Amazon, Meta, Alphabet report plunging tax bills thanks to AI and tax changes
finance.yahoo.com
finance.yahoo.com
Edit: hold on, breaking news from 1776: "People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the publick, or in some contrivance to raise prices" -Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations
We should be allowing businesses to write off research and development. This promotes forward-thinking and almost always adds new jobs during the investment phase and after.
More tax money just gets wasted at the top. California is a good example of this. They pay more in taxes than any other state and have almost nothing to show for it but a failing education system, crumbling infrastructure, and high crime.
The main issue is that those companies should be require to hire US citizens and not outsourcing, for these jobs.
The tariffs Trump had in place were a good start.
The US tax code does allow business to write off R & D.
When you hoard far more than just a slim majority, paying a majority isn’t unexpected and it can still be unfair. But I think you are talking about federal personal income tax not corporate tax.
> We should be allowing businesses to write off research and development.
They already do in various ways.
> More tax money just gets wasted at the top. California is a good example of this.
I agree California is wasteful. But we can tax and just give the money directly to people.
> The main issue is that those companies should be require to hire US citizens and not outsourcing, for these jobs.
Not even close to the main issue. Why not just redistribute the gains instead of playing games with these other schemes?
I mean sure it might be wasteful (name one entity private or public that doesn’t suffer from assholes and corruption), but the quality of life here is far better than in Texas or any other state.
We have labor rights, environmental protection, hell even the ethical farming practices like how eggs are produced. Life here is objectively better for the people.
It’s obviously more expensive. There’s demand for people to live here. Even if some people leave more want to move here or wish they could. Shitting on California is 90% of the time some form of cope for many people. They know they could never make it here so the best they can do is complain about it from whatever **hole they’re in.
I agree the demand drives up certain costs like housing. But those are in the private markets. But I don’t understand is what the state government and local governments are spending all of the money on. And there are certainly some prominent wasteful programs such as the high-speed rail project or various programs for homelessness. I expect there’s more of those kinds of waste.
In the end, I think simply giving people money is an effective way to make society better. I’m not against the taxation as much as the low return for the additional spending that has happened in the last few decades.
I can't speak to the Medicaid expansion or K-12 funding that much, but I do know that the spending on housing programs have been a boondoggle, mostly to fund more first-time purchasers chasing after the same fixed supply of housing, driving up prices even more. And the homelessness problem is created by the refusal to allow housing to be built. Even the supposed successes, like SB 79, have been minor, and not allowed much more building at all. And in more conservative places like Southern LA, state laws attempting to force cities to permit more housing have been met with extreme resistance, even for the small gains that the state laws make.
For K-12 spending, that's been a disaster ever since Prop 13 gutted property tax systems and forced the state to step in to make up the difference. And Prop 13 is at the core of the housing problem as well, incentivizing underuse of land by giving such massive tax breaks to those who stay in a massive house after they have an empty nest (mostly fixed very recently), and inducing severe tax penalties to those who would like to stay in the same location but build a bunch more housing (like Greece's polykatoikias, which solved Athen's severe housing crunch...).
And high housing costs means that all labor is far more expensive than it would be otherwise, which makes building the housing expensive, which makes it difficult to expand the workforce to build housing, etc. etc. etc. Lack of housing is at the core of all rising costs in California, and the bad policies such as Libertarian Prop 13 and NIMBYs are most of it.
Instead, Californians with high incomes, but not enough to pay the outrageous price for ownership, pay outrageous rents to landlords that repackage unupdated 1970s starter homes at extreme luxury prices.
Once we stop letting landlords exploit productive labor by removing the regulatory capture, the quality of life will increase, merely through allowing more people to experience the higher quality of life. However, reversing that trend is proving extremely difficult, despite fairly widespread support among the voting population.
And for fixing the current housing problems, there are still a good chunk of Republican representatives in the state legislature and they are even more strident in defending zoning and keeping out apartments than the Democratic representatives. At the local level, though, I think that housing issues are an axis that is pretty non-partisan, with only small amounts of partisan influence on the beliefs of people. I think the YIMBY groups have tried really really hard to keep it from becoming partisan, because even if it does become a partisan issue and move some deeply Democratic places, it would then cement Republican places against the issue and it would be nearly impossible to make overall progress on the issue.
California has seen negative net domestic migration for over 20 years. So multiple things can be true:
* It's a desirable place to live and work, for some. * For others, the net quality of life is higher elsewhere.
Triumphalism ("They know they could never make it here...") isn't a good look whether you live in Silicon Valley or Dallas.
First, not true.
Second, even if true it wouldn’t be surprising, if you have most of the wealth you pay most of the tax money. It’s surprising that that’s not even the case.
Third, it explains California. Of course the state with the highest GDP has also the highest tax income
Of course if you oppose this you are wealthy and are a money hoarder. Inequality is the number one problem.
I’m sure there are systemic changes that are possible, and it’s a topic worthy of brainstorming
That being said the current system desperately needs balance changes to nerf the stacking buffs from having money. It should be the opposite, the more money you have the harder it should be for you to get any additional money, and this difficulty curve should be asymptotic.
(I've seen other comments from you on here, you know you're being an unreasonable edgelord.)
Do we want that only ever be available to a privileged few? The goal should be to eliminate privilege such that the inequities of capitalism apply fairly (or unfairly) to everyone. $1m, A level of income which the vast majority of people will never see in their lifetimes, is clearly sustainable.
If you consider that an unreasonable burden then perhaps we should restructure society to be less capitalist such that everyone has an opportunity for healthcare and education regardless of income, and can retire at a more reasonable age.
Humans are a bunch of greedy selfish tribal bastards, aren't we?
Don't worry, I've had similar down voting whenever I've suggested that owning more than one home in a broken housing market shouldn't be allowed.
People make noises about being all in this together but will work against it actually happening, especially Americans (see: your tragic healthcare system).
Actually laughable that in 2026 we could automate most if not all basic human needs to the point that they're free. But you know, we don't.