Apple Nearly Worth 1 Trillion Dollars

[79wjd]

1 minute ago, Swatson said:

That logic right there is why they get away with it, you are part of the problem.

That's not the problem at all. The problem is that the loopholes exist. Only a moron wouldn't take advantage of perfectly legal ways to not spend money.

[Beskamir]

Soooo how much longer until Apple can build an orbital ring around earth and consider it a minor expense? (If they actually build an orbital ring I'll stop hating them regardless of how much they exploit their customers and provide horribly over priced products)

[S w a t s o n]

Just now, Dan Castellaneta said:

The implication here is that Apple is the only company that gets away with it, and that implication is misleading as hell.

No the implication is that Apple was the grossest example to ever occur AFAIK. The "but he did it" excuse helps no one, NO COMPANY should evade taxes but Apple was especially egregious

[S w a t s o n]

3 minutes ago, djdwosk97 said:

That's not the problem at all. The problem is that the loopholes exist. Only a moron wouldn't take advantage of perfectly legal ways to not spend money.

Why do you think they exist.....certainly not because of corporate interests???? Certainly not because Apple bald faced lied and said they totally paid all their owed taxes when in fact they had not. Don't say it was technically true because of the loophole because the fact they still had to pay taxes when they repatriated means you'd be wrong.

[rawrdaysgoby]

Wow must be all the people buying 7000$ macbooks

[S w a t s o n]

2 minutes ago, Nicholatian said:

You never explained why this is a bad thing in the first place, and now you're condemning people for resisting your narrative when they're not even opposed to what you're saying.

 

This is a matter of fact. It's market statistics, the ever-unpredictable economic system that drives the world, and Apple's market cap reaching one trillion dollars has no inherent meaning unless you want to inject ideology into the discussion. People aren't going to have a good time with that.

I'm condemning the celebration of a company amassing the most money in human history through the sale of products with insane margins and tax evasion on scale unheard of previously

[Mooshi]

And Face ID doesn't work unless it's in a very specific orientation, don't want to give engineers any of that scarce cash to fix it now~

[Andreas Lilja]

29 minutes ago, Swatson said:

Not to get too anti-capitalistic or anything but I'm not sure we all see it that way lol. 1 company being worth that much, 1 guy (Bezos) being worth 150 billion... wealth accumulation is accelerating and that money has to come from somewhere

I'm more concerned about absolute poverty than relative inequality 

 

I mean if one person makes a decent salary which covers all its needs, there isn't really oppression. The other is merely hoarding at this point.

[79wjd]

7 minutes ago, Swatson said:

No the implication is that Apple was the grossest example to ever occur AFAIK. The "but he did it" excuse helps no one, NO COMPANY should evade taxes but Apple was especially egregious

Microsoft, Facebook, Google, and Amazon spent more money lobbying to lower taxes than Apple did. Apple might have more foreign money (Microsoft/Google still have significant amounts), but they all lobbied to lower the tax rate.

 

6 minutes ago, Swatson said:

Why do you think they exist.....certainly not because of corporate interests???? Certainly not because Apple bald faced lied and said they totally paid all their owed taxes when in fact they had not. Don't say it was technically true because of the loophole because the fact they still had to pay taxes when they repatriated means you'd be wrong.

I understand why they exist, but you can't blame someone or some company for taking advantage of a legal way to save money -- just like I wouldn't blame someone for waiting for a sale on a product. The government allow the tax loopholes and exemptions to exist, therefore companies should be expected to take full advantage. 

[S w a t s o n]

Just now, Nicholatian said:

Right, it's an ideological position. No matter how he defends himself, you will not be satisfied unless he submits to the ideology you're presenting here, because that's what ideologues do. Really not a good direction for discussion bro.

Well the tax evasion is a legal position, people defending apple's practices as fair because others can do the same are also holding an ideological position instead of trying to fix the problem.

 

Ideologies are meant to be discussed, I really dont see your point here. He doesn't have to agree with me but defending illegal practices is bad

[79wjd]

1 minute ago, Swatson said:

but defending illegal practices is bad

I agree, good thing loopholes and exemptions are legal.

[S w a t s o n]

1 minute ago, djdwosk97 said:

Microsoft, Facebook, Google, and Amazon spent more money lobbying to lower taxes than Apple did (2 million for Apple vs. 14 million for the other four). http://fortune.com/2018/01/18/apple-bonuses-money-us-350-billion-taxes-trump/ 

 

With Microsoft and Google also having a significant (albeit not as significant) amount of foreign cash.

 

I understand why they exist, but you can't blame someone or some company for taking advantage of a legal way to save money -- just like I wouldn't blame someone for waiting for a sale on a product. The government allow the tax loopholes and exemptions to exist, therefore companies should be expected to take full advantage. 

So you mean they went through the appropriate legal avenues?

 

Why should a company be expected to take advantage of a loophole to deprive their home country of BILLIONS of tax revenue? Why do you hold the position that a company MUST make all the money?

[S w a t s o n]

Just now, djdwosk97 said:

I agree, good thing loopholes and exemptions are legal.

Not in all cases, look at ireland deal. Deemed illegal

[S w a t s o n]

1 minute ago, Nicholatian said:

Yeah, that's the vicious thing about an ideological approach: nothing has no ideological bearing, even though this is handily falsifiable. You cannot consider the possibility that someone doesn't give a shit to the colossal scale that you do about matters that none of us can change or do anything about.

What? You guys are discussing this with me and defending it so it seems to matter to you and others, don't try to paint me as the only one with an ideology behind this, you have yours I have mine. Yours is clearly opposite to mine, that's fine

[shermantanker]

3 minutes ago, Swatson said:

Not in all cases, look at ireland deal. Deemed illegal

No, it was legal agreement with the Irish Government, but the EU got their panties in a twist and made it illegal.

[S w a t s o n]

7 minutes ago, shermantanker said:

No, it was legal agreement with the Irish Government, but the EU got their panties in a twist and made it illegal.

So it was deemed illegal when the EU found out...

 

Things have to be deemed illegal, illegal is not the default state of the world

[79wjd]

9 minutes ago, Swatson said:

So you mean they went through the appropriate legal avenues?

 

Why should a company be expected to take advantage of a loophole to deprive their home country of BILLIONS of tax revenue? Why do you hold the position that a company MUST make all the money?

For the same reason that the vast majority of individuals, myself included, will take advantage of sales to deprive companies from the full profits on their products, and the retailers from their full share of the profits. The same reason why the vast majority of people, myself included, will happily take advantage of any tax exemptions. 

 

[S w a t s o n]

3 minutes ago, Nicholatian said:

No, and that's all I've been explaining is that some people aren't diametrically opposed to you simply because you perceive a disconnect as disagreement. People can easily have meaningful opinions about current events and not be locked into an ideology of how everything ought to be until they drop dead.

At no point have I said or implied that. I have made logical consistent arguments, to be fair this is more specifically about my opinion on apple and not an overarching ideology. I'm fine with the other 3 companies making trillions

 

1 minute ago, djdwosk97 said:

For the same reason that the vast majority of individuals, myself included, will take advantage of sales to deprive companies from the full profits on their products, and the retailers from their full share of the profits; and the same reason why the vast majority of people, myself included, will happily take advantage of any tax exemptions. 

 

A company decides to hold a sale, you aren't depriving them against their will or knowledge

A tax exemption is not the same thing as having an offshore account which, many people do

[S w a t s o n]

Just now, Nicholatian said:

I'm going off of your behaviour, not your words.

So basically pulling non-sequiturs from where the sun don't shine?

[DrMacintosh]

It’s not possible! Apple makes the most overpriced and stupid phones/computers in the world! I can buy/build a phone/computer for *insert some lofty percentage of dollar value of savings* that does all the same things! Why would anyone buy Apple!?

 

/s 

 

Apple has a market, and they know how to make products for people in that market that they want and didn’t even know they needed. 

 

I’m sure the investors are very happy with Tim Cook at the helm. 

 

On a side note, I would like to see Apple bring more production to the US, it’s just that prices would also go up so that’s a tough trade off. 

[79wjd]

7 minutes ago, Swatson said:

At no point have I said or implied that. I have made logical consistent arguments, to be fair this is more specifically about my opinion on apple and not an overarching ideology. I'm fine with the other 3 companies making trillions

 

A company decides to hold a sale, you aren't depriving them against their will or knowledge

A tax exemption is not the same thing as having an offshore account which, many people do

Just like a government decides to allow loopholes to exist. Just because you view it as different doesn't change the fact that the tax code doesn't. 

[S w a t s o n]

Just now, djdwosk97 said:

Just like a government decides to allow loopholes to exist. And just because you view it as different doesn't change the fact that the tax code doesn't. 

The government doesn't "decide" to allow loopholes to exist. Lots of people in government want to close them but you have lobbyists funding other members of government to allow it to keep happening. The US government doesn't want companies to be able to do what Apple did...why do you think they made such a fuss and had the money repatriated?

[DrMacintosh]

45 minutes ago, Shorty88jr said:

How insane it's sad that they convinced so many people to buy products with insane mark-ups to create huge margins. This should be a wake-up call for people that Apple is ripping people off because a company selling only a handful of products should not be the first to hit a 1 trillion dollar value over Amazon and Alphabet who have tons of investments and products. 

A product or item is only worth as much as people are willing to pay for it. Just because you don’t believe a specific item isn’t worth the asking price doesn’t mean that millions of others agree with you. 

 

Apple sells their products at the prices they ask for them, meaning at the very least, they are worth it to some people. 

[Blade of Grass]

20 minutes ago, Swatson said:

Why should a company be expected to take advantage of a loophole to deprive their home country of BILLIONS of tax revenue? Why do you hold the position that a company MUST make all the money?

Why? Because Apple has a legal obligation to act in the best (financial) interest of their shareholders, which means that they should work to reduce their tax burden through legal means (loopholes are legal means). Whether or not it's morally justifiable is a different question, but from the perspective of why are they expected to? Because the people who give them money and own them expect them too (like any corporation)

[79wjd]

Just now, Swatson said:

The government doesn't "decide" to allow loopholes to exist. Lots of people in government want to close them but you have lobbyists funding other members of government to allow it to keep happening. The US government doesn't want companies to be able to do what Apple did...why do you think they made such a fuss and had the money repatriated?

So part of the government doesn't want loopholes; the majority does (for one reason or another) -- in either case, the majority of the government -- and therefore the government as a whole -- allows tax exemptions.