The CTO said they lobby for high regulation in privacy specifically to stifle startups so they can get them cheaper.
Generally politions work with the biggest industry players to craft regulation and it ends up like you described.
As Chomsky points out, propaganda is still useful information, since the angles being portrayed in a debate tells us what a societal elite wants us to see (and conversely, not see)
Is this about the Georgia law forbidding giving water to people waiting in line to vote?
I remember Ron Paul saying we could do away with personal income tax - and providing facts to back up his argument - and people thought he might be crazy.
He also wanted to get rid of the Department of Education (which most people don't understand)
> The United States Department of Education (ED or DoEd), also referred to as the ED for (the) Education Department, is a Cabinet-level department of the United States government. It began operating on May 4, 1980, having been created after the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare was split into the Department of Education and the Department of Health and Human Services by the Department of Education Organization Act, which President Jimmy Carter signed into law on October 17, 1979.
> The Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW) was created on April 11, 1953, when Reorganization Plan No. 1 of 1953 became effective.
From Eisenhower's speech creating HEW:
> The purpose of this plan is to improve the administration of the vital health, education, and social-security functions now being carried on in the Federal Security Agency by giving them departmental rank.
Back to wikipedia:
> The Federal Security Agency (FSA) was an independent agency of the United States government established in 1939 pursuant to the Reorganization Act of 1939. ... The new agency originally consisted of the following major components: (1) Office of the Administrator, (2) Public Health Service (PHS), (3) Office of Education, (4) Civilian Conservation Corps, and (5) Social Security Board.
> Even though the first steps toward public education were taken in 1647 by the Massachusetts Bay Colony and land was set aside for public schools by the Congress of the Confederation in 1785, the idea of universal, free public schools did not become firmly established until the Civil War era. Even then, only half of the States had an efficient public school system.
> In 1867, Congress established the Department of Education to promote the cause of education and collect and disseminate facts and statistics about education. Until it was transferred to the FSA, the Office of Education and its predecessor organization had been part of the Department of the Interior.
So while the DoEd in name wasn't created till 1980, its forebears existed at the Federal level as long as we've had public education in the United States.
Taken from various wikipedia pages, but an overall summary is here:
Like what specific functions do you think the Dept. shouldn't be doing or could be scaled back? Because, like the Dept. of Energy (which is really the Dept. of Nuclear Material Management), I think a lot of people don't understand the purpose of the Dept.
Income tax is a word that disguises the more accurate but insidious term: protection money.
If the govt wanted to to collect money 'legitimately' then should charge for their services. (so for example a big truck can pay more tax than say a car for use of the road).
Of course we know that since governments will generally do a worse job than private entities, so they will stick to income tax.
businesses know how to give profit to shareholders and owners, and they do not know how to do simple things like keeping different departments each from doing work which invalidates the work of the other department.
I mean have you ever worked for a business? they are all giant messes masquerading as organized entities.
it is laughable to think that a business could be better at most things that the government now does.
I can't imagine what experience you've had to believe this. I've been in the work force for 20 years and for the most part, the shittiest businesses I've seen have been magnitudes more competent than what I've seen of government.
Lol, have you ever worked for the government? Nothing will ever clean up their mess. With businesses ( which are not aided by the govt in someway) latest one day they will perish if they are not profitable.
(Yep, I have worked for 3 decades with businesses, and probably know about 10 people who work for the government)
there is a very large swath of reality that you are choosing to ignore.
Large companies ($1B+) that have a negative impact on the environment and society, should pay more taxes to disincentivize the harmful behaviour. On the other hand companies that have a positive impact on the environment and the society should pay less.
Also, any billionaire person who labels themselves as a philanthropist should pay double digit % taxes. After all, through taxes we contribute to public good, infrastructure, social support and public institutions. Privately controlled investment funds labeled as charities don't count. Everyone knows.
As far paying taxes: All these billionaires aren't really making that much money, they're mostly owning stuff that may or may not appreciate. The fact that it does appreciate is now mostly a function of monetary policy. If you want to tax that, you really need a wealth tax, which is essentially confiscatory. Good luck keeping that capital ashore.
Lastly, even if you did somehow manage to keep billionaires around and tax them, it's not really that much revenue. You might as well not bother with it. It sounds unfair, and it is, but "worse is better" in this case.
Okay but how is that actually bad?
The barely profitable parts of Amazon, ie the retail operation, are already pretty comprehensively lousy. Making it unprofitable to more or less monopolize retail, the way Amazon does now, seems like it would open competition back up among ecommerce business on a smaller scale. As I've discovered since quitting Amazon myself, with platforms like Stripe and Shopify, human-scale ecommerce no longer needs to be - or is! - the patchwork headache we all remember unfondly from 2005. The experience at point of sale is consistent, reliable, quick, and pleasant. The money goes to support small businesses, rather than being shoveled directly into the flaming mouth of Mammon. And while it does take a little longer for shipments to arrive, that's actually also a net good because almost nothing actually needs the kind of unsustainable next-day Prime treatment that Amazon's retail operation insists on by default. Without Amazon's perverse incentives toward counterfeit garbage, the rate at which I've had what I get match what I order has so far been 100%. And without Amazon Logistics involved, I can be fairly confident besides that whoever did the work of delivering that order probably was not denied the basic human dignity of access to toilet facilities because of rampant Taylorism or for any other reason.
You've really made a remarkably strong case for the thing you're arguing against! I doubt that's what you wanted, but I appreciate it all the same.
I don't really have much to disagree with you about, but maybe you want to check the "monopoly" claim.
Look how the small ecommerce companies have all become FBA companies
While I suspect you're right in that many have, I don't believe it's anywhere near a majority.
https://sell.amazon.com/fulfillment-by-amazon.html
Or in the alternative, Fellow of the British Academy.
(And don't they? How much of b2c ecommerce are they? - how has the pandemic affected their share? You seem to have readier access to that data than I do!)
https://www.ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2019/12/amazons-mark...
Maybe they do want to monopolize, but I'm pretty sure that they couldn't, what with Walmart, Target, eBay, Ali Express, and other major global players in the space. Amazon's want is largely irrelevant to a conversation like this.
I feel like seeing that Amazon owned a third of US ecommerce, before the pandemic stomped brick-and-mortar flat, goes more to my point than to yours.
My point was simply that "monopoly" is not an accurate term here.
You can't say "oligopoly may be more accurate, so I've been correct."
Within the context of a policy discussion, a monopoly versus oligopoly is a pretty material difference. Every growing business at some level “wants” to monopolise their niche.
I'll quote myself:
> I don't really have much to disagree with you about, but maybe you want to check the "monopoly" claim.
If you want to have a debate, we can. Name something you want to disagree on.
> All these billionaires aren't really making that much money
I'm sorry, I can't tell if what you are saying is sarcastic, naive or perhaps you work as an Amazon Ambassador (throwaway account, 3 mo. old?).
What's the alternative? Don't tax corporations, allow them to form monopolies and starve SMBs? Don't tax billionaires, allow them to hoard power and give them a free pass on everything? Trust that somehow power cannot corrupt them?
This sounds nice in theory, but in practice there is always the option to just not do business. You can get away with high taxes if you have something to offer in return, but at some point you just damage or destroy the economy.
> Breaking monopolies and monopoly-like structures will create many opportunities for SMEs / SMBs to flourish.
Fair enough, but as a consumer, perhaps I would prefer not to shop at the SMB equivalent of Amazon? Perhaps I like the fact that AWS is cross-subsidizing my deliveries?
Amazon isn't really much of a monopoly if you consider that it really competes on price and there isn't much of a barrier of entry to their market. They have little competition because it's not profitable, not because they're so powerful. Of course Amazon knows this, which is why they attempt to build a moat with regulation and taxation.
> I'm sorry, I can't tell if what you are saying is sarcastic, naive or perhaps...
Perhaps you did not quite understand what I am saying: These people are not earning money, they own assets. Owning assets can earn you money, such as dividends or rent. Those are already taxed. However, the reason why people find themselves on top of the "richest people" lists is usually not because they earned income from assets, but because the assets they own appreciated in value.
In general, you don't tax that appreciation because the asset price could drop just as well - if the Fed didn't bail out the market every time. You tax the profits gained from selling those assets. If you never sell your assets because you are already a billionaire and don't need cash, you don't get taxed. This is not really much of a tax revenue loss, because if you taxed, say, unrealized stock gains, you would massively suppress the value of stocks. Such hypothetical tax revenue just doesn't exist, at least not in the amount that you may imagine.
> What's the alternative? Don't tax corporations...
Yes. Corporate tax does nothing but make the country less interesting from a business perspective, for what little revenue it creates.
> ...allow them to form monopolies and starve SMBs?
That is orthogonal, in fact SMBs would profit the most from reductions in corporate tax.
> That is orthogonal, in fact SMBs would profit the most from reductions in corporate tax.
Is it possible that this is the root of the issue? Filing corporate taxes is 10x as complicated (and expensive) as even the more complicated end of personal returns. I've got 1099 income, sole-prop and LLC, schedule C, home office deductions, business car lease, backdoor Roth, business and personal itemized deductions, etc. I pay maybe $200/yr to my CPA for all the paperwork and filing, sometimes as much as $300.
In the past I was a partner in an S corp. We paid $5k+ every year for all the paperwork.
Reductions in corporate taxes would be beneficial to smaller shops for sure, but simplification might be the best thing for everyone. Corporate income is going to get taxed twice most of the time anyway (once at the corp, and again when it passes to someone as income) so there seems to be little need to incentivize anything other than reinvestment which already happens by it not getting taxed as income. A simple progressive tax structure based on profit with little that can be deducted outside of actual reinvestment would simplify things greatly.
Indeed. Watch Amazon lobbying for a tax that you don't have to pay, but you have to pay for proving that you don't have to pay it.
If nothing else, I'd expect the tax increase to take the form of "same tax, but we take bigger numbers", so the cost of paperwork for small businesses would remain exactly the same.
I'm not who you responded to but surely you can discuss without resorting to accusations of shilling or insults.
In general, the super-rich don't need to sell, which is why they don't need to pay taxes. If you want to change that, you need a wealth tax, with all its problems. That's my point.
Then he also paid income taxes on that.
Would that not benefit the competition? And isn't that a good thing?
I think people would be made worse off if Amazon's retail operations were to be made worse (or shut down in the limit case).
"
Maybe short term but the in the long term I think everybody would be better off with more smaller competitors instead of a few dominant ones. Same for Apple. I don't think their size is good for the economy or technology in the long run.
There's nothing wrong or anti-competitive about undercutting another retailer. At some point, you can get into anti-competitive predatory pricing or "dumping", but I don't think anyone is credibly arguing that Amazon is dumping product below their cost.
In fact is has been recommended by most economists
In 2010 Congress passed FATCA [1], which forced financial institutions in foreign countries to give up information on assets held by US nationals in their borders. This was extraordinarily unpopular with other countries: I'm in Canada, and the amount of negative press was astounding. In addition to privacy concerns (the law applied to dual-citizens, including "accidental Americans" who didn't know they held US citizenship), implentation proved to be very expensive for foreign banks.
However, the US played hardball: if a financial institution was non-compliant with the provisions of FATCA, the US government took 30% of any payments made to them as tax. There was tons of grumbling, but foreign financial institutions went ahead and implemented it.
To add insult to injury, the US is itself not compliant with FATCA, as the information sharing is supposed to be reciprocal if a foreign country signs a reciprocal treaty. That has not happened.
Access to the US financial system is an extraordinarly big stick when the US government chooses to wield it. It's often said that preventing offshoring or creating a wealth tax is impossible without global buy in. Really, the US could do it if it wanted to. It would not be popular, but FATCA shows there's precedent.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Account_Tax_Compliance...
With the unintended side effect that it can make it incredibly hard, if not impossible, for an American citizen to open a bank account in another country. Even if she's a resident in that country.
In most places (e.g. Luxembourg, Basel, Lichtenstein, ...) the "pick your favorite tax scheme" game is tolerated (in Basel you can have your pick of 3 tax schemes. Anything agricultural goes for the French scheme, most of the rest, especially medical technology, for the Swiss one, Car companies like their German tax (I'm guessing to avoid import tax)). And while not quite as impactful, it's still tolerated at e.g. the French-German border.
And of course there is the "European exception". EU countries each have their tax policy set so "their" company doesn't get taxed. Even the EU proper has such a company (Airbus). But individual countries do as well: the Netherlands has Shell, France has Total, Belgium has lots of government non-government companies (e.g. Sita, Eurocontrol, BICS, who are "Belgian" but multinationals ...). The incumbent telecom is usually beneficiary of such schemes as well, as well as large medical concerns.
And I would like to point out: one thing FATCA (+the preexisting international income tax the US has) has done is make it much more difficult, much less worth it, for US citizens to work abroad. Do we really want that ?
Being a tax haven is arguably how small nations achieve this. The US has a large unfair advantage in terms of economy - has done since at least WW2.
America skews heavily in favour of freedom - for Americans in America, not so much outside that system.
Let's tax the economy of scale and force companies who are not able to utilize economy of scale well to split into multiple smaller companies.
For example, I sometimes thing large corporations can beat out smaller competition purely because they have/can afford a large legal/patent dept, that smaller single-industry players do not.
There should also probably be more rules wrt competition - allowing private interests to control TLD/DNS, protocols, Operating systems/ecosystems, hardware specs/compliance, the EM spectrum and other common utilities/services has allowed an extreme bent towards monolithic companies - force theses large corps to spin off internal services!
> On the other hand companies that have a positive impact on the environment and the society should pay less.
Just have a carbon tax. Setup a general scheme for SMBs, and allow larger corps to setup their own if they can do it more efficiently (regulate that, of course).
Large corporations and billionaires also have an outsize influence on politics at the expense of small business and regular people. They shape the world to their advantage.
https://money.cnn.com/2009/06/05/news/companies/cpsc/
Mattel lobbied for and helped write legislation that regulated themselves... and everyone else.
The laws ended up disproportionately hurting small toy makers while rewarding Mattel for their bad behavior.
https://reason.com/2009/08/31/law-passed-after-mattel-toy-sc...
When you realize Bezos also owns a newspaper, and journalists get paid to write articles praising this or that. Honestly, it’s enough to jade anyone at this point.
...
Here's a pattern I see play out every few years:
> Media rightly call out super rich for continuing to grow richer while people are struggling and SMBs fail
> Politicians rightly call out super rich and say they're going to do something about it
> Super rich come out in support of raising taxes, additional regulation, etc because who cares about laws and taxes if you're rich. Proceeds to lobby politicians for policies that help them.
> Media praise super rich for supporting policies and politicians that will help the super rich while either not understanding motivation or out right lying about who the beneficiary of these policies will be.
> Politicians implement policies that benefit the super rich while selling it to the public as something that's good for small business / those less fortunate.
> Media praises politicians implementing policies that were push for by the super rich while claiming it will help small business / middle class.