Doesn't make any sense. Either you're doing something terribly wrong, or these other hosting providers that are offering php4 are having the same concerns as you. Or, perhaps, these other hosting providers are specializing in offering legacy php4 hosting, in which case you would be better off letting those customers go to the specialized legacy host, because you will never be able to compete with them.
> The no VoIP will have been imposed by phone companies who don't want > their customers making cheap calls
Ok, but it's stupid and won't work. This is a technological advancement that is showing that the current business model for cell phone companies is dying. They either need to find a way to cut prices to be competitive with VoIP or they need to embrace VoIP themselves.
Perhaps you are familiar with what has happened to the CD recording industry when the established players didn't pay any fscking attention to VERY CLEAR market signals like this.
Indeed. His great economic analysis is something that could just as easily be presented to a private organization. While the FDIC is a government entity, it is funded by the banks, who are the true beneficiaries of the program. There's no reason something similar couldn't work here. Put another way, aside from easy of collection, there is no need for this to be funded by taxes.
> No, he merely asked why should we care where a business keeps its > nominal headquarters if we don't benefit from it being here.
We do benefit from it (your comment even says so!), even if they don't contribute to taxation (which they do). If you read my comment instead of just reacting in a knee-jerk fashion all the while essentially saying the same thing I said, you'll note that this is precisely what I said.
And "laws allowing incorporation"? Which do you think existed first: government or business?
Are you intentionally being stupid and missing the point? Parent's point is that these companies are profitable and exist in the US because they don't pay ridiculous US corporate taxes. No smart businessman of a business with significant revenue would HQ their business in the US and subject themselves and their shareholders to double taxation of dividends. That leaves you with, at best, the dumb businessmen leading US businesses.
Dude, not the same thing. Most people would pay their taxes properly if the tax code weren't a jumbled fscking mess and we could actually understand HOW to pay our taxes properly. Make collection of said state sales taxes straightforward and easy AND I WILL PAY IT.
> And one last concept I'd like to plant, that Blackberry they give > you to carry on your hip every waking hour of every day including > your days off is not a perk. You may feel all geeky and important > with your company paid geek status symbol but in reality its > simply a corporate slave leash.
What a load of shit. You clearly have never had this "non-perk". I check my emails when and if I want to. I answer my calls when and if I want to. The only thing my "corporate slave leash" allows me to do is make sure Joe in Accounting finished his shit and emailed me before he left work tonight, and I can check that from the bar instead of waiting at work. And I do.
If you don't have the discipline to separate work time from life time, that's not the blackberry's fault. The only thing my PDA has done is give me more freedom with when I'm at the office and when I am not.
> No, that's not the way it works. I don't know where you got that idea, > but history and economics disagree with you.
Points for effectively dismissing what I'm saying in typical/. style, but you're not correct.
> In a free market economy (and most others, for that matter), black markets > are always more expensive than the legal variety. Black markets only exist > when a legitimate market does not, and you pay extra for (1) the scarcity > of the product, and (2) the illegal nature of the product.
This is not correct, and it's not even what we're talking about here (the correct form of the highlighted portion would be "black markets only exist when a free market does not"). We're talking about a black market that has arisen due to high taxation. As long as the product can be smuggled in and sold on the black market for less than the cost of the domestic equivalent, the black market will arise. If you're not paying attention, this means the black market equivalent is cheaper than the domestic, legal version. The best modern example I can give you is Canadian and Mexican medications being smuggled into the US (here the premium is due to intellectual property, not taxation, but the idea is the same -- the government creates a false premium on the domestic product, and that premium is large enough to make smuggling profitable).
> Take illegal drugs, like marijuana for example.
Your example is relevant by accident. The government first handled marijuana with high taxation. But then it simply outlawed it. We're not talking about things that are forbidden (you are correct that it also creates black markets -- it's just not relevant). We're talking about taxation.
Perhaps history and economics agree with me a bit more than you thought?
> Someone else will step in and start selling competing products > legitimately, and cheaper (because they don't need a black market, > which drives up prices).
The black market would be cheaper or it wouldn't exist.
How incredibly naive. You act like corporations are entities just like humans. Corporations don't have income; individuals do. Corporations don't get taxed; individuals do. Let's dehumanize the situation and then get angry when it sounds like "corporations" are getting out of paying taxes, when in reality they are trying to avoid being taxed TWICE (once as the income passes through the corporate layer, and a second time when it passes as income to the individual).
Bottom line: "they" are already paying for the infrastructure "they" use.
They have a sweet deal? What are you talking about? "Corporate tax" is a misnomer. You don't tax corporations. You tax individuals. Corporate taxes are just another layer of individual taxation. See http://www.expertlaw.com/library/business/c_corporation.html#2
It's not an either-or. If wages were the same but taxes were higher in the US, work would still flow to the other countries. If taxes were the same but wages were higher in the US, work would still flow to the other countries. If both wages AND taxes are higher in the US... well, you get what we have now.
Those assumptions are not necessary. In your #1 point, if this is not the case, the corporation will need to pay the taxes, in which case they will reduce production, which reduces competition, which raises prices.
But, yes, you are right that the percentage paid by the consumer has to do with price elasticity.
They aren't tax cheats. They are following the law. If you want to find tax cheats, you will need to look elsewhere (like the person Obama appointed to the head of the IRS).
There is no such thing as corporate taxation. "Corporate taxation" is just another layer of individual taxation. In this case, it's a great way to punish people who are investing in our production economy. I'm sure you can empathize with deciding whether to invest in A or B. I invest in Vanguard mutual funds because the fund expenses are lower than their competitors. Do you think a similar thought goes through people's heads when they're deciding where to expand their businesses or create new businesses?
> The ultimate expression of business without government control is the Mafia.
What a load of crap. The Mafia was successful largely because it was able to manipulate and exploit opportunities created by government. Waste management, prohibition, drugs, prostitution, bribes, etc.
Hey, another brilliant comment. One problem though: if no one has any money to buy shit because they have no job and everything they want to buy has huge blackmarket markups, the US is no longer these companies' largest market. I can't buy HD TV's if I'm living in a box and eating gruel.
The government cannot stop the market from purchasing what the market wants to purchase. The only thing it can do is erect barriers that drive up the cost of those items (and usually establish criminal enterprises around them). See: imports, illegal drugs, prostitution, foreign prescription medication.
You are 100% right, but the problem is that repealing the taxes is not an option politically. The left would be whining to all hell, even if it's the right decision for everyone in the long run. It's the same reason the government doesn't raise individual taxes anymore to fund their projects; they just steal your wealth by inflation. It's the same thing as a tax, but worse... just because it's easier to do politically (because most people are dumb and don't know it's happening or know it's happening but don't understand it).
Brilliant. Your theory apparently is that all business exists to pay taxes and support government. Pretty backwards, dude, and exactly why in 10 years our country will be producing even less than we are now.
Slashdot Mirror
Doesn't make any sense. Either you're doing something terribly wrong, or these other hosting providers that are offering php4 are having the same concerns as you. Or, perhaps, these other hosting providers are specializing in offering legacy php4 hosting, in which case you would be better off letting those customers go to the specialized legacy host, because you will never be able to compete with them.
> The no VoIP will have been imposed by phone companies who don't want
> their customers making cheap calls
Ok, but it's stupid and won't work. This is a technological advancement that is showing that the current business model for cell phone companies is dying. They either need to find a way to cut prices to be competitive with VoIP or they need to embrace VoIP themselves.
Perhaps you are familiar with what has happened to the CD recording industry when the established players didn't pay any fscking attention to VERY CLEAR market signals like this.
Indeed. His great economic analysis is something that could just as easily be presented to a private organization. While the FDIC is a government entity, it is funded by the banks, who are the true beneficiaries of the program. There's no reason something similar couldn't work here. Put another way, aside from easy of collection, there is no need for this to be funded by taxes.
> No, he merely asked why should we care where a business keeps its
> nominal headquarters if we don't benefit from it being here.
We do benefit from it (your comment even says so!), even if they don't contribute to taxation (which they do). If you read my comment instead of just reacting in a knee-jerk fashion all the while essentially saying the same thing I said, you'll note that this is precisely what I said.
And "laws allowing incorporation"? Which do you think existed first: government or business?
> It is only income the companies hoard or distribute as dividends
> that is taxed.
Twice.
> The funds distributed as dividends are not subject to double taxation.
This is simply not true. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_tax_in_the_United_States#Entities_subject_to_federal_income_tax_on_corporations
Are you intentionally being stupid and missing the point? Parent's point is that these companies are profitable and exist in the US because they don't pay ridiculous US corporate taxes. No smart businessman of a business with significant revenue would HQ their business in the US and subject themselves and their shareholders to double taxation of dividends. That leaves you with, at best, the dumb businessmen leading US businesses.
Dude, not the same thing. Most people would pay their taxes properly if the tax code weren't a jumbled fscking mess and we could actually understand HOW to pay our taxes properly. Make collection of said state sales taxes straightforward and easy AND I WILL PAY IT.
> And one last concept I'd like to plant, that Blackberry they give
> you to carry on your hip every waking hour of every day including
> your days off is not a perk. You may feel all geeky and important
> with your company paid geek status symbol but in reality its
> simply a corporate slave leash.
What a load of shit. You clearly have never had this "non-perk". I check my emails when and if I want to. I answer my calls when and if I want to. The only thing my "corporate slave leash" allows me to do is make sure Joe in Accounting finished his shit and emailed me before he left work tonight, and I can check that from the bar instead of waiting at work. And I do.
If you don't have the discipline to separate work time from life time, that's not the blackberry's fault. The only thing my PDA has done is give me more freedom with when I'm at the office and when I am not.
> No, that's not the way it works. I don't know where you got that idea,
> but history and economics disagree with you.
Points for effectively dismissing what I'm saying in typical /. style, but you're not correct.
> In a free market economy (and most others, for that matter), black markets
> are always more expensive than the legal variety. Black markets only exist
> when a legitimate market does not, and you pay extra for (1) the scarcity
> of the product, and (2) the illegal nature of the product.
This is not correct, and it's not even what we're talking about here (the correct form of the highlighted portion would be "black markets only exist when a free market does not"). We're talking about a black market that has arisen due to high taxation. As long as the product can be smuggled in and sold on the black market for less than the cost of the domestic equivalent, the black market will arise. If you're not paying attention, this means the black market equivalent is cheaper than the domestic, legal version. The best modern example I can give you is Canadian and Mexican medications being smuggled into the US (here the premium is due to intellectual property, not taxation, but the idea is the same -- the government creates a false premium on the domestic product, and that premium is large enough to make smuggling profitable).
> Take illegal drugs, like marijuana for example.
Your example is relevant by accident. The government first handled marijuana with high taxation. But then it simply outlawed it. We're not talking about things that are forbidden (you are correct that it also creates black markets -- it's just not relevant). We're talking about taxation.
Perhaps history and economics agree with me a bit more than you thought?
> Someone else will step in and start selling competing products
> legitimately, and cheaper (because they don't need a black market,
> which drives up prices).
The black market would be cheaper or it wouldn't exist.
Also hard to buy shit when no companies can employ your citizens.
Sorry, why would the Cayman Islands cooperate with identifying companies that should be giving tax revenue to the US instead of... the Cayman Islands?
> The stock market went up today
a) that may have nothing to do with the news
b) the increase is zero if you look at possible inflation indicators, which mean it could just be a devaluation of the dollar that is increasing stock prices. see for example: http://www.google.com/finance?chdnp=0&chdd=0&chds=1&chdv=1&chvs=Linear&chdeh=0&chdet=1241496302951&chddm=391&cmpto=NYSE:GLD;NYSE:USO&cmptzos=-18000;-18000&q=NYSE:VTI&ntsp=0
Oh I see. So increasing taxes and therefore the per-dollar motivation to evade taxation will lead to less tax evasion. Brilliant.
How incredibly naive. You act like corporations are entities just like humans. Corporations don't have income; individuals do. Corporations don't get taxed; individuals do. Let's dehumanize the situation and then get angry when it sounds like "corporations" are getting out of paying taxes, when in reality they are trying to avoid being taxed TWICE (once as the income passes through the corporate layer, and a second time when it passes as income to the individual).
Bottom line: "they" are already paying for the infrastructure "they" use.
They have a sweet deal? What are you talking about? "Corporate tax" is a misnomer. You don't tax corporations. You tax individuals. Corporate taxes are just another layer of individual taxation. See http://www.expertlaw.com/library/business/c_corporation.html#2
It's not an either-or. If wages were the same but taxes were higher in the US, work would still flow to the other countries. If taxes were the same but wages were higher in the US, work would still flow to the other countries. If both wages AND taxes are higher in the US... well, you get what we have now.
Those assumptions are not necessary. In your #1 point, if this is not the case, the corporation will need to pay the taxes, in which case they will reduce production, which reduces competition, which raises prices.
But, yes, you are right that the percentage paid by the consumer has to do with price elasticity.
They aren't tax cheats. They are following the law. If you want to find tax cheats, you will need to look elsewhere (like the person Obama appointed to the head of the IRS).
There is no such thing as corporate taxation. "Corporate taxation" is just another layer of individual taxation. In this case, it's a great way to punish people who are investing in our production economy. I'm sure you can empathize with deciding whether to invest in A or B. I invest in Vanguard mutual funds because the fund expenses are lower than their competitors. Do you think a similar thought goes through people's heads when they're deciding where to expand their businesses or create new businesses?
Your sig:
> The ultimate expression of business without government control is the Mafia.
What a load of crap. The Mafia was successful largely because it was able to manipulate and exploit opportunities created by government. Waste management, prohibition, drugs, prostitution, bribes, etc.
I'm "anti-tax" and don't believe we should have been in those wars or have such a large "defense" budget.
That said, I am 100% pro-tax if the choice is between taxation and inflation/debt. At least taxation is honest.
Hey, another brilliant comment. One problem though: if no one has any money to buy shit because they have no job and everything they want to buy has huge blackmarket markups, the US is no longer these companies' largest market. I can't buy HD TV's if I'm living in a box and eating gruel.
The government cannot stop the market from purchasing what the market wants to purchase. The only thing it can do is erect barriers that drive up the cost of those items (and usually establish criminal enterprises around them). See: imports, illegal drugs, prostitution, foreign prescription medication.
You are 100% right, but the problem is that repealing the taxes is not an option politically. The left would be whining to all hell, even if it's the right decision for everyone in the long run. It's the same reason the government doesn't raise individual taxes anymore to fund their projects; they just steal your wealth by inflation. It's the same thing as a tax, but worse... just because it's easier to do politically (because most people are dumb and don't know it's happening or know it's happening but don't understand it).
Brilliant. Your theory apparently is that all business exists to pay taxes and support government. Pretty backwards, dude, and exactly why in 10 years our country will be producing even less than we are now.