Americans for the last 20 years haven't drunk Budweiser or Fosters. We have the best beer in the world here now. Anyone who thinks we all drink Budweiser is either an American over 40, not an American, or poor (college students, like me when I was in college 10 years ago, included).
Even if he did knowingly and intentionally contribute to illegal drug trade, do you think he should be put in jail for 24 fucking years? Murderers servoe on average 12 years.
According to the Slashdot FAQ, this is an American forum. American English is used. This is not a tribal issue of we're better than you. It's just a question of language, which has many different dialects. The dialect used here is that America refers to the USA.
There's no such thing as the "US definition of America" because America has no official language or governmental entity to define such things (unlike other countries, such as how the government of France defines the language of French). But there is such a thing as American English (a dialect of English), and in American English, America refers to the USA.
According to the Slashdot FAQ, this is an American forum. This is not a tribal issue of we're better than you. It's just language, which has many different dialects. The dialect here is that America refers to the USA.
Ugh I just read that diatribe from the URL you posted. It was exactly the worst example you could possibly have chosen - the copyright of 4 minutes and 33 seconds of 0's and the idea of someone else having a "copy" of those 0's.
In a society without intellectual property, the painting/songs/bits you created and physically held are not yours and they are not protected from copying by someone else. In a society with intellectual property, the paintings/songs/bits you created and physically held by someone else are not yours but they ARE protected from copying by someone else without your permission. If someone held the copyright of 0101 and there was the intellectual copyright of 0101 in that society's laws, then by those laws someone else cannot copy 0101 illegally without the permission/payment of the copyright holder.
You are trying to conflate your world views and the reality of laws. Listen, I'm not disagreeing with your world views. But I'm telling you the reality of the laws of the U.S. are factually not what you are saying. You say it's a illogical disagreement with reality. Well, it's not a disagreement with reality - Lady Gaga can create the song which can be represented by millions of certain bits, and those millions of bits can be copyrighted by Lady Gaga. You simply disagree that the copy on someone's harddrive without permission should be illegal, but the law says otherwise. The reality of the copy of those bits is real - but the reality of the law is also real.
They have gotten so used to be able to force bad quality on people and have them pay-before-consume (an entirely unnatural model for entertainment) that they want to keep that despicable model at all cost.
How the fuck is pay-before-consume an entirely unnatural model for entertainment? I can't imagine the act of purchasing a prostitute an entertainment service which is unnatural to pay beforehand. I can't imagine how going to see a movie and deciding "meh, that was a 2/5 or 1/5" and deciding not to pay for it.
The only thing that makes sense in your model is walking down a street and seeing a street performer, where I decide to pay if I liked it enough. The thing is, I didn't intend to be entertained by that street performer just by walking down the street. Sure, if I like it enough, I will pay after the fact. But for fuck's sake, if I download a movie (pirate it), I expected to be entertained, whether or not I liked the movie after I watched it.
Even 2000 years ago, you paid the ticket price before seeing the play.
The problem is not doctor's pay. You have no fucking clue how hard it is to become a doctor.
The problem is the uninsured, which the law requires hospitals to care for regardless of their ability to pay, so the people who actually can pay must pay more to make up for the people who can't.
So, you were cool with Saddam's invasion of Kuwait? And you were cool with his slaughter of people using WMDs? And cool with his continued import and manufacture of long range weapons, and his continued shooting at allied aircraft protecting the no-fly zones? How were you with the cash he was paying (on TV!) to the families of suicide bombers? Comfortable with his skimming UN cash for more palaces and re-arming his Republican Guard, while he deliberately withheld that support from his own citizens? Happy, were you, with his regime's deliberate lies and obfuscation about the disposition of tons of VX gas previously observed by UN inspectors? Liked his ongoing SCUD projects, did you?
I didn't like it, but there were other much better ways to spend one trillion dollars of the U.S.'s money and over 4000 lives.
I'm a little shocked... you seem to be telling a true story! I work in a startup in San Francisco with a bunch of computer nerds and I don't see any adderall at all.
In college, I once took some Ritalin to study for a test. I swear to god, I inadvertently wandered onto some porn before it kicked in... and then I ended up masturbating for THREE FUCKING HOURS STRAIGHT. I shit you not.
Duh - I wasn't insulting you, and clearly stated that I don't think your mother is a whore. Reread the comment, in particular the quoted text to what I was responding to.
Are human beings the primary and most significant factor in the climate warming up? I don't think anyone has proven that. The Climate Change religion states that this is so but climatology scientists don't have nearly as much certainty.
This question makes it seem as if climatology scientists don't actually have overwhelming evidence that human activity has caused excessive greenhouse gases which lead to climate change. So, when I ask "is your mother a whore", you get pretty defensive as if I am engaging in crass insults - but as stated I didn't call your mother a whore, and I don't even think your mother is a whore! But obviously the question makes people think there's actually something to the content of the question, while the person who asks the question can hide behind the fact that they aren't actually stating belief in a positive answer, or even have evidence in any way, about the question.
The reality is simply that some people realize dealing with GW is going to require changes in their lives that they won't enjooy, and its easier to deny it all by sticking your fingers in your ear and yelling "LA LA LA, I can't hear you, LA LA LA". Its pathetic.
When these debates happen, I would love to find this glue between one side and the other that is a great (but hypothetical) solution. Dealing with AGW does not necessarily require people to enjoy their lives less than they did before. If everyone replaced their car with a car that gets 10 times as efficient gas mileage, then they have the same lifestyle.
What "climate change fanatics", as their opposition calls them, wants, is for society to move in the direction of getting these technologies to help mitigate AGW. It's not for making everyone's life miserable - or "changes in their lives that they won't enjoy".
Sure, granted, some tree-hugging granola hippy in Berkley wants some doosh bag Texan to stop driving his Hummer - but that's an emotional tribal response. The real, scientific, and what I believe to be correct way to tackle this problem is to create solutions to the greenhouse gas problem that climate scientists warn about. And that's what pisses me off about these stupid political debates about AGW - it's about some guy in California and some guy in Texas in a pissing match, or an ideological argument, instead of saying "here are some problems we know about - let's make some solutions". And there ARE solutions!!
This is a worthless argument (Primary vs. complimentary) designed to distract people. The climate change the "fanatics" are talking about is directly correlated to certain human activity which produces greenhouse gas, and is caused by human activity. The percentage of that 1 or 2 degree Celsius raise in worldwide temperature as it relates to "primary" or "complimentary" is joke. The data says that AGW exists - which you don't deny - and ~95% of the knowledgeable scientists believe AGW will cause a catastrophic change for humanity in the next few centuries.
i.e. If the "warming" by 3 degrees in the next 200 years is only caused by 1.4 degrees of AGW, that 1.4 degrees is still catastrophic. You (and more specifically your argument) are the one muddying the science and the warnings by saying "well, it doesn't matter because volcanoes also increase greenhouse gases too".
Are human beings the primary and most significant factor in the climate warming up? I don't think anyone has proven that. The Climate Change religion states that this is so but climatology scientists don't have nearly as much certainty.
Is your mother a whore?
Hey, hey, hey... calm down. I didn't call your mother a whore. I don't even think she's a whore! I just think it's important to ask that question. There's a rational debate going on here, after all.
To me "Climate Change" is just a ploy for political control. Until it has been definitively proven what are all the factors of global warming and then, any proposed mitigation steps have been proven to work it is silly to panic and give political control over to the Climate Change religious zealots.
Until it has been definitively proven what are all the factors of your mother prostituting herself, and then, any proposed evidence has been proven to deny her being a whore, it is silly to "panic" and give political control over to the people who are trying to deal with your mother not being a whore.
I really like some of your ideas. Unfortunately, the effectiveness of your message is completely diluted by the insults you're throwing out. Someone who you need to disseminate the information you're saying (e.g. the left) will simply not absorb the information because you've peppered the information with attacks, to which their emotions will not allow their brains to rationally think about it.
How about putting forth some good, rational proposals and data instead of claiming the "great swollen heads" want to "control humanity" and "destroy the economy of the United States".
Remember that schooling isn't just by and for the tax payers of a state, but part of the UN charter on children's rights. As such, it transcends mere state legislation.
The UN charter on children's rights has no authority in any jurisdiction in the U.S. You may have well said that schooling is in the French or Russian or Chinese constitution as well.
Holy shit, at first I thought you sounded like you were being a typical slashdotter trolling dick... but everything you said was pure gold. This idea of sending a primitive nuke over to my home of San Francisco would suck ass for me, but it is, at this point in time, 65-50 year old technology. No the U.S. would not blow up the world... we would completely dismantle NK from top to bottom, and it would likely take less money than Iraq, and would likely have 100X more support, and there would (likely) BE NO NUKES INVOLVED, even if we had to use our own military to invade . There is no case for survival of a poor Emperor against a democracy whose citizens supports the war, along with tons of fucking money and technology.
When NK people there do "nuke tests" for "deterrence" they really need to understand two things: 1. 1950s war technology and 2. Very undeveloped people trying to get to the 1960s. The many military powers against them have been in the last 6 decades for a while now, oh, let's say I'd say 6 decades or so.
What US people need to know is that they - the DK - are a small, bullied people, who are trying to be badasses (via their government). They have impressive technology for such bullies. But as soon as they try to capitalize on their apparent self worth, they are fucked by so many players - Chinese, Japanese/Americans. Their country will seriously dissolve within a few weeks. So we can guess that they know that and won't hit SF because of that. And in the interim, they are just going to bully a little further until it happens. The Americans will never let them get to the point where they can actually bomb SF. It's just a game.
I really do believe, regardless of politics, that the natural and expected outcome of their continued bellicose attitude is just the beginning of reunification.
If we wanted a popular vote, after 200+ years, don't you think we would have abolished the electoral college by now?
No, I don't. It's very hard to change, 50% of Americans don't even vote, and it would require a lot of people who benefit from it to decide to give it up.
It also becomes a question of if you think power should reside with the states or the federal government? Are we one country, or are we a federation of united states? Anywhere else in the world, the world "state" means an independent government. If you believe that the state should hold the power, not the federal government, then you want the electoral college so that each state can speak. If you see the states as little more than an address, then you want a popular vote.
This isn't a good metaphor. Even if you think 95% of the power should be with the states vs. 5% with the federal government - e.g. if you believe states should have all the power - that doesn't have anything to do with how the federal government is elected.
Here's another way of thinking of it. Imagine a small state with two counties. They are two completely separate counties with separate jurisdictions within the state. They both vote for their state government. There's two ways those counties could vote for their state government - by electoral college or by popular vote. Why should the voting power of one county be less than the other? Why shouldn't each person's vote count the same? This is an independent question of how they divide the laws and jurisdictions of their counties and of their state.
How exactly can you correlate the data transferred through the networks of France that is related to Google-specific data, to the point of sale of an advertising sale with AdSense? Think about it - a French business buys advertising services on Google for $100. What exactly do you tax that $100 when you "tax data"? What counts as data to be taxed? Only the data related to the advertising? That is probably a paltry amount of data compared to everything else. But then how do you count everything else if it's just done for free? How in the heck do you measure which data you're taxing - everything coming from www.google.fr?
It seems viable to tax the $100 service purchase based on something related to that service. But I don't see how the data going in and out of networks in France can be taxed without some illogical injustice such as "We know you're big, but we cannot know how much - give us $50!".
That's a possibility. It's true that some of the founding fathers may have thought that - there were many debates about republics and direct democracies. But it also clearly a product of making a democracy work in a huge, rural land where it could take months for people to travel to Washington, D.C.
It's definitely an anachronism today, no matter the root causes.
So, just curious, why do you think France one of the richest economies in the world? 5th according to many different measurements.
I'm serious and I'm not trolling. I hear the socialist arguments against France all the time - such as those you just listed. Why is it still doing so darn well?
The tax rate is 22%. They actually pay close to 0%, and apparently less than 0% in some jurisdictions and points in time. This is their effective tax rate. My personal federal tax rate is over 30% but I always end up paying around 15%.
The company reportedly uses complex tax schemes called the 'Double Irish' and 'Dutch Sandwich', which take large royalty payments from international subsidiaries and set up a shell corporation in countries with no corporate taxes, like Bermuda.
Google isn't alone among big corporate tax evaders moving profits to tax shelters abroad. Boeing, DuPont, Capital One and General Electric paid a negative U.S. tax rate in 2010, according to Citizens for Tax Justice.
Now, I wholeheartedly agree with Google's response, "We're capitalistic and not confused about it." But you are either ignorantly ignoring reality, or maliciously distorting reality. Google is most certainly using complex schemes to avoid taxes. For example, Google is neither an Irish company nor a Bermudan company, yet that's what they're telling the IRS.
It's due to Americans going French all of a sudden and thinking that any money earned by any Google subsidiary anywhere in the world should be taxed by the IRS - even if that money was a Swiss Franc earned in Switzerland and then spent on Swiss salaries.
No, you are making that up in your head. Nobody's saying that. What "they" are saying is that Google makes billions of dollars in America, and pays 0% tax on that in America. Absolutely more of its income is made in America than in any other place, simply due to the size of the economy. And yet it pays close to 0% in taxes. Other businesses pay 15-35%, but not Google! And obviously other corporations do the Double Irish as I quoted, but Google is being called out above other corporations due to the Google motto, "Don't be evil".
Just so we're clear, I don't really think this is Google's "problem", it's the system's problem. And the "French way" of thinking money earned elsewhere requires taxes in France is neither logical nor sustainable. But don't distort reality, please.
Google does not pay 12.5% tax in Ireland! LOL! Please google "Google tax evasion", "Google tax rate", and so on. They pay close to 0%, and apparently less than 0% in some jurisdictions. Some notable quotations you'll find:
The company reportedly uses complex tax schemes called the 'Double Irish' and 'Dutch Sandwich', which take large royalty payments from international subsidiaries and set up a shell corporation in countries with no corporate taxes, like Bermuda.
Another quote:
Google isn't alone among big corporate tax evaders moving profits to tax shelters abroad. Boeing, DuPont, Capital One and General Electric paid a negative U.S. tax rate in 2010, according to Citizens for Tax Justice.
Slashdot Mirror
Americans for the last 20 years haven't drunk Budweiser or Fosters. We have the best beer in the world here now. Anyone who thinks we all drink Budweiser is either an American over 40, not an American, or poor (college students, like me when I was in college 10 years ago, included).
He didn't do anything illegal.
Even if he did knowingly and intentionally contribute to illegal drug trade, do you think he should be put in jail for 24 fucking years? Murderers servoe on average 12 years.
Fuck that system.
According to the Slashdot FAQ, this is an American forum. American English is used. This is not a tribal issue of we're better than you. It's just a question of language, which has many different dialects. The dialect used here is that America refers to the USA.
There's no such thing as the "US definition of America" because America has no official language or governmental entity to define such things (unlike other countries, such as how the government of France defines the language of French). But there is such a thing as American English (a dialect of English), and in American English, America refers to the USA.
According to the Slashdot FAQ, this is an American forum. This is not a tribal issue of we're better than you. It's just language, which has many different dialects. The dialect here is that America refers to the USA.
Ugh I just read that diatribe from the URL you posted. It was exactly the worst example you could possibly have chosen - the copyright of 4 minutes and 33 seconds of 0's and the idea of someone else having a "copy" of those 0's.
In a society without intellectual property, the painting/songs/bits you created and physically held are not yours and they are not protected from copying by someone else. In a society with intellectual property, the paintings/songs/bits you created and physically held by someone else are not yours but they ARE protected from copying by someone else without your permission. If someone held the copyright of 0101 and there was the intellectual copyright of 0101 in that society's laws, then by those laws someone else cannot copy 0101 illegally without the permission/payment of the copyright holder.
You are trying to conflate your world views and the reality of laws. Listen, I'm not disagreeing with your world views. But I'm telling you the reality of the laws of the U.S. are factually not what you are saying. You say it's a illogical disagreement with reality. Well, it's not a disagreement with reality - Lady Gaga can create the song which can be represented by millions of certain bits, and those millions of bits can be copyrighted by Lady Gaga. You simply disagree that the copy on someone's harddrive without permission should be illegal, but the law says otherwise. The reality of the copy of those bits is real - but the reality of the law is also real.
They have gotten so used to be able to force bad quality on people and have them pay-before-consume (an entirely unnatural model for entertainment) that they want to keep that despicable model at all cost.
How the fuck is pay-before-consume an entirely unnatural model for entertainment? I can't imagine the act of purchasing a prostitute an entertainment service which is unnatural to pay beforehand. I can't imagine how going to see a movie and deciding "meh, that was a 2/5 or 1/5" and deciding not to pay for it.
The only thing that makes sense in your model is walking down a street and seeing a street performer, where I decide to pay if I liked it enough. The thing is, I didn't intend to be entertained by that street performer just by walking down the street. Sure, if I like it enough, I will pay after the fact. But for fuck's sake, if I download a movie (pirate it), I expected to be entertained, whether or not I liked the movie after I watched it.
Even 2000 years ago, you paid the ticket price before seeing the play.
Most tech people (not the ITT/college/mil tech crowd) have social disorders like aspergers,
Incorrect. This may indeed be your perception, but it is factually untrue.
The problem is not doctor's pay. You have no fucking clue how hard it is to become a doctor.
The problem is the uninsured, which the law requires hospitals to care for regardless of their ability to pay, so the people who actually can pay must pay more to make up for the people who can't.
So, you were cool with Saddam's invasion of Kuwait? And you were cool with his slaughter of people using WMDs? And cool with his continued import and manufacture of long range weapons, and his continued shooting at allied aircraft protecting the no-fly zones? How were you with the cash he was paying (on TV!) to the families of suicide bombers? Comfortable with his skimming UN cash for more palaces and re-arming his Republican Guard, while he deliberately withheld that support from his own citizens? Happy, were you, with his regime's deliberate lies and obfuscation about the disposition of tons of VX gas previously observed by UN inspectors? Liked his ongoing SCUD projects, did you?
I didn't like it, but there were other much better ways to spend one trillion dollars of the U.S.'s money and over 4000 lives.
I'm a little shocked... you seem to be telling a true story! I work in a startup in San Francisco with a bunch of computer nerds and I don't see any adderall at all.
In college, I once took some Ritalin to study for a test. I swear to god, I inadvertently wandered onto some porn before it kicked in... and then I ended up masturbating for THREE FUCKING HOURS STRAIGHT. I shit you not.
Duh - I wasn't insulting you, and clearly stated that I don't think your mother is a whore. Reread the comment, in particular the quoted text to what I was responding to.
Are human beings the primary and most significant factor in the climate warming up? I don't think anyone has proven that. The Climate Change religion states that this is so but climatology scientists don't have nearly as much certainty.
This question makes it seem as if climatology scientists don't actually have overwhelming evidence that human activity has caused excessive greenhouse gases which lead to climate change. So, when I ask "is your mother a whore", you get pretty defensive as if I am engaging in crass insults - but as stated I didn't call your mother a whore, and I don't even think your mother is a whore! But obviously the question makes people think there's actually something to the content of the question, while the person who asks the question can hide behind the fact that they aren't actually stating belief in a positive answer, or even have evidence in any way, about the question.
The reality is simply that some people realize dealing with GW is going to require changes in their lives that they won't enjooy, and its easier to deny it all by sticking your fingers in your ear and yelling "LA LA LA, I can't hear you, LA LA LA". Its pathetic.
When these debates happen, I would love to find this glue between one side and the other that is a great (but hypothetical) solution. Dealing with AGW does not necessarily require people to enjoy their lives less than they did before. If everyone replaced their car with a car that gets 10 times as efficient gas mileage, then they have the same lifestyle.
What "climate change fanatics", as their opposition calls them, wants, is for society to move in the direction of getting these technologies to help mitigate AGW. It's not for making everyone's life miserable - or "changes in their lives that they won't enjoy".
Sure, granted, some tree-hugging granola hippy in Berkley wants some doosh bag Texan to stop driving his Hummer - but that's an emotional tribal response. The real, scientific, and what I believe to be correct way to tackle this problem is to create solutions to the greenhouse gas problem that climate scientists warn about. And that's what pisses me off about these stupid political debates about AGW - it's about some guy in California and some guy in Texas in a pissing match, or an ideological argument, instead of saying "here are some problems we know about - let's make some solutions". And there ARE solutions!!
This is a worthless argument (Primary vs. complimentary) designed to distract people. The climate change the "fanatics" are talking about is directly correlated to certain human activity which produces greenhouse gas, and is caused by human activity. The percentage of that 1 or 2 degree Celsius raise in worldwide temperature as it relates to "primary" or "complimentary" is joke. The data says that AGW exists - which you don't deny - and ~95% of the knowledgeable scientists believe AGW will cause a catastrophic change for humanity in the next few centuries.
i.e. If the "warming" by 3 degrees in the next 200 years is only caused by 1.4 degrees of AGW, that 1.4 degrees is still catastrophic. You (and more specifically your argument) are the one muddying the science and the warnings by saying "well, it doesn't matter because volcanoes also increase greenhouse gases too".
Are human beings the primary and most significant factor in the climate warming up? I don't think anyone has proven that. The Climate Change religion states that this is so but climatology scientists don't have nearly as much certainty.
Is your mother a whore?
Hey, hey, hey... calm down. I didn't call your mother a whore. I don't even think she's a whore! I just think it's important to ask that question. There's a rational debate going on here, after all.
To me "Climate Change" is just a ploy for political control. Until it has been definitively proven what are all the factors of global warming and then, any proposed mitigation steps have been proven to work it is silly to panic and give political control over to the Climate Change religious zealots.
Until it has been definitively proven what are all the factors of your mother prostituting herself, and then, any proposed evidence has been proven to deny her being a whore, it is silly to "panic" and give political control over to the people who are trying to deal with your mother not being a whore.
I really like some of your ideas. Unfortunately, the effectiveness of your message is completely diluted by the insults you're throwing out. Someone who you need to disseminate the information you're saying (e.g. the left) will simply not absorb the information because you've peppered the information with attacks, to which their emotions will not allow their brains to rationally think about it.
How about putting forth some good, rational proposals and data instead of claiming the "great swollen heads" want to "control humanity" and "destroy the economy of the United States".
Remember that schooling isn't just by and for the tax payers of a state, but part of the UN charter on children's rights. As such, it transcends mere state legislation.
The UN charter on children's rights has no authority in any jurisdiction in the U.S. You may have well said that schooling is in the French or Russian or Chinese constitution as well.
+1
Holy shit, at first I thought you sounded like you were being a typical slashdotter trolling dick... but everything you said was pure gold. This idea of sending a primitive nuke over to my home of San Francisco would suck ass for me, but it is, at this point in time, 65-50 year old technology. No the U.S. would not blow up the world... we would completely dismantle NK from top to bottom, and it would likely take less money than Iraq, and would likely have 100X more support, and there would (likely) BE NO NUKES INVOLVED, even if we had to use our own military to invade . There is no case for survival of a poor Emperor against a democracy whose citizens supports the war, along with tons of fucking money and technology.
When NK people there do "nuke tests" for "deterrence" they really need to understand two things: 1. 1950s war technology and 2. Very undeveloped people trying to get to the 1960s. The many military powers against them have been in the last 6 decades for a while now, oh, let's say I'd say 6 decades or so.
What US people need to know is that they - the DK - are a small, bullied people, who are trying to be badasses (via their government). They have impressive technology for such bullies. But as soon as they try to capitalize on their apparent self worth, they are fucked by so many players - Chinese, Japanese/Americans. Their country will seriously dissolve within a few weeks. So we can guess that they know that and won't hit SF because of that. And in the interim, they are just going to bully a little further until it happens. The Americans will never let them get to the point where they can actually bomb SF. It's just a game.
I really do believe, regardless of politics, that the natural and expected outcome of their continued bellicose attitude is just the beginning of reunification.
If we wanted a popular vote, after 200+ years, don't you think we would have abolished the electoral college by now?
No, I don't. It's very hard to change, 50% of Americans don't even vote, and it would require a lot of people who benefit from it to decide to give it up.
It also becomes a question of if you think power should reside with the states or the federal government? Are we one country, or are we a federation of united states? Anywhere else in the world, the world "state" means an independent government. If you believe that the state should hold the power, not the federal government, then you want the electoral college so that each state can speak. If you see the states as little more than an address, then you want a popular vote.
This isn't a good metaphor. Even if you think 95% of the power should be with the states vs. 5% with the federal government - e.g. if you believe states should have all the power - that doesn't have anything to do with how the federal government is elected.
Here's another way of thinking of it. Imagine a small state with two counties. They are two completely separate counties with separate jurisdictions within the state. They both vote for their state government. There's two ways those counties could vote for their state government - by electoral college or by popular vote. Why should the voting power of one county be less than the other? Why shouldn't each person's vote count the same? This is an independent question of how they divide the laws and jurisdictions of their counties and of their state.
How exactly can you correlate the data transferred through the networks of France that is related to Google-specific data, to the point of sale of an advertising sale with AdSense? Think about it - a French business buys advertising services on Google for $100. What exactly do you tax that $100 when you "tax data"? What counts as data to be taxed? Only the data related to the advertising? That is probably a paltry amount of data compared to everything else. But then how do you count everything else if it's just done for free? How in the heck do you measure which data you're taxing - everything coming from www.google.fr?
It seems viable to tax the $100 service purchase based on something related to that service. But I don't see how the data going in and out of networks in France can be taxed without some illogical injustice such as "We know you're big, but we cannot know how much - give us $50!".
That's very insightful. But what is a "privacy thing" to you, then? Are you saying there's no such thing as a right to or expectation of privacy?
That's a possibility. It's true that some of the founding fathers may have thought that - there were many debates about republics and direct democracies. But it also clearly a product of making a democracy work in a huge, rural land where it could take months for people to travel to Washington, D.C.
It's definitely an anachronism today, no matter the root causes.
So, just curious, why do you think France one of the richest economies in the world? 5th according to many different measurements.
I'm serious and I'm not trolling. I hear the socialist arguments against France all the time - such as those you just listed. Why is it still doing so darn well?
The tax rate is 22%. They actually pay close to 0%, and apparently less than 0% in some jurisdictions and points in time. This is their effective tax rate. My personal federal tax rate is over 30% but I always end up paying around 15%.
The company reportedly uses complex tax schemes called the 'Double Irish' and 'Dutch Sandwich', which take large royalty payments from international subsidiaries and set up a shell corporation in countries with no corporate taxes, like Bermuda.
Google isn't alone among big corporate tax evaders moving profits to tax shelters abroad. Boeing, DuPont, Capital One and General Electric paid a negative U.S. tax rate in 2010, according to Citizens for Tax Justice.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_Irish_arrangement
Now, I wholeheartedly agree with Google's response, "We're capitalistic and not confused about it." But you are either ignorantly ignoring reality, or maliciously distorting reality. Google is most certainly using complex schemes to avoid taxes. For example, Google is neither an Irish company nor a Bermudan company, yet that's what they're telling the IRS.
It's due to Americans going French all of a sudden and thinking that any money earned by any Google subsidiary anywhere in the world should be taxed by the IRS - even if that money was a Swiss Franc earned in Switzerland and then spent on Swiss salaries.
No, you are making that up in your head. Nobody's saying that. What "they" are saying is that Google makes billions of dollars in America, and pays 0% tax on that in America. Absolutely more of its income is made in America than in any other place, simply due to the size of the economy. And yet it pays close to 0% in taxes. Other businesses pay 15-35%, but not Google! And obviously other corporations do the Double Irish as I quoted, but Google is being called out above other corporations due to the Google motto, "Don't be evil".
Just so we're clear, I don't really think this is Google's "problem", it's the system's problem. And the "French way" of thinking money earned elsewhere requires taxes in France is neither logical nor sustainable. But don't distort reality, please.
Google does not pay 12.5% tax in Ireland! LOL! Please google "Google tax evasion", "Google tax rate", and so on. They pay close to 0%, and apparently less than 0% in some jurisdictions. Some notable quotations you'll find:
The company reportedly uses complex tax schemes called the 'Double Irish' and 'Dutch Sandwich', which take large royalty payments from international subsidiaries and set up a shell corporation in countries with no corporate taxes, like Bermuda.
Another quote:
Google isn't alone among big corporate tax evaders moving profits to tax shelters abroad. Boeing, DuPont, Capital One and General Electric paid a negative U.S. tax rate in 2010, according to Citizens for Tax Justice.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_Irish_arrangement