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

#181

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Aug 31, 2017, 2:23 PM UTC

_5ysi wrote: post #133

TheAdamAndChe wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[deleted]

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

#182

Post by Retric » Thu, Aug 31, 2017, 2:27 PM UTC

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #165

abalone wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Pressure to eliminate them is good and the state that best eliminates them wins This is nonsense. By this logic, corporate pressure to eliminate environmental regulations is "good" because they are "ineffective programs". You assume, wrongly, that the benefits of public investment realize themselves within a timeframe that matters to the bottom lines of individual corporations. In reality, markets reward short-term…

> By this logic, corporate pressure to eliminate environmental regulations is "good" because they are "ineffective programs". Environmental regulations prevent a harm. A dollar value can be attached to the harm, the cost to compensate victims and clean up the damage. If a company is polluting but not providing enough value to compensate for that pollution then they're a parasite and the state does not benefit from av…

Your assumption is states are rational actors with respect to their own self interests. That's clearly a false assumption as politicians incentives don't align with the states long term welfare.

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

#183

Post by PeterisP » Thu, Aug 31, 2017, 2:30 PM UTC

ebbv wrote: post #72

colechristensen wrote: post #24

These are property tax abatements. I don't see the big deal. Apple has to pay the property tax equal to the farmland for the next 20 years instead of the much higher tax on the datacenter property. Who cares? Unless someone is arguing the datacenter is going to use a lot of tax funded city services (police? fire? ... ?), Waukee isn't giving Apple anything. On top of that Apple is pledging to give them $100M for vario…

> Who cares? The people in Iowa who have to subsidize this and don't have the billions sitting in the bank that Apple does? I can't believe anyone really seriously takes this side of this argument.

It's not really equivalent to subsidizing (which would imply some transfer of value from Iowa to Apple, or selling something below cost) but rather to a discount.

Iowa was willing to provide their services at a hefty discount, so Apple chose to "buy" them from Iowa and not another state - but in any case Iowa gets money from Apple (just not the listed rate) and the citizens of Iowa are better off than they would have been if Apple wasn't placing that facility there and thus would pay zero taxes to Iowa.

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

#184

Post by MichaelGG » Thu, Aug 31, 2017, 2:31 PM UTC

paganel wrote: post #148

tallanvor wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

That's up to Romania to disallow that business to operate in that manner.

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

#185

Post by yeldarb » Thu, Aug 31, 2017, 2:42 PM UTC

ourmandave wrote: post #15

Maybe they're working on the "your first one is free" hook. The 50 jobs at the data center will attract a McDonalds across the street and then Waukee can hit those McGuys with a Burger Tax. Let's see. $208M at 5 cents per burger is only, uh, ... Well, the company slogan is "Billions and Billions Served."

You know, I think you said this facetiously.. but you might be on to something.

The Facebook data center in Altoona is on building 4, after all: http://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/money/business/develo...

It’s a much easier choice to expand an existing facility than to create an entirely new one.

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

#186

Post by AnthonyMouse » Thu, Aug 31, 2017, 2:44 PM UTC

Retric wrote: post #182

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> By this logic, corporate pressure to eliminate environmental regulations is "good" because they are "ineffective programs". Environmental regulations prevent a harm. A dollar value can be attached to the harm, the cost to compensate victims and clean up the damage. If a company is polluting but not providing enough value to compensate for that pollution then they're a parasite and the state does not benefit from av…

Your assumption is states are rational actors with respect to their own self interests. That's clearly a false assumption as politicians incentives don't align with the states long term welfare.

My assumption is that states operate in a competitive environment. The ones that respect their own self interests will succeed. The ones that don't will fail.

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

#187

Post by cratermoon » Thu, Aug 31, 2017, 2:58 PM UTC

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…

> a market for governments

This is the myth of the Free Market Fairy - https://bitworking.org/news/2008/01/The-Free-Market-Fairy

And the ways that "everything is a market" distorts and destroys are covered in this long read: https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/aug/18/neoliberalism-t...

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

#188

Post by paganel » Thu, Aug 31, 2017, 3:00 PM UTC

MichaelGG wrote: post #184

paganel wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

That's up to Romania to disallow that business to operate in that manner.

Good one. The EU as a whole can barely fight against Google as an entity, and you ask (relatively) smaller countries like Romania to go at it alone. Or maybe that was sarcasm?

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

#189

Post by kasey_junk » Thu, Aug 31, 2017, 3:05 PM UTC

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #186

Retric wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your assumption is states are rational actors with respect to their own self interests. That's clearly a false assumption as politicians incentives don't align with the states long term welfare.

My assumption is that states operate in a competitive environment. The ones that respect their own self interests will succeed. The ones that don't will fail.

But states (at least in the USA) can't fail as they are back stopped by the federal government.

So failed states become a drain on everyone & at the same time the most economically challenged within the state pay the brunt of that failure as they cant move.

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

#190

Post by mrgoldenbrown » Thu, Aug 31, 2017, 3:09 PM UTC

EpicEng wrote: post #60

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.

But often they chose to build in a location specifically because of the deals you're talking about. This is big money; citizens lose most (in terms of tax dollars) if apple stays out entirely.

The article specifically rebuts that argument.