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

latimes.com

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

#141

Post by honestoHeminway »

lend000 wrote: post #127
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.

> When they bid countries or states against each other I have nothing to say specific to this case, but there is a market for governments (very distorted since options are very practically limited for most people, although corporations have an advantage here), and we should encourage competition in this market, as well as political markets. Competition results in better products. Washington already won me over [parti…

Competition between governments results in you as product beeing sold for cheap, without rights and recursions against the company and your health beeing cast aside as obsticle.

Even the american post-problem lawsuit culture will fail to hold internationals accountable, once the managed to get that part of law as negotiatable into arbitration courts.

How somebody can willingly sew on the branch he sits upon- and declare that reasonable- can you expalin this to me?

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

#142

Post by altstar »

Aaargh20318 wrote: post #136
TheAdamAndChe wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

and you are still here?

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

#143

Post by watchdogtimer »

As an Iowa resident, I think it's worth mentioning that all this is happening at a period in time when state government has been experiencing multiple years of unexpected revenue shortfalls.

The governor may have to call the legislature back into special legislative session again next month because revenue is again coming in less than expected.

The three state universities will be increasing tuition 7% per year for each of the next five years because of budget cutbacks caused by these revenue shortfalls.

Part of the decline in revenue is due to the decline in the ag economy, but some have also attributed it to the increasing amount of tax breaks like these that Iowa has been giving out.

Furthermore, this is not just farmland. Waukee is a west Des Moines suburb, the fastest growing part of the state and supposedly one of the fastest growing parts of the US. If Apple hadn't purchased that land, it likely would have been purchased and developed by someone else soon.

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

#144

Post by jessriedel »

macintux wrote: post #140
jessriedel wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

There is lots and lots of data on this.

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

#145

Post by Kluny »

honestoHeminway wrote: post #141
lend000 wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When they bid countries or states against each other I have nothing to say specific to this case, but there is a market for governments (very distorted since options are very practically limited for most people, although corporations have an advantage here), and we should encourage competition in this market, as well as political markets. Competition results in better products. Washington already won me over [parti…

Competition between governments results in you as product beeing sold for cheap, without rights and recursions against the company and your health beeing cast aside as obsticle. Even the american post-problem lawsuit culture will fail to hold internationals accountable, once the managed to get that part of law as negotiatable into arbitration courts. How somebody can willingly sew on the branch he sits upon- and decl…

It's discouraged to mention people's spelling/grammar on HN, provided the intended meaning is clear, but in this case the mistakes are obscuring your meaning in a way that's likely to bring downvotes. I'm guessing that you are not a native English speaker, or possibly using someone else's phone, so please accept these notes as constructive encouragement.

> recursions

Probably meant "repercussions"

> beeing

being

> obsticle

obstacle

> once the managed to get that part of law as negotiatable into arbitration courts.

Not sure of intended meaning, but "the" is probably "they"

> negotiatable negotiable

> sew saw

> expalin explain

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

#147

Post by paganel »

MarchHare wrote: post #138
paganel wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

There are lots of employees over there, at least in IT. I work as a programmer in Eastern Europe and half of the offers I received for working abroad came from companies physically located in Ireland, meaning I would have had to relocate to Ireland had I accepted any of said offers.

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

#148

Post by paganel »

tallanvor wrote: post #139
paganel wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 region…

> Most likely they also don't have to worry about providing school buses for most of their students

I agree with that, but a company that does business in Romania (my country) but instead pays all of its related taxes in Ireland (as Google does) is causing my country not to provide school buses and the like (that and endemic corruption, but that's another issue). I was regarding the EU as a bigger political-economic union, more like the United States, I'm pretty sure that inside both of Ireland and Netherlands both of their governments are interested in re-distributing the taxes they collect from business-activities carried out all over Europe.

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

#150

Post by lumberjack »

lend000 wrote: post #127
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.

> When they bid countries or states against each other I have nothing to say specific to this case, but there is a market for governments (very distorted since options are very practically limited for most people, although corporations have an advantage here), and we should encourage competition in this market, as well as political markets. Competition results in better products. Washington already won me over [parti…

Competition between governments is harmful to citizens because in general, labour is never going to be as mobile as capital. And this is not just limited by regulations and laws (which it is). People just aren't going to move across borders because of politics, unless things get really bad. It just costs too much to move.
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