Corporations don't pay taxes, they only collect them. People pay taxes.
While true, that's an overly simplified view of what is being taxed, and how taxes play out economically. In essence, it's a straw man -- it diverts from the question of what activity is actually being taxed (and thus what activity is being inhibited by the tax).
In the end, there are only four types of taxes: taxes on labor, taxes on capital, taxes on imports, and taxes on consumption.
Each type of tax has different impacts on the economy, although their effects overlap in a lot of ways. Corporate taxes are a tax on profitable capital investment. While the tax is in the end born by everyone, those it impacts the most are capital investors. This is very different from a tax on labor (income tax) or a tax on consumption (sales tax).
I don't buy into a lot of the class warfare concepts; however, I do believe that assigning tax heavily on labor is a bad idea. I personally don't cherish the idea of a permanent underclass -- and it's getting ever harder for someone who earns primarily from labor to climb into the ranks of those who earn primarily from capital gains, save via tax-sheltered investment plans like 401ks or Roth IRAs.
Business taxes are just indirect taxes on people. Consumers pay more for goods, investors receive fewer dividends or the value of their shares decreases, and employees receive lower wages and have fewer job opportunities.
Let's examine each of those.
Consumers pay more for goods
Not necessarily, except in very mature commodity good markets. Elsewhere price is driven by demand, not by cost of production.
investors receive fewer dividends or the value of their shares decreases
True. But it is only a problem with certain economic philosophies; the current primacy of capital over labor is a driver of income disparity and class separation, which contributes to a host of economic problems.
and employees receive lower wages and have fewer job opportunities
Not necessarily true. I think the point you are trying to make is that by hindering business, taxes reduce demand for labor, which drives wages down. This is only true across the entire economy if government spending does not contribute an equivalent stimulation to business activity. I'd like to elaborate on this last point, as it is directly impacted by offshoring activities.
In terms of indirect business stimulus, US government spending plays a large role. From education to infrastructure, to risk reduction, to economic stability (poor time to mention that...), to political stability, to the rule of law, government spending contributes to providing a good atmosphere for business activity. Offshored operations used as a tax shelter (offshore profits are not taxed if used to grow the offshore business) reduce the effectiveness of government spending. So in addition to reducing government revenue, they decrease the effectiveness of all the fixed costs the government has (road maintenance, the justice system, etc). It's a double whammy.
I know your point was about balancing the budget or reducing expenses, but sometimes the best answer is to increase the effectiveness of the spending. One way to do this is to make the spending affect more businesses, and more people, by having them bring more operations back onshore where we spend the money.
When the workers are running around seizing the means of production smart people start looking to get out while they can.
Still running scared of the Red Menace, I see.
How about a new slogan for the times?
Maybe:
When the controllers of the means of production fail to keep the means of production working properly, smart people look to take over the means of production.
Sheep will eat the grass lower than cattle, but only if forced to. If the pasturage is not overgrazed, there is no problem. Especially since you need to rotate pasturage anyway in order to limit parasites.
What? No they don't. Chickens can't digest cellulose, so they don't eat a large volume of plant fiber. They'll eat the seed heads, and they'll keep the bugs in check, but the only way they'll keep a lawn mowed is by tramping it down when you've got them overcrowded in an enclosure.
I read the full article, jackass. Sorry to ruin your/. stereotype.
Ah, I see your sarcasm detector is broken.
Lighten up, Nancy. Being pissed off, paranoid, and miserable is a terrible way to go through life.
I'd say it's highly unlikely you read the links from TFA, though, am I correct?
FWIW, reading the links from the blog post cleared up a little bit of who the companies are, what they do, and what parts of the MS and IBM offerings they'll be competing with (frameworks).
Also, one more note... though you have disappointed me by not fulfilling a stereotype in one way, that's perfectly OK, as you fulfilled it in others (unable to detect sarcasm and/or hypersensitivity to it, hypersensitivity to criticism -- both are solid components of the slashdotter stereotype).
Not just for mowing, if you know what I mean heh heh heh.
I *do* know what you mean!
Goat hair (mohair) is terrible for making sweaters from unless you use a breed specifically bred for the purpose, and those breeds are even worse for mowing than the meat or dairy breeds.
I'm so glad there is someone else on slashdot who understands the advantages of sheep over goats. You've really made my day.
What makes this different, besides the fact I've never heard of either of these companies?
Translation: Someone please RTFA, follow the links, and report back with an executive summary.
Sheesh. You've been around long enough to know that you don't need to ask that type of question, someone else will say something stupid after not RTFA'ing, and some UID in the newest hundred thousand will respond back with a synopsis, eager to get karma for the informative post.
You're a little late, but there's still time for you to weave your pupa, then emerge from chrysalis to full-fledged cynical slashdotter who doesn't deign to ask, nor answer, such simple questions, instead understanding that if you are patient, the answers will appear.
Here's a useful primer if you're really into that kind of thing but don't have background specifically on it. Makes the article a bit easier to understand on a technical level.
Crap. Forgot to preview. Here it is with correct formatting:
Still, it's not anti competitive. To be more clear: this is a textbook definition of what competitive means.
False. This is anti-competitive -- the goal is to reduce or eliminate competition in the marketplace. Textbook anti-competitive behavior. By shifting the credit to services, instead of a hardware rebate, they dance around it a bit... but the effect remains the same.
Whether or not this is actionable is a different story. If IBM had a seriously dominant position in the marketplace (or a true monopoly), then this would be actionably anti-competitive. Since Sun is a viable competitor already established in the marketplace, with a market share close to IBM's, not so much.
The crux is, anti-competitive behavior is perfectly fine (since it is a form of competition), *unless* the behavior is done by a monopoly, trust, or hugely dominant player in the market.
Still, it's not anti competitive. To be more clear: this is a textbook definition of what competitive means.False. This is anticompetitive -- the goal is to reduce or eliminate competition in the marketplace. Textbook anti-competitive behavior. By shifting the credit to services, instead of a hardware rebate, they dance around it a bit... but the effect remains the same.
Whether or not this is actionable is a different story. If IBM had a seriously dominant position in the marketplace (or a true monopoly), then this would be actionably anti-competitive. Since Sun is a viable competitor already established in the marketplace, not so much.
The crux is, anti-competitive behavior is perfectly fine (since it is a form of competition), *unless* the behavior is done by a monopoly, trust, or hugely dominant player in the market.
That said, I'm surprised it worked. I once got a goat to eat the grass on a hill I needed mowed, but it refused to eat the grass. It preferred pieces of metal and fence posts to grass. What it really wanted was its expensive goat chow, though. Maybe we spoiled him.
Goats are browsers, not grazers. They'll eat grass, but typically prefer only the tender bits. That said, hunger works charmingly -- if you'd held out on the kibble for a couple days, it probably would have started on the grass.
If you really want to use ruminants to mow for you, sheep are a much better choice than goats. Though more annoying to deal with, IMO.
The reason it's "weasal" dollars is because hardware is down and they don't want to show a bigger drop in hardware, so the money is given away from the services part of the business where profits are high and thus the financial statement still looks good at the end of the quarter.
Which makes sense, since the hardware is pretty close to just being a loss leader for the services anyway.
It's kind of cute that they're portraying this as the services side being a loss-leader for the hardware (i.e., we'll give you free services if you buy our hardware), when in reality it's more like "We'll give you the hardware at cost, as long as you sign this support contract..."
I agree about the downward spiral, but I don't think it's causative. I think instead it just exacerbated the existing problem, which is that the output value of a local newsroom is less than the cost of maintaining one. Yes, people enjoy good local news -- but the internet would have cut the ad revenue of papers regardless.
Whether papers could have forestalled this by cutting costs elsewhere is possible; but I do not think they could have prevented it, only delayed it.
Also, please keep in mind that Helen Thomas was writing from the perspective of the reporter/journalist. While I respect her opinions, I feel in this case she might be slightly biased:)
While you're at it, compare the *revenues* from SMS traffic vs. email traffic.
SMS is a nice bridge product for the telcos; they get to capture a lot of revenue from people who will pay for SMS, but would not pay for an expensive data plan. Meanwhile, they can continue to charge high prices for data plans for people what want (or need) them.
Local papers are on life support. There is simply not enough revenue to make up for the cost of maintaining a quality staff of reporters, journalists, and editors.
Advertising doesn't bring in enough dough anymore, people go online to find local businesses, and so advertisers pay less to be in the paper (never mind declining circulations). Circulation revenue (subscriptions) has dropped.
The truth of the matter is that newspapers have basically outlived their usefulness. Once upon a time the town square and town criers served that purpose; then newspapers took over; now the web is usurping newspapers as centers for local news and communication.
Local papers are in their death throes, and while I mourn the passing of quality local papers, what I fear most is that we have gotten so used to getting things for free on the internet that there will be no way for quality reporting and journalism to support itself online.
How much you wanna bet that those savings are NOT passed on to the reader?
Considering that nearly all newspapers are operating deeply in the red, I'd guess a lot of those savings will not be passed on to the reader, except in the sense that the newspapers will be able to stay in business.
I'm willing to pay for content OR to have it infested with ads. Not both.
That is how you feel, that's fine. But the truth is, some level of advertising is acceptable to most people even when they pay for content. Advertising can help subsidize the cost of the content, thus allowing people to spend less to receive the same content -- so the publisher can get more people to pay if they charge less.
The question is, at what point do the drawbacks of including advertising outweigh the cost savings that included advertising brings?
The answer to this question will vary by person -- you have a very low tolerance for advertising. I, on the other hand, have a fairly high tolerance for it, as long as it is unobtrusive, since I can quickly judge if it's relevant to my interests, and ignore it if it isn't. People have a whole range of value assignations to advertising-free media, and the truth of the matter is that publishers need to work the sweet spots in order to generate enough revenue to be profitable.
I would prefer to see a scale of offerings, not an oversimplified duality of subscription-only or advertising-only revenue for publishers. I suspect the ad-revenue-only content would be horrific to read, while I wouldn't drop the cash on the subscription-revenue-only content.
To make a long post short, what exactly is wrong with advertising subsidizing suscription costs?
They have effectively created the classic union employment situation where the only way to get fired is to do drugs at school or molest a child. [...] I am quite familiar with this.
That's the foundation of human nature, for good or bad. Our economic system is based on dealing with that reality (as opposed to hoping it might become otherwise).
Yet an individual human is more likely to recognize the personal benefit of acting (erstwhile) altruistically. Human nature includes personal sacrifice for the benefit of others. This is not as common in corporate entities, which our economic system depends upon.
It's important to note that many actors in our economy are not humans, and so applying human nature to them yields false conclusions.
This is the same mistake Greenspan made with the concept of self-regulating banks. He assumed the banks would self-regulate since it was in the banks' long-term interests to do so; he depended on human nature (self-interest) to keep the banks from borking the whole economy. Instead, the actors in the economy (the banks) took actions that benefited the decision-makers (upper management) at the banks. So, an economy dependent on self-interest of the actors ran into trouble -- the actors in the economy didn't act out of pure self-interest, they were subverted by indivuduals who stood to gain.
I agree, there's additional cost to be considered... but I had included the parenthetical about net societal costs for that reason.
The total cost of identity theft is equal to the sum of compliance costs plus the sum of costs from identity theft occurrences. Determining the net cost/benefit of a mandatory compliance regulation is tough, because it's hard to quantify how much compliance reduces risk.
It's possible that the $10,000 a hospital would spend on this would have no preventative effect, in which case they shouldn't spend the money. It's possible there's a 1:1 return on money invested in compliance, or greater. Without knowing the relationship between compliance spending and reduction of risk, we've no way of figuring out whether it's worthwhile.
Wow, I wish I could mod this discussion.
A serious intellectual treaties on comedic philosophy? Now *that's* funny!
Well, it seems to be happening with me a lot lately, to varying degrees for various reasons. See this comment.
I think there are a lot of humor-impaired people on slashdot, and like most nerd issues, the best way to help them overcome it is to help them figure out how humor works.
Slashdot Mirror
While true, that's an overly simplified view of what is being taxed, and how taxes play out economically. In essence, it's a straw man -- it diverts from the question of what activity is actually being taxed (and thus what activity is being inhibited by the tax).
In the end, there are only four types of taxes: taxes on labor, taxes on capital, taxes on imports, and taxes on consumption.
Each type of tax has different impacts on the economy, although their effects overlap in a lot of ways. Corporate taxes are a tax on profitable capital investment. While the tax is in the end born by everyone, those it impacts the most are capital investors. This is very different from a tax on labor (income tax) or a tax on consumption (sales tax).
I don't buy into a lot of the class warfare concepts; however, I do believe that assigning tax heavily on labor is a bad idea. I personally don't cherish the idea of a permanent underclass -- and it's getting ever harder for someone who earns primarily from labor to climb into the ranks of those who earn primarily from capital gains, save via tax-sheltered investment plans like 401ks or Roth IRAs.
Let's examine each of those.
Not necessarily, except in very mature commodity good markets. Elsewhere price is driven by demand, not by cost of production.
True. But it is only a problem with certain economic philosophies; the current primacy of capital over labor is a driver of income disparity and class separation, which contributes to a host of economic problems.
Not necessarily true. I think the point you are trying to make is that by hindering business, taxes reduce demand for labor, which drives wages down. This is only true across the entire economy if government spending does not contribute an equivalent stimulation to business activity. I'd like to elaborate on this last point, as it is directly impacted by offshoring activities.
In terms of indirect business stimulus, US government spending plays a large role. From education to infrastructure, to risk reduction, to economic stability (poor time to mention that...), to political stability, to the rule of law, government spending contributes to providing a good atmosphere for business activity. Offshored operations used as a tax shelter (offshore profits are not taxed if used to grow the offshore business) reduce the effectiveness of government spending. So in addition to reducing government revenue, they decrease the effectiveness of all the fixed costs the government has (road maintenance, the justice system, etc). It's a double whammy.
I know your point was about balancing the budget or reducing expenses, but sometimes the best answer is to increase the effectiveness of the spending. One way to do this is to make the spending affect more businesses, and more people, by having them bring more operations back onshore where we spend the money.
Still running scared of the Red Menace, I see.
How about a new slogan for the times?
Maybe:
When the controllers of the means of production fail to keep the means of production working properly, smart people look to take over the means of production.
Good luck. Break a text editor.
That's only when improperly managed.
Sheep will eat the grass lower than cattle, but only if forced to. If the pasturage is not overgrazed, there is no problem. Especially since you need to rotate pasturage anyway in order to limit parasites.
What? No they don't. Chickens can't digest cellulose, so they don't eat a large volume of plant fiber. They'll eat the seed heads, and they'll keep the bugs in check, but the only way they'll keep a lawn mowed is by tramping it down when you've got them overcrowded in an enclosure.
Ah, I see your sarcasm detector is broken.
Lighten up, Nancy. Being pissed off, paranoid, and miserable is a terrible way to go through life.
I'd say it's highly unlikely you read the links from TFA, though, am I correct?
FWIW, reading the links from the blog post cleared up a little bit of who the companies are, what they do, and what parts of the MS and IBM offerings they'll be competing with (frameworks).
Also, one more note... though you have disappointed me by not fulfilling a stereotype in one way, that's perfectly OK, as you fulfilled it in others (unable to detect sarcasm and/or hypersensitivity to it, hypersensitivity to criticism -- both are solid components of the slashdotter stereotype).
I *do* know what you mean!
Goat hair (mohair) is terrible for making sweaters from unless you use a breed specifically bred for the purpose, and those breeds are even worse for mowing than the meat or dairy breeds.
I'm so glad there is someone else on slashdot who understands the advantages of sheep over goats. You've really made my day.
[rolls eyes]
Translation: Someone please RTFA, follow the links, and report back with an executive summary.
Sheesh. You've been around long enough to know that you don't need to ask that type of question, someone else will say something stupid after not RTFA'ing, and some UID in the newest hundred thousand will respond back with a synopsis, eager to get karma for the informative post.
You're a little late, but there's still time for you to weave your pupa, then emerge from chrysalis to full-fledged cynical slashdotter who doesn't deign to ask, nor answer, such simple questions, instead understanding that if you are patient, the answers will appear.
Here's a useful primer if you're really into that kind of thing but don't have background specifically on it. Makes the article a bit easier to understand on a technical level.
False. This is anti-competitive -- the goal is to reduce or eliminate competition in the marketplace. Textbook anti-competitive behavior. By shifting the credit to services, instead of a hardware rebate, they dance around it a bit... but the effect remains the same.
Whether or not this is actionable is a different story. If IBM had a seriously dominant position in the marketplace (or a true monopoly), then this would be actionably anti-competitive. Since Sun is a viable competitor already established in the marketplace, with a market share close to IBM's, not so much.
The crux is, anti-competitive behavior is perfectly fine (since it is a form of competition), *unless* the behavior is done by a monopoly, trust, or hugely dominant player in the market.
Goats are browsers, not grazers. They'll eat grass, but typically prefer only the tender bits. That said, hunger works charmingly -- if you'd held out on the kibble for a couple days, it probably would have started on the grass.
If you really want to use ruminants to mow for you, sheep are a much better choice than goats. Though more annoying to deal with, IMO.
Which makes sense, since the hardware is pretty close to just being a loss leader for the services anyway.
It's kind of cute that they're portraying this as the services side being a loss-leader for the hardware (i.e., we'll give you free services if you buy our hardware), when in reality it's more like "We'll give you the hardware at cost, as long as you sign this support contract..."
I agree about the downward spiral, but I don't think it's causative. I think instead it just exacerbated the existing problem, which is that the output value of a local newsroom is less than the cost of maintaining one. Yes, people enjoy good local news -- but the internet would have cut the ad revenue of papers regardless.
:)
Whether papers could have forestalled this by cutting costs elsewhere is possible; but I do not think they could have prevented it, only delayed it.
Also, please keep in mind that Helen Thomas was writing from the perspective of the reporter/journalist. While I respect her opinions, I feel in this case she might be slightly biased
Or, rather, Meh'eh'eh'eh (for those of us who've been around goats).
I wonder if they allow the goats near to where the workers are. Male goats are some stinky animals (and sometimes very aggressive).
In reality, though, this is just a clever business mooove by Google. Pretty soon we're going to see targeted advertising in our fresh chevre.
While you're at it, compare the *revenues* from SMS traffic vs. email traffic.
SMS is a nice bridge product for the telcos; they get to capture a lot of revenue from people who will pay for SMS, but would not pay for an expensive data plan. Meanwhile, they can continue to charge high prices for data plans for people what want (or need) them.
tl;dr
Local papers are on life support. There is simply not enough revenue to make up for the cost of maintaining a quality staff of reporters, journalists, and editors.
Advertising doesn't bring in enough dough anymore, people go online to find local businesses, and so advertisers pay less to be in the paper (never mind declining circulations). Circulation revenue (subscriptions) has dropped.
The truth of the matter is that newspapers have basically outlived their usefulness. Once upon a time the town square and town criers served that purpose; then newspapers took over; now the web is usurping newspapers as centers for local news and communication.
Local papers are in their death throes, and while I mourn the passing of quality local papers, what I fear most is that we have gotten so used to getting things for free on the internet that there will be no way for quality reporting and journalism to support itself online.
Considering that nearly all newspapers are operating deeply in the red, I'd guess a lot of those savings will not be passed on to the reader, except in the sense that the newspapers will be able to stay in business.
That is how you feel, that's fine. But the truth is, some level of advertising is acceptable to most people even when they pay for content. Advertising can help subsidize the cost of the content, thus allowing people to spend less to receive the same content -- so the publisher can get more people to pay if they charge less.
The question is, at what point do the drawbacks of including advertising outweigh the cost savings that included advertising brings?
The answer to this question will vary by person -- you have a very low tolerance for advertising. I, on the other hand, have a fairly high tolerance for it, as long as it is unobtrusive, since I can quickly judge if it's relevant to my interests, and ignore it if it isn't. People have a whole range of value assignations to advertising-free media, and the truth of the matter is that publishers need to work the sweet spots in order to generate enough revenue to be profitable.
I would prefer to see a scale of offerings, not an oversimplified duality of subscription-only or advertising-only revenue for publishers. I suspect the ad-revenue-only content would be horrific to read, while I wouldn't drop the cash on the subscription-revenue-only content.
To make a long post short, what exactly is wrong with advertising subsidizing suscription costs?
Too much information, man, too much information.
Yet an individual human is more likely to recognize the personal benefit of acting (erstwhile) altruistically. Human nature includes personal sacrifice for the benefit of others. This is not as common in corporate entities, which our economic system depends upon.
It's important to note that many actors in our economy are not humans, and so applying human nature to them yields false conclusions.
This is the same mistake Greenspan made with the concept of self-regulating banks. He assumed the banks would self-regulate since it was in the banks' long-term interests to do so; he depended on human nature (self-interest) to keep the banks from borking the whole economy. Instead, the actors in the economy (the banks) took actions that benefited the decision-makers (upper management) at the banks. So, an economy dependent on self-interest of the actors ran into trouble -- the actors in the economy didn't act out of pure self-interest, they were subverted by indivuduals who stood to gain.
I agree, there's additional cost to be considered... but I had included the parenthetical about net societal costs for that reason.
The total cost of identity theft is equal to the sum of compliance costs plus the sum of costs from identity theft occurrences. Determining the net cost/benefit of a mandatory compliance regulation is tough, because it's hard to quantify how much compliance reduces risk.
It's possible that the $10,000 a hospital would spend on this would have no preventative effect, in which case they shouldn't spend the money. It's possible there's a 1:1 return on money invested in compliance, or greater. Without knowing the relationship between compliance spending and reduction of risk, we've no way of figuring out whether it's worthwhile.
Well, it seems to be happening with me a lot lately, to varying degrees for various reasons. See this comment.
I think there are a lot of humor-impaired people on slashdot, and like most nerd issues, the best way to help them overcome it is to help them figure out how humor works.