seanj

avon b7 said:

lkrupp said:

iCave said:

I'm not sure which country you are from, but looking at high quality health care and affordable education provided in most of the European Union, it bears evidence that high taxes, when used the right way, do pay social dividends.

Complete baloney. The ONLY reason the EU has the social programs it has is because the EU members have NO military budgets to speak of. Instead the EU relies on the United States to protect it from the Russian Bear, the Middle East Islamic radicals. If the U.S. pulled out militarily from the EU and NATO those countries would have no choice but to dramatically increase their military budgets and those social programs would suffer big time. For over 70 years now the U.S. has spent its treasure to keep the peace in Europe.

Now that is baloney. The absence of conflict in Europe is precisely because of the EU. 

As for external threats and U.S 'protection', simply pull out of NATO if it costs too much!

That won't happen because the U.S wants to keep its military bases in Europe. It wants to continue selling arms. It needs NATO allies. Without them (however 'small' their financial contribution) the Gulf wars would not have been possible and with so much debt, the U.S is rapidly approaching a point where it might have hardware to parade around but no be able to use in actual conflict. Wars are expensive.

I'll take a balanced welfare state over any of that.


https://www.businessinsider.com/how-nato-budget-is-funded-2018-7

You're believing the spin from the Eurocrats I'm afraid, the EU has done NOTHING to prevent conflict in Europe.
When Yugoslavia split and war broke out, including ethnic cleansing, it wasn't the EU that stopped it, it was NATO with the USA and UK at the forefront.
As for the current ongoing war in the Ukraine, that's solely due to the EU courting the Ukraine to get them to join as part of their ongoing aggressive expansionist policy. Every observer pointed out that Russia would never allow Ukraine to join, but the EU persisted.
Meanwhile there is civil unrest across Europe - weekly riots in France for months - and the rise of extremists on both left and right due to the EU's disasterous Euro policy. Economists warned back in the 90's that allowing countries with divergent economies to use a common currency would result in economic collapse, so rules were put in place to stop it. But when Eurocrats realised that Greece, Spain, Portugal, Italy and France would fail the test and be excluded from the Euro, they decided to ignore their own rules. As a result they set in train the sovereign debt crisis that erupted in 2009 and is still ongoing. The reason they did this was simple to trap these countries in the EU, leaving after having adopted the Euro would be nearly impossible.

The USA and Canda should consider a mutual defence pact with a smaller set of countries - the UK and France account for nearly 50% of ALL of europe's military capability. In the long term, the like of Macron in France and the Eurocrats in Brussels want to undermine NATO and rely more on an EU Army. The hilarious thing is they don't want to fund it properly, for example, Germany's armed forces reduced to a token force with most ships, aircraft, and submarines unsable due to repairs being required.

cat52 said:

genovelle said:

cat52 said:

entropys said:

Ecky-Thump said:

How dare France try to level the playing field.  

Tax-dodging multinationals have an unfair advantage over small local companies who can’t base their operations in tax havens.

If US and other foreign corporates were “dodging” tax the solution would be to close the loophole. That France isn’t doing so and instead proposing a new tax suggests there is no dodging and France is exercising its usual protectionist approach to justify its over regulated inefficiencies. Any French company caught up in this tax would be looked after in other ways. In other words, France in reality wants to tip the playing field to make better companies than their domestic mates run uphill.

Exactly.

And the multinationals run a lot of their profits through Ireland, which isn't a tax haven, but merely has a lower corporate tax rate than countries such as Germany or France. And God forbid anyone should pay less tax than the French.

Well to tax what is earned in France sounds reasonable to me. Foreign companies have to pay taxes on revenue earned here in the US. 

I see your point but if a legal loophole exists whereby a company can pay a lower tax in another jurisdiction, should they not take advantage of it?

So if the French don't like Apple paying taxes in Ireland, the proper solution would be to close that loophole as someone here has mentioned before.  Instead however the French are proposing a 3% tax on revenues, which doesn't take into account whether the company in question is even turning a profit there.  So the French solution is clumsy at best.

Another solution open to the French is to lower their own tax rate so as to make it more competitive with Ireland's.

Point being the French have several options at their disposal, and they are choosing arguably the worst one.  For instance what would prevent them from increasing this new tax on revenue from 3% to 5% in two years' time? For the history of tax rates (especially in Europe) is that once a tax is introduced, it only goes higher in subsequent years.

The French and other countries in the EU can’t stop revenues and profits made in their countries and then being booked to lower tax regimes like Ireland and Luxembourg because EU regulations prevent them. It’s no accident that Jean-Claude Junker, current President of the EU, came up with this tax ruse when he was Prime Minister of Luxembourg (before being forced to resign over a security scandal). There’s nothing as corrupt as the unelected bureaucrats running the EU.

As they say, any technology sufficiently advanced will appear to be magic. So given the crud Gates was used to at Microsoft, I’m sure the products from Apple did appear to be magical.

rcfa said:

StrangeDays said:

BobForsberg said:

Hopefully, Jony Ive's obsession with ever-thinner devices will go with him and allow future products to have larger batteries and better cooling.

Nah. Apple products have remarkable cooling and do so very quietly. What you're asking for is a machine like the work Dell notebook sitting on my desk

No, that’s not what anyone is asking for.
what people are asking for are devices without soldered in SSD and RAM so they can be upgraded, or iPhones that are a couple of mm thicker, so the batteries last longer, both in terms of capacity and longevity, as thinner batteries are more fickle, fragile and have lower capacity.
I’d me more than happy to have an iPhone a few mm thicker, but lasting 24h of heavy usage, because guess what’s less sleek: a super thin iPhone that requires a Morphie-like battery case or a power bank with cable, or one that’s a little thicker, but can ditch both while easily lasting 24h of heavy use.

No ‘people’ aren’t asking for SSDs and RAM not be soldered in. Because most people are busy living there lives doing stuff. It’s only a few nerds that want to open up their computers, cars, toasters, whatever and tweak/customise them.
Steve Jobs knew that, that was the driving ethos from the Apple ][ onwards.

It’s understandable, this allows Ive to design products for a greater range of markets, not just technology. Perhaps designing the stores and Apple Park whet his appetite to design more than just technology gadgets.
Looking forward to seeing what cool products he designs outside of Apple, though relieved he’ll still be consulting for them.