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Shouting 'Pay Your Taxes', Activists Occupy Apple Stores in France (marketwatch.com)
An anonymous reader quotes MarketWatch:
A group of global activists stormed and occupied several Apple Stores in France on Saturday in a move aimed at pressuring the company to pay up on a €13 billion ($15.5 billion) tax bill to the European Union. In a press release, the France unit of the Association for the Taxation of Financial Transactions and Citizen's Action organization (Attac), said 100 of its members occupied the Opera Apple Store in Paris, demanding the company pay its taxes... Attac said dozens of protests were organized at other Apple store locations throughout France on Saturday. In the Paris store, activists were seen via videos circulating on Twitter, pushing past security and hanging a banner that said "We will stop when Apple pays." Security in Paris reportedly evacuated Apple workers from the building as those protests began.
After three hours they left the store -- leaving behind protest messages on the iPads on display. The group claims that Apple has stashed $230 billion in tax havens around the world, but also hopes to raise awareness about other issues.
"Attac said the action was part of the #PhoneRevolt movement aimed at highlighting unfair practices by Apple, that are not just about taxes, but also pollution via extraction of metals for its phones, worker exploitation and driving a global consumption binge."
After three hours they left the store -- leaving behind protest messages on the iPads on display. The group claims that Apple has stashed $230 billion in tax havens around the world, but also hopes to raise awareness about other issues.
"Attac said the action was part of the #PhoneRevolt movement aimed at highlighting unfair practices by Apple, that are not just about taxes, but also pollution via extraction of metals for its phones, worker exploitation and driving a global consumption binge."
Seems like they are awake. Taxes are what holds up and maintains infrastructure, health, food and shelter for the poor.
Complaining to their politicians would never have made the front page of international newspapers to raise awareness about the issues surrounding the current tax laws.
There is already plenty of awareness. I have seen dozens of front page articles about Apple's tax dispute with the EU.
But awareness is not enough. It is important to take action, and to direct that action appropriately. A good example is the reaction on both the left and the right to America's financial bailout. The left reacted with "Occupy Wall Street", which focused on street protests against the companies that received the bailout. The right reacted with the "Tea Party" and focused on electoral politics, endorsing candidates that met their approval, and promoting challengers to those that did not.
OWS never articulated any clear objectives, has now faded away, and is mostly forgotten.
The Tea Party, meanwhile, has taken over the Republican Party and is now running the country.
Lesson learned: Proper focus makes a difference.
Actually, EU corporate taxes are generally lower than US corporate taxes. That's why US corporations keep their money overseas.
European tax systems tend to me more fair: the European middle class, which receives most of the benefits from taxation, pays considerably higher taxes than the US middle class; that is, they pay what they use and balance their budgets.
The US middle class still deludes itself into believing that they can continue to get free stuff by taxing the wealthy and running up a massive debt.
EU countries impose massive tax burdens relative to the rest of the world. Excessive taxation, especially for how EU countries spend the money, is unjust. Refusing to pay unfair and excessive taxes is a moral position. Apple should continue to not pay the taxes, and they are completely justified in that position.
We get a good universal healthcare system, good welfare state, good education system and decent infrastructure for our money. You may think we're taxed to death but the tax burden per capita in the UK for the NHS is the same as the tax burden per capita of Medicare/Medicaid is for the US yet we get a healthcare system where it is free to use for all. We also get things provided for free that are an additional cost in the USA. We don't pay a separate charge through our local taxes for the fire department for example.
I'd rather keep paying the taxes and have what we have than not do and end up living in a first world country where highway bridges are collapsing and people go bankrupt because they get ill.
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You would be suprised to learn that France is one of the very few countries in the world with a truly independent computer platform development. Their national architecture split from the earliest generation of IBM360 in the 1960s and the BULL company developed it further independently. French electronic industry however is not cost-competitive in the post-Cold War world, so their architecture is only used in military and nuclear industrial applications nowadays.
For example, the french Dassault Rafale fighter jet has the world's most advanced electronic warfare computer system called SPECTRE. It is able to receive and analyze enemy radar signals in REAL-TIME and uses a specialized mini-supercomputer Fourier core to generate "counter-phase" signals onboard, which are then fed to gallium-based power modules and emitted back towards the enemy radar, so the factual and faux radar returns cancel each other out completely and Evil Regime (TM) sees nothing. That's one huge tour-de-force in hightech, which neither Russia, Japan or USA can imitate currently.
In essence the Rafale jet is both aerodynamic and stealthly at the same time, without the need to use cumbersome geometric stealth shapes in US fashion (remember how ungainly the F-117 looks) or the need for any exotic, high-maintenance and very poisonous paint materials on the fuselage surfaces to supress radar return. (In comparison the F-22 Raptor needs partial repainting every time it flies through rain or wet bulb clouds.) That enables frenchies to operate the Rafale on their aircraft carrier, while USA is currently unable to meet the heavy maintenance requirements of stealth planes onboard its CVNs.
That's the power of (admittedly low-visibility) french computing technology.