Hacker News Reader

Hacker News

Comment by pteredactyl | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

pteredactyl

More taxes. That's the answer. How has the government spent our taxes so far?

View on HN

Less taxes. That's the answer. How have the corporations spent their windfalls so far?

On workers. Record unemployment, including for underserved minorities.

It's their windfall ... They can spend it any damn well they want.

I believe that's exactly what's under contention, some people think corporations should not have as large windfalls in the name of spreading that wealth more generally.

Then people should simply stop buying their products.

Or they could just have their charters revoked and their assets seized. Corporations have no rights, not even the right to exist.

Corporations are owned by citizens. Those citizens have constitutional rights. Siezing the assets of a corporation = siezing the assets of a citizen.

To not have such an elementary understanding of how things work is just baffling to me.

Yes. People have rights, and those rights come with responsibilities.

And again, yes, corporations, individuals, criminal gangs, they can all have their assets seized at various times and under various conditions.

I'm not sure which part of that you think is news to me.

Those corporations operate under license.

Said license comes with terms.

Said citizen has a voice in those terms same as everyone else.

What are you talking about? Everyone knows corporations are owned by tiny white men wearing tuxedos and monocles.

Simply huh? Or a good majority of people share a belief in a mixed-market economy that includes sensible regulation on enterprise.

They used them to research, develop and build every piece of technology you used to post this snarky comment ... ??

Really? I'm pretty sure the internet wasn't researched and developed by corporations.

Yea, Bell Labs had nothing to do with the internet.

> Yea, Bell Labs had nothing to do with the internet.

Bell Labs existed in large part because AT&T was trying to justify its monopoly to fend off antitrust regulators.

Also, I think it had more to do with building the switched telephone network than it did with building the internet.

It was a pretty unique organization in time and space, and not at all typical of "corporations."

They’ve also used taxpayer giveaways to fund stock buybacks which really don’t have any effect on products they’re pushing to market. I don’t think anyone is really arguing that corporations don’t provide value, but there is a very valid to what effects tax policy have had (especially when govt makes these deals with certain envisioned effects, and without retrospecting to see if they did, we are bound to get into a place where money is poorly spent)

Not really, they used them to buy back shares while simultaneously expanding equity compensation plans for executives. There is very little corporate investment going on anymore despite many companies being awash in new cash.

I expected a more thought out answer from THE Jonathan Blow. There's 2 sides to every story and your reply only comes from one side.

Nah, all this R&D and CapEx is pretax.

That was actually the DoD, but no surprise you don't know that.

It‘s always really surprising and also really interesting how debates about „free“ markets and corporate taxes seem to get snarky and somewhat personal/emotional pretty quickly. For example, instead of having an open mind about possible solutions some ideas are dismissed outright under the premise that they haven‘t worked before, while it is pretty clear that such perceived bad outcomes (if they even exist objectively) have not been tied to anything fundamental wrong with the idea but with less than stellar execution.

To make a long story short, I would be interested in a constructive fact/evidence based position how we should tackle things like disappearing jobs due to automation, decreasing wages for unskilled labor, etc. in the future? Do you really have evidence and reason to believe that something like a government doesn‘t have to play a role in this? Really curious to understand your perspective and how you come to it :)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com