Apple's record $64B quarter is more than 34 countries combined will earn this year

2»

Comments

  • Reply 21 of 23
    spice-boyspice-boy Posts: 1,450member
    I should’ve known a thread on Apple’s incredible monetary success would immediately evolve into a serious discussion about how to best STEAL their fairly earned profits. My god, America is over and done with because Leftists have literally mutated into full-blown Communists.
    When you pay your yearly taxes to your city, state and the Feds do you consider that "stealing your profits"? Everyone pays taxes however the wealthiest including mega corporations like Apple do not pay anything near the percentage of the rest of do. People like Jeff Bezos and his incredible wealth has not been seen since the time of the Robber Barons, a time of phenomenal wealth for a few and poverty for anyone that could not sustain themselves on their farms. Family farms are pretty much gone, most of the population live in and near cities, we depend on employment which provides a living wage. Good paying jobs outside of those highly educated are hard to find. Yes unemployment is very low but how many people work for minimum wage when their parents labor for similar work made them middle class? Apple's great wealth is not the problem but the symptom of a lopsided tax system, one which gives birth to monopolies, crushes competition and slows innovation. If you don't believe me look at our economic history of the past 125 years to see how we are on a loop.  
    edited November 2019
    SoliCarnage
     2Likes 0Dislikes 0Informatives
  • Reply 22 of 23
    steveausteveau Posts: 302member
    spice-boy said:
    Apple should pay for every American's healthcare. 
    Er, no. We need to separate our healthcare from our employers. My healthcare should have nothing to do with who I work for, yet it does.

    But something must change. In today's episode of This Shit Is Out of Control -- I have plantar fasciitis from my physical activity so I visited the doc. He prescribed PT. At PT, the guy looked at my foot and had me do some stretches. The bill from the single PT session alone? $560 for -- $410 for the PT's "evaluation", and $150 for the stretching. My insurance took $250 off, leaving me with $310. What...a fucking...crock. 

    Our system is beyond broken. The prices from doctors and hospitals are fake, intended to be marked down via insurance provider negotiations. But even still the out-of-pocket is unreasonable for the non-wealthy and getting worse. I'm an enterprise software dev well into middle-class and this shit is too much. Our healthcare is completely broken, and we can thank the current system and the fat cat hospital & insurance executive class. Something has to change. 
    Apple paying for universal health care in the Us is a totally ridiculous proposition, but so is much of the rest of the argument above (Roadracerkev excluded).

    Health care in Australia is not free. Everyone who pays income tax pays a  Medicare levy of 1.5% of taxable income (with an additional surcharge of 1% for high-income earners without private health insurance). If you are not a high income earner and choose to have private health insurance (giving you shorter waiting times for elective surgery, more choice in terms of doctors and hospitals, a private room, etc.), then you get a partial rebate via an income tax deduction. All of this is independent of your employer and doesn't bankrupt you if you have a major uninsured accident or a life threatening illness. In return for such a wonderful system a tiny, tiny fraction of my 1.5% goes towards paying for the healthcare of the unemployed and the elderly, That tiny, tiny fraction is much less than the extra I would have to pay in deregulated system if Medicare did not exist (yes, I remember what it was like in Oz before 1975). Also, the current life expectancy in Australia is 82.5 years, whereas in the US it is 78.9, so I guess the system is doing something right.

    It's not difficult to set-up a logical, efficient and effective system, but first you have to defeat the vested interests who deliberately confuse the general public by setting up think tank propaganda machines and paying for advertising, lobbyists, etc. who deliberately stifle change by promoting divisive arguments based on irrelevant 'ism's.

    Imagine if two engineers at Apple argued over a motherboard design because one said that parallel processing was communist. That's what the US arguments over health care sound like to someone who lives elsewhere.

    PS. I love visiting the US, seeing new places and hanging out with my many great friends, but I always get full travel insurance. 
    avon b7roadracerkev
     0Likes 0Dislikes 2Informatives
  • Reply 23 of 23
    wizard69 said:
    spice-boy said:
    Apple should pay for every American's healthcare. 
     Not every American deserves health care!!   This talking point is one of the more stupid things the left has come up with.  

    What Apple should be using that money for is transformative research, especially into energy!!!   Contrary to popular opinion “renewables” will never solve our energy needs.   
    One can rogue that no one deserves health care (unless you paid for it), but most civilised countries have decided that providing health care to everyone is a privilege worth doing. Renewables HAVE to solve our energy needs because non renewables, by definition, are finite and will one day run out. Better we make the transition sooner rather than later so we don’t kil ourselves in the process. Covering a fraction of the Sahara dessert by the way, would provide enough energy for the whole planet if we could make the grid work.
    Soli
     1Like 0Dislikes 0Informatives
Sign In or Register to comment.