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Texas electric firm files for bankruptcy citing $1.8B in claims

reuters.com

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Re: Texas electric firm files for bankruptcy citing $1.8B in claims

#231

Post by croes »

simonh wrote: post #212
croes wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"After two straight years of paying $0 in U.S. federal income tax, Amazon was on the hook for a $162 million bill in 2019" "$162 million is still just a fraction of the $13.9 billion in pre-tax income Amazon reported for 2019 — roughly 1.2%" How much is your income tax rate?

Does the fact that some people game their personal income tax make your income tax contributions worthless or irrelevant? I'm not clear what point you're making. Corporate income tax is the third highest source of tax revenue in the US, at $230bn in 2019. Shareholders also pay capital gains taxes, and companies pay other taxes as well or collect taxes for the government as well like sales taxes.

State expenses have to be paid and if the wealthy don't pay, who is? I guess the one who can't afford an account in places like the Caimans. And of course Corporate income tax is a hight source of tax money. The larger the share in profits, the higher the share in tax revenue. The question is why isn't it the highest source of tax income?

Re: Texas electric firm files for bankruptcy citing $1.8B in claims

#232

Post by ericmay »

volta83 wrote: post #229
ericmay wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for your thoughtful response here. I want to really dive into something here which is your comment about 401ks and bonds. Unless I misunderstand what you are intending with your original post (and obviously that can be subject to reinterpretation, modification, etc. - i.e. I don't hold anybody to the original idea when there is room for evolution) - if you put money into your 401k into something like, let's sa…

> I'm also not sure why bonds would shield you from liability. You're still giving the company money to do these bad things, why does it matter if you have ownership? Sorry, should have clarified "government bonds" here. We are hypothetically talking about changing the rules, so we could change them to whatever. I think the fundamental problems here are a lack of oversight, and also a lack of financial incentive to a…

> Sorry, should have clarified "government bonds" here.

Sure, no problem. But what about when the government does bad things and gets sued? At least something to think about.

I think some of the things you're discussing here are still fundamental government enforcement issues. You can create a "proper oversight" index but that doesn't shield individual investors. Facebook would have been part of that, for example, but now things have changed and the company could be open to liability for damages. I think the main issue here is there is too much risk for individual investors - they can't be experts in every stock or research every company - or get out if they start to see a pattern of fraud. So the only people who will own companies will be wealthy individuals and institutions that can fight lawsuits.

I also don't think this solves the concentration of wealth to the top companies. You can be a small, highly ethical company but not be able to raise capital in the public markets because investors are too risk adverse.

In my view, I think if you believe that there is a lack of oversight and a financial incentive to default, then you need to go back and look at how the government enforces rules that already exist before blowing up the entire capital markets for regular people. They seem to work pretty well, overall. Government bonds pay nothing now - if every investor had to exit the market (me and you) we'd just be stuck with useless dollars and no means to deploy them.

If you haven't read it, Fooling Some of the People All of the Time is a great, but also depressing read into this.

Re: Texas electric firm files for bankruptcy citing $1.8B in claims

#233

Post by [deleted] »

bko wrote: post #158
adrianN wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand why so many people assume that public transport needs to cover cost with fares. It provides immense public utility, even to the people who don't use it. It makes perfect sense to subsidize it. And it's not like taxes on cars pay for all their externalities.

I don't understand why so many people assume that others should pay for the services they consume. Why should a relatively poor upstate new york taxpayer be paying 50% of the fare of some young finance bro going to work? Also removing prices removes information. For instance the ferry costs something like $15 per rider to operate compared to around $5 for subway. With both trips at the same price to the consumer, you…

[deleted]

Re: Texas electric firm files for bankruptcy citing $1.8B in claims

#234

Post by colejohnson66 »

pnutjam wrote: post #203
adrianN wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand why so many people assume that public transport needs to cover cost with fares. It provides immense public utility, even to the people who don't use it. It makes perfect sense to subsidize it. And it's not like taxes on cars pay for all their externalities.

Imagine if the trucking industry had to absorb the cost of the roads they damage.

Don’t they already do that through more expensive registration fees? “Apportioned” and (sometimes) commercial plates cost more than Joe Shmoe driving a Civic.

Re: Texas electric firm files for bankruptcy citing $1.8B in claims

#235

Post by volta83 »

ericmay wrote: post #232
volta83 wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm also not sure why bonds would shield you from liability. You're still giving the company money to do these bad things, why does it matter if you have ownership? Sorry, should have clarified "government bonds" here. We are hypothetically talking about changing the rules, so we could change them to whatever. I think the fundamental problems here are a lack of oversight, and also a lack of financial incentive to a…

> Sorry, should have clarified "government bonds" here. Sure, no problem. But what about when the government does bad things and gets sued? At least something to think about. I think some of the things you're discussing here are still fundamental government enforcement issues. You can create a "proper oversight" index but that doesn't shield individual investors. Facebook would have been part of that, for example, bu…

Thanks for the book, will give it a read!

Re: Texas electric firm files for bankruptcy citing $1.8B in claims

#236

Post by pnutjam »

colejohnson66 wrote: post #234
pnutjam wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine if the trucking industry had to absorb the cost of the roads they damage.

Don’t they already do that through more expensive registration fees? “Apportioned” and (sometimes) commercial plates cost more than Joe Shmoe driving a Civic.

No, they don't pay anywhere near enough. https://truecostblog.com/2009/06/02/the-hidden-trucking-indu...

Re: Texas electric firm files for bankruptcy citing $1.8B in claims

#237

Post by tptacek »

disgruntledphd2 wrote: post #162
rayiner wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's actually well understood that privatisation for platform industries is bad, privatisation for businesses running on top of platforms is good That’s not “well understood” at all. Folks don’t remember how dysfunctional and sclerotic nationalized industries were in the 1950s and 1960s. There is a reason nearly every developed country got rid of them.

Yeah, mostly driven by the ideas of Milton Friedman. Fortunately, we can see that 40 years later there were no unpleasant side effects from introducing markets into almost every business and service /s.

Working class people can now afford air travel, you can ship oranges between states without applying for a special trucking permit, almost 50% of Iowa's power generation is renewable, stock market trades went from 80c _per share_ to retail traders being paid to trade, and we still manage to make and enforce rules so that average gas mileage has gone from 13mpg to 26mpg.

I don't agree with Rayiner about Texas, but I don't think you can wave your hands at 60s-70s deregulation and say "lol Milton Friedman". The deregulators were right about a lot of stuff.

Re: Texas electric firm files for bankruptcy citing $1.8B in claims

#238

Post by ericmay »

volta83 wrote: post #235
ericmay wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sorry, should have clarified "government bonds" here. Sure, no problem. But what about when the government does bad things and gets sued? At least something to think about. I think some of the things you're discussing here are still fundamental government enforcement issues. You can create a "proper oversight" index but that doesn't shield individual investors. Facebook would have been part of that, for example, bu…

Thanks for the book, will give it a read!

Thanks for the interesting thoughts and discussion!

Re: Texas electric firm files for bankruptcy citing $1.8B in claims

#239

Post by simonh »

croes wrote: post #230
nybble41 wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to their 2019 annual income statement[0], Amazon paid a total of $2.374B of foreign and domestic income tax on pre-tax income of $13.976B. That's 16.9%, not 1.2%. Is the author perhaps comparing US taxes with global income? (Or perhaps just whatever was left over after paying estimated taxes?) That certainly looks to be the case since they cited US federal income tax while the $13.9B pre-tax income figure i…

Interestingly you are ignoring the part that Amazon paid no income tax at all in 2018 and 2017.

At least it was accurate. I don't think anyone here is cheering tax evasion on or denying there are problems There clearly are. Let's at least be honest about it though.

Re: Texas electric firm files for bankruptcy citing $1.8B in claims

#240

Post by [deleted] »

8note wrote: post #226
jonplackett wrote: post #41

This is the side of privatisation that gets ignored. When private companies screw up, who gets left with the bill? Private companies have no incentive to be ready for really big problems because they know they’ll get bailed out, or just not have to pay. Privatise the profit, socialise the losses.

I'm not clear why shareholders aren't on the hook for these cases, on a per share basis. The individual owners can declare bankruptcy instead of the business

[deleted]
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