By SN
Saturday June 6, 2009
Slashdot – June 6, 2009:
“Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer is threatening to move Microsoft employees offshore if Congress enacts President Obama’s plans to curb tax avoidance by US corporations. ‘It makes US jobs more expensive,’ complained billionaire Ballmer. ‘We’re better off taking lots of people and moving them out of the US as opposed to keeping them inside the US.’ According to 2006 reports, Microsoft transferred $16 billion in assets to secretive Dublin subsidiaries to shave billions off its US tax bill. ‘Corporate tax is part of the overall advantage of doing business in Ireland,’ acknowledged Ballmer in 2005. ‘It would be disingenuous to say otherwise.'”
# 32 JimR said, “Microsoft is a cheat. They are using the resources of the US and paying Ireland for them.”
What resource are they using and not paying for? Got a list or are you just blowing hot air?
None of the articles you linked to quoted Ballmer as saying “Fuck you.” Watch those quotation marks, SN. The last thing we need in this world is the media spreading around lies and wrong information.
#23:
“Frankly, if most the these rapacious international corporations left entirely, and we instituted policies to give small businesses real benefits”
You think we’d be fine with only small businesses? Who do you think they sell to?
They need big corporations as customers. Drive out the big bad evil corps, and you’re going to put a ton of small businesses out of business.
Whatever country we drive our big corps away to will enjoy an explosion of small business growth, and we’ll see a string of small business closures.
I’m glad Ballmer is taking a stand so quickly to teach this administration what anyone with an Econ 101 education already knows.
So Obama is the bad guy for enforcing the tax rules that three republican presidents put into place before him. Out of the past 28 years, 20 of those years were under a republican president. Why didn’t the republican presidents cancel all corporate taxes when they had the chance?
I don’t get all this whining from the republicans. Republicans need to stop with the boogey man and religious policies and start concentrating on businesses and small government.
Big corporations and the super-rich are bad for America.
The sooner we learn this, as a country, the better off we’ll be.
>> Alfred1 said,
>> “fair tax”
And remember, everybody, “fair” to a conservative means “favors the rich.”
# 37 bac said, “Why didn’t the republican presidents cancel all corporate taxes when they had the chance?”
Umm, because Presidents can’t cancel laws? Anything thing else you need to know about how our laws operate?
“Taxes are the price we pay to live in a civilized society” — Oliver Wendell Holmes.
Don’t like taxes? Move to Somalia.
Ireland, corporate money launderer.
#42 – pfkad – Don’t like taxes? Move to Somalia.
Good quote.
India and Brazil are two good options for countries that aren’t in a depression and have growing economies.
If you want the tax base to totally tank go with what some of you have been saying.
Ireland is a classic example of a country that took a chance after years of failure and cut its taxes and spending to the bone and found out it was taking in more money than before then repeated. The rest of the EU is pissed at it and is leaning on it to increase taxes hoping to drive jobs their way or at least prevent jobs from leaving.
When the government tries to take too much of the gnp people/businesses that can leave will leave. They will take jobs, often high paying jobs, with them.
They aren’t the first and they won’t be last because in the end if they don’t move their business somebody else somewhere else will have their business anyway.
GM China is making big bucks because that country is a great place for a car company right now. They aren’t wasting nearly as much money on paychecks including the paychecks of managers and the system is set up to encourage them. The business of China is business.
A American President once said that about the United States. It isn’t true any more. My take on a major reason we aren’t going to be the last great super power or even the top dog in ten years.
In the end, businesses have to make a profit or the go out of business. The more profit they make the more they can spend on upgrading their company, pay, perks, and benefits. And of course the more business they have and the more they are making the more taxes they can pay. If they aren’t in black they can’t share profits they didn’t make.
#39 And where does all the money and jobs come from that just left? You won’t have an empty tin can left to piss in. You’ll be digging up the land fills with hand tools to recycle anything worth a half penny.
#36 You think we’d be fine with only small businesses? Who do you think they sell to?
They need big corporations as customers. Drive out the big bad evil corps, and you’re going to put a ton of small businesses out of business.
Certainly a lot of parasitic companies and temp staffing firms that larger businesses use to minimize their on balance sheet employment load, and make it easier to get rid of employees on a moment’s notice by terminating corporate contracts rather than personelle contracts, would be hurt if large businesses went away.
But those businesses aren’t much in the business of the meeting the communities needs, they are in the business of meeting the needs of their corporate teat. Indeed, using fragmentary or front corporations with contracts to do dirty business is a trick as old as the sands.
What I propose is that we build things and do things that people want, in the way that most small business does, rather than making the needs of the mega-corporate ‘person’ reign supreme, particularly since their needs apparently now include the need to break the law.
#46 Your statement would have been pointed a year ago, but Ireland is suffering some of the worst of the current downturn because their low taxes and high growth were founded on credit. Indeed, the entire globalist miracle has been bought on borrowed and printed money.
It was fake.
Perhaps we should start actually working within our means a bit and try to produce the best things and services we can without going into debt doing it?
Small businesses don’t get government handouts when they are drowning in debt. They go out of business. Living trillions beyond one’s means are solely the purview of big governments and big business.
#23- Yes!
Though I do wish to avoid the cult of small business worship, as well. I’ve known some pretty rapacious and amoral small business owners as well. Though, they don’t enjoy the leverage of multinationals– market forces still can apply to those folks and can punish their misdeeds.
#42
So, why not make the tax rate 100%? After all, more “must” be better right? The optimal tax rate is measured on a curve. At some point, increasing (or decreasing) taxes lowers your tax revenue.
Government’s rely on the fact that knowing all the places where you are getting bitten by taxes is difficult and thus they try to hide taxes in as many places as possible which is why the VAT is so insidious.
#47
If Microsoft disappeared tomorrow, the effect on the economy would be devastating. Forgetting the people employed directly by Microsoft, there are hundreds of thousands of people that use their technology to produce solutions for other companies both small and large.
> What I propose is that we build
> things and do things that people
> want, in the way that most small
> business does, rather than making
> the needs of the mega-corporate
> ‘person’ reign supreme, particularly
> since their needs apparently now
> include the need to break the law.
If it costs more to build something than you are able to sell it, should they continue to make that item? What if it is cheaper to make that item overseas? What if said item is substantially cheaper to make in massive volume than in smaller volumes (economies of scale)? Small businesses have their benefits but their costs as well. “Mega-corporations” did not come to be because they were less profitable.
If Obama proposed to close the loopholes in exchange for lower corporate taxes to offset the costs, I think most businesses would be inline for that. The problem is that the governments (city, county, State, and Federal) keep raising corporate taxes to offset losses due to effective tax avoidance (not evasion). Close the loopholes and you are in effect raising corporate taxes.
Let me add that Microsoft is one of the few corporations that actually still produces something in the US. So, by pushing them to relocate overseas, you are effectively moving more production overseas.
#47:
“Certainly a lot of parasitic companies and temp staffing firms”
This is *not* what I’m talking about.
For example, take my hometown. GE operates their train biz there.
They are one of the largest corps in the world, and they leverage that size to sell their trains all over the world. A small business couldn’t pump out the train-a-week like they do and ship it to China.
Where do you think they get their parts from? My father is one guy out of many managing the purchasing for this single product GE makes. He’s in charge of procuring tens of millions of dollars worth of parts per year, mostly from domestic suppliers.
The suppliers are, almost without exception, small businesses. Like, a factory in the boonies that makes some wacky axle or capacitor that only a production line like that at General Electric can use. Often there’s no product a small biz makes that can use their part.
They need a big corp making a big product, like GE. When train production is up at this GE, a lot of these small suppliers drop all their other customers and supply *only* to GE, because it’s so profitable.
This is happening all over the country. Big corps building big products with components produced at small businesses.
So let me get this straight, you want to live in some fantasy land where all we have are small businesses that “do things that people want, in the way that most small business does?”
People want to work and make money. Get rid of the large corps, and you get rid of big projects like selling trains to China that put money in the pockets of way more than just the 5000 people working at a single GE plant.
But that’s all people like you can see – the big corp, and none of the ‘ecosystem’ surrounding it.
#50 – Thomas – If Microsoft disappeared tomorrow, the effect on the economy would be devastating. Forgetting the people employed directly by Microsoft, there are hundreds of thousands of people that use their technology to produce solutions for other companies both small and large.
Don’t be so absolute. Their products wouldn’t disappear overnight… people would adapt, as they always do… there’s a life after Microsoft.
#52
If Microsoft declared bankruptcy, every development project using Microsoft products would end overnight. No one would want to develop a solution with technology that would have no support in the very near future. The effect on jobs and taxes would be devastating. Then there is the effect on corporate costs which would temporarily sky rocket (which means prices would go up) as everyone scrambled to dump every MS product used in their corporation as fast as possible.
Granted, that scenario is not about to happen. However, what definitely could happen is that MS changes its status to be a foreign corporation and moves most of its production overseas and leaves a US subsidiary. No one would notice any difference in their software. The only difference would be the massive loss in tax revenue to the US, the State of WA, King County and the city of Redmond.
#51 I think that you are misconstruing my argument. I agree that certain large businesses are useful; producing planes and trains is difficult and requires a corporation of an appropriate size and complexity to the task. However, most multinational corps have actually grown far too large to produce a decent product. For instance, GE light bulbs suck, and their trains could be better. Why must one company make both? Perhaps a bit of focus on GE’s part would make their trains better, or perhaps allow them to sell some more of those trains round these parts. I also agree that certain large business produce secondary effects in the people they employ and the business they bring to the area and parts suppliers, but I also think that if split into smaller focused companies, they would employ more people with less executive overhead, and probably employ more of these secondary people in turn. You seem to think that need for the products the big corps make would dissapear with them. Without their ability to break the law and hide money in various places, small businesses would be much more competitive in their ability to provide those services. They would employ more people, who would need haircuts and deli sandwhiches the same way that GE employees need those services. And they would be much more responsive to the market if they should behave in abusive ways. When you are as generally focussed and Generally in control of the market as GE, why bother to make a better light bulb?
There would be fewer $100 million CEO’s though. Boo hoo.
#50 No, mega-corporations came about through endless government intervention in the pursuit of imperialism and resource exploitation, from the East India company on. You need to brush up on your history a bit, and realize that without exploitation and government largess, the large business as it existed yesterday and continues to exist today would be highly unprofitable, and thus would not exist.
#54
> No, mega-corporations
> came about through
> endless government
> intervention in the
> pursuit of imperialism
The concept of economies of scale alone argues against this. Some products are much cheaper in volume than in smaller quantities which means many small corporations making a given product will be more expensive than a larger corporation. In addition, you are ignoring vertical markets. There are more reasons for a corporation to get large than simply government intervention. If that were the case, then how would any corporation ever get to be large in the first place?
Using the EIC for example, do you think it would have been cheaper for many small one boat operations to extract resources than for a corporation with a fleet at its disposal? Aside the consolidation of rights to natural resources, there is the issue of capital resources for ships and efficient purchasing of materials by being able to purchase in bulk. The EIC did not become a large corporation because of government intervention. They became a large, profitable corporation on their own and used that power to influence political institutions to become even more powerful.
If MS goes AWAY, does that mean we dont need to pay $300 for the software??
LET them leave.
the USA/CANADA/GB have the BEST laws to protect them from Pirating.. Without these countries, MS has NO PROTECTIONS, and no country to Back them.
#54:
“have actually grown far too large to produce a decent product.”
Where does this myth come from that only small companies produce good products while big companies produce only shitty products?
“their trains could be better.”
Where are you getting this from?
“Why must one company make both?”
If the one company can make both products at the lowest cost, then that company *should* make both products.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with this.
“Perhaps a bit of focus on GE’s part would […] allow them to sell some more of those trains round these parts.”
Exports are bad? You’ve never bemoaned the trade deficit? How is selling everything domestically going to help?
“they would employ more people with less executive overhead”
GE is known for brutal performance assessments that are applied all the way to the top positions. Their work groups are pared down to the bare minimum. GE already has very little ‘executive overhead.’
“There would be fewer $100 million CEO’s though. Boo hoo.”
And we finally get to the real reason you don’t like big corps. Not because they’re inefficient, but because you don’t like the executive pay rate.
#57:
They’ll still sell Americans the software at $300 a pop. How could one country take them to court for charging another country monopoly prices?
# 42 pfkad said, “Taxes are the price we pay to live in a civilized society” — Oliver Wendell Holmes.
Where in the hell is that?
#60 – web – Where in the hell is that?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilization
i have seen the comments in here of economies of scale being the main driver for the justification for larger companies. I think you seem to forget something. after you get so large, you become inefficient because you end up having “too many chiefs and not enough braves”. as well, you see companies that are considered “too large to fail”. if the company is too large to fail, isn’t it too large period?
The problem here is really one of moderation and ethics.
I’ve had enough of the bickering in the news and the snide comments made by both sides about the state of things.
I know that this is the real world and times are changing but …someone please let me off!!
#62 – Jim M – …after you get so large, you become inefficient because you end up having “too many chiefs and not enough braves”. as well, you see companies that are considered “too large to fail”.
So true. You bury the ingenious mavericks in a heap of bureaucracy. This is where inventors and innovators come to die.
#66 – myself…
That should have been #63 – Jim M.
#65 – pedro – Yeah, who wants a company that can give such a large number of jobs. That’s what goverments are for. Go to NK, it seems you job paradise.
¿Que?