"If laws can be applied retroactively, they are not laws."
Yes, you keep saying this, it's not true, and no matter how many times you say it, it still wont be true, but I'll carry on playing along and pretending for your sake it is true, and that your arbitrary definition is correct.
"When you apply laws retroactively, you are saying, "Yesterday, when you did that it was legal, but today we made it illegal, so we are going to punish you."
Yes.
"Any time "laws" can be applied retroactively it means that "laws" will be written in order to punish individuals and companies for supporting the "wrong" political party."
Source? As I say just about every country in the world has used some kind of retroactive law, including the UK and US, and yet neither of these nations, nor any others that I can think of have then done this to punish individuals for supporting the wrong political party. When will these laws be written? you seem to know something I don't and you seem to be speculating about a reality that's never yet true. Do you know something about the future no one else does? The fact is you've simply resorted to a classical slippery slope fallacy here - you're saying it'll somehow reach some absurd extreme for which to date it has not, and for which there seems to be no suggestion or evidence that it will.
I absolutely agree that if use of them became commonplace it wouldn't be a good thing, and would be very dangerous. But where it is used it has to be politically tenable, and the reason this method of law making has been used succesfully is because it only ever really seems to get used to close loopholes in existing laws - effectively, this type of law is used in exactly the scenario I've been pointing out here, where people are using a loophole to avoid the spirit of the law. Everyone knows companies like Amazon are supposed to be paying more tax than they are, even Amazon knows it, that's why it's statements to investors are contradictory to it's statements to the tax authorities. As such, retroactive enforcement in these sorts of situations shouldn't really come as a suprise- you only have to watch the grilling Amazon's representative got from MPs the other day to see that they know full well they're skirting round the law (and may even be breaking it as written anyway, so retroactive enforcement may not even be necessary).
But out of interest, as a serious question, what would you prefer as a solution for people to finding loopholes in complex areas of law like this, would you prefer retroactive enforcement where people take the piss to send the message that the money will be recouped eventually anyway and to ensure revenue is not lost, or would you prefer law is written in an overly vague and broad manner in the first place, so that loopholes are rendered irrelevant because the vagueness of the law allows it to be interpreted freely enough to deal with this sort of scenario? Personally I prefer the retroactive approach because it allows things to be targetted against the people who really do take the piss and I think vague laws are even more dangerous.
Honestly, I don't even care if Amazon et. al. had paid at least 10% of the tax it owes out of the 21% of corporation tax, I don't care if they minimise their liabilities somewhat, but when companies reach the point of literally not paying corporation tax at all it just gets silly, and something has to be done - I'd much rather that was targetted retroactive collection of tax that should've been paid, than a future of overly vague laws being written to prevent it happening again, but causing other issues in the process.
It's not about changing law, it's about creating new laws and applying them retroactively.
What countries do you deem to have laws? Your arbitrary definition of law/edict seems to basically suggest law is a meaningless term in your vocabulary.
Sure, outright 21% on revenues is an oversimplification because yes there is depreciation etc. involved.
But fundamentally the point is that the government never intended that companies set up a complex network of shell companies that charge each other made up costs between various jurisdictions to make up false losses that are demonstrably false due to the fact that said companies state that they are not losses in their report to investors which has to be legally correct.
"If Google followed the law in the deductions they took, the taxes are not owed and cannot be legitimately collected retroactively"
Yes they can.
"(and if it can be done "legally" in your country than you do not actually have laws, just government edicts)."
So no country has law and every country in the world just has edicts? I believe just about every country in the world has applied law retroactively at some point for some thing, including those whose constitutions state that it's forbidden, such as the US. You might want to rethink this one, as your sweeping blanket statement is demonstrably false.
"You still don't seem to understand the difference between "evade" and "avoid""
No, I fully understand it, I just also recognise it's being used as a poor excuse for avoiding intended taxes.
"is that remotely fair?"
No because that's not what we're talking about here is it? The example you cited is one where the government intended something be tax free, in the cases we're talking about the exact opposite is true - the government in the UK for example never intended that Amazon avoid paying the 21% corporation tax on their $7bn in revenue, quite the opposite.
"You're morally obliged to pay every penny of tax you owe but not a penny more."
For some value of owe. To most decent people owed tax means tax that the spirit of the law intended you to pay, not "the bare minimum tax you can legally get away with paying by using complex methods of cheating the system, and outright lying about losses".
"you don't want rule of law, you want an autocracy where even if you follow the law to the letter someone can swoop in and punish you or declare that you owe them money."
I want companies to follow both the letter AND the spirit of the law. You only think people should have to follow the letter of the law, that's the difference. When the government sets a rate of 21% corporation tax, it's pretty clear that the government intends that companies pay 21% corporation tax on their revenues. There's nothing arbitrary or autocratic about enforcing that even if some companies and individuals feel they should be able to dodge it by trying to exploit loopholes in other laws.
Look, as the public accounts committee in the UK pointed out the other day - companies like Amazon on one hand are dodging taxes by creating fabricated losses and telling the government they made a loss in the UK so owe no tax, and on the other telling investors they've made record profits in the UK. This is called lying.
Yes in some cases you can argue they've found a legal loophole that means what they've technically done isn't illegal, but then, as I pointed out, it's not illegal for the UK government to withdraw public service support such as police and fire protection from companies like Amazon. As a sovereign nation the UK has every right to do that, just as they can enact laws to retroactively collect these taxes.
The best you can argue is that these companies did nothing illegal at the time. It doesn't change the fact that the taxes are both owed, and can be legally and legitimately collected by the authorities even if that means retroactive enforcement.
Just to be clear it isn't only Google that's implicated in this, the summary is probably just a typical attempt at defaming just Google by the usual culprits (i.e. Microsoft shills). That's not to defend Google in this, there's no doubt they're in the wrong, but most well known US multi-nationals are guilty of the exact same thing - some even more so. In the UK the companies exposed for this have included Amazon, Apple, Starbucks, and many others.
It doesn't matter either way. Here in the UK for example the government has a corporate tax rate of something like 21%, yet Amazon paid no corporation tax on £7bn worth of sales.
It doesn't matter how they managed to do it, the point is the intention is clearly that they pay 21% of that in tax so the government has every right to collect that from them retroactively even if it means they technically did nothing wrong at the time.
As Ian Hislop put it on have I got news for you a few weeks ago he was spot on, stating something along the lines of:
"Okay yes, very funny, you're very clever, you found a loophole, now just pay us what you owe"...and that's the attitude governments are now taking over this, quite rightly too. Nice to see Australia following France's lead, hopefully the UK and others will also join in now where this has come to light. You can't justify a situation where small businesses and most citizens pay the taxes it's intended that they pay and larger companies and individuals with more money don't because they have enough money to pay people to find loopholes.
People and companies can disagree with taxes and that's fine, but if you think they're extortionate then get them changed through political means, don't evade them and leave everyone else to foot the bill and subsidise your existence because you're too selfish to contribute your fair share to society.
Yes, yes, I know these tax dodger companies claim they still produce tax in other ways, like VAT paid, employees taxes and so forth, but they're still subsidised. The amount they pay isn't enough to cover healthcare to keep their workers healthy enough to work, the education system the rest of us paid for to give them an educated workforce to even make money in the first place, the highways they use to transport their products, the police, military, and fire brigade to protect their premises and so forth. That's why corporation tax is there in the first place - to help pay for this sort of thing. If they don't pay it perhaps the alternative is to remove services like police protection from them or something and let people steal from them at will making it a fair playing field.
Sorry but you're offering nothing more than a meaningless anecdote.
Looking at the actual Q3 figures, RIM is shifting 2 Blackberrys for every Windows Phone, and Apple is only shifting 2.6 iPhones for every Blackberry, which given Apple's high sales figures doesn't exactly put RIMs sales in too bad a light. You've also got to consider that the the smartphone market has seen explosive growth in recent years, so RIM is still shifting far more devices now, than it was prior to the iPhones release in 2007. It's shifting more than twice as many devices now than it was then, even though it hasn't kept it's marketshare up due to failing in the consumer arena.
But to focus on your anecdote, I'd question the wisdom of any company who basis their purchasing decision on users simply wanting to have a flashy phone, rather than wanting to actually get work done and be productive. Of the companies I know still using Blackberrys they do so because:
1) They still offer the best battery life 2) They still offer the best enterprise integration 3) They still offer the best hardware for typing out e-mails and so forth 4) They're still more durable than all Apple and most Android smartphones
My previous employer also looked at iPhones but didn't go with them largely because of battery life, it was an engineering firm and they made many sales to companies like Codelco in Chile, and they may fly from there straight to another country, like say, Dubai, and follow this pattern for a number of weeks. When you're in the middle of the Atacama you don't get chance to charge every 5mins, you go to the airport and sleep on the plane so no fancy hotel room where you can charge overnight, and then you end up somewhere where it can be +50c, but oh dear, guess what? The likes of the iPhone are only rated to work, and I quote from Apple's website:
Operating ambient temperature: 32Â to 95Â F (0Â to 35Â C) Nonoperating temperature: â'4Â to 113Â F (â'20Â to 45Â C) Relative humidity: 5% to 95% noncondensing Maximum operating altitude: 10,000 feet (3000 m)
It can get below -4c in the Atacama quite easily too, oh, and you can easily be over 3000 m altitude to boot. Travelling to some tropical places, or particularly dry places and you'll even breach the humidity limits. All of which the sales guys at the old place I worked used to do, some could breach all these limits within a couple of days.
Look, it's great that where you work your sales and marketing guys get to play the hipster and run round with their shiny phones, but the fact remains that RIM still holds an enviable chunk of the business market - seeing as most their sales are business whilst most of Apple's sales are consumer, I'd say that RIM likely far and away still hold a much bigger portion of the business market than Apple (though undoubtedly less than Android now).
I'm not even a fan of RIM, I'm a fan of Android and I own a Galaxy Nexus, and Nexus (both of which I fucking love and would highly recommend by the way), but it gets tiresome to read these sorts of anecdotes which basically amount to "My dad says RIM is not cool anymore". That's great, but the figures are still nothing to be scoffed at even now, RIM is still important in business, and there are still damn good reasons why some companies still choose Blackberrys regardless of your assertions about sales guys not wanting them because they're not cool - guess what, some sales people do actually work for a living, and hence need a device that can support that and allow them to be productive whatever environment they're in. The businesses still using Blackberrys are the business who care about actually getting things done rather than using company funds to enlarge a sales, marketing, or IT guy's ego.
I'm not saying RIM necessarily even has a bright future, but this isn't about anecdotes or partisan fanboyism, it's about the facts - the cold hard numbers, and right now RIM is still a major player in business, and Blackberrys still have a number of advantages depending on your business needs. The idea that they've somehow vanished from the business world is just completely false.
It's because it's elected by proportional representation.
That's what happens when you have politicians who actually have to represent the people who vote them in, and this is why all governments should move to a porportional system if they genuinely want to class themselves as democratic societies and legitimate representatives of the people.
People think electoral reform in most countries is just a fringe side issue, but it's the single most important issue in improving accountability and hence decreasing corruption and increasing quality of representation IMO. Things still wont be perfect with true proportional representation, but as the EP shows, they're a damn sight better than many of the individual national european governments by themselves and than the likes of the EC.
Even that varies from country to country, for example, I live in the UK and we have an electoral system where the country is split up into 650 regions, each of which has it's own member of parliament who is elected by first past the post. This means that the largest minority gets their MP elected, and the party that gets enough MPs to have over 50% of the seats in parliament gets effectively 100% of power.
The region I live in has an old mining village in it as well as a number of other villages. The mining villages vote Labour without fail for historic reasons, the other villages are a bit more pragmatic and vote for whomever they think is best at the time. The problem is this means that Labour always wins - it's known as a safe seat because no matter what happens, Labour will win because they can count on the political ignorance of the majority of the electorate in the particular village that votes for them no matter how badly they do.
To put numbers to it, they usually win with around 35% of the vote, with the other 65% split between about 5 or 6 other candidates. This means that in our area, despite nearly 2/3rds of the population voting against this guy, it doesn't matter, our vote doesn't really count, he doesn't have to listen to us, the majority of his constituents, he only has to listen to the minority that vote for him no matter what he does or however badly he screws up. This is the same story across the country, but ultimately parties in the UK tend to get an effective 100% of power with sometimes as little as only 30% of the public's support, that is, they get 100% of power despite not representing as much as 70% of the population.
Our "democracy" isn't untypical of many Western democracies, most of them are this bad and unrepresentative, this is why no matter how much people protest against wars like Iraq, the governments in question don't care and persist anyway.
There's really no more or no less hope for course correction here - Burma has carried out far vaster, far more wide ranging and important reforms as a dictatorship in the last year or two than our country has to it's political system in over a hundred years.
The fundamental problem is that few democracies are actually genuinely representative of the people. Most do the bare minimum needed to avoid a complete arab spring style meltdown of the power hierarchy. The swap of power in two party states does go at least a little way towards preventing complete North Korean style totalitarianism, but can you for example say that the US government has listened to the public at all on the war on drugs? the war on terror? the war on copyright infringement despite the multiple changes of guard during the lifetime of these issues?
To add another point, keep in mind that the West has (particularly including the British empire) installed it's own dictators in many countries for hundreds of years now precisely because the alternative is sometimes possibly going to be worse. In the arab spring for example, even Syria now, we're at risk of losing people like Assad, who have been horrendous leaders, and instead getting something worse - elected Islamist extremists. Iraq for example was also far safer and relatively more peaceful under Saddam, than it is since his overthrow, and China would be a massive clusterfuck if it weren't a dictatorship - the conflict between the Chinese and places like Taiwan, Xinjiang, and Tibet, would be far worse than they are now. In Palestine, Hamas is the elected representative of the people, yet Fatah who it beat are far more moderate, far less extremist, far more rational, and far more interested in peace. This is why Gaza is in a permanent state of conflict, and whilst the West Bank still has conflict with Israel, it's much more low level and generally a police issue, rather than the full on wars Gaza has with Israel. As you can see, democracy is just as capable of creating cruel war mongers as dictatorship, and sometimes dictatorship can bring stability and relative peace where democracy can't.
The point is that dictatorships don't do many of those things as well, that's why I picked them. You'll find some that do some of them perhaps, but for example, when is the last time China invaded a foreign nation, let alone without good cause? when is the last time China abducted foreign nationals? when was China last responsible for the kind of fiscal irresponsibility that led to the global financial crisis?
At the end of the day it's arbitrary as to whether they're better, they do different things wrong that's for sure, but to describe them as inherently worse? I don't think so, I think the US is at least as much of a problem in this world as China - China has an appalling human rights record internally, but at least it largely keeps to itself. Contrast that to America that may have a better average human rights record (though I'd argue in certain specific cases it has at least as much to answer for), but it's also got a far worse record in terms of detriment to global peace and in pursuing actions that have caused civilian deaths. Far more people have died as a result of US foreign policy either directly or indirectly than Chinese foreign policy for example.
What you're suffering from is a classic case of ethnocentrism, you believe that democracy is somehow a magical thing that makes a country "good", and that anyone who doesn't have it is inherently "bad", that's all well and good until you look at the number of civilians that have died as the result of US actions - I'd argue that 100s of thousands of dead civilians in Iraq paints a country in a far worse light than human rights abuses in China. Of course, democratic states can be good, and more generally are, but it's not a magic thing that makes a state inherently good, Russia, Venezuela, Iran, are all democracies, do you honestly believe they're better than, say, Cuba, or Burma?
I don't think it's really meant to be different as such, but it's part of Microsoft's strategy.
They want your PC to run Windows, your laptop to run Windows, your tablet to run Windows, your phone to run Windows, and your console to be an XBox. If you want a set top box, they want to make sure they offer something that integrates with everything else you have.
It's about providing an offering for every facet of your digital life, in the hope that if you buy into one of these, you'll be more likely to buy into the others due to the nice, easy integration and familiarity they will all offer. In other words, the more options Microsoft provides to enter the Windows ecosystem, the more chance there will be that you'll do so, and buy their other offerings in that ecosystem.
The danger for them is that if they don't fill a niche - i.e. a set-top box, then you'll go to say, Apple, or Google, and then there's a chance you'll buy an Apple or Android Phone, and then you may buy an Apple or Android tablet, and so on, until you move to one of these competing ecosystem offerings and ditch MS altogether.
Well there is a way the US could defuse this whole situation and that's enshrine in it's constitution that the internet is something that is international in nature, and that no national governmental body in the US, be it the courts, or be it the may interfere in the running of it.
This would eliminate the issue of ICE domain seizures, prevent the likes of SOPA and so on and so forth.
The problem is the US wont put this on the table, as such it's time to hand over the keys to the ITU who at least offer the protection of requiring unanimity.
The US could fix this in a second, it could trivially eliminate any valid reason to move control to the UN so it's not as though it's powerless to stop this - it just requires the US to listen to the people, not just it's own, but the people of the world, rather than vested corporate interests for once. That, and if it did this, it'd earn it a lot of international kudos and go some way to undoing much of the bad reputation it's earned in the last decade.
If the US wont do that it's just further confirmation as to why it shouldn't stay in the hands of the US. I'd urge all Americans to take this opportunity to write to their representatives and tell them this, that they can eliminate any reason for UN control by enforcing mandated protection of the internet as something far bigger and more important than just a toy for US corporations and courts to fuck around with at will at a level that guarantees it protection from such meddling.
"Since when did dictatorships suddenly have the same moral standing as democratic countries?"
I would imagine since democratic countries became the ones that invade other nations without just cause, that abduct foreign citizens and hold them for years without trial despite having never committed a crime, that torture people, and refuse to ban the use of weapons like white phosphorous and cluster bombs, that use entities like the WTO to enforce trade rules that benefit them and hurt others including those much poorer than them, that are the root cause of financial turmoil across the globe, etc.
You know, just if I had to hazard a guess that is.
I agree, it's like that here, and honestly I think it's like that in pretty much all of the UK now, different local government areas sort differently, but I think fundamentally they just about all do it. We have paper, garden waste, glass, plastic, and everything else bins.
Not everyone is the same though, the problem is that when it comes to recycling day some people never or rarely put their recycling bins out, but they always have their "everything else" bin out, because they try and cram everything in there.
If everyone did away with their lawns this would almost certainly have a counter effect.
If anything the solution is to not have a motorized lawnmower at all. My neighbour has a fucking old school manual mower that's basically the law equivalent equivalent of shaving with a razor blade rather than an electric razor. That's the most sensible option, and it even cuts more nicely too. The only downside is it requires a bit more effort. It works entirely manually using the movement of the wheels to simply spin the blades that cut the grass using gears.
£15 - £40 for an upgrade is too expensive for a piece of software you probably use day in day out every single day?
If that's too expensive then what the fuck do you call every other peice of software on the planet that you probably get far less usage out of such as computer games that last for about 6 hrs play time and cost the same price?
Of all the criticisms of Windows 8, price isn't one of them. It's the first Windows OS that actually has sane pricing options.
I don't think it's so much the cost, as I say it's telling a busy housewife that between the screaming kids and making her husband dinner she'll also have to find time to sort her plastics from her glass, from her paper, from her food waste, from her garden waste when throwing things away. Or explaining to her that rather than drive the kids 2miles to school and back in a gas guzzling SVU, she make them walk or stick them on the bus, or make them cycle.
It's these sorts of things that are going to be hard to change, making people change actual habits.
The only way to solve it seems to be to make it more inconvenient not to maintain those habits - i.e. drastically tax gas guzzling vehicles more with tax breaks for those who actually need them such as farmers who farm on rugged terrain. You then have the PR battle against mumsnet and such though as they get upset that they can't show off to all the other mums how far into debt the bank stupidly allowed them to go to buy an absurdly large oversized vehicle that will never be used for it's intended purpose anyway.
The problem is that in Cuba, being a doctor is one of the few professions where you both get respect, and, against the relative levels of poverty in Cuba, an acceptable standard of living. The problem is that Cuba does not allow doctors to emigrate out of the country. I sympathise with why they do this - if they spend the time and money training these people to get them a better lifestyle than the average Cuban then why should the state then let them use that additional income they gain in that profession to leave the country and go elsewhere?
If Cuba's doctors were allowed to emigrate away with the skills they have gained then Cuba would have to up the wages it pays doctors to not simply be better than the Cuban average wage, but to compete with international wage standards in order to convince them to stay. This would drastically increase the cost for Cuba.
The scary thing is that even that may not be true.
As Brian Cox pointed out once:
"We have spent more money bailing out the banks in one year, than we have spent, on Science, in Britain, since Jesus."
The amount of money in big business, particularly the fossil fuel mega-corps, is just on a completely different scale to that in the science/research industries.
For what it's worth though I think there is a bigger problem than PR from the fossil fuel industries. I think the bigger problem is that people neither want, nor like change. Telling people they may have to change their ways a little is a far more difficult than simply proving the fossil fuel industries wrong. People are lazy and getting everyone to even do something simple like sort their rubbish and recycle more rather than mindlessly throwing stuff in the same old bin to be sent to a single landfill is far more of a problem than dealing with shills, the shills just make a tough problem tougher.
Good post, and exactly the sort of which there is not enough of on Slashdot these days. I was going to add however that I'd caution against reading into too much from taxonomic changes. Taxonomy is, in my opinion, rather a "dangerous" discipline in this respect when used as a basis for factual discussion.
The problem with taxonomy is that it tries to apply classification in a uniform manner, when the evolutionary tree is anything but uniform. As such, classification all too often ends up being nothing more than subjective opinion. This remains true even with the arrival of DNA sequencing.
The problem is that even if you use an objective measure, such as suggesting that a specimen that has a genome that is (using simple made up percentages as an example) 0.1% different from a reference specimen is a subspecies, a specimen that is 0.5% different is a different species, a specimen that is 1% different is a different genus, and so on then what you will often find is that these arbitrarily defined percentages will have been developed against a specific group of specimens, let's say in this case, frogs, and that because it's been defined against them it works fine. You then take this over to say, Newts, and all of a sudden you end up with odd groupings, and the percentages no longer work to produce meaningful groupings. Some may say well the solution is to have different groupings for different families of species, which works fine, until you start having to deal with species that have come about through natural hybridisation and so forth.
The issue is that taxonomy tries to provide classification that "feels" right to humans, but that's in conflict with it being a scientific discipline, where subjective feeling is irrelevant and objective analysis is king.
Until there is some sort of decision either way as to what taxonomy is meant to actually achieve - subjective human-friendly groupings, or objective scientifically-sound groupings, and not the hodge-podge little bit of both, then you'll always get disagreement on classification of species within the discipline of taxonomy and neither side will be wrong, because it's impossible to be wrong when the discipline fails to universally determine what its right.
This isn't to say taxonomy is a useless discipline - caution must be taken in avoiding that mindset - because it does produce groupings that are useful, we need to be able to call a dog a dog, and a cat a cat, but when it comes to arguments over fringe cases, and battles over reclassification then taxonomy will never provide a "correct" answer, only an arbitrary answer that has received enough backing of enough subjective viewpoints to be chosen as the winner - the problem is that that's not a constant, and opinion can change, which means such cases tend to only be settled temporarily until opinion sways the other way. Or in other words, taxonomy is a useful discipline, but it's often not a genuinely scientific discipline that determines fact, and instead often merely generates simple opinion, and simple opinion is not a firm enough basis for sound factual argument.
Or to apply the point to your discussion, one might be more correct in saying that birds have many shared traits and some shared ancestry with dinosaurs, whether there's enough shared ancestry to classify them as a branch of the dinosaurs is entirely down to personal opinion, though most experts in the field are currently of the opinion that they are. This may one day change however if for example, the commonly accepted boundary of what is enough shared ancestry also changes.
Finally, just to contrast this to talk about global warming, we know that the average temperature is rising, that is something that's genuinely a pretty well determined fact based on reproduceable objective analysis of the hard data we have acquired to date. As you suggest though there are still many other specifics that are yet to be determined with a similar degree of accuracy - are we to blame? what will the rise be? can we stop it? what will the effects be? We have answers to these sorts of questions of varying degrees, from "Most likely" when it comes to "are we to blame?", to "Who the fuck knows" when it comes to "can we stop it?".
Slashdot Mirror
"If laws can be applied retroactively, they are not laws."
Yes, you keep saying this, it's not true, and no matter how many times you say it, it still wont be true, but I'll carry on playing along and pretending for your sake it is true, and that your arbitrary definition is correct.
"When you apply laws retroactively, you are saying, "Yesterday, when you did that it was legal, but today we made it illegal, so we are going to punish you."
Yes.
"Any time "laws" can be applied retroactively it means that "laws" will be written in order to punish individuals and companies for supporting the "wrong" political party."
Source? As I say just about every country in the world has used some kind of retroactive law, including the UK and US, and yet neither of these nations, nor any others that I can think of have then done this to punish individuals for supporting the wrong political party. When will these laws be written? you seem to know something I don't and you seem to be speculating about a reality that's never yet true. Do you know something about the future no one else does? The fact is you've simply resorted to a classical slippery slope fallacy here - you're saying it'll somehow reach some absurd extreme for which to date it has not, and for which there seems to be no suggestion or evidence that it will.
I absolutely agree that if use of them became commonplace it wouldn't be a good thing, and would be very dangerous. But where it is used it has to be politically tenable, and the reason this method of law making has been used succesfully is because it only ever really seems to get used to close loopholes in existing laws - effectively, this type of law is used in exactly the scenario I've been pointing out here, where people are using a loophole to avoid the spirit of the law. Everyone knows companies like Amazon are supposed to be paying more tax than they are, even Amazon knows it, that's why it's statements to investors are contradictory to it's statements to the tax authorities. As such, retroactive enforcement in these sorts of situations shouldn't really come as a suprise- you only have to watch the grilling Amazon's representative got from MPs the other day to see that they know full well they're skirting round the law (and may even be breaking it as written anyway, so retroactive enforcement may not even be necessary).
But out of interest, as a serious question, what would you prefer as a solution for people to finding loopholes in complex areas of law like this, would you prefer retroactive enforcement where people take the piss to send the message that the money will be recouped eventually anyway and to ensure revenue is not lost, or would you prefer law is written in an overly vague and broad manner in the first place, so that loopholes are rendered irrelevant because the vagueness of the law allows it to be interpreted freely enough to deal with this sort of scenario? Personally I prefer the retroactive approach because it allows things to be targetted against the people who really do take the piss and I think vague laws are even more dangerous.
Honestly, I don't even care if Amazon et. al. had paid at least 10% of the tax it owes out of the 21% of corporation tax, I don't care if they minimise their liabilities somewhat, but when companies reach the point of literally not paying corporation tax at all it just gets silly, and something has to be done - I'd much rather that was targetted retroactive collection of tax that should've been paid, than a future of overly vague laws being written to prevent it happening again, but causing other issues in the process.
"Retroactive laws are a really, really bad idea and are unconstitutional in the USA. "
Yet the US has still enacted a number of them.
"What you describe upthread is already illegal. Look up 'arms length transaction'. "
Yet we've done exactly that here in the UK, as have a number of other countries.
"You don't understand the dodge, so can't speak about solutions."
You don't have any background knowledge, so can't reasonably discuss the topic full stop it seems.
It probably is on Apple maps, just in the middle of Lake Ontario or something.
It's not about changing law, it's about creating new laws and applying them retroactively.
What countries do you deem to have laws? Your arbitrary definition of law/edict seems to basically suggest law is a meaningless term in your vocabulary.
This is exactly what's happening.
It's kinda what the article is about.
Sure, outright 21% on revenues is an oversimplification because yes there is depreciation etc. involved.
But fundamentally the point is that the government never intended that companies set up a complex network of shell companies that charge each other made up costs between various jurisdictions to make up false losses that are demonstrably false due to the fact that said companies state that they are not losses in their report to investors which has to be legally correct.
"If Google followed the law in the deductions they took, the taxes are not owed and cannot be legitimately collected retroactively"
Yes they can.
"(and if it can be done "legally" in your country than you do not actually have laws, just government edicts)."
So no country has law and every country in the world just has edicts? I believe just about every country in the world has applied law retroactively at some point for some thing, including those whose constitutions state that it's forbidden, such as the US. You might want to rethink this one, as your sweeping blanket statement is demonstrably false.
"You still don't seem to understand the difference between "evade" and "avoid""
No, I fully understand it, I just also recognise it's being used as a poor excuse for avoiding intended taxes.
"is that remotely fair?"
No because that's not what we're talking about here is it? The example you cited is one where the government intended something be tax free, in the cases we're talking about the exact opposite is true - the government in the UK for example never intended that Amazon avoid paying the 21% corporation tax on their $7bn in revenue, quite the opposite.
"You're morally obliged to pay every penny of tax you owe but not a penny more."
For some value of owe. To most decent people owed tax means tax that the spirit of the law intended you to pay, not "the bare minimum tax you can legally get away with paying by using complex methods of cheating the system, and outright lying about losses".
"you don't want rule of law, you want an autocracy where even if you follow the law to the letter someone can swoop in and punish you or declare that you owe them money."
I want companies to follow both the letter AND the spirit of the law. You only think people should have to follow the letter of the law, that's the difference. When the government sets a rate of 21% corporation tax, it's pretty clear that the government intends that companies pay 21% corporation tax on their revenues. There's nothing arbitrary or autocratic about enforcing that even if some companies and individuals feel they should be able to dodge it by trying to exploit loopholes in other laws.
Look, as the public accounts committee in the UK pointed out the other day - companies like Amazon on one hand are dodging taxes by creating fabricated losses and telling the government they made a loss in the UK so owe no tax, and on the other telling investors they've made record profits in the UK. This is called lying.
Yes in some cases you can argue they've found a legal loophole that means what they've technically done isn't illegal, but then, as I pointed out, it's not illegal for the UK government to withdraw public service support such as police and fire protection from companies like Amazon. As a sovereign nation the UK has every right to do that, just as they can enact laws to retroactively collect these taxes.
The best you can argue is that these companies did nothing illegal at the time. It doesn't change the fact that the taxes are both owed, and can be legally and legitimately collected by the authorities even if that means retroactive enforcement.
Just to be clear it isn't only Google that's implicated in this, the summary is probably just a typical attempt at defaming just Google by the usual culprits (i.e. Microsoft shills). That's not to defend Google in this, there's no doubt they're in the wrong, but most well known US multi-nationals are guilty of the exact same thing - some even more so. In the UK the companies exposed for this have included Amazon, Apple, Starbucks, and many others.
It doesn't matter either way. Here in the UK for example the government has a corporate tax rate of something like 21%, yet Amazon paid no corporation tax on £7bn worth of sales.
It doesn't matter how they managed to do it, the point is the intention is clearly that they pay 21% of that in tax so the government has every right to collect that from them retroactively even if it means they technically did nothing wrong at the time.
As Ian Hislop put it on have I got news for you a few weeks ago he was spot on, stating something along the lines of:
"Okay yes, very funny, you're very clever, you found a loophole, now just pay us what you owe" ...and that's the attitude governments are now taking over this, quite rightly too. Nice to see Australia following France's lead, hopefully the UK and others will also join in now where this has come to light. You can't justify a situation where small businesses and most citizens pay the taxes it's intended that they pay and larger companies and individuals with more money don't because they have enough money to pay people to find loopholes.
People and companies can disagree with taxes and that's fine, but if you think they're extortionate then get them changed through political means, don't evade them and leave everyone else to foot the bill and subsidise your existence because you're too selfish to contribute your fair share to society.
Yes, yes, I know these tax dodger companies claim they still produce tax in other ways, like VAT paid, employees taxes and so forth, but they're still subsidised. The amount they pay isn't enough to cover healthcare to keep their workers healthy enough to work, the education system the rest of us paid for to give them an educated workforce to even make money in the first place, the highways they use to transport their products, the police, military, and fire brigade to protect their premises and so forth. That's why corporation tax is there in the first place - to help pay for this sort of thing. If they don't pay it perhaps the alternative is to remove services like police protection from them or something and let people steal from them at will making it a fair playing field.
Sorry but you're offering nothing more than a meaningless anecdote.
Looking at the actual Q3 figures, RIM is shifting 2 Blackberrys for every Windows Phone, and Apple is only shifting 2.6 iPhones for every Blackberry, which given Apple's high sales figures doesn't exactly put RIMs sales in too bad a light. You've also got to consider that the the smartphone market has seen explosive growth in recent years, so RIM is still shifting far more devices now, than it was prior to the iPhones release in 2007. It's shifting more than twice as many devices now than it was then, even though it hasn't kept it's marketshare up due to failing in the consumer arena.
But to focus on your anecdote, I'd question the wisdom of any company who basis their purchasing decision on users simply wanting to have a flashy phone, rather than wanting to actually get work done and be productive. Of the companies I know still using Blackberrys they do so because:
1) They still offer the best battery life
2) They still offer the best enterprise integration
3) They still offer the best hardware for typing out e-mails and so forth
4) They're still more durable than all Apple and most Android smartphones
My previous employer also looked at iPhones but didn't go with them largely because of battery life, it was an engineering firm and they made many sales to companies like Codelco in Chile, and they may fly from there straight to another country, like say, Dubai, and follow this pattern for a number of weeks. When you're in the middle of the Atacama you don't get chance to charge every 5mins, you go to the airport and sleep on the plane so no fancy hotel room where you can charge overnight, and then you end up somewhere where it can be +50c, but oh dear, guess what? The likes of the iPhone are only rated to work, and I quote from Apple's website:
Operating ambient temperature: 32Â to 95Â F (0Â to 35Â C)
Nonoperating temperature: â'4Â to 113Â F (â'20Â to 45Â C)
Relative humidity: 5% to 95% noncondensing
Maximum operating altitude: 10,000 feet (3000 m)
It can get below -4c in the Atacama quite easily too, oh, and you can easily be over 3000 m altitude to boot. Travelling to some tropical places, or particularly dry places and you'll even breach the humidity limits. All of which the sales guys at the old place I worked used to do, some could breach all these limits within a couple of days.
Look, it's great that where you work your sales and marketing guys get to play the hipster and run round with their shiny phones, but the fact remains that RIM still holds an enviable chunk of the business market - seeing as most their sales are business whilst most of Apple's sales are consumer, I'd say that RIM likely far and away still hold a much bigger portion of the business market than Apple (though undoubtedly less than Android now).
I'm not even a fan of RIM, I'm a fan of Android and I own a Galaxy Nexus, and Nexus (both of which I fucking love and would highly recommend by the way), but it gets tiresome to read these sorts of anecdotes which basically amount to "My dad says RIM is not cool anymore". That's great, but the figures are still nothing to be scoffed at even now, RIM is still important in business, and there are still damn good reasons why some companies still choose Blackberrys regardless of your assertions about sales guys not wanting them because they're not cool - guess what, some sales people do actually work for a living, and hence need a device that can support that and allow them to be productive whatever environment they're in. The businesses still using Blackberrys are the business who care about actually getting things done rather than using company funds to enlarge a sales, marketing, or IT guy's ego.
I'm not saying RIM necessarily even has a bright future, but this isn't about anecdotes or partisan fanboyism, it's about the facts - the cold hard numbers, and right now RIM is still a major player in business, and Blackberrys still have a number of advantages depending on your business needs. The idea that they've somehow vanished from the business world is just completely false.
You sound serious...
It's because it's elected by proportional representation.
That's what happens when you have politicians who actually have to represent the people who vote them in, and this is why all governments should move to a porportional system if they genuinely want to class themselves as democratic societies and legitimate representatives of the people.
People think electoral reform in most countries is just a fringe side issue, but it's the single most important issue in improving accountability and hence decreasing corruption and increasing quality of representation IMO. Things still wont be perfect with true proportional representation, but as the EP shows, they're a damn sight better than many of the individual national european governments by themselves and than the likes of the EC.
Even that varies from country to country, for example, I live in the UK and we have an electoral system where the country is split up into 650 regions, each of which has it's own member of parliament who is elected by first past the post. This means that the largest minority gets their MP elected, and the party that gets enough MPs to have over 50% of the seats in parliament gets effectively 100% of power.
The region I live in has an old mining village in it as well as a number of other villages. The mining villages vote Labour without fail for historic reasons, the other villages are a bit more pragmatic and vote for whomever they think is best at the time. The problem is this means that Labour always wins - it's known as a safe seat because no matter what happens, Labour will win because they can count on the political ignorance of the majority of the electorate in the particular village that votes for them no matter how badly they do.
To put numbers to it, they usually win with around 35% of the vote, with the other 65% split between about 5 or 6 other candidates. This means that in our area, despite nearly 2/3rds of the population voting against this guy, it doesn't matter, our vote doesn't really count, he doesn't have to listen to us, the majority of his constituents, he only has to listen to the minority that vote for him no matter what he does or however badly he screws up. This is the same story across the country, but ultimately parties in the UK tend to get an effective 100% of power with sometimes as little as only 30% of the public's support, that is, they get 100% of power despite not representing as much as 70% of the population.
Our "democracy" isn't untypical of many Western democracies, most of them are this bad and unrepresentative, this is why no matter how much people protest against wars like Iraq, the governments in question don't care and persist anyway.
There's really no more or no less hope for course correction here - Burma has carried out far vaster, far more wide ranging and important reforms as a dictatorship in the last year or two than our country has to it's political system in over a hundred years.
The fundamental problem is that few democracies are actually genuinely representative of the people. Most do the bare minimum needed to avoid a complete arab spring style meltdown of the power hierarchy. The swap of power in two party states does go at least a little way towards preventing complete North Korean style totalitarianism, but can you for example say that the US government has listened to the public at all on the war on drugs? the war on terror? the war on copyright infringement despite the multiple changes of guard during the lifetime of these issues?
To add another point, keep in mind that the West has (particularly including the British empire) installed it's own dictators in many countries for hundreds of years now precisely because the alternative is sometimes possibly going to be worse. In the arab spring for example, even Syria now, we're at risk of losing people like Assad, who have been horrendous leaders, and instead getting something worse - elected Islamist extremists. Iraq for example was also far safer and relatively more peaceful under Saddam, than it is since his overthrow, and China would be a massive clusterfuck if it weren't a dictatorship - the conflict between the Chinese and places like Taiwan, Xinjiang, and Tibet, would be far worse than they are now. In Palestine, Hamas is the elected representative of the people, yet Fatah who it beat are far more moderate, far less extremist, far more rational, and far more interested in peace. This is why Gaza is in a permanent state of conflict, and whilst the West Bank still has conflict with Israel, it's much more low level and generally a police issue, rather than the full on wars Gaza has with Israel. As you can see, democracy is just as capable of creating cruel war mongers as dictatorship, and sometimes dictatorship can bring stability and relative peace where democracy can't.
The point is that dictatorships don't do many of those things as well, that's why I picked them. You'll find some that do some of them perhaps, but for example, when is the last time China invaded a foreign nation, let alone without good cause? when is the last time China abducted foreign nationals? when was China last responsible for the kind of fiscal irresponsibility that led to the global financial crisis?
At the end of the day it's arbitrary as to whether they're better, they do different things wrong that's for sure, but to describe them as inherently worse? I don't think so, I think the US is at least as much of a problem in this world as China - China has an appalling human rights record internally, but at least it largely keeps to itself. Contrast that to America that may have a better average human rights record (though I'd argue in certain specific cases it has at least as much to answer for), but it's also got a far worse record in terms of detriment to global peace and in pursuing actions that have caused civilian deaths. Far more people have died as a result of US foreign policy either directly or indirectly than Chinese foreign policy for example.
What you're suffering from is a classic case of ethnocentrism, you believe that democracy is somehow a magical thing that makes a country "good", and that anyone who doesn't have it is inherently "bad", that's all well and good until you look at the number of civilians that have died as the result of US actions - I'd argue that 100s of thousands of dead civilians in Iraq paints a country in a far worse light than human rights abuses in China. Of course, democratic states can be good, and more generally are, but it's not a magic thing that makes a state inherently good, Russia, Venezuela, Iran, are all democracies, do you honestly believe they're better than, say, Cuba, or Burma?
I don't think it's really meant to be different as such, but it's part of Microsoft's strategy.
They want your PC to run Windows, your laptop to run Windows, your tablet to run Windows, your phone to run Windows, and your console to be an XBox. If you want a set top box, they want to make sure they offer something that integrates with everything else you have.
It's about providing an offering for every facet of your digital life, in the hope that if you buy into one of these, you'll be more likely to buy into the others due to the nice, easy integration and familiarity they will all offer. In other words, the more options Microsoft provides to enter the Windows ecosystem, the more chance there will be that you'll do so, and buy their other offerings in that ecosystem.
The danger for them is that if they don't fill a niche - i.e. a set-top box, then you'll go to say, Apple, or Google, and then there's a chance you'll buy an Apple or Android Phone, and then you may buy an Apple or Android tablet, and so on, until you move to one of these competing ecosystem offerings and ditch MS altogether.
Well there is a way the US could defuse this whole situation and that's enshrine in it's constitution that the internet is something that is international in nature, and that no national governmental body in the US, be it the courts, or be it the may interfere in the running of it.
This would eliminate the issue of ICE domain seizures, prevent the likes of SOPA and so on and so forth.
The problem is the US wont put this on the table, as such it's time to hand over the keys to the ITU who at least offer the protection of requiring unanimity.
The US could fix this in a second, it could trivially eliminate any valid reason to move control to the UN so it's not as though it's powerless to stop this - it just requires the US to listen to the people, not just it's own, but the people of the world, rather than vested corporate interests for once. That, and if it did this, it'd earn it a lot of international kudos and go some way to undoing much of the bad reputation it's earned in the last decade.
If the US wont do that it's just further confirmation as to why it shouldn't stay in the hands of the US. I'd urge all Americans to take this opportunity to write to their representatives and tell them this, that they can eliminate any reason for UN control by enforcing mandated protection of the internet as something far bigger and more important than just a toy for US corporations and courts to fuck around with at will at a level that guarantees it protection from such meddling.
"Since when did dictatorships suddenly have the same moral standing as democratic countries?"
I would imagine since democratic countries became the ones that invade other nations without just cause, that abduct foreign citizens and hold them for years without trial despite having never committed a crime, that torture people, and refuse to ban the use of weapons like white phosphorous and cluster bombs, that use entities like the WTO to enforce trade rules that benefit them and hurt others including those much poorer than them, that are the root cause of financial turmoil across the globe, etc.
You know, just if I had to hazard a guess that is.
I agree, it's like that here, and honestly I think it's like that in pretty much all of the UK now, different local government areas sort differently, but I think fundamentally they just about all do it. We have paper, garden waste, glass, plastic, and everything else bins.
Not everyone is the same though, the problem is that when it comes to recycling day some people never or rarely put their recycling bins out, but they always have their "everything else" bin out, because they try and cram everything in there.
"Lawn Mowers" Why have a lawn?"
Because grass actually acts to counter CO2?
If everyone did away with their lawns this would almost certainly have a counter effect.
If anything the solution is to not have a motorized lawnmower at all. My neighbour has a fucking old school manual mower that's basically the law equivalent equivalent of shaving with a razor blade rather than an electric razor. That's the most sensible option, and it even cuts more nicely too. The only downside is it requires a bit more effort. It works entirely manually using the movement of the wheels to simply spin the blades that cut the grass using gears.
£15 - £40 for an upgrade is too expensive for a piece of software you probably use day in day out every single day?
If that's too expensive then what the fuck do you call every other peice of software on the planet that you probably get far less usage out of such as computer games that last for about 6 hrs play time and cost the same price?
Of all the criticisms of Windows 8, price isn't one of them. It's the first Windows OS that actually has sane pricing options.
I don't think it's so much the cost, as I say it's telling a busy housewife that between the screaming kids and making her husband dinner she'll also have to find time to sort her plastics from her glass, from her paper, from her food waste, from her garden waste when throwing things away. Or explaining to her that rather than drive the kids 2miles to school and back in a gas guzzling SVU, she make them walk or stick them on the bus, or make them cycle.
It's these sorts of things that are going to be hard to change, making people change actual habits.
The only way to solve it seems to be to make it more inconvenient not to maintain those habits - i.e. drastically tax gas guzzling vehicles more with tax breaks for those who actually need them such as farmers who farm on rugged terrain. You then have the PR battle against mumsnet and such though as they get upset that they can't show off to all the other mums how far into debt the bank stupidly allowed them to go to buy an absurdly large oversized vehicle that will never be used for it's intended purpose anyway.
The problem is that in Cuba, being a doctor is one of the few professions where you both get respect, and, against the relative levels of poverty in Cuba, an acceptable standard of living. The problem is that Cuba does not allow doctors to emigrate out of the country. I sympathise with why they do this - if they spend the time and money training these people to get them a better lifestyle than the average Cuban then why should the state then let them use that additional income they gain in that profession to leave the country and go elsewhere?
If Cuba's doctors were allowed to emigrate away with the skills they have gained then Cuba would have to up the wages it pays doctors to not simply be better than the Cuban average wage, but to compete with international wage standards in order to convince them to stay. This would drastically increase the cost for Cuba.
The scary thing is that even that may not be true.
As Brian Cox pointed out once:
"We have spent more money bailing out the banks in one year, than we have spent, on Science, in Britain, since Jesus."
The amount of money in big business, particularly the fossil fuel mega-corps, is just on a completely different scale to that in the science/research industries.
For what it's worth though I think there is a bigger problem than PR from the fossil fuel industries. I think the bigger problem is that people neither want, nor like change. Telling people they may have to change their ways a little is a far more difficult than simply proving the fossil fuel industries wrong. People are lazy and getting everyone to even do something simple like sort their rubbish and recycle more rather than mindlessly throwing stuff in the same old bin to be sent to a single landfill is far more of a problem than dealing with shills, the shills just make a tough problem tougher.
Good post, and exactly the sort of which there is not enough of on Slashdot these days. I was going to add however that I'd caution against reading into too much from taxonomic changes. Taxonomy is, in my opinion, rather a "dangerous" discipline in this respect when used as a basis for factual discussion.
The problem with taxonomy is that it tries to apply classification in a uniform manner, when the evolutionary tree is anything but uniform. As such, classification all too often ends up being nothing more than subjective opinion. This remains true even with the arrival of DNA sequencing.
The problem is that even if you use an objective measure, such as suggesting that a specimen that has a genome that is (using simple made up percentages as an example) 0.1% different from a reference specimen is a subspecies, a specimen that is 0.5% different is a different species, a specimen that is 1% different is a different genus, and so on then what you will often find is that these arbitrarily defined percentages will have been developed against a specific group of specimens, let's say in this case, frogs, and that because it's been defined against them it works fine. You then take this over to say, Newts, and all of a sudden you end up with odd groupings, and the percentages no longer work to produce meaningful groupings. Some may say well the solution is to have different groupings for different families of species, which works fine, until you start having to deal with species that have come about through natural hybridisation and so forth.
The issue is that taxonomy tries to provide classification that "feels" right to humans, but that's in conflict with it being a scientific discipline, where subjective feeling is irrelevant and objective analysis is king.
Until there is some sort of decision either way as to what taxonomy is meant to actually achieve - subjective human-friendly groupings, or objective scientifically-sound groupings, and not the hodge-podge little bit of both, then you'll always get disagreement on classification of species within the discipline of taxonomy and neither side will be wrong, because it's impossible to be wrong when the discipline fails to universally determine what its right.
This isn't to say taxonomy is a useless discipline - caution must be taken in avoiding that mindset - because it does produce groupings that are useful, we need to be able to call a dog a dog, and a cat a cat, but when it comes to arguments over fringe cases, and battles over reclassification then taxonomy will never provide a "correct" answer, only an arbitrary answer that has received enough backing of enough subjective viewpoints to be chosen as the winner - the problem is that that's not a constant, and opinion can change, which means such cases tend to only be settled temporarily until opinion sways the other way. Or in other words, taxonomy is a useful discipline, but it's often not a genuinely scientific discipline that determines fact, and instead often merely generates simple opinion, and simple opinion is not a firm enough basis for sound factual argument.
Or to apply the point to your discussion, one might be more correct in saying that birds have many shared traits and some shared ancestry with dinosaurs, whether there's enough shared ancestry to classify them as a branch of the dinosaurs is entirely down to personal opinion, though most experts in the field are currently of the opinion that they are. This may one day change however if for example, the commonly accepted boundary of what is enough shared ancestry also changes.
Finally, just to contrast this to talk about global warming, we know that the average temperature is rising, that is something that's genuinely a pretty well determined fact based on reproduceable objective analysis of the hard data we have acquired to date. As you suggest though there are still many other specifics that are yet to be determined with a similar degree of accuracy - are we to blame? what will the rise be? can we stop it? what will the effects be? We have answers to these sorts of questions of varying degrees, from "Most likely" when it comes to "are we to blame?", to "Who the fuck knows" when it comes to "can we stop it?".
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8474611.stm