111–120 of 130 posts
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How much do you think Apple pays the US govt in taxes? The US is held together by taxes on the working man and small businesses. Massive corporations don't pay their fair share. How can you expect the tax situation to be better in Sierra Leone?
Apple paid about $35bn in corporate income taxes globally in the last 3 years. Their effective global corporate tax rate is 24.6 percent and most of their taxes were paid in the US.
It's hard to take diamonds seriously any more. This is a diamond factory in China.[1] That's the "high pressure high temperature" process, a huge room of very strongly built presses. There's also the "controlled vapor deposition" process. Alibaba has huge lots of diamonds produced that way. Those are real diamonds. Mostly. You may get cubic zirconia. Cubic zirconia is so cheap that those stones come in plastic bags a…
Well, for approximately flawless, clear diamonds, yes, actually flawless, clear diamonds are the ideal.
But, e.g., blue diamonds are, like, vastly preferred by the market over clear ones, with a couple orders of magnitude price premium, iirc.
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> The citizens here in Koidu don't get any of the income of the diamonds. Surely the issue of where and how minimg licences and sales revenue is distributed in SL, is something the folk of Koidu should take up with their government. As with any company anyehere, De Beers pays the share they are obliged to to the authorities.
> As with any company anyehere, De Beers pays the share they are obliged to to the authorities BP and Facebook aren't paying their share of taxes in the USA, do you think De Beers is going to do so in Sierra Leone? The only difference is there are just enough tax dollars in the US to make life tolerable for the masses - cheap beer & cigarettes, sports on TV and elementary education.
Do you have any evidence that thy aren't?
Or do you just make things up?
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> everyone thinks it’s a diamond and we haven’t yet felt the need to correct them It also avoids conversations that have few good outcomes. Tell someone who spent $$$$ on a diamond that you think diamonds are a waste of money or a humanitarian disaster, and it's not a great way to start a conversation. There are also other colored stones that I think are nicer looking than diamonds, but moissanite provides a nice way…
Cultural norm? That concept was invented by an ad agency paid for by de Beers. https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/diamond-de-beers-marketin... Does anyone really pay attention and judge others based on their choice of wedding jewelry, or wearing any, or being married even, in 2020?
Never believe we live in a more enlightened age. The subtlety of the points people find to mock astounds me.
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> As with any company anyehere, De Beers pays the share they are obliged to to the authorities BP and Facebook aren't paying their share of taxes in the USA, do you think De Beers is going to do so in Sierra Leone? The only difference is there are just enough tax dollars in the US to make life tolerable for the masses - cheap beer & cigarettes, sports on TV and elementary education.
BP and Facebook aren't paying their share of taxes in the USA, do you think De Beers is going to do so in Sierra Leone? Do you have any evidence that thy aren't? Or do you just make things up?
BP Actually get tax credits, as does Amazon. So they pay negative taxes.
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BP and Facebook aren't paying their share of taxes in the USA, do you think De Beers is going to do so in Sierra Leone? Do you have any evidence that thy aren't? Or do you just make things up?
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/2018-taxes-some-of-americas-big... BP Actually get tax credits, as does Amazon. So they pay negative taxes.
Or is guilt by association the new thing these days?
Show me where De Beers is not paying what the government of SL requires them to pay.
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Even De Beers announced they would start selling synthetics.
de beers is doing it as a pr move, selling them as 'budget' diamonds as an attempt to devalue them
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The parent said adtech, not advertising. What we call adtech today is advertising plus tracking. The tracking part is what most people seem to have a problem with.
Post-war advertising isn't much better itself, being based to make people to want things they might not even need...
But at least De Beers didn't try to track individual brides and grooms and show them different diamonds based on what they were talking about on the phone. Maybe they do now.
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https://www.cbsnews.com/news/2018-taxes-some-of-americas-big... BP Actually get tax credits, as does Amazon. So they pay negative taxes.
And how, pray tell, do the incentives of a British oil company in another part of the world automagically imply the guilt of an African mining company in SL? Or is guilt by association the new thing these days? Show me where De Beers is not paying what the government of SL requires them to pay.
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Well, it's one of the hardest known materials...
I found an excerpt from geology.com about uses for lab-grown diamonds: "wear-resistant bearings, heat sinks for computer processors, and high-temperature windows."
Wow, I forgot about that - looks like that you can buy one of the best thermal pastes out there for VERY reasonable prices... and it's 90%+ diamond !!