You are making it sound like the fact that google is paying 2% is a problem... (if that's in fact even true)
but it's not, because any income reaching it's shareholders will get taxed:
2% (what google pays) + 43% (dividend rate that Obama is proposing)=45%
which is likely higher than what Minte pays now...

and 2% is unusual, on average for big corporations it's probably more like 20%, so combined tax rate would be 63%... which seems relatively high?

Google 2.4% Rate Shows How $60 Billion Lost to Tax Loopholes

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-1...loopholes.html

and your calculation is nonsense (sorry) since no company ever pays their full profit (after taxes) as dividends

and now i would like to see where Obama proposes to raise the tax on financial gains from 15% to 43%

plus we all know that even if he did that, it's only to end up at 25% or something like that after negotiations

here - for everyone to learn how to avoid taxes - takes a little effort though ;)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_Irish_arrangement

"the highest tax on dividends is set to go up to 43% under that scenario for the highest income earners."

http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/break...130824731.html


how are my calculations nonsense? even if corporation ends up paying 0%, shareholders will still pay 43% so combined tax on the income can not be less than 43%....

....and besides the idea that corporations pay low tax rate is a bit misleading, it makes for good headlines, but all that is happening is the tax gets deferred into the future... (it's kinda exactly like if you would have an offshore bank account, you would pay no taxes until you wanted to bring that $$ back to the US, at which point it would be taxed...)

first of all the main sentence here is:

so it's 20% on capital gains, not 43%

second: treating dividends as ordinary income doesnt mean they get taxed at 43% - only when you are in the highest tax bracket anyways

and third: it will only happen when the fiscal cliff happens

so you are spreading misinformation here

also even at 500 trillion profit a company can still decide to pay no dividends and keep it all for themselves.

and if its double taxation is debatable anyways

you simply don't understand the world you live in.
Countries around the world are fighting over jobs. The smart ones are lowering or eliminating corporate taxes. The dumb ones like the US are not. Until the US gets business people instead of politicians running the country, the Mintes of the country will get screwed. If the US gives google an ultimatum, google will simply leave the US. Just as any other intelligent corporation would do.

thats exactly why i suggest to unify tax rates worldwide and close tax heavens

and with a tax rate of 2.4% Google has left the US already - virtually.

besides income tax for their US employees of course, but that they do have to pay everywhere else too.

the market will eventually unify the corporate tax rates worldwide to zero.
Whether you understand this or not, taxes world wide are too high. Take for example the US. If the bottom 47% was forced to pay "their fair share" the way they demand it of the top, our government and our spending policies would look quite different.
You need to climb out of the trap you've fallen into mistaking politicians for leaders.

and no need to get personal btw - i studied economics long enough and run my own company long enough to disagree with that statement.

besides working several years for Siemens and Henry Schein (big US company, feel free to look it up :winkwink: )

we just disagree on how the subject should be handled - and just cause someone has a different opinion, it doesnt mean he has less clue.

80+ trillion in unfunded liabilities and they're calling this a cliff?! More like a crack.

Maybe it's time to play out "Trading Places" with Eddie Murphy and Dan Aykroyd. Let's see how that plays out in real life :)

I'm not getting personal. You simply don't understand the subject (regardless of where you used to work)
The world today is a different place than it was when the US instituted draconian corporate tax rates. The US used to be able to say,"if you want to do business in our safe, stable country, regulated by the rule of law, its going to cost you the highest tax rate in the civilized world. if you don't like it, fuck you" Now, corporations can say,"there are plenty of other safe, stable, countries who offer the same protections under the rule of law and they don't charge your outrageous tax rate. so fuck you"

someone brought up earlier that 47% don't pay any federal income taxes....

so let me guess, the solution is to squeeze more $$ out of the 53% that do pay taxes?
and better yet, the more productive someone is, the more taxes we should squeeze out of them?

corporate taxes, "top 1%", "high income earners", etc, is all just a misdirection, it all comes down to trying to squeeze more $$ out of those that actually produce in our society, no?

Robbie,

GE didn't take all the legal deductions that were available like you or I do. They write the tax code to suit their interests and demand tax breaks from municipalities not offered to anyone else. The New York Times reported a few days ago just how much that costs and how little that helps our society. When a company like GM gets millions in tax credits from a state to keep a plant open there and then closes the plant anyway a few years later, the public is stuck with the debt burden and the company walks away with the benefit. It works the same way internationally.

The UK is now dealing with companies like Google and Starbucks paying 0 taxes while local businesses are being taxed at too high a rate to compensate for the loss in revenue. The US has some people who earn a million dollars paying 3x the rate paid by other people earning the same amount. The tax system is broken globally in much the same way piracy laws are broken globally. Nations are being marginalized by corporations, Jamie Dimon has more clout than the leader of most nations.

Madalton is correct that the solution is a series of moves to unify rates, but we are very far away from making those sorts of international deals. In the meantime, just as a 3% tax break won't stop Minte from eventually automating his operations, allowing Goldman Sachs to pay 2% does nothing to stabilize or improve our economy. Throwing cash at welfare recipients is not the answer, whether they are on welfare making $30.00 per year or 300M per year.

just to point out the obvious, you can take 35% of all the profits of all the corps currently able to get around US taxes and it doesn't make a dent in our deficit. we have a spending issue, not a tax issue.

unifying tax rates would be not unlike companies colluding on prices of goods...
competition is good, makes everyone strive to achieve maximum efficiency and forces markets to determine prices / tax rates / etc... :2 cents:

Competition only works to a point. Just because North Korea is willing and able to provide slave labor to Russian lumber interests, that doesn't mean other countries should 'compete' to provide that service more effectively. Having corporate parasites infest countries that compete for them will not benefit the countries that 'win' their residence or 'lose' their interest. It will only benefit the tiny number of people at the top of that pyramid. You may recall a story where there were many slaves working for Pyramid owners. It supposedly didn't work out so well for anyone - in fact it turned out so badly that they wrote a fairly lengthy book about it claiming God intervened and slaughtered the first born of the haves in favor of the have-nots. The book went on to become quite a best seller.

Smart people live a life of luxury without making the masses want to behead them. When the gap between rich and poor becomes too wide, very bad things happen. That remains true every time throughout history. Not the gap between ONE rich person and ONE poor person, the gap between the economic layers of our society. That fact will stay just as true after globalization as it was before it - especially with regard to necessities like food, water, basic health care and energy which are becoming increasingly privatized and insecure.

We can produce all the food we need with a tiny number of people doing the work... but if two companies decide to shut down or sell their goods elsewhere we have an artificial famine nationwide in this country. We have banks too big to fail so our country is subject to the whims of their gamesmanship and unwilling to regulate them effectively, which makes all of our markets less stable rather than more stable. Energy has been outsourced to quasi-private utility companies that destroy entire mountain ranges, leave the east coast without power for weeks after a storm due largely to their own incompetence and get billions in tax incentives thanks to herculean lobbying efforts. The current course toward multinational corporate supremacy over representative nations is not a good thing and it won't last... but it will likely become a bloody mess before it resolves itself. :2 cents:

exactly. Its amazing how the rabble fail to understand this.
The US is paying the price through job loss, income loss, etc. because our government is not efficient and is bloated beyond its citizen's needs.
The problem isn't corporations, its politicians.

so what's the end result you are proposing? one unified world government, right? what will people do? you keep saying that most people will not be needed? so most will not work? while some small percentage will?

:thumbsup

Repetitive mundane tasks were an enormous part of human productivity for centuries. They are now a rapidly decreasing part of human productivity. Working on a farm is very hard labor intensive work that many people were capable of doing. Now we have one machine that can easily do the work of many farmhands. That machine is cheaper, faster, more efficient and better in virtually every way... even if the farmhands are hard workers who try their best to compete with it they will never be better at picking crops than the automated machine will be. Over time that machine becomes less and less expensive to own. Maintenance becomes simpler, cheaper and easier. Meanwhile humans get old, retire, must be replaced by new less efficient employees who require training... it's very much a lost cause for monotonous labor and that will only become more true over time. The same can be said for virtually any other labor intensive mundane task. People worry about working conditions at FoxConn in China where the iPhones are made... twenty years from now those jobs will be automated.

Just because the amount of work needed decreases, that doesn't suddenly make every farm hand capable of becoming an entrepreneur. There has always been a small fraction of society unable to produce because they were disabled, dumb, lazy, crazy or a host of other reasons. That number is rising at a very rapid rate, not because more people are unable but because the minimum requirements to be productive are rising very quickly and the pace is accelerating. In the not too distant future we will be able to produce all that we need with less than half of the population working. More than that, we will have nothing for more than half of the population to do... even if they want to work and are hard working competent people with skills that no longer translate into productive roles in the modern world. There is an old saying that 'the world needs ditch diggers too' but that is quickly becoming false. The world will not need a single ditch digger in the fast approaching future.

At that point automation will move UP the food chain to higher and higher levels of production. Right now we can automate farm workers... we are very close to being able to automate accountants (turbotax), lawyers (legalzoom), real estate agents (zillow), librarians (google), and the list goes on and on. The result will be an increasing number of people not working, and a society that has no work for them to do, while we are able to produce all that they would buy if they had the money to buy things. New areas of automation do not produce new areas of employment. You need 1 guy to fix 10 farm machines... you needed hundreds before the work became automated to do the farm work those machines now accomplish.

If you lift the hood and look at the engine, instead of just staring at the car from ten feet away you'll notice there are some very significant things going on underneath the surface. They have been brewing for decades. The nature of production is changing and we will soon have to make a simple choice. What do we do when more than half the people on the planet are not needed but can live comfortably thanks to the enormous capability of the other half of the people on the planet?

Capitalism requires scarcity of resources. There has to be something to compete over or the system breaks down. We will have a scarcity of luxuries - only one Mona Lisa will exist, but we will not have any scarcity of the basic things people need to live a moderately comfortable life. Food, fuel, shelter, clothing, water, entertainment etc...

Having the producers own a fleet of private jets, exotic cars, football teams, art and land is a good thing... so long as they are providing the rest of society with an opportunity to earn a good quality of life. The wealthy will soon have no opportunity to offer. It's already happening when companies like Goldman Sachs make huge sums of money and provide just about nothing for society in return. Nobody complains about a CEO living like a king when the employees of the company and the public can generally earn a good living, have a pension they can retire on and a workplace they can survive. We are headed for trillion dollar companies staffed by less than 100 people... and 50+% unemployment. Changing the tax rates 2 or 3 points will not prevent that. Cutting spending on entitlements won't fix that. It is a fundamental change that will only be solved by a very different set of societal rules.

If I had the answer I'd be the smartest person alive. The sad thing is that most people do not even understand the importance of the question. :2 cents:

Only the rich people should decide how to unregulate the rich people. The rest are rabble, and who cares what rabble thinks.

Seems legit.

your whole argument assumes that vast majority of people are unable to do more "advanced" work... I don't buy that, people are just lazy, lack motivation, lack right attitude, etc... perhaps not everyone can become a doctor, but nearly everyone can be trained to perform a relatively "advanced" work...

for example: imagine some minimum wage worker, you tell him that you will train him for free to become a car mechanic AND guarantee him a $500k/year income...

don't you think most people would be able to complete the training and would be able to perform a job of a car mechanic? I'm 100% sure there would be lines to signup for this program, proving that majority of the people are in fact capable of doing more advanced work and are not getting trained for reasons other than lack of ability...

so the question becomes, why aren't most minimum wage workers getting training so they can perform more productive work?

people like yourself, who pay nothing, should have the least say. In that you're right.


for example, if you were an advocate for all Bush era tax cuts to end, you'd have a valid point of view. Pointing your finger at your betters and demanding more from only them because they were bold, intelligent, and industrious makes you a parasite.

Don't worry, the Republitards will cave, or they will continue losing elections and support until they are COMPLETELY irrelevant...

http://sphotos-b.xx.fbcdn.net/hphoto...73473747_n.jpg

Facts - they'll get you every time!

I love how the rabble use these charts in their uneducated arguments.
How do you think earnings were calculated, checked, etc. during the time before computers?
What was the BOTTOM tax rate during those times?
It wasn't ZERO like you rabble pay now.:1orglaugh

on the other hand, of course the poor people should be the ones deciding how much everyone should be taxed and how that tax revenues should be spent.. :error

cause after all, the poor are usually the most educated, the best at managing money and they contribute the most themselves :helpme

Seems legit. :)

The rich gettin' richer.....
Poor, poor pitiful me.








I was here.

It isn't only entire careers, it is also the simpler aspects of complex careers. For example, simple wills, simple incorporation filings and such were a very easy part of a lawyer's job that brought in easy money and less able attorneys made money providing them. Now legalzoom handles all of that for next to nothing.

You won't need car mechanics for the vast majority of the work being done... especially the routine, mundane work. You already don't need nearly as many now as you once did back in the day. Any idea how many oil changes 2 guys at a Jiffy Lube can complete in one day? Simple tasks are already automated, automation starts at the very bottom end and then gradually works its way up to higher and higher levels of functionality.

At the same time, products are being produced to require replacement rather than maintenance. People used to hire a television repairman... now you just buy a new television because the parts and labor would cost more than a new set in most cases. The same is true for virtually every kitchen appliance and may soon become true for cars. A car that costs 10K and works well for 10 years with virtually zero maintenance is not too far off down the road. When it breaks down and needs more than a simple oil change people will get a new one. The 'skateboard power plant' design of hydrogen concept cars are based on the idea that 90% of your car will be 'swapped out' into a new body and interior each time you want a new vehicle.

You are looking at how labor has been your whole life... which is easy to do. Labor will not be the way you are used to, and that change is likely less than 50 years away. Products will be disposable or plug and play, services will be automated (even difficult ones), routine tasks will be done by machines not humans. Even things like driving a car are becoming automated thanks to Google.... once that is perfected, do you have any idea how many teamsters, cabbies, bus drivers, etc will be looking for something else to do?

There are many people out of work right now who have certain skills, a real work ethic, and would have made good employees... in the past. That number will grow rapidly in the future.

You should stick you what you know...

http://fetishsoup.com/GFY/12clicksdog.jpg

:1orglaugh :1orglaugh :1orglaugh

Before you get too full of yourself, thinking you are smarter than me and others on here...keep in mind that Johnny Clips thinks the exact same way as your last sentence... :1orglaugh:1orglaugh:1orglaugh:1orglaugh

Woj,

You are a coder... I bet there aren't many occupations that exist where you would be unable to imagine ways to make them more efficient and less labor intensive. At its core, that is all a coder actually does - make tasks less labor intensive and more efficient. Applying that principle to every possible career simultaneously is what leads to less workers needed for greater productivity.

If you needed 10 people to pick all the apples people would buy, and you make a machine that lets you pick all those apples with only 3 employees... that doesn't change how many apples people will buy. At some point you are able to get 'all the apples needed' and adding another employee to increase how many apples you pick doesn't serve any legitimate business purpose. Your company might say 'ok then ill also pick pears and expand' which is great for your company but on a global level any pear you pick is a pear someone else doesn't need to pick... so from a global labor market POV the result remains the same.

Not full of myself at all... and I am sure the people in this conversation can appreciate the question just fine. Most people aren't having this conversation (here or anywhere else). Most people are watching the real housewives on bravo or honeybooboo and many of them can't name the last 3 American presidents in a row starting from Obama and counting backwards. :2 cents:

He's right. It's almost impossible to find info on that. But after googling and googling I finally did.

And not only that...but the "Middle Class" income people that are political gold are paying historically LOW tax rates as well.

Looks like everybody is...you know the FAIR way.

ahhhh the rabble and their silly arguments and pictures. no wonder they don't have a pot to piss in......

Not true...most of them have smart phones and can google up any question you ask them.
It's an age of information.

Obama keeps pushing for a class war. He loves the growing hatred the lazy useless 47% have for working productive Americans. You cannot over tax and oppress people and not expect a response.

Things change and will continue to change... I used to make easy money too, I made $1000s selling scripts that basically do what wordpress does now for free...

it sucks, but I'm not sitting here claiming the sky is falling, I've moved on, I've adapted, as should everyone else... those that don't will fall behind, and they have only themselves to blame... :2 cents:


the point is not that we will need "car mechanics" in the future, I could have used "widget repairmen" instead, the point is that people are capable of performing more advanced work, but they choose not to...

and why are we theorizing about the future, when the problem has existed for a while now? Why are minimum wage workers bitching and whining, instead of getting trained to become "car mechanics" at least tripling their income in the process?

we are in a "recession" now, so I don't think it's appropriate to generalize what the labor market is now, to how things will play out in the future...

Exactly...just before the housing market collapse and subsequent economic collapse at the end of 2008, we were below 5% unemployment.

And anything under that number is considered zero unemployment (takes into account people moving from job to job, etc.)

Relentless is definitely becoming Johnny Clips with his obsession about people not being needed for jobs.

The only reason they aren't working is the housing market failed, took down the banks, and the economy collapsed. Once the housing market stabilizes the economy will begin to creep back (like it is doing now).

Replace "employment" with "aliens/lizard people" and you would get Johnny Clips. :1orglaugh:1orglaugh:1orglaugh (just fucking with you Relentless)

so all the soldiers that fight for your freedom should have the least say?

that sounds.. backwards

everything intelligent sounds backwards to your kind. how many years now have you been in this business working a dead end job?

pretending to be intelligent on a chat board is vastly different than actually BEING intelligent in real life. :thumbsup

Richard, I'm not sure what you are saying there....how do soldiers come into the equation of he statement that 12clicks made?

Also, in my personal opinion, our troops are NOT currently "fighting for our freedom".
Our freedom is not at stake by them occupying other countries.

Every time I hear of one of our troops dying in Afghanistan in 2012, I just shake my head. He just died for no reason. We shouldn't even be there.

So please, don't start this tired story of how our soldiers are fighting for our "freedom". They aren't. They are stuck in a situation that they don't want to be in by our corrupt govt.
The same govt. that many of y'all are demanding that we give MORE money to so they can invade more countries and kill more people. :(

I hate to be the one to break this important news to you... YOU aren't the average person. If 50% of people are unemployed, you would still be likely to find a job somewhere... as would I and most of the people in this conversation. That doesn't change the fact that an increasingly large number of people will become unemployed, it only means you aren't one of them. When 10% of the people are unemployed we deal with it by incarcerating many of them, having a small rash of homeless people, and some welfare recipients. When 50% of the people are unemployed that becomes an insufficient method of dealing with the problem - whether you personally are employed or not.

Pick any profession.... and it is subject to automation. Doctors, Lawyers, software developers, financiers, hair dressers, farm workers, pornstars... pick any profession you like and intelligent people can find ways to get the job done with less workers, cheaper workers, or eventually 0 workers. The only thing that can not be automated (yet) is innovation. So far only humans can come up with good ideas... and only a small number of humans have that ability on a marketable scale. As we move forward the pace of automation accelerates and the amount of man hours needed decreases while production increases. Eventually you have more production than you need with less man hours required than ever before - displacing many people (eventually a majority of people) and what we do with them will be a very important decision.

Yes, now even the dumbest among us can look up information at any moment from anywhere. That doesn't mean they can recall the information from memory, but it does mean that countless hours of human research and interaction on every level of information comprehension or dissemination have been obviated.

what does your insult have to do with my asking for clarification regarding the mental diarrhea you seem to like flinging at the gfy wall?

Are the soldiers that fight for your freedom and defend your nation the last people who should have a say in your country?

This is what you said, i want you to clarify it.

I accidentally dragged you into "workers will not be needed in the future" discussion, but what does that really have to do with anything? It's an interesting topic, but you aren't prepared to offer any evidence to support your viewpoint, besides the obvious fact that some jobs are disappearing (while others are getting created), and you aren't prepared to offer any solutions....

so lets say you are right, so what's the bottom line? What action do we need to take? is the 1.6B tax increase good or bad if what you are saying is true?

what I said (very clearly) was that rabble like yourself, who have accomplished and contributed nothing, should not have a say in how the government is run or how its population is taxed.
When your singular claim to fame is a GFY job hopper, you're just not intelligent enough to tackle those issues.:thumbsup

while i thank you for your opinion, that is all it is.

for the second time, i have never said that more money should be given to the government, i have said that it should be either taken away or redistributed.

this is for the record, i have said this for the second time.

Employees pay income taxes then state taxes, sales taxes and property taxes.

The point being is everyone gets fucked not just one little group of business owners whom happen to have it good right now with lower taxes. The argument isn't about making someone else pay higher taxes but making everyone pay their equal share so the burden isn't stiffed on a specific group like it is right now with the Middle class paying the bulk of the taxes in this country despite earning less money than the 1%.

It's obvious that neither side will actually cut their spending as long as lobbyist own the political system, so until that is fixed we all should be paying for the spending equally. Maybe if "everyone" had to pay their equal amount then perhaps the spending would finally get nipped in the butt.

you are unable to discuss the points in question, and simply revert to attempting to attacking my character to the extent your imagination will allow

which, isn't far.

if that were the argument, we'd be discussing the 47% who pay no income tax, not the 2% who pay most of it.