Most artists aren't interested in gouging their fans
No, what the artists are interested in is fucking their fans over, by giving away many tickets as favors to the rich, famous, and connected, and watching a feeding frenzy over the remaining tickets. It makes those "artists" feel powerful and important.
Tickets get scalped because the price doesn't reflect demand. Instead of impossible to enforce regulations, why don't venues/artists instead change their pricing model?
Probably a bunch of reasons:
(1) Many of these bands don't need to maximize profit anymore; they want to minimize the risk of having a venue that is not sold out because that makes them look bad. (2) Many of the venues are publicly subsidized and/or at the receiving end of political attention, so it is in their interest to appeal to voters in general, and they can't do that if their ticket prices seem astronomically high.
Distributing tickets in this kind of lottery system probably isn't all that bad if your goal is to "give everybody an equal chance". Of course, if you have the right contacts or enough money, you can still get the tickets anyway.
If an apparently bad system like this persists for so long, it's worthwhile to ask why.
Probably one the reason these tickets are not auctioned is that the events, teams, and/or venues are subsidized by tax dollars, and people might start to ask questions about why their tax dollars go to subsidizing events "for the rich".
Furthermore, the politicians and "sponsors" who created this system get their tickets through other channels anyway, and hand out even more tickets as rewards; they like to have seemingly cheap ticket sales as a cover for their other activities.
This is the book I base my strategy on. Its author is Benjamin Graham
I seriously doubt that Benjamin Graham advised Warren Buffet to pay taxes unnecessarily. In fact...
Berkshire Hathaway does not pay a dividend because its chairman and CEO, Warren Buffett, believes it is more auspicious to allocate the company's earnings in other ways. In particular, Buffett prefers to reinvest profits in things that allow his company to improve its efficiency; expand its reach; create new products and services and improve existing ones; and further separate itself from competitors. Buffett, like many business leaders, feels that investing back into his business provides more long-term value to shareholders than paying them directly because the company's financial success rewards shareholders with higher stock values. Additionally, Berkshire Hathaway maintains an aggressive stock buyback policy that puts cash directly into shareholders' pockets.
So, Buffet seems to agree with me, not you.
In any case, I provided an explanation for why companies rarely pay dividends these days. You're welcome to formulate an alternative explanation. How you personally prefer to handle your taxes is irrelevant to that explanation, since you yourself seem to consider your investment strategy and preference for dividends atypical.
An "ad hominem" would be to say that your argument is wrong because of who you are. I simply gave a name to your political ideology and your way of thinking ("detailed discussions of Tax brackets for corporations is beyond my interest or knowledge"). You just want to stick it to corporations without really known why or what the consequences are. That pretty much describes the early years of European fascism.
Most of these tech companies don't make a profit, Plenty of them never will make a profit, ever. So people are speculating based upon an analyst's wild ass guess as to what the company is worth.
That's completely independent of whether a company pays out their profits as dividends or puts them in the bank. Balance sheets are not based on analyst's guesses.
Things did used to be more stable back when there were fewer investors and most investors were professionals.
Not that there is anything wrong with volatility per se.
Now everyone's in the market and the pros are doing trades where every millisecond count, and most activity is with short term trades and not long term investments. Because the market forces see this churn of short term investments that affects the value even of stocks held for the long term.
If Apple's financials are bad or Microsoft screws up a product launch, thereby depressing expected future profits, why shouldn't the stock price reflect that immediately? If Google shares trade $0.01 higher on one exchange than on another, why shouldn't short term trades ensure that the prices equilibrate across the two exchanges?
Detailed discussions of Tax brackets for corporations is beyond my interest or knowledge for the same reason I have no interest in restoring a vehicle that's been crushed.
Because you are terminally stupid? Because you are a proto-fascist?
No, that's the word to describe astro-turfers or professional trolls pushing a propaganda set by their employers financial or political motivations.
Indeed, I have a strong financial interest in corporations doing well: my retirement and economic well being depend on it. So does everybody's, including yours, whether you are a welfare recipient or a corporate CEO. You simply are too stupid to realize it.
No it's not, because what those perhaps-irrational investors believe (in speculation) is what sets the market value of the shares and thus what you could buy or sell them for.
Irrational investors can't indefinitely misjudge stock values; any who do run out of money. Remember that for every seller there is a buyer and vice versa. Money accumulates with the people who make correct decisions. On average, dividend payments and stock price changes are related rationally. On average, in the absence of taxation, a $5 dividend payment per share should be the equivalent of a $5 increase in stock price. In the presence of taxation, a $5 dividend payment is the equivalent of a slightly larger increase in stock price, which is why you see few dividend payments these days.
Remember, I'm not arguing for the existence of some hypothetical, bizarre relationship between dividends and stock price, I'm providing an explanation for the observation that companies have become increasingly reluctant to pay dividends.
You are right that paying dividends used to be a simple way for companies to signal to their stockholders that they were successful; but that mechanism isn't that important anymore with the widespread and detailed financial reporting on companies.
This strategy relies on the stock price constantly growing
It's not a "strategy" and it doesn't "rely" on anything. If a company has $5 million in profit and doesn't pay it out as a dividend, the stock goes up on average by as much as the dividend would have been. At that point in time, you can rebalance your portfolio the same way you would have done with a dividend payment.
and that the growth is by a greater dollar amount than the dividend otherwise would be
No, it assumes that the growth related to not paying the dividend is, on average, equal to the dividend, which it is.
These are assumptions I am not willing to make and if any of them is false I'm better off receiving the dividend.
Well, there are a lot of irrational investors, and you are evidently one of them.
Paying a dividend signals that they're not planning to expand into more kinds of business
That would be a pretty costly signal to stockholders in a publicly traded corporation. I think in this case, the answer is much simpler: Kickstarter isn't publicly traded. Far from being a noble gesture, that means that paying a dividend to themselves is a simple way in which the owners of Kickstarter can take out money for themselves.
What you've done here called lying with statistics.
I didn't quote any statistics. What I was pointing out is that naive people like you may get the false impression that mass shootings are frequent in the US and infrequent elsewhere because the US is so much bigger and because if someone farts the wrong way in the US the US (and foreign media) wallow in it for weeks, whereas events elsewhere around the globe don't receive much attention in the US.
Not saying Australia is a solid argument for gun control
Australia is a solid argument against gun control because it accomplished nothing when it comes to homicide rates. As for mass shootings, there isn't enough data to say anything meaningful about any country, including Australia.
but you are going to have to pull your head out of your ass and make a cogent argument why it isn't instead of just pretending its not real
Lying with statistics is what you have done. And you need to pull your head out of your ass and stop making a fool of yourself by citing bogus statistics.
The US corporate income tax system is very much out of kilter, with some well connected corporations getting large tax breaks and others getting screwed.
Now, if you believe that US companies should be taxed in the US on their worldwide income (as your links suggest), it follows logically that they can't also be taxed on their local income in, say, Germany or Japan, since otherwise you end up with marginal tax rates that are way too high. In addition, it also follows that the same should be true in reverse. So, German companies like T-Mobile, Volkswagen, BMW, DHL, Trader Joe's, Henkel, or Mercedes then shouldn't be taxed at all in the US or on their US profits, right? Is that the principle you want, that each corporation only gets taxed in its home country? Or are you advocating that all corporations worldwide get taxed in the US? Or are you advocating that all corporations get double-taxed on all their profits? Or what?
As for the charge of "shill", that bogus accusation is the last resort of the ignorant and incompetent.
If you are given the option of receiving your dividends in either stock or cash form, then the dividends are taxable even if you choose to take them in stock form. The same is true for DRIPs.
Not paying dividends does not guarantee rational reinvestment much less subsequent growth.
Correct.
I only invest in shares that pay dividends.
That's just stupid. If a company doesn't pay dividends and instead keeps its profits in cash or reinvests them, you can simply take the money out of that stock and diversify by selling shares. The point is: keeping the profits gives you, as a shareholder, more options. If they pay (cash) dividends, you lose options and are forced to pay taxes.
In addition to having one of the highest nominal corporate tax rates in the world, the US also has one of the highest median corporate tax rates as well (i.e., after "loopholes"). If it didn't, US corporations wouldn't be trying to hard to get taxed overseas, and that is on top of high capital gains taxes. Sweden, incidentally, has one of the lowest median corporate tax rates.
Dividends used to be the standard way to get paid by owning stock, especially with blue chip companies. This is basic profit sharing to the shareholders. Now in the "new" economy it's all about growth, growth, and more growth. The money is made through speculation instead, hoping that the stock price rises and that you can sell it before it goes back down.
There is no "speculation" involved. Let's say a company has 1 million outstanding shares and makes a profit of $5 million. If it pays that entire profit as dividends, that means paying $5/share. If it puts that profit in the bank, the share values simply go up by $5 each and you can realize that profit by selling your shares.
If you look at the total number of mass shootings, you will see that they happen with much greater, and I mean MUCH greater frequency in the United States.
Of course they happen with much greater frequency in the US; the US is much, much bigger too.
If you'd like, I can post citations to back up my claim that John Lott's statistics are completely bogus.
You have shown time and again that you are incapable of distinguishing truth from fiction, so frankly, I wouldn't even bother following your links.
Advertising, insurance, buying out their competitors, for example.
Do you expect them to branch into unrelated fields
No, but they might branch out into related fields, like makerspaces, startup labs, business support services, insurance, legal services, escrow services, etc
Slashdot Mirror
Mostly through copyright claims, trademark claims, government pressure, lawsuits, and threats by activists.
No, what the artists are interested in is fucking their fans over, by giving away many tickets as favors to the rich, famous, and connected, and watching a feeding frenzy over the remaining tickets. It makes those "artists" feel powerful and important.
"Artificial scarcity" is a meaningless concept. The scalpers simply try to price tickets rationally because the original seller isn't doing so.
Probably a bunch of reasons:
(1) Many of these bands don't need to maximize profit anymore; they want to minimize the risk of having a venue that is not sold out because that makes them look bad. (2) Many of the venues are publicly subsidized and/or at the receiving end of political attention, so it is in their interest to appeal to voters in general, and they can't do that if their ticket prices seem astronomically high.
Distributing tickets in this kind of lottery system probably isn't all that bad if your goal is to "give everybody an equal chance". Of course, if you have the right contacts or enough money, you can still get the tickets anyway.
If an apparently bad system like this persists for so long, it's worthwhile to ask why.
Probably one the reason these tickets are not auctioned is that the events, teams, and/or venues are subsidized by tax dollars, and people might start to ask questions about why their tax dollars go to subsidizing events "for the rich".
Furthermore, the politicians and "sponsors" who created this system get their tickets through other channels anyway, and hand out even more tickets as rewards; they like to have seemingly cheap ticket sales as a cover for their other activities.
There is a nearly perfect correlation between US spending on science and suicides by hanging/strangulation/suffocation.
I seriously doubt that Benjamin Graham advised Warren Buffet to pay taxes unnecessarily. In fact...
So, Buffet seems to agree with me, not you.
In any case, I provided an explanation for why companies rarely pay dividends these days. You're welcome to formulate an alternative explanation. How you personally prefer to handle your taxes is irrelevant to that explanation, since you yourself seem to consider your investment strategy and preference for dividends atypical.
An "ad hominem" would be to say that your argument is wrong because of who you are. I simply gave a name to your political ideology and your way of thinking ("detailed discussions of Tax brackets for corporations is beyond my interest or knowledge"). You just want to stick it to corporations without really known why or what the consequences are. That pretty much describes the early years of European fascism.
That's completely independent of whether a company pays out their profits as dividends or puts them in the bank. Balance sheets are not based on analyst's guesses.
Well, no, not really. Check other measures of volatility if you like.
Not that there is anything wrong with volatility per se.
If Apple's financials are bad or Microsoft screws up a product launch, thereby depressing expected future profits, why shouldn't the stock price reflect that immediately? If Google shares trade $0.01 higher on one exchange than on another, why shouldn't short term trades ensure that the prices equilibrate across the two exchanges?
Because you are terminally stupid? Because you are a proto-fascist?
Indeed, I have a strong financial interest in corporations doing well: my retirement and economic well being depend on it. So does everybody's, including yours, whether you are a welfare recipient or a corporate CEO. You simply are too stupid to realize it.
Irrational investors can't indefinitely misjudge stock values; any who do run out of money. Remember that for every seller there is a buyer and vice versa. Money accumulates with the people who make correct decisions. On average, dividend payments and stock price changes are related rationally. On average, in the absence of taxation, a $5 dividend payment per share should be the equivalent of a $5 increase in stock price. In the presence of taxation, a $5 dividend payment is the equivalent of a slightly larger increase in stock price, which is why you see few dividend payments these days.
Remember, I'm not arguing for the existence of some hypothetical, bizarre relationship between dividends and stock price, I'm providing an explanation for the observation that companies have become increasingly reluctant to pay dividends.
You are right that paying dividends used to be a simple way for companies to signal to their stockholders that they were successful; but that mechanism isn't that important anymore with the widespread and detailed financial reporting on companies.
It's not a "strategy" and it doesn't "rely" on anything. If a company has $5 million in profit and doesn't pay it out as a dividend, the stock goes up on average by as much as the dividend would have been. At that point in time, you can rebalance your portfolio the same way you would have done with a dividend payment.
No, it assumes that the growth related to not paying the dividend is, on average, equal to the dividend, which it is.
Well, there are a lot of irrational investors, and you are evidently one of them.
What I said is true independent of what irrational investors believe.
That would be a pretty costly signal to stockholders in a publicly traded corporation. I think in this case, the answer is much simpler: Kickstarter isn't publicly traded. Far from being a noble gesture, that means that paying a dividend to themselves is a simple way in which the owners of Kickstarter can take out money for themselves.
I didn't quote any statistics. What I was pointing out is that naive people like you may get the false impression that mass shootings are frequent in the US and infrequent elsewhere because the US is so much bigger and because if someone farts the wrong way in the US the US (and foreign media) wallow in it for weeks, whereas events elsewhere around the globe don't receive much attention in the US.
Australia is a solid argument against gun control because it accomplished nothing when it comes to homicide rates. As for mass shootings, there isn't enough data to say anything meaningful about any country, including Australia.
Lying with statistics is what you have done. And you need to pull your head out of your ass and stop making a fool of yourself by citing bogus statistics.
The US corporate income tax system is very much out of kilter, with some well connected corporations getting large tax breaks and others getting screwed.
Now, if you believe that US companies should be taxed in the US on their worldwide income (as your links suggest), it follows logically that they can't also be taxed on their local income in, say, Germany or Japan, since otherwise you end up with marginal tax rates that are way too high. In addition, it also follows that the same should be true in reverse. So, German companies like T-Mobile, Volkswagen, BMW, DHL, Trader Joe's, Henkel, or Mercedes then shouldn't be taxed at all in the US or on their US profits, right? Is that the principle you want, that each corporation only gets taxed in its home country? Or are you advocating that all corporations worldwide get taxed in the US? Or are you advocating that all corporations get double-taxed on all their profits? Or what?
As for the charge of "shill", that bogus accusation is the last resort of the ignorant and incompetent.
If you are given the option of receiving your dividends in either stock or cash form, then the dividends are taxable even if you choose to take them in stock form. The same is true for DRIPs.
Correct.
That's just stupid. If a company doesn't pay dividends and instead keeps its profits in cash or reinvests them, you can simply take the money out of that stock and diversify by selling shares. The point is: keeping the profits gives you, as a shareholder, more options. If they pay (cash) dividends, you lose options and are forced to pay taxes.
In addition to having one of the highest nominal corporate tax rates in the world, the US also has one of the highest median corporate tax rates as well (i.e., after "loopholes"). If it didn't, US corporations wouldn't be trying to hard to get taxed overseas, and that is on top of high capital gains taxes. Sweden, incidentally, has one of the lowest median corporate tax rates.
http://www.forbes.com/pictures...
http://taxfoundation.org/artic...
There is no "speculation" involved. Let's say a company has 1 million outstanding shares and makes a profit of $5 million. If it pays that entire profit as dividends, that means paying $5/share. If it puts that profit in the bank, the share values simply go up by $5 each and you can realize that profit by selling your shares.
It's not such a good thing if they run Kickstarter into the ground.
Choosing to reinvest instead of paying dividends is not a "tax loophole", it's the essence of growing businesses.
That's total bullshit. All corporations pay for infrastructure through property tax, sales tax, business tax, and (effectively) income tax.
US corporations also pay some of the highest taxes in the world, which is why many of them are moving overseas.
And they may well pay the price for it and become irrelevant.
And you must be one of those racist and bigoted American low information voters that I have heard so much about.
No. I still speak it a lot better than you ever will, honey.
Of course they happen with much greater frequency in the US; the US is much, much bigger too.
You have shown time and again that you are incapable of distinguishing truth from fiction, so frankly, I wouldn't even bother following your links.
http://www.politifact.com/trut...
Advertising, insurance, buying out their competitors, for example.
No, but they might branch out into related fields, like makerspaces, startup labs, business support services, insurance, legal services, escrow services, etc