The agreement between the states was a perfect example of a holdout problem, where when a large block of land is being assembled for development, the last few remaining holders of land of land can holdout, demanding a disproportionately large amount to what everyone else got, and everyone else has to go along with it in order to complete the development. Whether it's fair or not is I think not a cut and dry question.
At any rate, though, that hardly makes this a situation of robbing Peter to Paul.
In this case, one of the small states that got a disproportionately large amount of the vote by holding out, is now considering relinquishing their disproportionate share and making things equal. If anything, I'd say Paul was the robber to start with, and after 10 generations, Paul's children out of a principled stance have agreed to give back what they took to Peter's children.
Are you that you actually like this current solution, or that it's not just conservatism towards existing systems?
Why should the government favor rural voters over city voters? This not being a binary system, if rural voters represent 10% of the population and city voters represent 90%, why should we rig the system so the government spends 20% of its money on rural voters in the absence of benefit to the city voters (obviously if it's better for the country to have a strong agricultural sector, then that's good for city voters too and not an improper allocation).
Also, while it is true that pure democracy can lead to bad decision making, is there any reason to believe that the current system of basing votes for the president on arbitrary lines drawn for historical reasons on the map would produce better results? The electoral college as originally designed was more of a representative republic, but now that electors already don't have any (de facto) power or decision making ability of their own, the current system isn't more representative than pure democracy. It's just an obfuscated pure democracy.
You act as if national campaigns targeting larger groups in the population is a bad thing. Is there a principled reason in this case to think that Iowans and other rural voters should receive votes that matter more even though they are numerically fewer? If so, why does that principle not also apply to all sorts of other minorities, such as giving racial minorities their own set of votes in the electoral college?
This is not robbing Peter to pay Paul. This is Paul having exacted an unfair deal from Peter as a price of being able to form the country, and Peter's descendants 50 generations later wanting out of the deal.
You are right, though, that from a purely selfish point of view, this is not a good idea for the rural states. The electoral college system disproportionately favors them, and giving up such an advantage out of a belief in principles seems almost quaint these days.
I've heard Popcorn Hours have a tendency to choke on certain files. They support 95% of stuff out there, but 5% gives them problems.
Since you've owned it and presumably follow development, what are the odds of firmware updates coming out that can give you support in the future for something not supported now?
I ask because I've long been an XBMC faithful, and their updating history has been just phenomenal. At this point, it seriously can play any file I throw at it, even things I can't get playing on my computer.
I think a big difference is that in Hong Kong, the bottom of the market is much, much lower, like the GP demonstrated. This can be contrasted against the US, where we prevent any housing that fails to meet a certain standard from being on the market. On the plus side, this means everyone has running hot water. On the minus side, it means that people who can't or don't want to pay for that are simply priced out of the market. This has all sorts of collateral effects, such as wage pressure, which translates into increased costs for all goods and services.
This is hardly theoretical either. If you've ever eaten at a restaurant in Chinatown and wondered how it is they are capable of selling product for so much cheaper than American competitors, consider that the restaurants are able to employ illegal immigrants who are willing to accept below minimum wages to live in illegally converted tiny apartments (sub-divided into locked cages to protect their possessions, no joke). And most interestingly of all perhaps, the illegal immigrants are willing to pay for the privilege of coming into the country to do so.
"But a ruler who reigns humanely and takes care of the people is to be obeyed strictly, for the benevolence of his dominion shows that he has been mandated by heaven."
"The Chinese wasted little time in applying gunpowder to warfare, and they produced a variety of gunpowder weapons, including flamethrowers, rockets, bombs, and mines, before inventing firearms. There was once a great deal of confusion and controversy surrounding the invention of firearms, but it is now generally accepted that firearms originated in China."
However, you are right that the Europeans certainly improved on the existing design and used it to reshape the world.
Variable demand, with 1200 passengers arriving at once at the airport, and each needing their own personal vehicle. This sounds like a problem that has already been well-characterized and solved in the past. It's called a parking lot. Only this one would be more efficient, because you could practice flow control to avoid so much duplicated functionality in the form of there being more cars than the system's maximum flow rate/capacity.
Ripple effects, where one breaking down is a PITA. Yes, if one breaks down, traffic stops. I believe this is also something of an understood problem, I deal with it on my morning commute every day on the highway. Sucks, life isn't perfect. If anything, I imagine this is much easier, since if a pod breaks down, you simply have a provision for it where it's pulled off the track and the passenger stuffed in the next available pod, with the broken pod to be dealt with at leisure. Remember, there's no reason there should only be a single track between any two given places, the same reason there isn't only one lane on the road.
Goofing off: Sounds like any other type of vandalism to me. If they intentionally create problems for the system, make part of the system penalizing people who do so.
Besides which, if this is supposed to be some type of a replacement for a lot of car flow, then it'd be a simple matter of reallocating the police and resources that were dedicated to patrolling the streets to patrolling the mass transit.
The NYC experience would also seem to address the shopping/hauling point you raise. In NYC, everything, including groceries and restaurants, delivers. I don't see any reason in a city where this system is rolled out why we couldn't adopt the same method, even if it is less dense.
Main problem with rolling it out is that people love to have costs of things hidden from them. It may be difficult to convince people to agree to a 5-10 dollar delivery fee, even though they are saving 100s or 1000s of dollars in maintenance, fuel, and amortization costs of a car.
I look at corporate stupidity around here, and realize that a truly well-run company could mop the floor with them, assuming it could get well-launched. There must be some sort of systemic barriers to entry, or self-stultifying aspect to a growing company, that this hasn't already happened.
Running a small company well is surprisingly difficult. Running a big company well is much, much harder than one would think, i.e. pretty much impossible. Why do you think that big company rot sets in after a while and companies gradually become less agile? It's not for lack of trying on the part of smart people.
From your post: "Many of the implied responsibilities have been eroded over the years, and that may be corrected by codifying them into law -an option I'm hoping gets traction."
The owners simply aren't satisfied with the hundreds of millions per year they're already making.
Of course, the owners are people like you and me (and yes, the CEO and other assorted "fat cats"). IBM is a public corporation. The funny thing about this is, people are all for corporations doing things that make no sense economically like hiring Americans at 100x the wage of someone else who is willing to do the job for cheaper. However, somehow whenever most people get a stake, no matter how small, even just one share, if you ask them if they want THEIR corporation to forgo making money for them, they would respond HELL no. It's easy to succumb to the desire to vote to take away someone else's money.
Apologies if I came off harsh in my reply. Your response just struck me like you hadn't considered my point at all before replying.
Rephrased in terms of padding a company's profit margin, that is certainly a much more significant factor in terms of a company's revenues and expenses. Also a much harder problem to resolve, with lots of factors to consider. One is that in terms of "buy American" it would seem to make more sense to support companies with American stock ownership, rather than companies incorporated in the United States.
I think the question of how much consumers would have to pay to makeup the CEO's 2000x(avg employee salary) is besides the point. Even if improved PR with American consumers results in increased sales due to hiring a cheaper CEO, this isn't a net gain except in terms of massaged senses of pride.
Essentially, consumers have paid extra in order to feel like they got revenge on the fat cat executives. This comes at the expense of compromising the board's business judgment that another CEO that cost more could have generated additional real sales. In the end, the US would have traded additional people with a slightly improved standard of living who feel happy because they now own a new Widget X (as well as possibly additional foreign cash flowing into the country from foreign consumers), for on the other hand a temporary sense of satisfaction in the minds of consumers at getting even.
You say there's no need for American companies to export jobs or reduce wages such that base costs are the same as with their competitors, we just need to "motivate the right choices". You seem to continue by implying that the solution is to place more restrictions upon American companies. That will resolve the problem of American labor costing more, and American products costing more such that no one wants to buy them. What exactly is your proposal?
By the tone of your response, I wonder if it would even make any difference at all, whatever numbers I produce. I think the answer to my question is obvious to anyone who is willing to take even a moment to consider it.
But anyway, here's numbers: Google says IBM spent in 2007 about 20m on CEO compensation, including stock and such. IBM's website shows 386,558 employees worldwide. Assuming, what I think is a very conservative estimate, that IBM pays each employee, other than the CEO only 10k a year, then 386,557 (minus 1 for CEO) times 10k = 3.86b.
Looked at in another way, in 2007 IBM had 98.786b of gross revenue. Let's say we slash that fat cat CEO's salary down to 0. Power to the people! How much percent of gross revenue has been saved?.02% Huzzah! The company is saved, peace is restored to the USA, we finally put those fat cats in their place and fixed the economy.
The fact of the matter is that CEO pay, as much as it galls the populist rabble rousers, accounts for virtually nothing of a company's expenses. If the board sees someone they think could run the company even 1% better, than doubling CEO salary is worth it to get him. And that's why they do it. Until the negative PR from overpaying fat cat executives outweighs any possible benefit. In which case, America as a whole loses, because less effective managers are running our business enterprises, with no gain to anybody but wounded senses of pride and reduced feelings of envy.
Is that your rationalization on why you don't have to do your part to support your beliefs and buy American to protect American jobs and standard of living?
What percentage of an American made product's price do you suppose is going to pay the CEO's paycheck versus the salary of all of the non-upper management employees?
So under your plan, Haier, a China based manufacturing company, selling its consumer products in the US, would be forced to turn over 100% of its profits to the IRS? Clearly, this would have the effect of denying the US Market to foreign labor.
I could imagine some of our trade partners may not be so thrilled about this type of blatant protectionism. I'm not expert on trade treaties, but this sounds like the sort of thing that might run into problems there, too.
Hypothetical example: USA is good at producing CPUs. China is good at producing furniture. Under their old arrangement, USA would specialize in producing CPUs, and China would specialize in producing furniture, and then they would trade half of their products. In the end, each has more/cheaper CPUs and furniture, because of specialization and trade. Now USA decides, aha, let's seize all of China's profits on selling furniture. What do you suppose is the net result for all of the efficiencies previously unlocked by global trade?
I'm sick and tired of all this populist bull that is everywhere these days. Populism has a point, but the variety that seems popular right now is just empty rabble rousing based not on logic but emotion. Yes, it's all the CEO's fault, those fat cats are the ones who put us in this situation.
What percent of the costs of IBM do you suppose are general labor, and what percent is upper management?
IBM is a publicly traded company. If you could gather enough people who actually put their money where their mouth is, and would either think that this savings on CEO salary would make this worth it, or are willing to forgo value in the company in order to deliberately get a less qualified executive to make a political statement, more power to you.
Alternatively, you could make your point in the marketplace by punishing companies that you disagree with. Are you personally willing to support American companies and high cost American workers by buying American whenever possible? No? Apparently most Americans don't like that idea much either.
Is it better to simply layoff the American workers and hire cheaper foreign labor? No? American companies attempting to become cost competitive with foreign companies are unpatriotic corporate fat cats!
Then is it better simply to let our corporations be out-competed by the Hyundais and Haiers of the world? In the end, the costs of most things boil down to labor. How are our businesses supposed to compete with higher costs across the board? Protectionist laws would work for a while, but in the end a country can only hide for so long from the fact that its business enterprises aren't competitive globally if the difference is too wide.
Western society has grown weak and spineless. We aren't willing to make any hard decisions anymore, because the ends never justify the means. We're not right or good, we're just nice. We can't crack an egg to make an omelet because what about the feelings of the egg shell? It's fine that a 3rd party starves now as a result, because we don't have to see them, so it doesn't make us feel bad.
Reminds me of a petulant child, who is given the choice between a cookie or candy, and refuses to make a decision and throws a tantrum because he wants both.
One can come up with tons of rationalizations for why it makes sense to both not buy American, and also support job protectionism.
At the end of the day, what would you guess is the percent of an average product's costs that goes to CEO and upper management pay, and what is the percent that goes to rank and file labors' pay?
This is a misleading summary, albeit cribbed from the first story linked.
This is the basis of the story for both articles linked, it's a part of the Agenda found on Whitehouse.gov:
Ensure Freedom of Space: The Obama-Biden Administration will restore American leadership on space issues, seeking a worldwide ban on weapons that interfere with military and commercial satellites. They will thoroughly assess possible threats to U.S. space assets and the best options, military and diplomatic, for countering them, establishing contingency plans to ensure that U.S. forces can maintain or duplicate access to information from space assets and accelerating programs to harden U.S. satellites against attack.
A ban on weapons that interfere with satellites is very different from a ban on space weapons. The former I could support, it's an agreement to protect the common good, mankind's access to space, from the possible disastrous consequences of ringing the planet with debris. The latter I would have deep reservations about.
Just another example of the perv's ruining things for the rest of us, and I'm sure that a modified firmware will be released in like 10 minutes to take it off
Well, really then given that this in all likelihood won't hinder pervs in any way as you pointed out, this is just another example (if the bill passes, and I have no idea of the likelihood of that) of politicians ruining things.
If you incorporate an overseas subsidiary, and conduct business in that, then in most circumstances, there won't be any US tax on that. It's if a US corporation tried to operate business directly in another country without a foreign subsidiary that they are subject to taxation by the US.
Slashdot Mirror
The agreement between the states was a perfect example of a holdout problem, where when a large block of land is being assembled for development, the last few remaining holders of land of land can holdout, demanding a disproportionately large amount to what everyone else got, and everyone else has to go along with it in order to complete the development. Whether it's fair or not is I think not a cut and dry question.
At any rate, though, that hardly makes this a situation of robbing Peter to Paul.
In this case, one of the small states that got a disproportionately large amount of the vote by holding out, is now considering relinquishing their disproportionate share and making things equal. If anything, I'd say Paul was the robber to start with, and after 10 generations, Paul's children out of a principled stance have agreed to give back what they took to Peter's children.
Are you that you actually like this current solution, or that it's not just conservatism towards existing systems?
Why should the government favor rural voters over city voters? This not being a binary system, if rural voters represent 10% of the population and city voters represent 90%, why should we rig the system so the government spends 20% of its money on rural voters in the absence of benefit to the city voters (obviously if it's better for the country to have a strong agricultural sector, then that's good for city voters too and not an improper allocation).
Also, while it is true that pure democracy can lead to bad decision making, is there any reason to believe that the current system of basing votes for the president on arbitrary lines drawn for historical reasons on the map would produce better results? The electoral college as originally designed was more of a representative republic, but now that electors already don't have any (de facto) power or decision making ability of their own, the current system isn't more representative than pure democracy. It's just an obfuscated pure democracy.
You act as if national campaigns targeting larger groups in the population is a bad thing. Is there a principled reason in this case to think that Iowans and other rural voters should receive votes that matter more even though they are numerically fewer? If so, why does that principle not also apply to all sorts of other minorities, such as giving racial minorities their own set of votes in the electoral college?
This is not robbing Peter to pay Paul. This is Paul having exacted an unfair deal from Peter as a price of being able to form the country, and Peter's descendants 50 generations later wanting out of the deal.
You are right, though, that from a purely selfish point of view, this is not a good idea for the rural states. The electoral college system disproportionately favors them, and giving up such an advantage out of a belief in principles seems almost quaint these days.
Are they good about support/updates?
I've heard Popcorn Hours have a tendency to choke on certain files. They support 95% of stuff out there, but 5% gives them problems.
Since you've owned it and presumably follow development, what are the odds of firmware updates coming out that can give you support in the future for something not supported now?
I ask because I've long been an XBMC faithful, and their updating history has been just phenomenal. At this point, it seriously can play any file I throw at it, even things I can't get playing on my computer.
I think a big difference is that in Hong Kong, the bottom of the market is much, much lower, like the GP demonstrated. This can be contrasted against the US, where we prevent any housing that fails to meet a certain standard from being on the market. On the plus side, this means everyone has running hot water. On the minus side, it means that people who can't or don't want to pay for that are simply priced out of the market. This has all sorts of collateral effects, such as wage pressure, which translates into increased costs for all goods and services.
This is hardly theoretical either. If you've ever eaten at a restaurant in Chinatown and wondered how it is they are capable of selling product for so much cheaper than American competitors, consider that the restaurants are able to employ illegal immigrants who are willing to accept below minimum wages to live in illegally converted tiny apartments (sub-divided into locked cages to protect their possessions, no joke). And most interestingly of all perhaps, the illegal immigrants are willing to pay for the privilege of coming into the country to do so.
What of the Confucian concept of loyalty and the Mandate of Heaven?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confucianism#Loyalty
"But a ruler who reigns humanely and takes care of the people is to be obeyed strictly, for the benevolence of his dominion shows that he has been mandated by heaven."
China actually used the knowledge to engineer groundbreaking powder-using weapons first.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunpowder#China
"The Chinese wasted little time in applying gunpowder to warfare, and they produced a variety of gunpowder weapons, including flamethrowers, rockets, bombs, and mines, before inventing firearms. There was once a great deal of confusion and controversy surrounding the invention of firearms, but it is now generally accepted that firearms originated in China."
However, you are right that the Europeans certainly improved on the existing design and used it to reshape the world.
In NY, you can go to the store, pick out the stuff you want, and that's the stuff they deliver.
Or you can do like you suggested, and have the store people pick it out for you so you don't have to go.
Variable demand, with 1200 passengers arriving at once at the airport, and each needing their own personal vehicle. This sounds like a problem that has already been well-characterized and solved in the past. It's called a parking lot. Only this one would be more efficient, because you could practice flow control to avoid so much duplicated functionality in the form of there being more cars than the system's maximum flow rate/capacity.
Ripple effects, where one breaking down is a PITA. Yes, if one breaks down, traffic stops. I believe this is also something of an understood problem, I deal with it on my morning commute every day on the highway. Sucks, life isn't perfect. If anything, I imagine this is much easier, since if a pod breaks down, you simply have a provision for it where it's pulled off the track and the passenger stuffed in the next available pod, with the broken pod to be dealt with at leisure. Remember, there's no reason there should only be a single track between any two given places, the same reason there isn't only one lane on the road.
Goofing off: Sounds like any other type of vandalism to me. If they intentionally create problems for the system, make part of the system penalizing people who do so.
Besides which, if this is supposed to be some type of a replacement for a lot of car flow, then it'd be a simple matter of reallocating the police and resources that were dedicated to patrolling the streets to patrolling the mass transit.
The NYC experience would also seem to address the shopping/hauling point you raise. In NYC, everything, including groceries and restaurants, delivers. I don't see any reason in a city where this system is rolled out why we couldn't adopt the same method, even if it is less dense.
Main problem with rolling it out is that people love to have costs of things hidden from them. It may be difficult to convince people to agree to a 5-10 dollar delivery fee, even though they are saving 100s or 1000s of dollars in maintenance, fuel, and amortization costs of a car.
I look at corporate stupidity around here, and realize that a truly well-run company could mop the floor with them, assuming it could get well-launched. There must be some sort of systemic barriers to entry, or self-stultifying aspect to a growing company, that this hasn't already happened.
Running a small company well is surprisingly difficult. Running a big company well is much, much harder than one would think, i.e. pretty much impossible. Why do you think that big company rot sets in after a while and companies gradually become less agile? It's not for lack of trying on the part of smart people.
From your post:
"Many of the implied responsibilities have been eroded over the years, and that may be corrected by codifying them into law -an option I'm hoping gets traction."
How is that not a "restriction or regulation"?
Of course, the owners are people like you and me (and yes, the CEO and other assorted "fat cats"). IBM is a public corporation. The funny thing about this is, people are all for corporations doing things that make no sense economically like hiring Americans at 100x the wage of someone else who is willing to do the job for cheaper. However, somehow whenever most people get a stake, no matter how small, even just one share, if you ask them if they want THEIR corporation to forgo making money for them, they would respond HELL no. It's easy to succumb to the desire to vote to take away someone else's money.
Apologies if I came off harsh in my reply. Your response just struck me like you hadn't considered my point at all before replying.
Rephrased in terms of padding a company's profit margin, that is certainly a much more significant factor in terms of a company's revenues and expenses. Also a much harder problem to resolve, with lots of factors to consider. One is that in terms of "buy American" it would seem to make more sense to support companies with American stock ownership, rather than companies incorporated in the United States.
I think the question of how much consumers would have to pay to makeup the CEO's 2000x(avg employee salary) is besides the point. Even if improved PR with American consumers results in increased sales due to hiring a cheaper CEO, this isn't a net gain except in terms of massaged senses of pride.
Essentially, consumers have paid extra in order to feel like they got revenge on the fat cat executives. This comes at the expense of compromising the board's business judgment that another CEO that cost more could have generated additional real sales. In the end, the US would have traded additional people with a slightly improved standard of living who feel happy because they now own a new Widget X (as well as possibly additional foreign cash flowing into the country from foreign consumers), for on the other hand a temporary sense of satisfaction in the minds of consumers at getting even.
You say there's no need for American companies to export jobs or reduce wages such that base costs are the same as with their competitors, we just need to "motivate the right choices". You seem to continue by implying that the solution is to place more restrictions upon American companies. That will resolve the problem of American labor costing more, and American products costing more such that no one wants to buy them. What exactly is your proposal?
By the tone of your response, I wonder if it would even make any difference at all, whatever numbers I produce. I think the answer to my question is obvious to anyone who is willing to take even a moment to consider it.
But anyway, here's numbers:
Google says IBM spent in 2007 about 20m on CEO compensation, including stock and such.
IBM's website shows 386,558 employees worldwide.
Assuming, what I think is a very conservative estimate, that IBM pays each employee, other than the CEO only 10k a year, then 386,557 (minus 1 for CEO) times 10k = 3.86b.
Looked at in another way, in 2007 IBM had 98.786b of gross revenue. Let's say we slash that fat cat CEO's salary down to 0. Power to the people! How much percent of gross revenue has been saved? .02% Huzzah! The company is saved, peace is restored to the USA, we finally put those fat cats in their place and fixed the economy.
The fact of the matter is that CEO pay, as much as it galls the populist rabble rousers, accounts for virtually nothing of a company's expenses. If the board sees someone they think could run the company even 1% better, than doubling CEO salary is worth it to get him. And that's why they do it. Until the negative PR from overpaying fat cat executives outweighs any possible benefit. In which case, America as a whole loses, because less effective managers are running our business enterprises, with no gain to anybody but wounded senses of pride and reduced feelings of envy.
Is that your rationalization on why you don't have to do your part to support your beliefs and buy American to protect American jobs and standard of living?
What percentage of an American made product's price do you suppose is going to pay the CEO's paycheck versus the salary of all of the non-upper management employees?
So under your plan, Haier, a China based manufacturing company, selling its consumer products in the US, would be forced to turn over 100% of its profits to the IRS? Clearly, this would have the effect of denying the US Market to foreign labor.
I could imagine some of our trade partners may not be so thrilled about this type of blatant protectionism. I'm not expert on trade treaties, but this sounds like the sort of thing that might run into problems there, too.
Hypothetical example: USA is good at producing CPUs. China is good at producing furniture. Under their old arrangement, USA would specialize in producing CPUs, and China would specialize in producing furniture, and then they would trade half of their products. In the end, each has more/cheaper CPUs and furniture, because of specialization and trade. Now USA decides, aha, let's seize all of China's profits on selling furniture. What do you suppose is the net result for all of the efficiencies previously unlocked by global trade?
Insightful?
I'm sick and tired of all this populist bull that is everywhere these days. Populism has a point, but the variety that seems popular right now is just empty rabble rousing based not on logic but emotion. Yes, it's all the CEO's fault, those fat cats are the ones who put us in this situation.
What percent of the costs of IBM do you suppose are general labor, and what percent is upper management?
IBM is a publicly traded company. If you could gather enough people who actually put their money where their mouth is, and would either think that this savings on CEO salary would make this worth it, or are willing to forgo value in the company in order to deliberately get a less qualified executive to make a political statement, more power to you.
Alternatively, you could make your point in the marketplace by punishing companies that you disagree with. Are you personally willing to support American companies and high cost American workers by buying American whenever possible? No? Apparently most Americans don't like that idea much either.
Is it better to simply layoff the American workers and hire cheaper foreign labor? No? American companies attempting to become cost competitive with foreign companies are unpatriotic corporate fat cats!
Then is it better simply to let our corporations be out-competed by the Hyundais and Haiers of the world? In the end, the costs of most things boil down to labor. How are our businesses supposed to compete with higher costs across the board? Protectionist laws would work for a while, but in the end a country can only hide for so long from the fact that its business enterprises aren't competitive globally if the difference is too wide.
Western society has grown weak and spineless. We aren't willing to make any hard decisions anymore, because the ends never justify the means. We're not right or good, we're just nice. We can't crack an egg to make an omelet because what about the feelings of the egg shell? It's fine that a 3rd party starves now as a result, because we don't have to see them, so it doesn't make us feel bad.
Reminds me of a petulant child, who is given the choice between a cookie or candy, and refuses to make a decision and throws a tantrum because he wants both.
One can come up with tons of rationalizations for why it makes sense to both not buy American, and also support job protectionism.
At the end of the day, what would you guess is the percent of an average product's costs that goes to CEO and upper management pay, and what is the percent that goes to rank and file labors' pay?
This is a misleading summary, albeit cribbed from the first story linked.
This is the basis of the story for both articles linked, it's a part of the Agenda found on Whitehouse.gov:
link
A ban on weapons that interfere with satellites is very different from a ban on space weapons. The former I could support, it's an agreement to protect the common good, mankind's access to space, from the possible disastrous consequences of ringing the planet with debris. The latter I would have deep reservations about.
Just another example of the perv's ruining things for the rest of us, and I'm sure that a modified firmware will be released in like 10 minutes to take it off
Well, really then given that this in all likelihood won't hinder pervs in any way as you pointed out, this is just another example (if the bill passes, and I have no idea of the likelihood of that) of politicians ruining things.
If you incorporate an overseas subsidiary, and conduct business in that, then in most circumstances, there won't be any US tax on that. It's if a US corporation tried to operate business directly in another country without a foreign subsidiary that they are subject to taxation by the US.