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Microsoft Pushes For Public Education Funding While Avoiding State Taxes
theodp writes: After stressing how important the funding of Washington State education — particularly CS Ed — is to Microsoft, company general counsel Brad Smith encountered one of those awkward interview moments (audio at 28:25). GeekWire Radio: "So, would you ever consider ending that practice [ducking WA taxes by routing software licensing royalties through Nevada-based Microsoft Licensing, GP] in Nevada [to help improve WA education]?" Smith: "I think there are better ways for us to address the state's needs than that kind of step." Back in 2010, Smith, Steve Ballmer, and Microsoft Corporation joined forces to defeat Proposition I-1098, apparently deciding there were better ways to address the state's needs than a progressive income tax.
Everyone loves taxes when it is someone else paying them.
“In Venezuela Chavez has made the co-ops a top political priority, giving them first refusal on government contracts and offering them economic incentives to trade with one another. By 2006, there were roughly 100,000 co-operatives in the country, employing more than 700,000 workers. Many are pieces of state infrastructure – toll booths, highway maintenance, health clinics – handed over to the communities to run. It’s a reverse of the logic of government outsourcing – rather than auctioning off pieces of the state to large corporations and losing democratic control, the people who use the resources are given the power to manage them, creating, at least in theory, both jobs and more responsive public services. Chavez’s many critics have derided these initiatives as handouts and unfair subsidies, of course. Yet in an era when Halliburton treats the U.S. government as its personal ATM for six years, withdraws upward of $20 billion in Iraq contracts alone, refuses to hire local workers either on the Gulf coast or in Iraq, then expresses its gratitude to U.S. taxpayers by moving its corporate headquarters to Dubai (with all the attendant tax and legal benefits), Chavez’s direct subsidies to regular people look significantly less radical.”
Naomi Klein
Unfortunately most business ethics as taught these days highlight the need to return value to the shareholders over most everything else
They like to highlight ideas like, "how would you feel if your grandmother saw this on the front page", or "think how the cost of criminal prosecution would hurt your company", while simultaneously propagandizing grandma to believe that being a tax cheat is like the Founders of the country, or subverting Congress to reduce the punishments associated with their crimes
If grandma is pleased that you are a tax cheat, and the fines for being one are negligible, there is no barrier in the current world of 'business ethics' to doing it
Wherever You Go, There You Are
Google pushesf for Public Education Funding While Avoiding Taxes
Apple pushes for Public Education Funding While Avoiding Taxes
Goldman Sachs pushes For Public Education Funding While Avoiding Taxes
ExxonMobil pushes For Public Education Funding While Avoiding Taxes
Koch Brothers pushes For Public Education Funding While Avoiding Taxes.
etc...
I'm all for capitalism but American capitalism was never about Rand's definition. It was about working hard and smart and being rewarded appropriately for your effort. It was OK to be rich as long as you earned it. What's currently going on though is a return to aristocracy rather than meritocracy.
People that richly benefited from our mixed economy are now going on to screw the rest of us because they are in a decision making role. Back in the 50s major CEOs made 50 times what an employee made. Today they are making 500 times. We even have companies like Warlmart that shamelessly depend on food stamps to subside their employees wages. At some point there is going to be major blow back if major corporation continue hoarding all the wealth by evading taxes and paying their employees crap. (as happened to Greece where their own government and elite screwed over their own countrymen)
And then Nevada lowers its tax rate to get it back, and then it's Washington's turn again, the end result being that Microsoft pays a nominal tax if any at all. And since that means other people and companies must pay more to make up the difference, their effective tax rate goes up, they do the same, and ultimately all tax burden gets concentrated on those too poor to move. But of course they can't pay, so the state must cut education, infrastructure maintenance, law enforcement, etc. And that, in turn, makes the state an even less attractive location for business.
It's simply another manifestation of the illness that's killing capitalism. But at least the process of decay is fascinating to watch, as pathological patterns become the norm and eat away the structure of society. Sooner or later it's frayed enough that some crisis launches the final domino effect of collapse.
Washington state wants to survive, just like any living thing. Unfortunately, being a cultural organism rather than biological one limits its options, since it must be careful not to discredit the very mythology that justifies its own existence. And in the US, the mythology of the nation has been tightly coupled with the mythology of capitalism. Untangling them or altering capitalism to less toxic form is a job for the prophetic archetype; Washington state can do little but play for time and hope one appears before it runs out.
Of course, the whole reason prophets are so rare is because you always run the risk of being one of those things found wanting and cast out, but at some point the prevalent mythology of the society has been exhausted of its possibilities so there's little choice except to get a new one or die.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.