Iowa's handout to Apple illustrates the folly of corporate welfare deals • Hacker News Board

Re: Iowa's handout to Apple illustrates the folly of corporate welfare deals

#131

Post by eridius » Thu, Aug 31, 2017, 6:41 AM UTC

birken wrote: post #69

vturner wrote: post #17

Just for all the inevitable comments about "the government should have just given X people Y dollars instead..." Iowa isn't "giving money." It does not have the additional revenue before Apple arrives, thus, it can't give anyone those revenues. All it can do is tell Apple you have to give us, Iowa, less than the state next door... now whether this is a good economic plan I disagree. I'd rather have a thousand small b…

Iowa is "giving money". If there is a greater than 0% chance Apple would have built on that site anyways, then Iowa is directly losing that money. And it seems based on the local advantages of the Iowa location there was a non-zero (and potentially high) chance Apple would have picked the site anyways. And even if Iowa isn't "giving money", somebody is. Maybe without the Iowa deal, Apple would have located in Kansas…

> If there is a greater than 0% chance Apple would have built on that site anyways, then Iowa is directly losing that money.

That doesn't make sense. Perhaps you meant to say if there's 100% chance Apple would have built there anyway?

Re: Iowa's handout to Apple illustrates the folly of corporate welfare deals

#132

Post by eridius » Thu, Aug 31, 2017, 6:46 AM UTC

quadrangle wrote: post #121

laser wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That "$208M" is how much more would have been earned in taxes had Apple built the data center there with no tax breaks. However, it seems like the reality is that without those deductions, there would be no Apple there, and therefore not only no "$208M", but no jobs, no $20 million donation, and no whatever taxes they are paying (if any?). On the other hand, the article claims that according to research not offering…

If no states did these tax breaks, Apple would still need a data center. This is nothing more than corporations playing states against each other for the result of corporate profit and public loss.

Sure, but why would all states refuse tax breaks? It's a pretty obvious means to convince a company to choose that state. This is "nothing more" than the free market at work.

Re: Iowa's handout to Apple illustrates the folly of corporate welfare deals

#133

Post by _5ysi » Thu, Aug 31, 2017, 6:52 AM UTC

TheAdamAndChe wrote: post #120

KKKKkkkk1 wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A corporation is purely a legal notion. In real life, when you shake down a corporation so that "we" can have nice stuff, you are shaking down that corporation's shareholders, employees, and customers. These folks already paid their fair share of income and sales taxes. And they can also be referred to using a first-person pronoun.

This implies that large corporations act like normal people, which really isn't the case. The shareholders of publicly traded companies expect exponential growth, and if the managers and owners don't provide that growth, the board of directors kicks them out and replaces them with someone who will drive that growth, regardless of the effect on the workers. When corporations naturally behave sociopathically, it's only…

I did not down vote you but most stock owners do not expect exponential growth from the company. They expect linear dividends, which they can reinvest to get exponential growth.

Re: Iowa's handout to Apple illustrates the folly of corporate welfare deals

#134

Post by sneak » Thu, Aug 31, 2017, 7:24 AM UTC

rxhernandez wrote: post #99

colechristensen wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Implying that not taking advantage of every legal avenue to minimizing tax burden while incorporated in Delaware is exercising your fiduciary duty to your investors is willful ignorance.

Maybe there are other duties to other groups that are more important than your investors. I can't believe I even have to say that out loud. I can extend your fiduciary duty to uber easily insofar as them doing malicious things so long as the payoff was better than the legal costs. Hell I can extend this to certain evil pharmaceutical entities with little more additional effort. Your logic is either naive or you don't…

To equate tax minimization with malice is ridiculous and you know it. Only the most brainwashed statists would think allowing public officials to piss away shareholder funds unnecessarily is virtuous.

Re: Iowa's handout to Apple illustrates the folly of corporate welfare deals

#135

Post by paganel » Thu, Aug 31, 2017, 7:31 AM UTC

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #93

fulafel wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Companies are supposed to pay taxes so we can have schools, healthcare, basic income etc. When they bid countries or states against each other to get tax breaks and governments play the game, citizens lose. Yes, it happens in other cases too, and citizens should also protest against those other cases.

There is nothing wrong with states competing with each other. If one state has poor schools then companies won't want to be there because they won't be able to find competent employees. If one state has no government healthcare subsidies then employees there will demand higher wages so they can pay for healthcare. The states that have better schools and more subsidies will have correspondingly higher taxes. The only…

> The states that have better schools and more subsidies will have correspondingly higher taxes.

The reality contradicts you. The Netherlands and Ireland have some of the best schools in Europe and at the same time they're some of the best tax-heavens for big corporations. Too early in the morning for me to search out for any reasons for why this is the case, I've just presented what the facts currently are.

Re: Iowa's handout to Apple illustrates the folly of corporate welfare deals

#136

Post by Aaargh20318 » Thu, Aug 31, 2017, 8:02 AM UTC

TheAdamAndChe wrote: post #118

Larrikin wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A large corporation like Apple getting a tax cut allows Apple to pay the relocation costs of engineers and other employees. Those sames engineers are putting off children to later or not having them at all. A group that also switches jobs frequently. So long as Apple has some trendy locations people will be happy to work there and the schools won't even be a consideration for most.

> Those sames engineers are putting off children to later or not having them at all. A group that also switches jobs frequently. Do we really want to structure our society like this? Do we want to require so much instability for the workers that they can't even start families? I don't. I'm getting really tired of large multinational corporations blatantly controlling our government, our quality of life, and now tryin…

> they can't even start families?

You say that like it's a bad thing. Humanity is a plague, we breed uncontrolled and our population keeps growing and growing. There is no need for anyone to start a family, there is no shortage of humans.

Re: Iowa's handout to Apple illustrates the folly of corporate welfare deals

#137

Post by inb4dangshitban » Thu, Aug 31, 2017, 8:46 AM UTC

_5ysi wrote: post #130

BLanen wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Willfully naive. You presume that all companies choose the locations that will benefit them in the long-term.

This seems like a good presumption, at least for a large capital operations like factories and data centers.

I hope you do realise that in eastern EU factories get built, work for a few years, get packed up when the wages/unions rise and moved somewhere else?

Almost everything in a factory/datacenter is modular, documented building blocks with super detailed assembly documentation.

The buildings themselves are often steel framework and panels that get thrown up in ~months

No one puts a price on lost expertise and cost of lower quality such moves incur.

All they care for is 0.5% lower wages cost

Re: Iowa's handout to Apple illustrates the folly of corporate welfare deals

#138

Post by MarchHare » Thu, Aug 31, 2017, 8:57 AM UTC

paganel wrote: post #135

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is nothing wrong with states competing with each other. If one state has poor schools then companies won't want to be there because they won't be able to find competent employees. If one state has no government healthcare subsidies then employees there will demand higher wages so they can pay for healthcare. The states that have better schools and more subsidies will have correspondingly higher taxes. The only…

> The states that have better schools and more subsidies will have correspondingly higher taxes. The reality contradicts you. The Netherlands and Ireland have some of the best schools in Europe and at the same time they're some of the best tax-heavens for big corporations. Too early in the morning for me to search out for any reasons for why this is the case, I've just presented what the facts currently are.

Ireland may be where many corporations are registered but is not necessarily where the employees are located. Similar to how many companies are registered in Delaware.

Re: Iowa's handout to Apple illustrates the folly of corporate welfare deals

#139

Post by tallanvor » Thu, Aug 31, 2017, 9:16 AM UTC

paganel wrote: post #135

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is nothing wrong with states competing with each other. If one state has poor schools then companies won't want to be there because they won't be able to find competent employees. If one state has no government healthcare subsidies then employees there will demand higher wages so they can pay for healthcare. The states that have better schools and more subsidies will have correspondingly higher taxes. The only…

> The states that have better schools and more subsidies will have correspondingly higher taxes. The reality contradicts you. The Netherlands and Ireland have some of the best schools in Europe and at the same time they're some of the best tax-heavens for big corporations. Too early in the morning for me to search out for any reasons for why this is the case, I've just presented what the facts currently are.

The Netherlands and Ireland are also much smaller (geographically speaking) and don't have to have as many small schools as you'll find in the US. Most likely they also don't have to worry about providing school buses for most of their students. European countries also set and collect income taxes centrally, not at a state/county/province/whatever level, and they distribute the funds more fairly so that poorer regions aren't left behind the way they tend to be in the US.

Re: Iowa's handout to Apple illustrates the folly of corporate welfare deals

#140

Post by macintux » Thu, Aug 31, 2017, 9:49 AM UTC

jessriedel wrote: post #85

rtpg wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

because the decision makers on this deal are not those who have to manage the costs down the row? Pretty classic principle-agent problem

I mean, that applies to all local government actions. And in any case, we don't need to speculate. You can just total up these costs.

Totaling up the public infrastructure costs of one specific user of resources is non-trivial. What are the additional road repair costs? How much extra money and time do local firefighters spend to be trained on how to deal with data centers?