Why is Apple sitting on $142bn? | Hacker News Reader

Why is Apple sitting on $142bn?

bbc.com

> He even admitted Apple would be happy to pay more tax, but only if there was a "dramatic simplification of the corporate tax code" including a "reasonable tax on foreign earnings that allows the free flow of capital back to the United States".

"I'd like to say I'm paying taxes without actually paying taxes"....

Oh yes, I'm sure the major issue for the largest corporation in the world is "complicated tax laws." They just can't figure out what all those darn big words mean!

Because they're a revenue generating machine in an age of suppressed demand.

With that kind of money you could invent the future, or one small piece of it. Microsoft's HoloLens was a nice surprise, for example. Apple should take a big jump in something.

Apple is probably working on a lot of things, but their current method is to not show something unless it's shipping (or close to it).

http://counternotions.com/2008/08/12/concept-products/

Yes, I think everyone understands Apple's secrecy by now. Here's my favorite expression of that: http://worrydream.com/Apple/

Anyway, it doesn't count until it ships. You haven't actually solved a problem until you've shipped a product that someone will pay for.

Are they hiring like mad? Isn't that what were told should happen if corporations paid less taxes?

Is Apple really an outlier? Many Japanese companies do the same. Nintendo is famous for its huge cash reserves. It can help a company see through regular ups and downs of the market.

Minus $35B in debt: http://finance.yahoo.com/q/ks?s=AAPL+Key+Statistics

From the article...

"In total, the amount of cash in the group is around $178bn. Some $35bn in debt reduces that figure to the $142bn mentioned above."

They could always end world hunger 4 times over (granted, so could many many entities), but they'll probably use it to make more money.

Not really. If all you're doing is feeding hungry people then you're just creating more hungry people.

World hunger is a $30 billion a year problem? Americans spend $15 billion on bottled water. If we stopped that we'd fix half the problem:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/12/bottled-water_n_374...

In fact, $30 billion is a rounding error in a $15 trillion economy.

Women's luxury market is $250 billion/year.

http://discover.umn.edu/news/arts-humanities/university-minn...

Anyway, I really don't understand why you'd add noise to this conversation.

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