Comment by SapphireSun | Hacker News Reader

Comment by SapphireSun | Hacker News Reader

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This is a diversion tactic.

They're grabbing 252.3B and spending less than a fifth of it. Let's imagine a different world. 200B, divided by 50k + 1.5x overhead (75k) could create about 2.6M decent jobs for one year (or 1.3M for two years etc).

2.6M jobs is equal to 0.8% of the total US population. The total labor force size is about 160M (~1/2 the total population) and the U6 measure of unemployment is about 8%. A healthy U6 is probably closer to 6% (from around 2000). That 2% of 160M is 3.2M jobs. Thus, in one fell swoop without even affecting operations overly much, Apple could reduce the magnitude of the economic crisis by a little over 2/3.

These are astonishing numbers that would have real impacts on people's lives. Imagine what we could do with the profits of the other large conglomerates.

Instead, they're spending a tiny amount on PR and reduced taxes that they lobbied heavily for to do what? Probably stock buy backs. The adulation of the rich and powerful continues at the expense of the working class.

EDIT: added some comparison numbers

EDIT: You guys are too much! So many questions, keep on asking, but I'll have to let others answer. I have other things to do today. Keep thinking critically about the political economy of the system. :)

There is no diversion about it. Remember that people, voting individuals in the US, have decidedly different stances on what "appropriate" amount of taxes should be. Business, particularly public ones, have a responsibility to their share holders to handle money as fiscally responsibly as they can.

From my perspective, Apple isn't "grabbing" anything. They are moving their money from Bank A to Bank B and paying a 20% fee on their balance simply for doing so. You may say this is a PR piece and a continued way to screw workers, but i see it differently. Apple had no need to repatriate this money. This is part of a conscious shift in their fiscal policy moving forward. It stands to benefit US workers a great deal more than them keeping these funds overseas.

Paying their taxes and investing in technology and scientific progress would help workers even more.

Would you mind clarifying what you mean? The implications i read in this comment are that Apple isn't paying taxes and do not invest in technology. Both are of course false, even before this announcement. I haven't fished through documents but i suspect Apple spends Billions on both every year.

Apple lobbied for and received an incredible tax break for repatriating its money. It should be paying the full 35% corporate tax rate. Apple invests in some science and technology, that is true. However, for some reason, despite its fervent dedication to the arts and sciences, it hasn't figured out how to spend 200+ billion dollars. Weird.

And they did that. This is paying the extra tax the US - and only the US - requires on repatriation

Yet somehow they managed to avoid paying much tax elsewhere as well. Strange.

They do pay taxes elsewhere. They are subject to each country's tax laws that they make income in. You are probably referring to the Irish/EU arrangement, but that has little bearing in Japan or China or wherever else China makes money.

Your reference to the double Irish arrangement completely undercuts your point. You admit that they aren't paying substantial taxes in a huge market they participate in.

With respect to Japan and China, a multinational company, an effectively stateless entity (or possibly a state unto itself) can simply move to the most profitable country, thus forcing countries to compete for its tax dollars. Thus, the multinationals, unless resisted via solidarity, will cause a collapse in all nations treasuries.

Apple must pay taxes where they make money. Apple's retail operations in China/Japan can't be moved to a less-tax country, it is physically impossible to be in China/Japan and not be in China/Japan at the same time! You simply cannot operate in a country without paying taxes, the EU rules being weird and an exception because of their one market principle.

Ah, this is exactly the same reason no corporation can stay in business! (Since consumers can just buy from the one that has the lowest prices)

For this reason, we should encourage corporations to form cartels to avoid getting taken advantage of by disloyal consumers.

Ok, last one. :) You've really just made a mockery of the ideology of competition haven't you? In fact, that is what corporations do. There's an awful lot of highly concentrated market power lying around for exactly that reason.

Would you please not use HN for ideological battle? At the point this stuff gets generic, it gets predictable, and therefore boring in HN's sense of the word.

My apologies dang. I try to at least be on topic, and this is what has been intensely interesting to me in the past year. Thanks for moderating.

That doesn’t make any sense though. Why would Apple just create millions of jobs that they don’t require?

This is the key mistake people make when they say that tax cuts will create jobs, or minimum wages will cost employment. Companies try to be efficient, and therefore don’t create jobs they don’t need, and don’t get rid of jobs they do need if wages go up. That’s why there is pretty much zero statistical correlation between tax cuts and employment, or wage price and employment.

Apple will create jobs if their operations require them - they’re not going to make up busywork out of the goodness of their hearts.

Let’s not forget that US-based competitors are getting the very same tax cut, while foreign-based competitors likely had more favorable tax environment to boot. Creating the jobs one doesn’t need by one player increases that player’s costs and affects margins long-term, meanwhile competitors who did nothing can simply lower their prices.

Exactly right. Why would a for-profit company work to improve the lives of the population that birthed them? I'm merely making the point that we can do better than this.

I think companies should pay their fair share of tax, comply with stringent labour, environmental and other regulations (high minimum wage, decent holidays, humane limits on work hours per week etc.), even donating part of their profits to charity would be cool.

But you can’t expect companies to randomly create new jobs just for the sake of making jobs (because they have a bit of spare cash)... It just doesn’t make sense.

Are you under the impression that a sizable portion of those currently unemployed have the skills that Apple looks for in their employees? Or are you suggesting they start up a pastry shop, carwash and clothing conglomerate?

If they don't really need that money, why not give it to the people that could really use it?

I'm suggesting that capitalism is going to encounter a crisis point sometime in the next decade or two at this rate. It will destroy itself leaving either barbarism or socialism in its wake.

So now that we've looted the reserves of Apple to fix all our problems for 1-2 years, what will be the next golden goose we would choose to slaughter?

Imagine if that money didn't accumulate in the hands of a few and instead continuously circulated...

What is their fair tax rate? How much do they owe the working class?

All of their profits is what the socialist would respond. :) They produce nothing without the working class. Managers can earn a modest salary.

It's important to have incentives to reward success. How would a business even grow if it could never keep profits?

The working class does benefit from Apple, in the form of high-quality technology that even they can purchase.

There are a variety of alternative arrangements that have been proposed. Economic democracy is one of them (that is, the workers control the company via elections, which will influence their pay).

The workers benefit somewhat from Apple, yes, in the form of a consumer gadget. I will grant Apple some utility, it did find a way to fuse existing science and technology in an interesting way to produce a very nice pocket computer.

However, this has had many effects, some good (access to information and maps), some bad (dissolution of privacy, addictive interfaces, the creation of "apps" at the expense of the open internet). Apple then uses this commodity to vacuum up dollars from consumers in excess of what it cost to produce... and do nothing with them other than allow executives and securities holders to slake their desire to accumulate. It's an addiction in itself.

I'm sold! I'll go in and refuse my pay check because my employer offers me high quality products that even I can purchase.

I can't, because I won't have the money to purchase them, but they are "in business to make money," and I'm clearly only here for the opportunity to buy the products that I make.

OK, sarcasm isn't especially productive, but I hope my point is clear: if my employer takes all the money and pays only subsistence wages, which the huge power imbalance enables, then he's doomed because nobody can afford his products.

At the very least, mine would be if he hadn't managed to get massive tax breaks for being a "job creator" who's also persuaded the government to subsidize those jobs with public funding, and then decided that he's not topping those wages up with the money his business earned. Basically, running costs are funded by the public while he pockets all the profits and pays me with my own tax dollars.

The working class needs more than just the benefit of stuff being offered for sale. We need to be able to spend and save, the ability to shape the economy and keep it running, otherwise it all breaks down.

Well hopefully they well distribute the rest as a special dividend to the stock owners

You have the right idea. That's probably what they will do, but not as a dividend (those are taxed as ordinary income). Instead they will buy back stock, reducing the supply of stock and increasing the price. Long term sales of stock incur a 15% tax rate.

I'm not saying this is good, but this is what they will do.

ahh so the bankers make $$ for an arcane opaque "buyback" I would rather have the $ now and as my apple holdings are in Investment trusts in my ISA I don't pay tax on dividends.

Crisis? Unemployment is almost at all-time lows.

U6 is still high. Most of the jobs created after 2008 were more transient than old jobs. Hence, the term "gig economy". The precariousness of the working class has increased dramatically and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.

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