Google's Tax Scheme Saved it $3.1B

BallerX said:
Wow thanks for fucking the Fed out of 3billion dollars Google. Meanwhile, I pay my taxes, as I must, or the IRS will illegally confiscate my things.:mad:

I would try to say something to the effect of: How many sets of advanced body armor could we have fielded for our soldiers with 3billion dollars? We all know the truth, even if they payed it, our Government would do nothing like that with it.

This kind of shit should be illegal. You better believe that Google isn't the only one who does it either.

This reminds me of the time the Attorney General had to ask several large corporations to stop laundering money for drug cartels. Laissez-faire capitalism at its finest.
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If we had Laissez-faire capitalism, then there would be no problem. Because we do not have Laissez-faire capitalism, there seems to be a problem with this. So how then, can you blame this on Laissez-faire capitalism?
 
After skimming through some of these posts, I see a LOT of history being revised before my very eyes.
 
Tokamak said:
And spy on you. And say who you can and can't marry. And tell you what you can do with your body.

Oh wait...
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The big government liberal apparatus loves to spy on us, especially if it thinks we've been holding out on any cash to which it believes it's entitled (after all, it's the government's money, didn't you know). It also says who you can and can't marry, at least until NAMBLA, polygamists (remember Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints vs. United States (1890)? Mormons today no longer teach/practice polygamy because the Supreme Court back then said who they can and can't marry), and the incestuous hire enough Washington lobbyists to change its money-malleable mind. And it also says what you can and can't do with your body because, just as a severed finger still is a part of your body (though it's no longer attached), so is a born child still just as much a part of the mother's body (at least according to the dubious liberal definition of such) as it was before it fully evacuated the birth canal, and when last I checked, even the most bloodthirsty (for unborn children's blood) of libs still recognized rights for the fully born, even going so far as to arrest parents who discipline their unruly children through spanking for supposed child abuse. At least until Harvard bioethicist Peter Singer, who believes in retroactive abortion up to a month after a child's birth, gains more than a cult following among the left.

As for Google engaging in financial gymnastics (via a method that makes Coney Island shell games look straightforward) in order to keep more of the money it legitimately earned, it is a bit contradictory when you consider the political causes and candidates it supports domestically. Businesses as successful as Google don't tend to flourish in command economies (i.e. socialistic ones), so why they go on to promote polititians who propose the perpetual pilfering of our pocketbooks seems a bit strange to me, if not outright suicidal. Still, as opposed as I might be to some of the causes and policies Google endorses, I maintain that its money is better spent by it than by bloated and covetous government bureaucrats with dollar (or Euro or Renminbi) shaped pupils who instantly salivate at the notion of seizing someone else's money. I trust that Eric E. Schmidt can better decide how Google's money is spent than can Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid.
 
jiminator said:
So Obama tried to fix any of this stuff? No, it was free government health care for everyone. That's the promise anyway. People have come to realize the health care will not be free, and government borrowing money is also not free. Every person in this country needs to balance their budget or they go broke. The government needs to abide by the same rules. If it is financing 30% of the national budge via debt then the obvious answer is that the government needs to be cut by a minimum of 30%. This happens all the time in "evil" corporations.

The way the government is being run today is extremely shortsighted. Think of the chaos and probably millions of deaths that would result if our government collapses. It cannot happen? Happens all the time in other countries. But then I guess housing values always go up also, right?

You can't tax to fix this mess. Taxes make everything worse. Governement needs to be reduced to live within its means. All the blanket guarantees need to go. Government has no mandate to be daddy for everyone from conception to the grave. That is personal responsibility.
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Only reason Health Care took so long was because of ignorant stonewalling with no actual solutions or positive discussions occurring. Both sides of the aisles are guilty for ignoring the other but the Republicans are purely responsible for tying up Congress for the better part of a year for what amounts to absolutely nothing. They literally just said "No!" alot. If I could do that for a year and collect 200k, I'd pull my name off the Do Not Call List. You are correct that Health Care isn't free but prices will drop with competition and hospitals will get cheaper once they don't have to worry about Medicare giving them an unfair cut and no-pay, uninsured people getting heart transplants. The system has huge problems and doing nothing wasn't solving anything.

You are absolutely correct that the government needs to trim it's budget. And here is the only real solution: Cut the entire defense department save the Coast Guard, National Guard and the VA. Shut down all wars and all overseas bases, decommission half of the US Navy and move all warplanes home. Fire the entire standing Army and all Marines and all associated contractors. Do that immediately and our budget will be balanced immediately and we can focus purely on defending our borders. Then again, about a million military trained people will be out of a job so... nope, no real good solution. You could cut all the fat and pork and crap you want out of the budget and you'd still see the Defense Department eating the lion's share of the budget, almost putting us in a deficit by itself.
 
health care reducing costs? simple economics state when demand for a product goes up the prices also go up. Where are the savings coming from? Congress talks a lot about medicare savings. That equals less money for hospitals and doctors. How will hospitals become cheaper? A lot of the savings also come from shifting the burdens to the states instead of federal. Where is the money going to come from to pay for that? The biggest gotcha at all is that in most cases it is cheaper to pay penalties for health care until you get sick, then get insurance which cannot be denied to you. Health insurance works today because you cannot do these "tricks". Tomorrow it won't work. Insurance companies have already reacted to stuff like this by denying any *NEW* insurance policies to kids for example. Let the government pick up the bills for them.

As for military cuts, yeah, I am for that. 30% sounds good. Get rid of the entire homeland department. A total waste of money protecting us from imaginary threats. Terrorism as a threat is meaningless. you can have a dozen bombings every year and people are still thousands of times much likelier to die when they get in a car or when they pick up that whopper.
 
satsunada said:
Only reason Health Care took so long was because of ignorant stonewalling with no actual solutions or positive discussions occurring. Both sides of the aisles are guilty for ignoring the other but the Republicans are purely responsible for tying up Congress for the better part of a year for what amounts to absolutely nothing. They literally just said "No!" alot. If I could do that for a year and collect 200k, I'd pull my name off the Do Not Call List. You are correct that Health Care isn't free but prices will drop with competition and hospitals will get cheaper once they don't have to worry about Medicare giving them an unfair cut and no-pay, uninsured people getting heart transplants. The system has huge problems and doing nothing wasn't solving anything.

You are absolutely correct that the government needs to trim it's budget. And here is the only real solution: Cut the entire defense department save the Coast Guard, National Guard and the VA. Shut down all wars and all overseas bases, decommission half of the US Navy and move all warplanes home. Fire the entire standing Army and all Marines and all associated contractors. Do that immediately and our budget will be balanced immediately and we can focus purely on defending our borders. Then again, about a million military trained people will be out of a job so... nope, no real good solution. You could cut all the fat and pork and crap you want out of the budget and you'd still see the Defense Department eating the lion's share of the budget, almost putting us in a deficit by itself.
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You’re kidding me right? The Democrats have control of Congress and the Presidency. If healthcare was such a great idea they could pass whatever they wanted. However, and lot of moderate Dems thought it was a bad idea as well. Republicans have very little power to stop anything Obama wanted to do. It's members of his own party that have made it difficult.

Bottom line is Obama didn't need a Republican vote for healthcare. The law is pure pork garbage like everyone else congress has passed for years including the Republican years as they weren't any better. Just the lesser of two evils.
 
What is th edifference between a demacrat and a republican???? The color of their tie.
They are all the same these days, money hungry grubs on both sides of the aisle.
I don't trust any of them.
 
Good for Google. Foreign income should not be subject to taxes in the USA anyway.
 
1 said:
If we had Laissez-faire capitalism, then there would be no problem. Because we do not have Laissez-faire capitalism, there seems to be a problem with this. So how then, can you blame this on Laissez-faire capitalism?
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Actually, our sort of fringe obsession with achieving Laissez-faire capitalism as described by the cult of Ayn Rand and somehow ingrained in our psyches since the 80's with Reagan is exactly the kind of nonsensical thinking that gets us into these kind of problems. See: Greenspan. What they've done over the years is sold you and everyone else a weirdly false set of purported facts. Most people probably have comparatively next to nothing to take so why are we vehemently against tax law that's significantly more linear than the progressive tax system of the 50's etc... supposedly the golden years of this country? Why do we want things to be well.. worse than when they were good? All Reagan really seemed to understand was that he didn't feel like he took home enough money when he was an actor since there were little tax breaks for entertainers so he grabbed Greenspan and off they went.

Further, the perversion of Adam Smith (the intellectual father of our economic system as outlined by the "founding fathers" everyone loves to reference) is mind-blowing. This link will explain better than I can:
http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2010/03/adam-smith-and-the-role-of-government.html

The problem isn't Democrats or Republicans, Liberal or Conservative. The problem is a complete lack of understanding of Economics and a touch of revisionist history. Ron Paul and Peter Schiff are perfect examples of this. Look at how many uneducated people jumped on that train. A gold standard implemented in any way would demolish this country's ability to compete in a global economy. More than that, Gold is bubbling hard right now and any scarcity based money standard is subject to major problems when demand for the standard changes. Neither of them have any real economic knowledge. Schiff's investment firm lost clients a ton of money despite him "predicting" doom and gloom. His claims about gold and all this hype is just feeding another moronic bubble.

What's interesting now is the renewed academic interest in Institutional Economics. Where everyone was down on Galbraith etc 10-20 years ago, now everyone is rereading this stuff and trying to model institutional economics through newer institutions.

It's like a giant perfect storm of dumb where people are like "founding fathers this!" "adam smith that!" and there are all of these appeals to authority and better times when people don't even understand what they're quoting! The problem isn't one party or the other or Obama, it's that we've been largely sold up the river. Now, our tax system and even our IDEAS of what is fair are completely perverted. For years we've been told about freedom and tax structures and founding fathers but is that really an issue at all?

You realize that when the founding fathers were around, you had to charter a corporation and it could only last 1-2 years or something to complete a task? There was really no such thing as a multinational... or even a major company that crossed states lines. They were against government-sponsored corporations like the East India Companies and I think this is where some of the confusion lies. Take a look online about founding fathers and corporations. Most of them probably would have opposed the rights they have now.

It's easy to understand HOW this all came to be though. Charters were changed, corporations were allowed to exist, and then the Delaware Effect happened where regulations were dropped and taxes were dropped as everyone tried to attract jobs. Too much to write here but blaming the left or the right is silly... blame the perversion of History, blame the use of anti-communist propaganda to promote ideals as being distinctively "American" that never really were so. This alone has just confused everyone and made us bicker constantly.
 
InternationalHat said:
Actually, our sort of fringe obsession with achieving Laissez-faire capitalism as described by the cult of Ayn Rand and somehow ingrained in our psyches since the 80's with Reagan is exactly the kind of nonsensical thinking that gets us into these kind of problems. See: Greenspan. What they've done over the years is sold you and everyone else a weirdly false set of purported facts. Most people probably have comparatively next to nothing to take so why are we vehemently against tax law that's significantly more linear than the progressive tax system of the 50's etc... supposedly the golden years of this country? Why do we want things to be well.. worse than when they were good? All Reagan really seemed to understand was that he didn't feel like he took home enough money when he was an actor since there were little tax breaks for entertainers so he grabbed Greenspan and off they went.

Further, the perversion of Adam Smith (the intellectual father of our economic system as outlined by the "founding fathers" everyone loves to reference) is mind-blowing. This link will explain better than I can:
http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2010/03/adam-smith-and-the-role-of-government.html

The problem isn't Democrats or Republicans, Liberal or Conservative. The problem is a complete lack of understanding of Economics and a touch of revisionist history. Ron Paul and Peter Schiff are perfect examples of this. Look at how many uneducated people jumped on that train. A gold standard implemented in any way would demolish this country's ability to compete in a global economy. More than that, Gold is bubbling hard right now and any scarcity based money standard is subject to major problems when demand for the standard changes. Neither of them have any real economic knowledge. Schiff's investment firm lost clients a ton of money despite him "predicting" doom and gloom. His claims about gold and all this hype is just feeding another moronic bubble.

What's interesting now is the renewed academic interest in Institutional Economics. Where everyone was down on Galbraith etc 10-20 years ago, now everyone is rereading this stuff and trying to model institutional economics through newer institutions.

It's like a giant perfect storm of dumb where people are like "founding fathers this!" "adam smith that!" and there are all of these appeals to authority and better times when people don't even understand what they're quoting! The problem isn't one party or the other or Obama, it's that we've been largely sold up the river. Now, our tax system and even our IDEAS of what is fair are completely perverted. For years we've been told about freedom and tax structures and founding fathers but is that really an issue at all?

You realize that when the founding fathers were around, you had to charter a corporation and it could only last 1-2 years or something to complete a task? There was really no such thing as a multinational... or even a major company that crossed states lines. They were against government-sponsored corporations like the East India Companies and I think this is where some of the confusion lies. Take a look online about founding fathers and corporations. Most of them probably would have opposed the rights they have now.

It's easy to understand HOW this all came to be though. Charters were changed, corporations were allowed to exist, and then the Delaware Effect happened where regulations were dropped and taxes were dropped as everyone tried to attract jobs. Too much to write here but blaming the left or the right is silly... blame the perversion of History, blame the use of anti-communist propaganda to promote ideals as being distinctively "American" that never really were so. This alone has just confused everyone and made us bicker constantly.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the interesting read.

I disagree on most of your points, and particularly I don't think the "founding fathers" had any notion of economics as a science. Before your post I have never even heard of the economics of the founding fathers except that they did not like taxes without representation. After all, the Wealth of Nations was published in 1776 and at that time there was hardly any consideration of issues like fiat currency.

I don't like large corporations any more than I like large government bureaucracy. I also believe that large corporations are a result of lobbyist which is result of the federal government having too much power.

On top of that, I feel a gold standard is the only way to dampen the business cycle. There are a lot of economist that feel that way, not just Peter Schiff and Ron Paul (who is not an economist.)

And lastly, I am pretty darn educated (don't let me poor writing skill throw you off, lol.) I cannot take an argument seriously when it starts off with a poising the well and ad hominem fallacy.

If you cannot put together an argument without attacking the education or intelligence of the other side, then please don't bother making an argument at all. The only thing that does is push the debate into needless name calling. Either that, you do not care about a meaningful exchange of ideas and merely want to push your own perspective, which if that is the case I don't care to discuss it with you.
 
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