81–88 of 88 posts
Capitalism is way out of control. No corporation should be able to strong arm the government to get out of taxes. At least not until I can pit states against each other to get out of my income tax.
> At least not until I can pit states against each other to get out of my income tax. You can by moving to any of Alaska, Florida, Nevada, South Dakota, Texas, Washington, or Wyoming.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is an article about how giant tech firms drive politics, and the guidelines state only that "most" articles about politics are not welcome. It is not a blanket ban and I think it's an interesting and relevant discussion to be having.
It's not about how "giant tech firms" drive politics, it's about how businesses drive politics. Lots and lots of businesses that are not "giant tech firms" impose themselves on the political process to receive tax credits.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
So by virtue of being English/Dutch descended they have a better system. The leaps in your logic are all over the place. How is France "uniquely vulnerable to fascism? How do you think that having a response to monopolies enshrined in law makes it a "bedrock feature" of our society when the US has seemingly abandoned any serious enforcement of antitrust law? How do you respond to the state and industries working toge…
My original point is that capitalism has to operate on equal footing with the state if it is to thrive, otherwise it will be subsumed into the state at the convenience of said state. > So by virtue of being English/Dutch descended they have a better system. Sure. Systems persist through generations. You can still see remnants of the old French colonial government in Louisiana to this day. I don't understand why this…
The magna Carta for instance was so far back that their language is extinct, they have the barest of influence on the modern world.
The anglosphere and the Dutch may have evolved institutions that kept a balance between the state and private industry but that balance only existed for a short time. It certainly didn't exist between the civil war and world war 2 in the US as we swiftly changed between robber barons and the new deal. It seemed like they more in between 1945 and the oil crisis of the 1970s, but since then the companies have taken more control every year
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> However, HQ2 will create an enormous "supply chain pull" on every aspect of government, and those costs are impossible to accurately assess. Rather than trying to account for the supply chain pull as you noted, I wish cities and states would standardize upon an open source formatting and presentation of the data in their accounting systems. Many competing analyses of costs to various jurisdictions can then arise fr…
Something I've been wondering about for a while now... Would it be possible to train an algorithm to identify similar characteristics of data from different schema? Looking at the actual data, I mean, and inferring a translation table or the like? I have a background in data engineering and don't really know where I'd get started. But if you could figure out a way to throw differently schema'd data at an algorithm an…
For some kinds of data like account numbers, phone numbers, names, and addresses, it is possible to envision some kind of algo. But that's not where the interesting action happens. After working with lots of application developers over the years, I've learned they cram the damndest bits of information into databases, and it's dangerous to make assumptions about how they use the data (whether temporally, structurally, computationally, *etc.). Sometimes with absolutely no rhyme or reason to what or why, either; the rationale and logic is embedded entirely in front of the database within the application code.
Without access to that code, even process re-engineering teams are flummoxed at just understanding a schema, not to speak of porting it. So I find it challenging to envision a scenario where inspecting only the data can yield better results; by the time we're restricting ourselves to only the data, and only at a snapshot in time, we've lost too many bits of information, and the resolution of the solution is too coarse-grained to be universally useful. As we add more inspection time, more fine-grained snapshots, and more kinds of data however, resolution goes up; the real question becomes just how much is needed to generate a MVP.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Correct, that piece is missing from the article. And the answer to that question is that a tax break is effectively a form of financing, so why not let Amazon (or other major corporations) be on the hook for the note? Even when that financing is paid by future tax revenues, every tax payer in the region will sign up involuntarily for a little piece of that debt. For smaller projects, this incentive mechanism makes se…
No, it's not financing. It's not a giveaway. It's a rebate.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
My original point is that capitalism has to operate on equal footing with the state if it is to thrive, otherwise it will be subsumed into the state at the convenience of said state. > So by virtue of being English/Dutch descended they have a better system. Sure. Systems persist through generations. You can still see remnants of the old French colonial government in Louisiana to this day. I don't understand why this…
I might be able to agree with your argument if your most recent example, Teddy Roosevelt, was not alive 4-5 generations ago for me. The magna Carta for instance was so far back that their language is extinct, they have the barest of influence on the modern world. The anglosphere and the Dutch may have evolved institutions that kept a balance between the state and private industry but that balance only existed for a s…
I challenge you to learn more about history. Learn about the history of corporations and how they grew out of colonial enterprises. Learn about Standard Oil and what private enterprise looked like before and after them. There are a lot of devils in those details. When you study enough of it, you can sense a smooth, continuous line of social and legal innovations that threads through all of recorded history, thousands of years.
The Civil War that you mentioned settled many pressing issues regarding the ability of states to assert their will against the nation. World War 2 enshrined international agreements and institutions as vitally important for averting war. It also thrust women into economic importance. All of these events created bedrock principles for the new social order to coalesce around. Once they're set, they're set. Other countries want them and so they do the best they can to try to copy them.
But they're never going to work as well as in the countries that they arose in. Nobody does tributary taxation like the Russians. Nobody can build a single-party state quite like the Chinese, with 6.3% of the entire population in the CCP.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you can't get the state to stop engaging in this, how are you going to get them to pass a law against it? Or not repeal the law the minute they want to do it again? The incentive for states to do this is a direct consequence of progressive taxation. If a company paid $1000 in taxes and got back >=$1000 in police protection (or whatever), and the government's relationship with every other taxpayer was of the same n…
> If you can't get the state to stop engaging in this, how are you going to get them to pass a law against it? Or not repeal the law the minute they want to do it again? This stuff usually happens at the state or local level, so a federal law (not sure about the constitutionality of that) or constitutional law (or judicial interpretation) seems like the right place for it. Tax arbitrage is a problem, IMHO, and I do w…
"Income tax where the sale is made" is VAT. And "business taxes" (meaning incorporation fees and the like) are stupid garbage that disproportionately impact small businesses, don't even generate that much revenue, and should just be eliminated entirely.
But yes, VAT would work really well for this. Especially if there was a standardized way for internet retailers to remit it without having to register with every individual state and locality that each uses their own filing system.
> IMHO, tax policy is part of the political system, and in the interests of democracy, the political systems shouldn't be made to compete with each other in exploitable ways.
It's impossible to prevent this and still maintain any semblance of different states or countries. If states couldn't have different taxes then they would attract businesses by not spending the money on social programs and instead using it for infrastructure projects businesses like. If they weren't allowed to do that then they would still attract businesses with less stringent regulations.
The only way states don't compete with each other is if they're all exactly the same. And they would never actually be on equal footing regardless. If everyone had to abide the same taxes, minimum wage laws and regulations there are in California then no one would ever set up shop in Arizona, much less Mexico or South Africa.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've repeatedly thought about moving to Atlanta, because I really like the city. I won't be able to afford to if Amazon moves there. Somebody who lives there who hasn't already bought themselves a sandbag-wall against ridiculous rent spikes would probably be wise to consider moving. (I don't want to own a car again; MARTA, being a good public transit option that is taken by people across the socioeconomic spectrum an…
Oh you definitely don't want to live here without a car. I live in perhaps the only neighborhood where it's even feasible, and I would never give up my car. Being at mercy to Marta and the buses and Uber isn't fun.