I am not blaming environmentalists. I'm blaming government subsidizing. And the total for every year is in the ballpark of a billion dollars. I can't find where I've seen it totalled up before, so it's a lot of digging to find all the individual pieces for you and I don't care to spend the time to do it. I am against subsidizing and I am for lowering the tax rate or replacing it with a national sales tax.
Considering our budget is about $4 Trillion a year, I'd consider the interest payments to be pretty significant. This year we borrow more than ever before, about $4/$10 we spend.
Oh I believe we're in trouble as a nation, don't get me wrong, but the trouble is coming from government spending and growth when the interest rates consume the budget and no one gets any money.
All in all, GE receives quite a lot in tax credit in the US for green subsidies every year. Now, is it the only thing they do to avoid tax burden? Absolutely not, but it is a significant part of the equation. I can't find the total, but I believe it's in the hemisphere of about a billion dollars a year in tax credits that GE gets off of tax credits. Considering they profited $5.1B in the US, you've already knocked out over half their tax liability.
It's not like they don't pay any taxes anywhere. They paid plenty to foreign countries, but they paid it there because the rates are lower. If you had the choice to paying switzerland 25% instead of paying the US 35%, wouldn't you want to pay switzerland? It doesn't make any sense as a businessman to pay the higher rate. They are funneling their profits into these countries with the lower tax rates.
We are speaking in terms of corporate tax rate. at 35% US is the highest (tied with several others). Japan used to be higher, but they just lowered it to 35%
Not really, if you worked in multiple countries you could do the same thing. Why does GE have any motivation to pay the US tax rate when it's the highest in the world? If you had the option of paying $5 billion in taxes instead of $10 billion in taxes, wouldn't you? It's impractical policies that don't understand how business works and it ends up hurting all the smaller businesses who can't afford to do the same practices as GE. It's a barrier created by government policy that prevents further competition in the market by allowing the larger corporations to prosper.
You can't hand out massive subsidies and tax credits for green energies and then complain when the largest recipient of those credits and subsidies ends up not owning the government money. Here's a hint, when you offer the rich/smart corporations money and ways to reduce their tax burden, they take it. So which is it that you want? Do you want them to pay taxes or do you want them to develop highly cost ineffective green technologies that they wouldn't otherwise develop because they couldn't make the right profit on it. You can't have it both ways.
Well if it's off topic then it shouldn't have been posted at all, so I'm going to assume it's an on topic and directly responding to the subject of the thread otherwise.
Not really, I think it's a valid conclusion to reach that that was the point of his post in a thread about google securing it's business model and dominating the market. This wasn't a thread about ethics, laws, or anything similar. It was about successful business practices, so without any quantifier to state differently, I would assume it was a direct response to that. Otherwise, it's off topic.
So a company having a successful business model and dominating the market is evil? Got it. If all markets were dominated by companies like Google, the world would be a much better place. Are they perfect? No. But they're trying dammit.
Apparently you haven't because nothing in this topic really reflects anything in that movie. It's a movie about overpopulation with lack of resources both in commodities and police and security forces.Nothing about tracking people.
Also, aside from broadcast television, any censorship on TV, movies, video games, books, is left entirely up to society. Nothing needs to be approved for classification by the government to be distributed in the US. You can basically publish anything you want aside from child pornography, though there are restrictions on pornography in terms of selling things to minors. The movie and video game industry regulate themselves and do a very good job at it, but nothing is ever banned from distribution by the government.
In contrast, in Australia, if you show a film or a possess books that haven't been classified for distribution by the government, that's grounds for the government to raid your house or business and you can be slapped with heavy fines or jail time. Loads of video games, movies, or books are heavily censored before being released in Australia or refused classification and effectively banned. Australia also has a huge obsession with anything that remotely resembles child pornography. A man received fines for possess nude photos of the Simpsons, and smaller but still perfectly naturally breasted women (B cup and under) have been banned from the covers of pornographic material under the idea that small breasted women incite child pornography. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7770781.stm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_in_Australia http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/11/11/3063975.htm
Really? Because I don't consider police raiding the house of individuals for showing films or bookshops for having books that weren't approved by the Australian government to be considered free speech. Heck, I don't consider not allowing the sale of any speech material of any form to be an invasion of freedom of speech. Australia also has some of the most intrusive internet censorship laws. They feel the need to make sure that no adult likes small breasted women and therefor can't be turned into a child pornographer by banning women with perfectly legitimate but smaller breast size (B) from the cover of pornography cases. I'm really just scratching the surface here. There is a lot more you can read about and understand on your own time, but as far as the first world is concerned, Australia is one of the worst offenders in freedom of speech.
Maybe not with those things, but it does raid peoples houses for airing movies that weren't certified for viewing approval, sentence people to jail for viewing lolicon, force porn to only display large breasted women on the covers (C or bigger), make huge internet censorship attempts, and other huge nanny state strides. I mentioned australia for freedom of speech infringements.
I know exactly how they make their money and have no delusions as to the contrar. And as long as that information is kept anonymous, I have no issue with it. Currently the government is doing the exact same thing Google is doing, except they're not keeping that information anonymous, as such, I have huge issues with it. The acts of Google are significantly important in improving our lives as humans. In order to provide superior services and better anticipate the needs of individuals, we need this statistical data about individuals. Google has promised this data is kept anonymous and there is no real evidence that there is anything contrary to that matter. Given the past behavior of the company, I feel fine leaving the situation as is until someone gives significant evidence to put doubt on that matter. It is just as unfair to ask Google to hand over their information as it would be for the government to raid your house and search your computers for child pornography if there was no significant evidence prior to the fact that you were in possession of such material. Is Google perfect? Absolutely not, but when there are problems like the mail loss, or spending of ad money left over in accounts, there are steps taken to rectify it. Microsoft lost far more data when their sidekick servers reset. Accidents happen and business mistakes happen. What is more important is what the companies intentions were and what happens with the resulting matter.
Oh, I'm not defending it by any means, I'm hugely politically active on the matter. I'm just tired of people saying the US is so much worse off. It's not. We should focus on trying to be a beacon to the world on individual freedoms and liberties. If anything, we should help people realize how much their own country invades on their freedoms.
If you think what the US does is substantially different from the rest of the first world, then you're wrong. The difference is we just bitch about it a lot more. If anything we're just catching up. Amazingly we still have preserved the freedom of speech a lot more than places like the UK, Germany, and Australia.
Except Google really doesn't try to hide anything. I like Google not just because they give stuff away for free, but because they also deliver a quality product, but, more importantly, they are very honest and transparent with their actions. Like with the incidents with the WIFI data, they came forward and admitted it without anybody investigating them. There is nothing "shady" about their business practices. You may not agree with the way they do that business, but you are completely free to use another product as you so suggest. It's not evil. It's just business
Slashdot Mirror
I am not blaming environmentalists. I'm blaming government subsidizing. And the total for every year is in the ballpark of a billion dollars. I can't find where I've seen it totalled up before, so it's a lot of digging to find all the individual pieces for you and I don't care to spend the time to do it. I am against subsidizing and I am for lowering the tax rate or replacing it with a national sales tax.
Umm, I wouldn't consider $191 Billion paid last year in interest to be close to zero. http://www.treasurydirect.gov/govt/reports/ir/ir_expense.htm
At it's current rate of spending and debt gathering, the US will pay $1 Trillion in interest every year by 2020. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/12/opinion/12brooks.html?hp
Considering our budget is about $4 Trillion a year, I'd consider the interest payments to be pretty significant. This year we borrow more than ever before, about $4/$10 we spend.
Oh I believe we're in trouble as a nation, don't get me wrong, but the trouble is coming from government spending and growth when the interest rates consume the budget and no one gets any money.
As far as my point with the Green tax credits, please look at my post here http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2056568&cid=35638710
The US gives GE about half of it's tax liability in green energy tax credits.
Well from just making Energy Star compliant devices (Which is cake to do) GE earned itself about $200 million. . http://eyeonfreedom.com/index.php/whirlpool-parlays-obama-green-tax-credits-into-zero-tax-liability/
Here's another $25.5 Million for batteries.
http://www.greencarcongress.com/2010/01/taxcred-20100109.html
This is from 2007, where they got a net profit of $250 million for BUILDING wind turbines. Just building them, not to mention the money they'll make when they're actually in use. They get a tax break on the energy output ast well.
http://www.progressivefuture.org/media-center/news-we-can-use/ge-says-tax-incentive-for-wind-power-pays-for-itself
Here's an article where GE tells congress that if they don't extend green credits they'll take jobs elsewhere
http://www.environmentalleader.com/2008/09/15/ge-extend-clean-energy-tax-credits-or-well-go-to-germany-china/
All in all, GE receives quite a lot in tax credit in the US for green subsidies every year. Now, is it the only thing they do to avoid tax burden? Absolutely not, but it is a significant part of the equation. I can't find the total, but I believe it's in the hemisphere of about a billion dollars a year in tax credits that GE gets off of tax credits. Considering they profited $5.1B in the US, you've already knocked out over half their tax liability.
It's not like they don't pay any taxes anywhere. They paid plenty to foreign countries, but they paid it there because the rates are lower. If you had the choice to paying switzerland 25% instead of paying the US 35%, wouldn't you want to pay switzerland? It doesn't make any sense as a businessman to pay the higher rate. They are funneling their profits into these countries with the lower tax rates.
They just recently cut it to the same 35% the US is at. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/14/business/global/14yen.html
We are speaking in terms of corporate tax rate. at 35% US is the highest (tied with several others). Japan used to be higher, but they just lowered it to 35%
Not really, if you worked in multiple countries you could do the same thing. Why does GE have any motivation to pay the US tax rate when it's the highest in the world? If you had the option of paying $5 billion in taxes instead of $10 billion in taxes, wouldn't you? It's impractical policies that don't understand how business works and it ends up hurting all the smaller businesses who can't afford to do the same practices as GE. It's a barrier created by government policy that prevents further competition in the market by allowing the larger corporations to prosper.
You can't hand out massive subsidies and tax credits for green energies and then complain when the largest recipient of those credits and subsidies ends up not owning the government money. Here's a hint, when you offer the rich/smart corporations money and ways to reduce their tax burden, they take it. So which is it that you want? Do you want them to pay taxes or do you want them to develop highly cost ineffective green technologies that they wouldn't otherwise develop because they couldn't make the right profit on it. You can't have it both ways.
Well if it's off topic then it shouldn't have been posted at all, so I'm going to assume it's an on topic and directly responding to the subject of the thread otherwise.
Not really, I think it's a valid conclusion to reach that that was the point of his post in a thread about google securing it's business model and dominating the market. This wasn't a thread about ethics, laws, or anything similar. It was about successful business practices, so without any quantifier to state differently, I would assume it was a direct response to that. Otherwise, it's off topic.
So a company having a successful business model and dominating the market is evil? Got it. If all markets were dominated by companies like Google, the world would be a much better place. Are they perfect? No. But they're trying dammit.
And there were also gained sales for increased free marketing. It wasn't a one sided deal, there was plenty of benefit for the music industry.
Music sales suddenly skyrocket right? Right?? Oh, they're still abysmal. Never mind then.
Because mine didn't survive the 4 ft fall from my hand to the kitchen floor.
Apparently you haven't because nothing in this topic really reflects anything in that movie. It's a movie about overpopulation with lack of resources both in commodities and police and security forces.Nothing about tracking people.
Aside from recent crackdowns with piracy, there is virtually no internet censorship in the US, while there is plenty in Australia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_Australia
Also, aside from broadcast television, any censorship on TV, movies, video games, books, is left entirely up to society. Nothing needs to be approved for classification by the government to be distributed in the US. You can basically publish anything you want aside from child pornography, though there are restrictions on pornography in terms of selling things to minors. The movie and video game industry regulate themselves and do a very good job at it, but nothing is ever banned from distribution by the government.
In contrast, in Australia, if you show a film or a possess books that haven't been classified for distribution by the government, that's grounds for the government to raid your house or business and you can be slapped with heavy fines or jail time. Loads of video games, movies, or books are heavily censored before being released in Australia or refused classification and effectively banned. Australia also has a huge obsession with anything that remotely resembles child pornography. A man received fines for possess nude photos of the Simpsons, and smaller but still perfectly naturally breasted women (B cup and under) have been banned from the covers of pornographic material under the idea that small breasted women incite child pornography.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7770781.stm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_in_Australia
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/11/11/3063975.htm
Really? Because I don't consider police raiding the house of individuals for showing films or bookshops for having books that weren't approved by the Australian government to be considered free speech. Heck, I don't consider not allowing the sale of any speech material of any form to be an invasion of freedom of speech. Australia also has some of the most intrusive internet censorship laws. They feel the need to make sure that no adult likes small breasted women and therefor can't be turned into a child pornographer by banning women with perfectly legitimate but smaller breast size (B) from the cover of pornography cases. I'm really just scratching the surface here. There is a lot more you can read about and understand on your own time, but as far as the first world is concerned, Australia is one of the worst offenders in freedom of speech.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_in_Australia
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/11/11/3063975.htm
http://opennet.net/research/australia-and-new-zealand
Maybe not with those things, but it does raid peoples houses for airing movies that weren't certified for viewing approval, sentence people to jail for viewing lolicon, force porn to only display large breasted women on the covers (C or bigger), make huge internet censorship attempts, and other huge nanny state strides. I mentioned australia for freedom of speech infringements.
I know exactly how they make their money and have no delusions as to the contrar. And as long as that information is kept anonymous, I have no issue with it. Currently the government is doing the exact same thing Google is doing, except they're not keeping that information anonymous, as such, I have huge issues with it. The acts of Google are significantly important in improving our lives as humans. In order to provide superior services and better anticipate the needs of individuals, we need this statistical data about individuals. Google has promised this data is kept anonymous and there is no real evidence that there is anything contrary to that matter. Given the past behavior of the company, I feel fine leaving the situation as is until someone gives significant evidence to put doubt on that matter. It is just as unfair to ask Google to hand over their information as it would be for the government to raid your house and search your computers for child pornography if there was no significant evidence prior to the fact that you were in possession of such material. Is Google perfect? Absolutely not, but when there are problems like the mail loss, or spending of ad money left over in accounts, there are steps taken to rectify it. Microsoft lost far more data when their sidekick servers reset. Accidents happen and business mistakes happen. What is more important is what the companies intentions were and what happens with the resulting matter.
Oh, I'm not defending it by any means, I'm hugely politically active on the matter. I'm just tired of people saying the US is so much worse off. It's not. We should focus on trying to be a beacon to the world on individual freedoms and liberties. If anything, we should help people realize how much their own country invades on their freedoms.
If you think what the US does is substantially different from the rest of the first world, then you're wrong. The difference is we just bitch about it a lot more. If anything we're just catching up. Amazingly we still have preserved the freedom of speech a lot more than places like the UK, Germany, and Australia.
People still link to Goatse? Man, what a classic.
Except Google really doesn't try to hide anything. I like Google not just because they give stuff away for free, but because they also deliver a quality product, but, more importantly, they are very honest and transparent with their actions. Like with the incidents with the WIFI data, they came forward and admitted it without anybody investigating them. There is nothing "shady" about their business practices. You may not agree with the way they do that business, but you are completely free to use another product as you so suggest. It's not evil. It's just business
I now see why you've been moderation bombed.