Just as the limited liability aspect of incorporation is a subsidy to capital. Stop pretending that we live in, or ever will live in, a global libertopia.
Nice straw man. Who ever claimed that we were in a "libertopia"? (whatever the hell that is supposed to be) We're talking about someone who is trying to mask their racism under the guise of economic protectionism. We have millions of illegal immigrants in the US who are finding work because there is a need and they are willing and able. If you subsidize labor then you necessarily are taxing capital. Which one do you want to do because you can't have both. The best you can hope for is to find the magic level of capital versus labor to optimize growth and thus maximize benefits for all.
BTW the limited liability aspect of a corporation is the entire point of a corporation. Limiting personal liability for the actions of others is what allows many investments to be made at all. Without the corporate veil our modern economy would not exist at all. It's what allows us to take risks with capital. Your comparison of the very existence of corporations with the decision on subsidizing wages by limiting the size of the labor pool is an irrelevant comparison.
Where is that line from, the Thomas Friedman school of sycophancy?
Cute. Remember that the next time you buy something made outside the US which you will most assuredly do today whether you want to or not.
The global aspect of the economy is very selective.
Really? Let's see if I can enumerate just some of the things I've purchased today that came from overseas. About half the produce on my grocery bill came from South America and most of the rest either came from the Midwest or California. I bought a piece of electronics that mostly came from China, a piece of clothing that came from Vietnam, I used gasoline that has a percentage of the oil in it most likely from either Canada, Mexico and/or Venezuela. Several products I used have materials mined from all over the globe. I drank some coffee that almost certainly was not domestically produced. For my company I bought some wire that was manufactured in Asia and probably mined there too as well as some terminals that were made in Japan. I'm going to turn that into a product that is going to be exported to Europe. We're about to buy a machine that was designed in Switzerland, made in Germany and has parts from Asia and the US.
Selective? Spare me... I'm surrounded by products, both tangible and intangible, that came from all around the world including here at home and so are you. The economy is global and the notion that you can close the borders and keep the rest of the world out is both naive and dangerous. You want to close the border and kick out all the immigrant labor? Fine. Enjoy your higher prices at the grocery store and other places as well as the higher taxes and lower economic growth required to make it happen.
For example, offshoring is considered wonderful, but little mention is made of region pricing.
Off-shoring is neither wonderful nor horrible. It is simply economic laws in action. It's like saying "gravity is considered wonderful" - it misses the point. Capital and labor will seek the locations where costs are lowest. It's like water settling into the lowest cavity. Sometimes there are good reasons it doesn't move but if it can then it will. It might be beautiful or it might be dangerous but that is a second order effect.
Our so-called "free trade" agreements include lots of things that are very much anti-free trade, like requirements for the greater enforcement of government monopolies called "intellectual property".
Intellectual property laws are in place to mitigate the free rider problem. If you have a better way to do it then dazzle us with your brilliance. I
It's about blaming income inequality on teachers and schools rather than the 1%.
Blaming a specific group of people for income inequality kind of misses the point. That's just scapegoating. Just because someone was fortunate enough to gain a lot of wealth doesn't mean they are responsible for others not being so fortunate. Economic growth is not a zero sum game except in the short run. In the long run it is possible for economic rewards to be shared and everyone to benefit. The top 1% of the population does not have the power by themselves (in a democracy) to dictate income inequality. That can only happen if a very large portion of the remaining 99% permits it to happen. People regularly support policies that are demonstrably not in their best interest or that of society if they were deciding rationally.
Too many people have bought into the notion that social structures that keep the playing field relatively level are somehow a bad thing. Everyone should have the chance to become rich but after a certain point some have more money than they could ever possibly need. More accumulation by one person at that point does not benefit society. Nobody likes paying taxes but a sensible progressive tax policy (or a flat tax with a floor) can have the side effect of minimizing income disparity. Healthcare is a cost that everyone experiences but in the US we historically have forced low income people to pay a disproportionate share of their income on it. We subsidize large corporations (oil companies, big agriculture firms, etc) that don't need the help. We refuse to balance our taxation levels with our expenditures. We spend a disproportionate amount of our tax revenue on maintaining an overly large military rather than on economic growth, research and jobs. These are choices we have made as a society and they aren't just the fault of the so-called 1%.
And also about washing one's hands of any social responsibility for the well-being of the roughly 70% of Americans who don't have a college degree.
Approximately 40% of Americans have at least an Associates degree and over 50% have at least some college education. Your point is valid but the data isn't correct.
(Not that a college degree guarantees middle-class success these days.)
It's well-established by now that one of the most significant factors in destroying the lives of the unskilled and semi-skilled workers across the country has been the influx of similar immigrants from around the world.
Bullshit it's "well-established". What you are talking about is essentially a subsidy to labor by limiting the size of the labor pool. Limit supply and prices for the labor and every product that labor produces has to rise. Make labor cost more and you will pay more for the results of that labor. What you are forgetting is that we are in a GLOBAL economy. There are very few unskilled jobs that cannot be done elsewhere. Limit the supply of labor in the domestic market and much of that production will migrate elsewhere. If labor costs are too high relative to those available elsewhere then labor-intensive work will migrate to areas with lower labor costs like osmosis. Try to stop it and you will only drive prices higher and hurt the economy in the long run.
Here's how you enact a sensible immigration policy. You crack down on the employers of illegals such that no one will hire them.
You think that is the basis for a "sensible" immigration policy? You think a police state is somehow a good thing? It's unenforceable at any reasonable economic or humanitarian cost. It drives up costs making it harder to compete globally. Furthermore it doesn't address why they are coming into the country in the first place. They come because there is work available. What you should worry about is not whether people are coming into the US illegally. What you should worry about is if they STOP coming to the US because that means there are some serious economic problems.
hen, you only allow immigrants with provable skills to immigrate as singles or with their immediate family if they're married with children.
How does this work with unskilled workers? You think those crops are going to pick themselves? There is lots of vital work that does not depend on skilled labor. Furthermore if a family wants to migrate to the US then that is not a bad thing. Who the hell are you to tell them they cannot come?
That's just a recipe for waking up one day and finding a large ethnic enclave in an American city
Oh so it's really about race. I get it. You don't want those brown people who don't speak English immigrating to the US. Never mind that your ancestors were immigrants too and probably came here illegally as well and probably lived in "a large ethnic enclave in an American city". It's not as if we asked the Native American population if it was ok if we moved in.
I don't know how old you are but Ma Bell was nowhere near as evil as today's AT&T and Verizon.
Bullshit they weren't. My father and grandfather worked for Ma Bell for over 50 years between the two of them (both as line installers and in engineering) and I'm old enough to remember them pre-breakup. I've seen them operated behind the scenes and my father can tell you in great detail what a bunch of evil pricks they could be.
Ma Bell was a regulated monopoly with many constraints on what it could do.
Regulated yes. Constrained? Not so much. AT&T had vast power back in the day. Certainly more than Verizon and AT&T do currently, who BTW are also still regulated quasi-monopolies at least for some of the services they provide. The old AT&T basically monopolized all telephone and data communications in the US and I assure you that they behaved accordingly.
The Bell System was broken up in 1982 by a lawsuit brought by Northern Telecom because they wanted to sell the DMS-100 in the US.
The reasons for the breakup were FAR more complicated than wanting to sell some gear made by Nortel. Primarily AT&T wanted to get into the computer business but the breakup ultimately was the end result of an 8 year anti-trust suit begun in 1974 over the issue that AT&T was accused of using its Western Electric subsidiary (now Lucent, Agere, Avaya and some other companies) to subsidize the cost of their network. Essentially they were using one monopoly to maintain another.
Landline sound quality in 1975 was better than any mobile phone sound quality in 2014.
Do you really want to go back to 1975? There was no such thing as mobile service. There also was for all practical purposes no data service. There was no voice mail and no answering machines. Text messaging didn't exist and email wasn't available outside of academia and some research labs. You had precisely one company to deal with in the US (AT&T) and they're weren't exactly friendly what with them being a monopoly and all. You would get charged an obscene amount of money to call anyone more than a few miles from your house and you didn't even want to think about the cost of calling someone outside your country. Rotary dial phones were still commonplace. And I'm old enough to remember all this.
Yeah they had voice service that was optimized for voice and nothing else. Cell phones might have their problems but I'm not exactly eager to turn the clock back.
Instead, the bills for customers on the major wireless providers have actually gone up, if not dramatically, in recent months — which means U.S. cell service remains much more expensive than it is in many other countries.
Bills may have gone up but that doesn't mean you are paying more for the same stuff. I'm paying less for voice but I'm paying more for data in total. I'm also paying less per byte in data than I used to but I'm using more of it. My first cell phone bill was around $40/month (15 years ago) and only included a "massive" 40 minutes/month of voice calls before expensive ($0.70/minute) overage minutes kicked in. My bill reached a peak of about $100/month/phone recently but now I'm paying about $70 per phone for unlimited talk, text and more data than I use in a month. Plus I'm not even accounting for inflation.
So yeah, my bill is higher but I'm getting a lot more in terms of data communicated per dollar and I expect that to continue to fall over time. The product the telecom companies are selling is a commodity so I expect prices to continue to fall unless we allow the companies to merge into a monopoly.
Meh, I suspect that if that were their attitude they wouldn't have drawn attention to the issue at all.
Sure they would. They need to assure people, particularly outside the US, that they aren't the US government's sock puppet to make their business look credible. Google has ambitions outside the US you know plus they need to present a good face to their current customers so they don't go elsewhere. Though in reality it probably isn't that simple, you can explain all their actions purely in terms of profit motive. Google is trying to do just enough rather than take the painful step of actually doing the right thing. "Don't be evil" isn't the same thing as "go fight evil".
They were the ones who made a big deal of the government snooping their dedicated lines.
Kind of low hanging fruit there. It's like discovering that the NSA has bugged your bedroom. Frankly that is kind of the least of the problems.
I'm not a fan of Google's, but I'm not sure why people are unwilling to recognize this is a significant step in the right direction.
Because they aren't really going to bat on this. It would be one thing if this was some big surprise to them but the KNOW the government is snooping and their response has been half-hearted at best. Google has a huge war chest to fight the good fight on this. I realize they can't do some things but they aren't doing a lot of things that they can do, including lobbying HARD on this issue. Google isn't the only one. I put just as much blame on Apple and Microsoft and Facebook and the rest of the tech giants. Want to profit on information about us? Fine, then step up and defend us in ways we cannot.
Before Google took the steps necessary to ensure communications between data centers was secured, the government could (and apparently did) just slurp up everything and troll for information.
If the government could do it, so could others and I'm pretty sure Google has some people smart enough to realize that. All this means is that if they had the ability to stop this earlier then they were either negligent or incompetent.
and they revealed that Google's data is now safely protected from the prying eyes of government organizations.
Does anyone actually believe this? First off we know that all the government has to do is issue a National Security Letter and Google will fold like a dish cloth. Eric Schmidt isn't about to go to jail to protect you. Second, he has every reason to publicly proclaim our data is "safely protected" in order to protect his business regardless of whether it is true. Third, he cannot possibly promise that even if he genuinely believes it because he can't prove it. Fourth, even if he could somehow be sure he's keeping the government snoops out, he won't provide anyone the access necessary to verify it.
There are things they could say that I would believe but him being "pretty sure" that our data is safe just isn't really credible.
Maybe you had to be there. I was about 10 years old when The Beatles hit the scene. Not all of their music is great but much of it was really groundbreaking at the time. Same thing for the Stones.
Perhaps you did have to be there. I'm not quite old enough, though I'm close. But on the other hand even if it was groundbreaking at the time (something I'm not entirely convinced of) that doesn't mean it should be held in high regard simply out of nostalgia. It's all subjective of course but I can point to lots of other music even from the same era that I think was more interesting and/or requires more skill. To my mind the Beatles were simply a better than average boy band. Their earlier stuff in particular I find especially vapid.
The Stones I understand even less. I really have a hard time appreciating their music and I've heard plenty over the years. I think musically they are perhaps more talented than the Beatles but their stuff is harder to enjoy for me at least.
I am going to assume that we both think that Apple’s corporate tax rate is too low.
They certainly are paying less than the statutory rate so yes I believe they are paying less than they ought to be paying.
There is the bottom up solution where Apple voluntarily increases the taxes it pays to a fair level, but that raises 2 questions. First, what is a fair level?
"Fair" is probably the wrong way to look at it since it is a C-Corp. A fair rate would probably be something equivalent to what the shareholders would pay if it were an S-Corp where the shareholders have to pay for the profits of the company because a C-Corp is really taxed twice. However I don't pretend to know and don't think it is relevant what a "fair" rate is for a C-Corp at least in relation to this conversation. I think Apple should be paying whatever the statutory rate is without any devious loopholes. If the statutory rate is too high for US firms to compete (it might very well be) then that is a separate issue which needs to be dealt with. However, given Apple's cash position and the rate at which it is growing I don't see that as an actual problem for them. They are generating cash faster than they can invest it and paying the statutory rate wouldn't change that situation.
Second, why would one company chose a higher level of voluntary contributions then its competitors?
They won't so it's a moot question. However Apple is building up cash faster than they can profitably invest it to grow the company. That means that Apple could pay MUCH higher taxes without handicapping themselves in any meaningful way. (Google and Microsoft are in the same boat) They would be making less profit but not less than they appear to need to grow the business and provide a reasonable return for shareholders. I'm an accountant and I simply do not see how Apple's ability to compete would be impeded in any way by paying a greater tax burden.
You are suggesting that people in a highly competitive environment play nice and give back a fair amount in taxes (which is subjective) to the correct government (another subjective call) while their competitors don’t
I'm suggesting nothing of the sort. Companies are run as amoral entities. I fully expect a company to push their behavior to the limits of the law. The morality of that however is different from the legality and the people who run these companies are fully aware of what they are doing. If company management is directing their organizations to engage in widespread tax avoidance to the detriment of the rest of the taxpaying public, then that is a problem. The behavior should be condemned by the taxpaying public and the loopholes should be closed as soon as possible. They certainly are violating the spirit of the law if not the letter and that quite simply is not something I can condone. I do not appreciate being left to pick up the tab.
If anyone makes the argument that Apple's tax avoidance is ok because it is legal then they are de-facto arguing that we as taxpayers should subsidize Apple. If we do not believe that Apple should be paying so high a tax burden then the laws should be changed to reflect that but it clearly is not the intent of the laws as written. Apple (and others) are simply weaseling out of taxes the ought to be paying even if they legally aren't required to.
The issue of upper management's perception of music, or outside intellectual pursuits as being anathema to productivity may have something to do with the selection criteria for MBA candidates. People who pursue such degrees might just be less capable of multitasking and not posses the mental faculties necessary.
Why are you trying to demonize a group of people who went to school to learn how to run a business as somehow mentally deficient and inferior? You realize you are making the EXACT same arguments a white supremacist makes about black people?
I do realise that some people must like modern/pop stuff, but I do wonder how much of it will still be played in 20 years let alone 200.
Not much. The stuff you hear from the 50s, 60s, 70s and 80s is basically a best of compilation. The stuff that sucked (most of it) never get gets played. Same thing was true 200 years ago and the same thing is true of the works being generated now. The vast majority of it will be relegated to a figurative garbage heap and never listened to by any meaningful audience ever again. People find the stuff that was good and they save that and then declare that the stuff being played now is crap, forgetting all the crap they had to listen to to find the stuff that is now "classic".
Huh, if I were pressed I could name at least 30 Beatles songs I like and would listen to now.
I couldn't name one. I don't dislike the Beatles but I think their music is highly overrated. I realize a lot of people like them and that's fine, but to me their music is objectively no better than the current bubble gum pop stars. Certainly nothing I'd ever pay money to hear or seek out intentionally. I feel the same way about a number of other famous bands including the Rolling Stones. I've never been able to reconcile their popularity with what I think is the quality of their music.
I go to 1 or 2 concerts a month
I haven't been to what people would call a concert in over 20 years and don't really have any interest in them. They're loud (sometimes painfully so), I don't really enjoy much of what they tend to play, I dislike large crowds, and I'm generally bored after a half hour of listening to live music. The fact that it is a live performance doesn't add to my enjoyment meaningfully. I like some music but even the stuff I like I don't listen to often. Can't remember the last time I intentionally listened to music in the car.
I couldn't imagine my life without music.
It's easy. Go on a trip somewhere and don't take your MP3 player or radio. You'll find other things are out there to keep you entertained.
It's not a DISlike of music, it's just no interest.
I can't say that I have no interest in music. I do listen sometimes but it's pretty occasional and it requires a LOT of my attention to be enjoyable. I almost never listen to music in the car or other places and most of the time it just annoys and bores me. I cannot actively listen to music and concentrate. A lot of supposedly "great" music like the Beetles or the Stones draws nothing more than a "meh" from me. I generally think it is highly overrated. Even the bits I do like (not confined to a particular genre) I don't care to listen to very often. I wonder if I'm somewhere on the continuum close to the 1-3% who don't enjoy it at all.
I have a fairly large music collection but mostly because my wife has acquired the majority of it. I've only ever bought a handful of music albums in my life and even those I'm not sure I really got my money's worth from. Music doesn't offend or annoy me but it holds minimal fascination for me. I was forced to take music lessons as a kid (which I mostly hated) and I respect the talent it takes to be a good musician but it isn't something I want to spend any of my life doing.
Does the term money laundering mean anything to you? There are only two reasons to sell a car for bitcoins. One is because you are trying to hide the source of funds and the other is because you are speculating. Otherwise doing that is utterly retarded. It makes no financial sense whatsoever for the seller of the car.
, people are buying land and mansions with them, you can get takeaways delivered, bars and restaurants accept them
Right. Show me where that happens. Show me multiple examples of people who are buying large assets in bitcoin and not engaged in money laundering or fraud. If someone is accepting bitcoin to for real estate for real then they are taking an insane amount of financial risk and quite simply there aren't many people out there that are likely to do something that dumb. Furthermore if a bar or other retail business is accepting bitcoins (I'm aware a few are trying) as anything other than a promotional scheme and not charging a hefty transaction premium then they are financially illiterate. It's cute to do a few transactions maybe as a marketing scheme but I assure you that it is not a large portion of their business, at least not if they wish to stay in business.
Converting $500M bitcoin to cash is MASSIVELY short sighted.
First off, again, it ISN'T $500M. That is paper value. It's like people who get a stock option grant and are "worth" millions on paper that they cannot actually get access to. He CANNOT sell them for that much money. It isn't possible. If he tried he would crash the already volatile market. Second, there is NO guarantee that bitcoins will hold the value they currently have into the future and even less guarantee that they will rise in value. Continuing to hold a significant amount of them without diversifying into other assets is quite simply dumb. It's a speculative bubble like tulips or beenie babies or the stock market 15 years ago. If the guy has that many bitcoins and he isn't steadily liquidating them into other assets then he's very likely to experience a significant loss in the not to distant future.
Whatever you do, do it as an independent consultant. DO NOT take a job with a boss. You will be fired when you can least afford it.
Everyone has a "boss". The only difference is whether they work for your company or for the customer. Customers can and will fire you even easier than employers can.
I did name one and you have no idea who I work for. (It isn't Emerson or anyone affiliated with them)
It's a lot more than a few, and it's constant. AND it's published. Where can I look at Emerson's reports? Thought so.
Look at Emerson's published financial statements. You have to dig a little but the cost of their China operations is in there.
Taxes are useful - up to a point. But we long ago crossed the point where they are NOT useful, they are just feeding large political systems that produce nothing of value.
Nice little content free soundbite with no evidence whatsoever to back it up. Turn off Fox News for a while. You might find it refreshing.
Schools are suffering not from lack of money, but lack of people who care or have to care.
If you believe that you clearly do not work in a school. I do get a small portion of my pay from a school system. Any claim that schools are flush with money is demonstrably absurd. If you think that the people who work in schools "don't care" then you don't actually know any of them. Tell the teachers who spend their own money to buy school supplies for their students and who work 12+ hour days that they don't care to their face sometime and let me know how that goes for you.
Yes, made far worse by large bloated government organizations that spend 2x whatever you give them. Raising taxes will only INCREASE debt the way the current system is organized.
Nobody is "raising taxes" unless you are one of those tea party idiots who thinks that any increase in revenue = a tax increase. The debt already exists and has to be dealt with. There is NO way it is going to go away through cutting spending alone no matter how much some might wish it so. Apple (and other companies) are engaged in the morally reprehensible act of dodging taxes and sticking you and me with the bill. If you are ok with that then how about you pay my tax bill too?
I'll let you have the last response since this is not a debate, just you laying out the groundwork for having to disclaim any connection with your Slashdot userID in years to come...
Tim Cook recently told a shareholder that Apple would put environmental concerns before profit. Are you saying that Apple should be questioned or the shareholders should revolt over that?
He said “When we work on making our devices accessible by the blind, I don’t consider the bloody ROI. If you want me to do things only for ROI reasons, you should get out of this stock.” Now to be perfectly frank he's being a little disingenuous here and cherry picking when he's going to consider ROI and when he isn't. I also think it is kind of ridiculous that a company that makes more than half their money from the iPhone and iPad which is close to useless to a blind person uses that as an example of corporate altruism. When he chooses to take advantage of tax loopholes he isn't doing it for altruistic reasons, he is doing it to maximize ROI by sticking the US taxpayer with a larger share of the cost of the government.
Apple - nor any corporation - is not a charity. It's not their job to pay more taxes than they legally have to. Their job is specifically the opposite - generate as much value for shareholders as they can.
That is true. However you need to finish the thought. If Apple is not paying taxes then someone else has to pick up the tab because those government expenses didn't just magically vanish. That person is rest of the taxpaying public. Do you think it should be OK for Apple to avoid paying taxes and stick you with the bill even if they aren't breaking any laws by doing so? Given the size of our budget deficit I don't really appreciate having my future robbed from me so a company with $160 Billion in cash can get a smaller tax bill.
Any company that pays more than they have to by law should be questioned, or the shareholders should revolt.
And any company that pays less than they ought to should be questioned or the taxpayers should revolt.
So your argument is essentially "don't hate the player, hate the game"? Yeah, that's a pretty shitty argument when sleazy guys make it to justify their bad behavior towards women and it isn't any better here.
No, the law is pretty clear. Management has a fiduciary duty to manage the companies’ assets for the owners – that is the shareholders.
That is legally correct but just remember that by making that argument you are essentially subsidizing Apple. The US government runs a deficit and by Apple weaseling out of taxes via legal loopholes they are placing the burden of that unpaid tax on you and me. They might be legally allowed to do what they are doing but the people paying the price for it is the citizenry. We have to make up the difference for taxes that go unpaid by Apple, legally or otherwise. I find it reprehensible that our government has failed to close these loopholes given the budget deficit.
CEOs can’t (or at least shouldn’t) just give money away to people they like.
What exactly do you think a charitable contribution is then if not giving away money to people they like? Charity does not improve the cash position of the company a bit. It doesn't matter if you are paying the tax man or a charity - the money is still spent on something that won't bring in a dime of revenue to the company.
Even the new mac has some looks over performance vs what you could do with the same cpu and a full size video card setup in a full size workstation case.
What are you going to do with your Mac that requires bleeding edge performance beyond what the Mac Pro can provide? There are a few applications out there but I can't think of one that actually requires OS X. Buy a PC with Windows or linux if you really need that sort of performance and expandability. I own a Mac but my main computer is a Windows machine because that suits my work needs better at present. Use the best available tool for the job.
Apple is selling to the sort of customer base they have. Very few of them are the sort that is going to swap video cards. (Hell not many Windows users ever open their PC either) If you are that sort of person that has those niche requirements then by all means go get one. But don't think Apple is making a mistake by not catering to the teeny-tiny fraction of the population that has those requirements. Macintoshs are nice but they aren't the right choice for everyone and Apple would be stupid to try to make them so.
No, Apple pays plenty (far more than any other company) for monitoring and reports on suppliers, for bonus to overseas workers that only Apple gives, for higher labor costs because they will not allow workers to be over-worked.
"Far more"? Demonstrable nonsense. There are plenty of companies that actually have their own facilities in China (and elsewhere) and I assure you that doing that costs FAR more than what Apple pays to "inspect" their suppliers. I've been to China and visited plants for companies like Emerson Electric which has over 10 plants in China. Apple sending over a few inspectors and "demanding" that they not overwork their workers (which BTW they still do) is hardly what I consider socially responsible. And Apple only instituted those inspections after getting a lot of bad press for their earlier lack of giving a crap. When you have to be shamed into bad behavior you aren't being responsible.
What does not make any sense is to pour MORE money into a giant engine of inefficiency that just wastes it.
Ahh, yes. The old stupid saw that all taxes are just wasted money. It's a completely nonsensical and ideological argument made by people who don't want to actually consider the actual economics involved but would rather engage in soundbite arguments. Taxes are necessary for any society and much of it demonstrably serves the public interest. Yes there is waste but it does not follow that all taxes are bad because of that fact. Furthermore since the US government falls further into debt each year, letting Apple off the hook on taxes merely makes the burden on you and me just that much greater. If you want to argue that we should reduce spending I'll agree with you but until we do everyone (including Apple) needs to pay their share. Do you enjoy subsidizing Apple? I sure don't appreciate it.
Why would anyone but a handful of government workers be better off if Apple paid more taxes?
Have you seen the size of the US debt? Are you really so daft as to thing that Apple dodging taxes has no effect on you and me?
Slashdot Mirror
Just as the limited liability aspect of incorporation is a subsidy to capital. Stop pretending that we live in, or ever will live in, a global libertopia.
Nice straw man. Who ever claimed that we were in a "libertopia"? (whatever the hell that is supposed to be) We're talking about someone who is trying to mask their racism under the guise of economic protectionism. We have millions of illegal immigrants in the US who are finding work because there is a need and they are willing and able. If you subsidize labor then you necessarily are taxing capital. Which one do you want to do because you can't have both. The best you can hope for is to find the magic level of capital versus labor to optimize growth and thus maximize benefits for all.
BTW the limited liability aspect of a corporation is the entire point of a corporation. Limiting personal liability for the actions of others is what allows many investments to be made at all. Without the corporate veil our modern economy would not exist at all. It's what allows us to take risks with capital. Your comparison of the very existence of corporations with the decision on subsidizing wages by limiting the size of the labor pool is an irrelevant comparison.
Where is that line from, the Thomas Friedman school of sycophancy?
Cute. Remember that the next time you buy something made outside the US which you will most assuredly do today whether you want to or not.
The global aspect of the economy is very selective.
Really? Let's see if I can enumerate just some of the things I've purchased today that came from overseas. About half the produce on my grocery bill came from South America and most of the rest either came from the Midwest or California. I bought a piece of electronics that mostly came from China, a piece of clothing that came from Vietnam, I used gasoline that has a percentage of the oil in it most likely from either Canada, Mexico and/or Venezuela. Several products I used have materials mined from all over the globe. I drank some coffee that almost certainly was not domestically produced. For my company I bought some wire that was manufactured in Asia and probably mined there too as well as some terminals that were made in Japan. I'm going to turn that into a product that is going to be exported to Europe. We're about to buy a machine that was designed in Switzerland, made in Germany and has parts from Asia and the US.
Selective? Spare me... I'm surrounded by products, both tangible and intangible, that came from all around the world including here at home and so are you. The economy is global and the notion that you can close the borders and keep the rest of the world out is both naive and dangerous. You want to close the border and kick out all the immigrant labor? Fine. Enjoy your higher prices at the grocery store and other places as well as the higher taxes and lower economic growth required to make it happen.
For example, offshoring is considered wonderful, but little mention is made of region pricing.
Off-shoring is neither wonderful nor horrible. It is simply economic laws in action. It's like saying "gravity is considered wonderful" - it misses the point. Capital and labor will seek the locations where costs are lowest. It's like water settling into the lowest cavity. Sometimes there are good reasons it doesn't move but if it can then it will. It might be beautiful or it might be dangerous but that is a second order effect.
Our so-called "free trade" agreements include lots of things that are very much anti-free trade, like requirements for the greater enforcement of government monopolies called "intellectual property".
Intellectual property laws are in place to mitigate the free rider problem. If you have a better way to do it then dazzle us with your brilliance. I
It's about blaming income inequality on teachers and schools rather than the 1%.
Blaming a specific group of people for income inequality kind of misses the point. That's just scapegoating. Just because someone was fortunate enough to gain a lot of wealth doesn't mean they are responsible for others not being so fortunate. Economic growth is not a zero sum game except in the short run. In the long run it is possible for economic rewards to be shared and everyone to benefit. The top 1% of the population does not have the power by themselves (in a democracy) to dictate income inequality. That can only happen if a very large portion of the remaining 99% permits it to happen. People regularly support policies that are demonstrably not in their best interest or that of society if they were deciding rationally.
Too many people have bought into the notion that social structures that keep the playing field relatively level are somehow a bad thing. Everyone should have the chance to become rich but after a certain point some have more money than they could ever possibly need. More accumulation by one person at that point does not benefit society. Nobody likes paying taxes but a sensible progressive tax policy (or a flat tax with a floor) can have the side effect of minimizing income disparity. Healthcare is a cost that everyone experiences but in the US we historically have forced low income people to pay a disproportionate share of their income on it. We subsidize large corporations (oil companies, big agriculture firms, etc) that don't need the help. We refuse to balance our taxation levels with our expenditures. We spend a disproportionate amount of our tax revenue on maintaining an overly large military rather than on economic growth, research and jobs. These are choices we have made as a society and they aren't just the fault of the so-called 1%.
And also about washing one's hands of any social responsibility for the well-being of the roughly 70% of Americans who don't have a college degree.
Approximately 40% of Americans have at least an Associates degree and over 50% have at least some college education. Your point is valid but the data isn't correct.
(Not that a college degree guarantees middle-class success these days.)
No degree ever guaranteed success.
It's well-established by now that one of the most significant factors in destroying the lives of the unskilled and semi-skilled workers across the country has been the influx of similar immigrants from around the world.
Bullshit it's "well-established". What you are talking about is essentially a subsidy to labor by limiting the size of the labor pool. Limit supply and prices for the labor and every product that labor produces has to rise. Make labor cost more and you will pay more for the results of that labor. What you are forgetting is that we are in a GLOBAL economy. There are very few unskilled jobs that cannot be done elsewhere. Limit the supply of labor in the domestic market and much of that production will migrate elsewhere. If labor costs are too high relative to those available elsewhere then labor-intensive work will migrate to areas with lower labor costs like osmosis. Try to stop it and you will only drive prices higher and hurt the economy in the long run.
Here's how you enact a sensible immigration policy. You crack down on the employers of illegals such that no one will hire them.
You think that is the basis for a "sensible" immigration policy? You think a police state is somehow a good thing? It's unenforceable at any reasonable economic or humanitarian cost. It drives up costs making it harder to compete globally. Furthermore it doesn't address why they are coming into the country in the first place. They come because there is work available. What you should worry about is not whether people are coming into the US illegally. What you should worry about is if they STOP coming to the US because that means there are some serious economic problems.
hen, you only allow immigrants with provable skills to immigrate as singles or with their immediate family if they're married with children.
How does this work with unskilled workers? You think those crops are going to pick themselves? There is lots of vital work that does not depend on skilled labor. Furthermore if a family wants to migrate to the US then that is not a bad thing. Who the hell are you to tell them they cannot come?
That's just a recipe for waking up one day and finding a large ethnic enclave in an American city
Oh so it's really about race. I get it. You don't want those brown people who don't speak English immigrating to the US. Never mind that your ancestors were immigrants too and probably came here illegally as well and probably lived in "a large ethnic enclave in an American city". It's not as if we asked the Native American population if it was ok if we moved in.
I don't know how old you are but Ma Bell was nowhere near as evil as today's AT&T and Verizon.
Bullshit they weren't. My father and grandfather worked for Ma Bell for over 50 years between the two of them (both as line installers and in engineering) and I'm old enough to remember them pre-breakup. I've seen them operated behind the scenes and my father can tell you in great detail what a bunch of evil pricks they could be.
Ma Bell was a regulated monopoly with many constraints on what it could do.
Regulated yes. Constrained? Not so much. AT&T had vast power back in the day. Certainly more than Verizon and AT&T do currently, who BTW are also still regulated quasi-monopolies at least for some of the services they provide. The old AT&T basically monopolized all telephone and data communications in the US and I assure you that they behaved accordingly.
The Bell System was broken up in 1982 by a lawsuit brought by Northern Telecom because they wanted to sell the DMS-100 in the US.
The reasons for the breakup were FAR more complicated than wanting to sell some gear made by Nortel. Primarily AT&T wanted to get into the computer business but the breakup ultimately was the end result of an 8 year anti-trust suit begun in 1974 over the issue that AT&T was accused of using its Western Electric subsidiary (now Lucent, Agere, Avaya and some other companies) to subsidize the cost of their network. Essentially they were using one monopoly to maintain another.
Landline sound quality in 1975 was better than any mobile phone sound quality in 2014.
Do you really want to go back to 1975? There was no such thing as mobile service. There also was for all practical purposes no data service. There was no voice mail and no answering machines. Text messaging didn't exist and email wasn't available outside of academia and some research labs. You had precisely one company to deal with in the US (AT&T) and they're weren't exactly friendly what with them being a monopoly and all. You would get charged an obscene amount of money to call anyone more than a few miles from your house and you didn't even want to think about the cost of calling someone outside your country. Rotary dial phones were still commonplace. And I'm old enough to remember all this.
Yeah they had voice service that was optimized for voice and nothing else. Cell phones might have their problems but I'm not exactly eager to turn the clock back.
Instead, the bills for customers on the major wireless providers have actually gone up, if not dramatically, in recent months — which means U.S. cell service remains much more expensive than it is in many other countries.
Bills may have gone up but that doesn't mean you are paying more for the same stuff. I'm paying less for voice but I'm paying more for data in total. I'm also paying less per byte in data than I used to but I'm using more of it. My first cell phone bill was around $40/month (15 years ago) and only included a "massive" 40 minutes/month of voice calls before expensive ($0.70/minute) overage minutes kicked in. My bill reached a peak of about $100/month/phone recently but now I'm paying about $70 per phone for unlimited talk, text and more data than I use in a month. Plus I'm not even accounting for inflation.
So yeah, my bill is higher but I'm getting a lot more in terms of data communicated per dollar and I expect that to continue to fall over time. The product the telecom companies are selling is a commodity so I expect prices to continue to fall unless we allow the companies to merge into a monopoly.
Meh, I suspect that if that were their attitude they wouldn't have drawn attention to the issue at all.
Sure they would. They need to assure people, particularly outside the US, that they aren't the US government's sock puppet to make their business look credible. Google has ambitions outside the US you know plus they need to present a good face to their current customers so they don't go elsewhere. Though in reality it probably isn't that simple, you can explain all their actions purely in terms of profit motive. Google is trying to do just enough rather than take the painful step of actually doing the right thing. "Don't be evil" isn't the same thing as "go fight evil".
They were the ones who made a big deal of the government snooping their dedicated lines.
Kind of low hanging fruit there. It's like discovering that the NSA has bugged your bedroom. Frankly that is kind of the least of the problems.
True, but at least they have to ask for the data now. Before they could just go digging through it.
Who is to say they still can't. With getting all tinfoil hat about it the only thing we have is Google's word on the matter. That's pretty thin.
I'm not a fan of Google's, but I'm not sure why people are unwilling to recognize this is a significant step in the right direction.
Because they aren't really going to bat on this. It would be one thing if this was some big surprise to them but the KNOW the government is snooping and their response has been half-hearted at best. Google has a huge war chest to fight the good fight on this. I realize they can't do some things but they aren't doing a lot of things that they can do, including lobbying HARD on this issue. Google isn't the only one. I put just as much blame on Apple and Microsoft and Facebook and the rest of the tech giants. Want to profit on information about us? Fine, then step up and defend us in ways we cannot.
Before Google took the steps necessary to ensure communications between data centers was secured, the government could (and apparently did) just slurp up everything and troll for information.
If the government could do it, so could others and I'm pretty sure Google has some people smart enough to realize that. All this means is that if they had the ability to stop this earlier then they were either negligent or incompetent.
and they revealed that Google's data is now safely protected from the prying eyes of government organizations.
Does anyone actually believe this? First off we know that all the government has to do is issue a National Security Letter and Google will fold like a dish cloth. Eric Schmidt isn't about to go to jail to protect you. Second, he has every reason to publicly proclaim our data is "safely protected" in order to protect his business regardless of whether it is true. Third, he cannot possibly promise that even if he genuinely believes it because he can't prove it. Fourth, even if he could somehow be sure he's keeping the government snoops out, he won't provide anyone the access necessary to verify it.
There are things they could say that I would believe but him being "pretty sure" that our data is safe just isn't really credible.
Maybe you had to be there. I was about 10 years old when The Beatles hit the scene. Not all of their music is great but much of it was really groundbreaking at the time. Same thing for the Stones.
Perhaps you did have to be there. I'm not quite old enough, though I'm close. But on the other hand even if it was groundbreaking at the time (something I'm not entirely convinced of) that doesn't mean it should be held in high regard simply out of nostalgia. It's all subjective of course but I can point to lots of other music even from the same era that I think was more interesting and/or requires more skill. To my mind the Beatles were simply a better than average boy band. Their earlier stuff in particular I find especially vapid.
The Stones I understand even less. I really have a hard time appreciating their music and I've heard plenty over the years. I think musically they are perhaps more talented than the Beatles but their stuff is harder to enjoy for me at least.
I am going to assume that we both think that Apple’s corporate tax rate is too low.
They certainly are paying less than the statutory rate so yes I believe they are paying less than they ought to be paying.
There is the bottom up solution where Apple voluntarily increases the taxes it pays to a fair level, but that raises 2 questions. First, what is a fair level?
"Fair" is probably the wrong way to look at it since it is a C-Corp. A fair rate would probably be something equivalent to what the shareholders would pay if it were an S-Corp where the shareholders have to pay for the profits of the company because a C-Corp is really taxed twice. However I don't pretend to know and don't think it is relevant what a "fair" rate is for a C-Corp at least in relation to this conversation. I think Apple should be paying whatever the statutory rate is without any devious loopholes. If the statutory rate is too high for US firms to compete (it might very well be) then that is a separate issue which needs to be dealt with. However, given Apple's cash position and the rate at which it is growing I don't see that as an actual problem for them. They are generating cash faster than they can invest it and paying the statutory rate wouldn't change that situation.
Second, why would one company chose a higher level of voluntary contributions then its competitors?
They won't so it's a moot question. However Apple is building up cash faster than they can profitably invest it to grow the company. That means that Apple could pay MUCH higher taxes without handicapping themselves in any meaningful way. (Google and Microsoft are in the same boat) They would be making less profit but not less than they appear to need to grow the business and provide a reasonable return for shareholders. I'm an accountant and I simply do not see how Apple's ability to compete would be impeded in any way by paying a greater tax burden.
You are suggesting that people in a highly competitive environment play nice and give back a fair amount in taxes (which is subjective) to the correct government (another subjective call) while their competitors don’t
I'm suggesting nothing of the sort. Companies are run as amoral entities. I fully expect a company to push their behavior to the limits of the law. The morality of that however is different from the legality and the people who run these companies are fully aware of what they are doing. If company management is directing their organizations to engage in widespread tax avoidance to the detriment of the rest of the taxpaying public, then that is a problem. The behavior should be condemned by the taxpaying public and the loopholes should be closed as soon as possible. They certainly are violating the spirit of the law if not the letter and that quite simply is not something I can condone. I do not appreciate being left to pick up the tab.
If anyone makes the argument that Apple's tax avoidance is ok because it is legal then they are de-facto arguing that we as taxpayers should subsidize Apple. If we do not believe that Apple should be paying so high a tax burden then the laws should be changed to reflect that but it clearly is not the intent of the laws as written. Apple (and others) are simply weaseling out of taxes the ought to be paying even if they legally aren't required to.
The issue of upper management's perception of music, or outside intellectual pursuits as being anathema to productivity may have something to do with the selection criteria for MBA candidates. People who pursue such degrees might just be less capable of multitasking and not posses the mental faculties necessary.
Why are you trying to demonize a group of people who went to school to learn how to run a business as somehow mentally deficient and inferior? You realize you are making the EXACT same arguments a white supremacist makes about black people?
I do realise that some people must like modern/pop stuff, but I do wonder how much of it will still be played in 20 years let alone 200.
Not much. The stuff you hear from the 50s, 60s, 70s and 80s is basically a best of compilation. The stuff that sucked (most of it) never get gets played. Same thing was true 200 years ago and the same thing is true of the works being generated now. The vast majority of it will be relegated to a figurative garbage heap and never listened to by any meaningful audience ever again. People find the stuff that was good and they save that and then declare that the stuff being played now is crap, forgetting all the crap they had to listen to to find the stuff that is now "classic".
Huh, if I were pressed I could name at least 30 Beatles songs I like and would listen to now.
I couldn't name one. I don't dislike the Beatles but I think their music is highly overrated. I realize a lot of people like them and that's fine, but to me their music is objectively no better than the current bubble gum pop stars. Certainly nothing I'd ever pay money to hear or seek out intentionally. I feel the same way about a number of other famous bands including the Rolling Stones. I've never been able to reconcile their popularity with what I think is the quality of their music.
I go to 1 or 2 concerts a month
I haven't been to what people would call a concert in over 20 years and don't really have any interest in them. They're loud (sometimes painfully so), I don't really enjoy much of what they tend to play, I dislike large crowds, and I'm generally bored after a half hour of listening to live music. The fact that it is a live performance doesn't add to my enjoyment meaningfully. I like some music but even the stuff I like I don't listen to often. Can't remember the last time I intentionally listened to music in the car.
I couldn't imagine my life without music.
It's easy. Go on a trip somewhere and don't take your MP3 player or radio. You'll find other things are out there to keep you entertained.
It's not a DISlike of music, it's just no interest.
I can't say that I have no interest in music. I do listen sometimes but it's pretty occasional and it requires a LOT of my attention to be enjoyable. I almost never listen to music in the car or other places and most of the time it just annoys and bores me. I cannot actively listen to music and concentrate. A lot of supposedly "great" music like the Beetles or the Stones draws nothing more than a "meh" from me. I generally think it is highly overrated. Even the bits I do like (not confined to a particular genre) I don't care to listen to very often. I wonder if I'm somewhere on the continuum close to the 1-3% who don't enjoy it at all.
I have a fairly large music collection but mostly because my wife has acquired the majority of it. I've only ever bought a handful of music albums in my life and even those I'm not sure I really got my money's worth from. Music doesn't offend or annoy me but it holds minimal fascination for me. I was forced to take music lessons as a kid (which I mostly hated) and I respect the talent it takes to be a good musician but it isn't something I want to spend any of my life doing.
Dude there are Mclaren MP4s for sale for Bitcoins
Does the term money laundering mean anything to you? There are only two reasons to sell a car for bitcoins. One is because you are trying to hide the source of funds and the other is because you are speculating. Otherwise doing that is utterly retarded. It makes no financial sense whatsoever for the seller of the car.
, people are buying land and mansions with them, you can get takeaways delivered, bars and restaurants accept them
Right. Show me where that happens. Show me multiple examples of people who are buying large assets in bitcoin and not engaged in money laundering or fraud. If someone is accepting bitcoin to for real estate for real then they are taking an insane amount of financial risk and quite simply there aren't many people out there that are likely to do something that dumb. Furthermore if a bar or other retail business is accepting bitcoins (I'm aware a few are trying) as anything other than a promotional scheme and not charging a hefty transaction premium then they are financially illiterate. It's cute to do a few transactions maybe as a marketing scheme but I assure you that it is not a large portion of their business, at least not if they wish to stay in business.
Converting $500M bitcoin to cash is MASSIVELY short sighted.
First off, again, it ISN'T $500M. That is paper value. It's like people who get a stock option grant and are "worth" millions on paper that they cannot actually get access to. He CANNOT sell them for that much money. It isn't possible. If he tried he would crash the already volatile market. Second, there is NO guarantee that bitcoins will hold the value they currently have into the future and even less guarantee that they will rise in value. Continuing to hold a significant amount of them without diversifying into other assets is quite simply dumb. It's a speculative bubble like tulips or beenie babies or the stock market 15 years ago. If the guy has that many bitcoins and he isn't steadily liquidating them into other assets then he's very likely to experience a significant loss in the not to distant future.
Whatever you do, do it as an independent consultant. DO NOT take a job with a boss. You will be fired when you can least afford it.
Everyone has a "boss". The only difference is whether they work for your company or for the customer. Customers can and will fire you even easier than employers can.
Name one. You work for one of the slavers.
I did name one and you have no idea who I work for. (It isn't Emerson or anyone affiliated with them)
It's a lot more than a few, and it's constant. AND it's published. Where can I look at Emerson's reports? Thought so.
Look at Emerson's published financial statements. You have to dig a little but the cost of their China operations is in there.
Taxes are useful - up to a point. But we long ago crossed the point where they are NOT useful, they are just feeding large political systems that produce nothing of value.
Nice little content free soundbite with no evidence whatsoever to back it up. Turn off Fox News for a while. You might find it refreshing.
Schools are suffering not from lack of money, but lack of people who care or have to care.
If you believe that you clearly do not work in a school. I do get a small portion of my pay from a school system. Any claim that schools are flush with money is demonstrably absurd. If you think that the people who work in schools "don't care" then you don't actually know any of them. Tell the teachers who spend their own money to buy school supplies for their students and who work 12+ hour days that they don't care to their face sometime and let me know how that goes for you.
Yes, made far worse by large bloated government organizations that spend 2x whatever you give them. Raising taxes will only INCREASE debt the way the current system is organized.
Nobody is "raising taxes" unless you are one of those tea party idiots who thinks that any increase in revenue = a tax increase. The debt already exists and has to be dealt with. There is NO way it is going to go away through cutting spending alone no matter how much some might wish it so. Apple (and other companies) are engaged in the morally reprehensible act of dodging taxes and sticking you and me with the bill. If you are ok with that then how about you pay my tax bill too?
I'll let you have the last response since this is not a debate, just you laying out the groundwork for having to disclaim any connection with your Slashdot userID in years to come...
Kiss my ass troll.
Tim Cook recently told a shareholder that Apple would put environmental concerns before profit. Are you saying that Apple should be questioned or the shareholders should revolt over that?
He said “When we work on making our devices accessible by the blind, I don’t consider the bloody ROI. If you want me to do things only for ROI reasons, you should get out of this stock.” Now to be perfectly frank he's being a little disingenuous here and cherry picking when he's going to consider ROI and when he isn't. I also think it is kind of ridiculous that a company that makes more than half their money from the iPhone and iPad which is close to useless to a blind person uses that as an example of corporate altruism. When he chooses to take advantage of tax loopholes he isn't doing it for altruistic reasons, he is doing it to maximize ROI by sticking the US taxpayer with a larger share of the cost of the government.
Apple - nor any corporation - is not a charity. It's not their job to pay more taxes than they legally have to. Their job is specifically the opposite - generate as much value for shareholders as they can.
That is true. However you need to finish the thought. If Apple is not paying taxes then someone else has to pick up the tab because those government expenses didn't just magically vanish. That person is rest of the taxpaying public. Do you think it should be OK for Apple to avoid paying taxes and stick you with the bill even if they aren't breaking any laws by doing so? Given the size of our budget deficit I don't really appreciate having my future robbed from me so a company with $160 Billion in cash can get a smaller tax bill.
Any company that pays more than they have to by law should be questioned, or the shareholders should revolt.
And any company that pays less than they ought to should be questioned or the taxpayers should revolt.
So your argument is essentially "don't hate the player, hate the game"? Yeah, that's a pretty shitty argument when sleazy guys make it to justify their bad behavior towards women and it isn't any better here.
No, the law is pretty clear. Management has a fiduciary duty to manage the companies’ assets for the owners – that is the shareholders.
That is legally correct but just remember that by making that argument you are essentially subsidizing Apple. The US government runs a deficit and by Apple weaseling out of taxes via legal loopholes they are placing the burden of that unpaid tax on you and me. They might be legally allowed to do what they are doing but the people paying the price for it is the citizenry. We have to make up the difference for taxes that go unpaid by Apple, legally or otherwise. I find it reprehensible that our government has failed to close these loopholes given the budget deficit.
CEOs can’t (or at least shouldn’t) just give money away to people they like.
What exactly do you think a charitable contribution is then if not giving away money to people they like? Charity does not improve the cash position of the company a bit. It doesn't matter if you are paying the tax man or a charity - the money is still spent on something that won't bring in a dime of revenue to the company.
Even the new mac has some looks over performance vs what you could do with the same cpu and a full size video card setup in a full size workstation case.
What are you going to do with your Mac that requires bleeding edge performance beyond what the Mac Pro can provide? There are a few applications out there but I can't think of one that actually requires OS X. Buy a PC with Windows or linux if you really need that sort of performance and expandability. I own a Mac but my main computer is a Windows machine because that suits my work needs better at present. Use the best available tool for the job.
Apple is selling to the sort of customer base they have. Very few of them are the sort that is going to swap video cards. (Hell not many Windows users ever open their PC either) If you are that sort of person that has those niche requirements then by all means go get one. But don't think Apple is making a mistake by not catering to the teeny-tiny fraction of the population that has those requirements. Macintoshs are nice but they aren't the right choice for everyone and Apple would be stupid to try to make them so.
No, Apple pays plenty (far more than any other company) for monitoring and reports on suppliers, for bonus to overseas workers that only Apple gives, for higher labor costs because they will not allow workers to be over-worked.
"Far more"? Demonstrable nonsense. There are plenty of companies that actually have their own facilities in China (and elsewhere) and I assure you that doing that costs FAR more than what Apple pays to "inspect" their suppliers. I've been to China and visited plants for companies like Emerson Electric which has over 10 plants in China. Apple sending over a few inspectors and "demanding" that they not overwork their workers (which BTW they still do) is hardly what I consider socially responsible. And Apple only instituted those inspections after getting a lot of bad press for their earlier lack of giving a crap. When you have to be shamed into bad behavior you aren't being responsible.
What does not make any sense is to pour MORE money into a giant engine of inefficiency that just wastes it.
Ahh, yes. The old stupid saw that all taxes are just wasted money. It's a completely nonsensical and ideological argument made by people who don't want to actually consider the actual economics involved but would rather engage in soundbite arguments. Taxes are necessary for any society and much of it demonstrably serves the public interest. Yes there is waste but it does not follow that all taxes are bad because of that fact. Furthermore since the US government falls further into debt each year, letting Apple off the hook on taxes merely makes the burden on you and me just that much greater. If you want to argue that we should reduce spending I'll agree with you but until we do everyone (including Apple) needs to pay their share. Do you enjoy subsidizing Apple? I sure don't appreciate it.
Why would anyone but a handful of government workers be better off if Apple paid more taxes?
Have you seen the size of the US debt? Are you really so daft as to thing that Apple dodging taxes has no effect on you and me?