completely nuts libertarian.
- more worthless ad-hominem.
A libertarian who's found some excuse to ignore being called what you are, based on something some other autistic libertarian told you.
-
1. More worthless ad-hominem.
2. I am a libertarian, when was I disagreeing on that point?
Goodbye.
sure.
You can't handle the truth.
You can also earn a lot if people were prepared to pay realistic prices for items.
Jonathanjk.com
You Ron Paul libertarians are completely nuts:
- worthless ad-hominem.
- You think that a corporation's public benefit is the only way for it to survive other than government subsidy, but you're busy preventing corporations from exploiting and damaging people - the other way they survive, and thrive.
- nobody survives on the market who damages the public, not in the long run. The only way to survive in the market by doing this is to have government privileges and protections.
- You think that corporations don't buy assets they let their privileged elites use rather than let those elites buy them after taxes.
- I never said that corporations do not buy assets that the management/owner/worker of a company cannot use. That's stupid, that's what assets are for.
- You think those people pay the same taxes on their capital gains with which they're paid as their labor pays on their cash.
- no I do not think that because and you are making an assumption out of your ass. I disagree with income taxes completely, but I also disagree that capital gains should be taxed at different rate than other form of income.
However.
I disagree that a corporate tax should be paid and then taxes must be paid on dividends. This is where W. Buffet has you over the chair and you don't know it. He is lying to you that he is paying a lower tax rate than his 'secretary', but all of the corporate taxes that his company pays are his taxes.
- You think corporations spend their money in local or even the American economy at the rate that their labor does, rather than spending it in foreign economies or just exclusively inside the old-boy network that has little to no multiplier effect in America.
1. Quit putting words into my mouth. When I say 'economy', I do not at all say 'local economy'.
2. The reason for US companies not investing/re-investing in USA is government regulations, taxes, labor laws, subsidies and support to monopolies, inflation.
- You think that government actions that "distort the marketplace" are always bad,
- correct.
ignoring the ways in which the abuses of people an unregulated market always perpetrates are the primary government distortions.
- government's regulations only exist to provide ability for government to grow and to feed off the labor of others, nothing else. Abuses are far and between and without governments protecting industries from competition they eventually are weeded out by a wealthier society. All businesses make society wealthier by providing products/services society needs. If a business is not making society wealthier, it will eventually fail. A wealthier society is the only kind of society that can address issues of environment and other problems, poor societies cannot address such issues, as they are busy looking for food.
- You think that government subsidies that force innovations and lead private investment are damaging interference,
- yes, the only real innovation that government subsidies force, are the kind of innovations that make pumping money out of tax-payers pockets into pockets of selected individuals a more efficient procedure.
though they're time and again the necessary leadership that put and kept this country on top, even as corporations usually tried stopping, and eventually just leeched off of, the resulting American success.
- Marxist bullshit. No government intervention can produce a viable economy, that will live on its own without making the entire society poorer by taxes/reduction of choices/reduction of opportunities. Monopoly of government over so called 'innovation' is just a mis-appropriation of resources, nothing else.
It is the government that leeches of all the wealth that businesses create, not
You can't handle the truth.
Try to live 6 months without your Macbook, smartphone, or iPod. Now try the same without petroleum based products. 'nuf said.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
It's the largest entity run by corporations.
False. If it was really run by corporations, we'd be turning a profit rather than a 27% loss every year...
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
BTW Dell now sells smartphones and tablets, too.
The difference: Dell still gets the vast majority of its revenue and profits from computer sales - it's still a computer company.
Apple gets half its revenue - and over half its profit - from just the iPhone. Add in the iPod and iPad and you're talking about 80% of Apple revenue and 85% of Apple profit. Apple is no longer a computer company - it's a consumer electronics company a la Sony.
Apple got out of the computer business in the 2005-2006 timeframe, effectively. Their recent continued paring down of the product line, and merging of iOS-UI into Lion confirms that Apple will continue to exit the computer business entirely, leaving it as a media consumption and communications company.
The Apple that Michael Dell spoke about is, effectively, dead.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
And half that amount - $950 billion or so - was for Social Security and FICA. Actual US individual income tax payments were a shade over $900 billion - about 4.5 times what corporations paid.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Oil companies face a different kind of instability. Middle East, OPEC, Obama, Democrats, BP, EPA, etc.
Yawn. Even if they could avoid all of that, ultimately Peak Oil will kick them.
Fandroids hate facts.
'Market Cap' is a crock of shit and a red herring. Remember pre - 'crash and burn' Enron. I believe it had an astronomical Market Cap at it's peak of popularity, right before it got obliterated off the planet. It is an almost meaningless set of figures, or perception of value.
It does turn a profit, its just that its being pocketed.
It's not the size, it's how you sue it.
Whereas overpaying overprivileged labor looks bad on paper and in the real world.
Where do you think that tax money would come from, exactly? Would "the corporations" suddenly become altruistic and absorb that cost?
You can't soak a fictional entity. Only individuals pay taxes in the end.
The surprising thing is how little Apple actually does. Apple is really a design and marketing firm and a reseller/retailer. They don't make much hardware. (From the annual report: "Substantially all of the Companyâ(TM)s Macs, iPhones, iPads, iPods, logic boards and other assembled products are manufactured by outsourcing partners, primarily in various parts of Asia. A significant concentration of this outsourced manufacturing is currently performed by only a few outsourcing partners of the Company, including Hon Hai Precision Industry Co. Ltd. and Quanta Computer, Inc."). They resell music owned by others. They're not a wireless carrier.
Didn't realize that barnacles and fish could type... Curious what keyboard you have that isn't petroleum based?
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Nope. Debts, for or against, are nothing to do with cash flow (until and unless they're paid). Cash flow. Flow of cash. The clue is in the name. A debt isn't a flow, any more than coulombs are amperes.
Cash flow is inherently hard to rig because cash is either 1) in the drawer as tangible notes and coins or 2) it's on the bank statement, i.e. under the scrutiny/control of a third party. P&L and the balance sheet can be frigged by hiding or inventing transactions, as happened at Enron & Barings.
This is why there are three different kinds of statements. They tell you different things, and you need to look at them all to get the full picture.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I think market cap is an important metric of a company from an investor's perspective, but has only indirect relevance to the size of the company.
Basically, the largest company by market cap (roughly) is the one expected to make the highest total discounted future profits, not the "largest" which would more obviously be defined by total sales, total employees, total capital (cash, land, buildings, equipment). Exxon represents a bigger slice of the US economy, even if its profits are lower than Apples. The difference is Exxon spends more money paying employees (and indirectly income tax) and other things that don't directly improve value from an investor's perspective.
Obviously investors want to own a company that is going to net them strong profits in the future. Therefore a massive company (tens of billions in sales, hundreds of thousands of employees) is not particularly valuable if its cost of good sold and marketing expenses leave it with a profit of 0.00001% of revenue. In fact, this sort of company is high risk because a very small increase in costs could quickly send the company bankrupt. Similarly, a company that has massive revenues but averages a loss on each sale is often near worthless to an investor. It may have valuable assets that can be salvaged, but that may require a write off of a portion of its debts which will usually wipe out the existing investors.
Similarly, a company like Microsoft who has high revenue, negligible expenses and a cash mountain is an excellent proposition from an investor's perspect (unless its sales are expected to decline, but even then its got some intrinsic value simply from the pile of cash it could pay out if it decided to wind up.)
Market cap is therefore roughly a function of the investor's average expected future profits. This can swing wildly day to day as new information acquired by investors can lead to reaction (and over-reaction) based on a change in perceived future profitability (plus human nature).
The other thing to remember about market cap on any given day is it does not reflect investors in the company as a whole, but instead reflects those who decided to buy or sell shares on a given day. This is in turn influenced by the price and the information available on any given day. The classic example of this is Petrochina which briefly became the world's largest company by market cap at close of trade one day because some idiot (or maybe just some hacker doing it for the lulz) drastically overpaid for the last couple of shares bought that day.
It depends on which grade of crude Exxon is dealing with, but you only get 5-30% of 42gal as gasoline in the straight run distillation. You have to go through further refining to get more gas from the remaining products but that is more expenses. It's also a reason why we have such a huge thirst for the Saudi oil. That's one of the grades that we get 30% with the first pass. The Venezuelan stuff? 5%
"Lack of speed can be overcome. In the worst case by patience." --Znork
Corporations/Companies are based on the greed of creating artificial separations of liability in order to maximize profit. Before they were created in 1347, people used "Trusts" to do business for the past few thousand years... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporation [wikipedia.org]
No, companies were created in order to expand the number of people willing and able to invest in ventures without risking unlimited personal liability.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
You're right. That's why I have an accountant do my taxes :).
if I were your accountant I'd be empted to stick a zero on the end of my bills and see if you noticed ;-)
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Any tax is an exercise in forceful coercion and confiscation of private property
Any law at all is an exercise in forceful coercion.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Sure, but US Constitution is very specific about ability of government to limit individual rights when it concerns the right not to be searched, coerced into giving self-incriminating evidence, having property seized, etc.
You can't handle the truth.
I agree, honestly. I don't see how this sort of growth is sustainable in the long-term, and Jobs' departure is sure to put a dent in it. And by "dent", I mean "send it plummeting".
It seems that history and basic economics are not on your side. First, the idea that government regulation are killing industry is bordering on insane. A lack of government regulation and intervention has almost ruined this economy, just like it already has ruined others. Look at the nations that have never been able to succeed economically....the lack of government control and regulation has been the problem. China is going to need far more government control and regulation to continue that economic growth, it is very clear. Second, businesses being untaxed is a recipe for disaster. There is no insentive to reinvest in your employees, infastructure, or business. Instead, the insentive is to hoard the cash. The trend them seems to be that executives are paid millions and competition is bought out....reducing competition, efficiency, and global competitiveness. Why does it seem like the loudest republicans are the ones with the worst grasp on economics? I was a replublican once.... but now the party is ruined. There is a complete loss in commmon sense. The republican party is no longer about building a stronger America, it is about making the wealthy wealthier....and tricking the sheep into following them out of fear that the sky is falling. "The government leeches wealth..." hah, priceless.
A lack of government regulation and intervention has almost ruined this economy, just like it already has ruined others.
- not lack of regulation, the exact opposite is the case. Existence of government regulations is what is ruining the economy.
FDIC, FHA, Freddie/Fannie, Fed created inflation, 1%-0% interest rates, labor laws that end up killing off smaller competitors and promote large monopolies/oligopolies, income taxes and money printing, which destroy ability of people to save and start their own businesses.
If you require a more specific explanation than the above on how government regulations caused the 2008 crash, my sig has it.
Look at the nations that have never been able to succeed economically....the lack of government control and regulation has been the problem.
- the opposite is true, your statement is false. US economy was growing the most during industrialization and mostly free market capitalism in 19 century, not past 1913, when government growth and Fed caused inflation stifled business.
The heavier the government involvement is, the less likely the economy to increase the wealth of society.
China is going to need far more government control and regulation to continue that economic growth, it is very clear.
- this makes not just 0 sense, it makes negative amounts of it. We are all dumber for having read this.
China had to let go of so much government regulations and rules from the Communist era to get where it is, and it will have to let go of more of it, especially the currency controls if it wants to have more growth and wealth creation.
Second, businesses being untaxed is a recipe for disaster.
- wow, that must have been a real disaster in the US in 19 century, as the competition and re-investment turned USA around and made it the world's largest creditor out of world's greatest debtor.
There is no insentive to reinvest in your employees, infastructure, or business.
- more nonsense. With no regulations and taxes, what you have is exactly this - reinvestment to grow the capital.
Instead, the insentive is to hoard the cash.
- no, the government regulations are causing businesses in USA to so called 'hoard cash'. In reality of-course they are not hoarding cash, they are holding onto assets, getting rid of their USD denominated debt/credit/cash because of inflation that the Fed is causing and all of the taxes and regulations that prevent businesses from investing.
What do you think is the deal with all that money that is found in off-shore accounts for many businesses? They are not bringing it home because they made that money elsewhere and IRS will make them pay some insane taxes on the money. So the government regulations prevent money from re-entering the US economy and from being re-invested.
Who in their right mind believes that people/businesses with cash actually want to SIT on it rather than reinvest it to GROW it? This is such a nonsense idea, again, we are all dumber now for having been exposed to it.
The trend them seems to be that executives are paid millions and competition is bought out.
- the trend in USA is that government is in the middle of all industries, subsidizing the failed corporations and mis-allocating credit from private sector to all sorts of government programs, destroying incentives to invest. Largest US financial (and some other) companies are bankrupt and are being heavily subsidized not to disappear, but of-course it's 'lack of regulations' in your mind and not totalitarian government control over the economy and subsidies/bail outs that are causing this. More dumb shit.
reducing competition, efficiency, and global competitiveness.
- USA has its global competitiveness destroyed by its government, which destroy
You can't handle the truth.
When you are in business of selling overpriced needless trinkets (like apple is) you depend on the overpayed and overprivileged people to buy your stuff. It just makes you wonder when will the bubble burst?
Number of employees X how scary they are...
Fight. The biggest is the company that wins.
Sure McDonald's can field a pretty bit army, but they are all skinny teenagers, easily overwhelmed.
Apple, I've seen the folks that work at the iStore. They are not scary.
Exxon. While not all of them work on a oil rig or a refinery, I'm fairly certain they would wipe the floor with Apple.
Replies to this have mostly been said in the other posts, but I think some insight needs to be given on China. Yes, they did have to open up their markets in order to compete on a global scale....but they are in dire need of government regulation in many areas. Within the next 10 years, if they do not develop an improved set of environmental and building codes, they are in trouble. While I have not been to China, the salesmen I work for are stationed there. Without some regulation in place, the quality of life of the Chinese is going to be far worse than it should be in such good economic times. Yeah, building and environmental codes will require oversight, and will cost business money..........but the point you miss in all of this is that more money does not really mean a better life for the voters.
I will watch your video, when I can get the link to actually work. Darn slashdot.
You might say you are not a republican, but your economic theory suggests that you are....even if you do not want to belong to the group.
I would suggest doing more reading on history, and less on politics. When a government steps aside and let businesses run the show....all nations have ended up in the situation we are in right now. I do agree with you about the inflation issue however.....but inflation is probably inevitable considering the debt we are carrying.
Our politicians, at least here in Wisconsin, are currently puppets for big businesses and getting every bill passed that they want. Do you think this has helped our economy? It sure has not helped the quality of our water supply now that businesses can dump phospherous again. And now they pushed a bill through trying to kill the small family breweries. The small brewers, family businesses, are going down hard. The list can continue for days here in Wisconsin. Again and again, ever since the Reps took over, big business has got the govt to step aside and give them full control of the state. I have traveled all around the country....the states with the strongest anti-govt stance are by far and away the most difficult to find a job.
I cannot find the source I was hoping to use, and this is not an original source.....but check it out. When the govt gets involved, good things can happen. When the govt steps asside......profits are pocketed. http://blueworksbetter.com/PresidentsGDPGrowth