This article is absolutely an advertisement for the subject company. It is an interesting article but when reading it please keep in mind that it is not objective about its subject and is being used to promote a pro-diamond agenda.
Shaking Up the Diamond Industry
121–130 of 130 posts
Re: Shaking Up the Diamond Industry
#122Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Re: Shaking Up the Diamond Industry
#123Earlier quoted context omitted.
de beers is doing it as a pr move, selling them as 'budget' diamonds as an attempt to devalue them
Nice try. Manufacturing them also has non negligible costs. I'd only buy synthetics anyway. Not very keen on 18th century slavery, which is pretty close to what happens in diamond mines. In addition to that synthetics are more pure, so better quality if the cut and polishing is done right.
The above comment is correct. De Beers bought Lightbox to position synthetic diamonds as for “everyday jewelry” rather than special occasion jewelry such as engagement rings. So it essentially is to help protect diamond price levels and the allure or scarcity.
Re: Shaking Up the Diamond Industry
#124Re: Shaking Up the Diamond Industry
#125E.J. Epstein's "the death of the diamond" was a great read. But, since 1984 is long behind us, kind of wrong. I had no idea how much bort the world consumes. Industrial diamonds are .. industrial. Hard to feel romantic about drill bits and cutting saws. Also the simplicity of the financials to lend liz Taylor the dough to buy the diamond .. Who actually bought it if the money came from the shop?
Well, push the commodity price to the limit. LVMH designing purses with diamond studs? Bedazzled dresses? Jewelry shifting more to intricate designs, brand increasing in importance, and more use of gold or platinum?
If a girl in Iowa can easily get a 3 carat diamond ring, what will the girl in New York now want?
Re: Shaking Up the Diamond Industry
#126Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Is that with or without payroll tax?
It doesn’t include payroll taxes, import duties or VAT / sales taxes.
Re: Shaking Up the Diamond Industry
#127Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/06/world/apple-taxes-jersey....
Yes that’s absolutely true, they do take advantage of international tax rules, but the insinuation that they pay almost no or very low overall corporate taxes is not true. I doubt the OP I was replying to expected the answer to be 24.6% of corporate income. I’ve got no objection to claims that’s too low, it’s a legitimate question, but let’s at least discuss this from an informed position.
Re: Shaking Up the Diamond Industry
#128Earlier quoted context omitted.
de beers is doing it as a pr move, selling them as 'budget' diamonds as an attempt to devalue them
Nice try. Manufacturing them also has non negligible costs. I'd only buy synthetics anyway. Not very keen on 18th century slavery, which is pretty close to what happens in diamond mines. In addition to that synthetics are more pure, so better quality if the cut and polishing is done right.
i think you misread my comment
Re: Shaking Up the Diamond Industry
#129Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think you have a vast disconnect between the reality of advertising today vs. the quaint mid-20th century mental model that you seem to hold. Or you're being entirely disingenuous about what people complaining about "advertising" mean . If modern advertising 1) did not vacuum up personal data in extremely invasive ways, 2) didn't distort the entire business models of the largest tech companies against the interests…
Nitpick: Plenty of people gripe about CL. By giving away classified ads, CL killed a huge cash cow for many newspapers.
This is a direct corollary of the existence of the internet and the effect that had on the scarcity of information that supported the local newspaper model. Ben Thompson has written a number of great articles diving into this topic at Stratechery[1]. I understand why blaming CL seems like it should be a thing, but it's absolutely the wrong target: the very existence of the internet made newspapers utterly unsustainable because the scarcity they depended on vanished.
Re: Shaking Up the Diamond Industry
#130Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.
Cheap beer and cigarettes are not provided for by tax dollars though.
BP and Facebook probably don't pay much tax in Australia either, where beer and cigarettes are not particularly cheap (mostly due to sin taxes)