> It's not so much that it's hard, it's that it has a lower return on investment, because the IRS gets money from finding mistakes or intentional fraud....
Isn't this exactly what all megacorps are hoping for everyone thinks? I am not saying that you are wrong but these megacorps are some of the most evil the Civilization has ever seen (see Meta) and now you and I are hired as tax attorneys - pretty soon (if not right away) one of us will go "this shit's very much so illegal but who is actually going to audit us? - the answer, per your comment is basically no one because we think these megacorps and their lawyers are there to play by the book...
In order for that to make sense to them, it would have to be impossible for them to avoid paying taxes without breaking the law, but the very nature of applying "corporate income tax" to an international supply chain makes that relatively straightforward.
The general problem is this. You have a company with its headquarters in Ireland that designs a product in California, manufactures it in China and sells it in Germany. In which country did they make a profit and therefore owe taxes? It depends on what each subsidiary bought from the others and how much they paid, so they're going to structure their operations so that the profit ends up in the one with the lowest taxes. That's the defect in "corporate income tax" for international companies, and why it gives international companies an advantage over domestic ones.
In order to fix that you need a tax code that says the taxes have to be paid to the country where whatever subset of their operations you want to tax is actually present. But then it's not "corporate income tax" anymore. If you want to tax them in the location they have workers it's payroll tax, if it's where they have buildings it's property tax, if it's where they have customers it's VAT, etc. You need it to be something they can't so easily move out of your jurisdiction. Because if you say that it's profit then they'll just arrange to make their profits in Ireland or Bermuda.
Or the US could tax it's corporations just like it taxes it's citizens.
Doesn't care that the citizens pay tax in whatever country they live in. If they earn over some 6 figure sum, they have to pay tax in the US as well.
That would put US corporations at a distinct disadvantage on the global scene, so it won't happen. Disadvantaging citizens doesn't seem to matter as much.
The thing the US does to its citizens is bizarre and atypical and it should stop doing that.
But how would that even work for a corporation? Suppose you did that; is anything multinational going to remain a US corporation? Of course not, they'll just register in some other country. The CEO of Stellantis nee Chrysler is in Michigan but how many people can guess which country the corporation is registered in without looking it up?
The problem here is not how the US taxes corporations, but rather that there are different corporations involved. A regular citizen can not establish an additional, foreign citizen that "owns" them or "supplies" them with IP (or labor hours, &c) -- this kind of tax management accounting is not possible for citizens.
You still haven't answered the question: What are you going to do when Apple or Google becomes "subsidiaries of a parent that is ultimately not a US entity"? What about your proposal prevents them from registering the parent company somewhere else while changing nothing else about their operations? Making them file different paperwork doesn't accomplish anything.
> No government contracts (or super strict rules to get them)
Now you've created a disadvantage for corporations to bid on government contracts, reducing competition and causing the government to pay more for stuff. Meanwhile the companies that actually bid are then the ones that specialize in lobbying the government and register locally and other corporations still register elsewhere.
> tariffs
If you were going to use that you could just as easily use VAT to begin with.
foreign-owned companies already are at disadvantage (rightfully so) getting gov contracts. so if you gonna try to evade paying taxes claiming you are based in Burma the government should treat you accordingly. given that there is no bigger customer than US government the companies might re-think their Burmese HQ?
> given that there is no bigger customer than US government the companies might re-think their Burmese HQ?
Only if the percentage of their business represented by US government contracts is more than the US corporate tax rate, i.e. only for companies like Lockheed whose business is focused on government contracts. But those are some of the largest "domestic companies" being put at a disadvantage by the existing tax system because they already can't use the same international tax avoidance strategies as other companies when they're required to use domestic supply chains by those same government contracts.
Meanwhile the companies that do lower percentages of their business with the government would just stop doing business with the government at all, causing the government to pay more for things because that company would otherwise have been the one to get the contract by being the one to offer the government the best price.
you are writing this as if you were never a kid yourself... there is absolutely nothing I wasn't able to "get" as a kid - some stuff I had to jump through some hoops but end-result would always end up being the same. if I wanted to watch hardcore porn, there was a way, if I wanted to smoke a cigarette, there was a way. if I wanted to drink, there was a way. and make it "forbidden" made it ever more appealing for me to get it as a kid. I grew up in society where alcohol was not a big deal, I was buying alcohol for my parents when I was 6-years old, would get sent to the store to get stuff and among the stuff was always beer and sometimes wine if my parents were expecting some guests. most of my friends growing up never thought of alcohol as something cool, we had easy access to it so it was like a rights of passage or anything like that and it showed, just about no one was doing any drinking while we were teenagers. when I came to america junior year of high school I was stunned at home much effort my schoolmates were making to acquire alcohol - could not really understand what the big deal is until I realized that was because it was forbidden and acquiring beer etc for a friday evening chill made one a cool kid.
the only barrier I have ever had to doing stupid things was the wrath of my parents. the punishment(s) levied when I did stupid shit was always such that I would very seldom-to-never-again consider doing whatever stupid shit I did. it always starts and ends with parents. you can put in whatever "laws" you want (which will always get weaponized politically at some point either immediately or at a later time) but end of the day the buck starts and stops with parents...
1. There is no scientific evidence that the "forbidden fruit" theory is correct. Studies of minimum drinking ages show a near universal reduction in drunk driving deaths, alcoholism, and crime rates.
If you care to google it there are dozens of additional studies that all say the same thing.
2. You're writing this as if you don't understand what it's like growing up in a country where 8 year olds don't have easy access to alcohol, cigarettes, and drugs.
And you're writing this as if you don't understand what it's like growing up was a kid growing up in America specifically. My young children and the young children of everyone I now could not regularly drink alcohol or smoke cigarettes without their parents knowing about it. When I was 8 I couldn't have done either regularly without my parents knowing about it.
Again this isn't about stopping every single kid in the world from ever trying alcohol. This is about making it harder for them get and easier for parents to enforce.
>end of the day the buck starts and stops with parents...
That's a completely unrealistic view of the world and it's just flat out wrong on the face of it because every study we have on the subject shows that minimum drink age laws reduce harm--they work. If it were solely up to the parent they wouldn't work.
The easier you make it for parents to do the right thing, the more of them will do it.
This would check out at companies where you could “coast” without any oversight and were just randomly estimating some “points” on your “stories” or whatever BS process is in place.
On real projects and real teams you can’t do this. If you did what you did in your example you’d say log 8hrs of work, right? Your team lead will ask a simple question: “did you write this code or was it AI-assisted? and what exactly here took 8hrs?” so you could do this once and 2nd time you’d be changing the status on linkedin to looking for work
I am a contractor and have been fixing shit large part of my career. non-idempotent POSTs are just about always at the top of the list of shit to fix immediately. To this day (30 years in) I do not understand how can someone design a system where POSTs are not idempotent… I mean I know why, the vast majority of people in our industry are just not good at what they do but still…
Yep. I worked in corporate back-office IT way before the web era. It was a requirement that every batch job be re-runable idempotently. So if it failed, you'd identify the bad data, excise it, rerun the job, and deal with the bad record in the morning.
for every one like you I’ve worked with there are about 25 that went to school and got formal degree in their field and it showed at work. and the “you” I encountered were all exceptional which you definitely sound like you are as well. but you are an exception. try getting a job anywhere in any industry (particularly ours) with “i am self-thought _____” - you’d likely be put into “code bootcamp candidate” bucket and never get a chance to even show what you are made of.
Judging from the recent hiring commentary, those from school with proper degrees aren’t going to be hired either. At least not hired until the AI hype dies down. As I said, it’s the practice and results - what code you’ve made and how it’s used. Gotta rise above the madding crowd. Now, I’m not sure the managers even care about anything other than reducing headcount.
And I wasn’t saying not get a degree, merely not get one in cs. Get one where da can be applied.
Engineering, Chemistry, Biology to start. Simulation, property prediction, implementation of AI/ML, data and model validation, databasing, e-notebooks, structure elucidation... Lots of stuff uses computers to facilitate how projects move forward.
this makes sense but EOD say you are in charge of recruiting, you are team lead and ultimately the buck stops with you - you are hiring for entry-level SWE position. you have two candidates from the same school, one is a CS grad and one has a degree in Biology or Chemistry. all else being similar-ish who do you hire? I can tell you from my experience that CS grad will get the nod. one of the best developers I have ever worked with had a degree in Physics and no "formal" hacking training so after my time in the industry I will carefully review the candidate through and through but I think overall the CS grad will get the nod. maybe things will be different in the future, our industry is rapidly changing in front of our eyes but as a Dad I can tell you that if my kid wanted a career like mine (God I hope not :) ) I would advise her to get a CS-ish degree
the investments are being made by massively profitable companies (our biggest and brightest ones, the ones that have been carrying the economy for quite some time now, even before "AI"). even just in recent history we have seen companies making large investments and being very unprofitable until they weren't anymore (e.g. Uber). and it is always the same story, everyone is up in arms "this is not sustainable etc..."
whether or not these companies can turn a profit - time will tell. but I am betting that our massively profitable companies (which are biggest spenders of course) perhaps know what they are doing and just maybe they should get the benefit of the doubt until they are proven wrong. but if I had to make a wager and on one side I have google, microsoft, amazon, meta... and on the other side I have bunch of AI bubble people with a bunch of time to predict a "crash" I'd put my money on the former...
The fact that the companies that have already shoveled billions of dollars at this are continuing to do so is equally consistent with AI improvement and adoption stalling as it is with infinite improvement and widespread adoption. Yes, it’s irrational to chase sunk costs - but unlike the VC funds that backed Uber and its competition, may of the players in this game are exposed to public markets, which are not known for being rigorously logical. If you pull back on your AI investments, the markets will punish you - probably vigorously - and if your only concern is the value of your stock options, it is entirely rational for you to act in a way that keeps the market from punishing their value. We’re 3 years in without showing any ROI, and who’s to say we can’t get 3 or 5 or 10 more? Plenty of time to cash out before the eventual reckoning.
There is definitely growing hesitancy in the market, but pulling back at this juncture could set off a full-on race to the bottom, because it would disprove the original point (“all the smart tech companies are all-in, so there must be profit at the end of the tunnel”). Right now, they can point to the skeptics as bears or doomers or whatever. The first big tech company to drop its capex will pierce the aura of invincibility and make the moderate retreat from the exuberant highs of late 2025 look like a blip on the radar.
I'd maybe think twice about assuming Meta knows what they're doing after they just pissed $75 billion up the wall on a Metaverse dream that went nowhere.
Pissed it away, but Zuckerberg is richer than ever and so are his stockholders it seems. I can’t imagine doing it, but also can’t imagine running Meta.
I am certainly not saying that this can’t all come crashing down for the big boys, surely it can. I just am putting a little more weight on them than on people on the internet and doomsdayers hunting for clicks is all
I just keep thinking about SGI and, to an extent, Sun. Couple missteps and a couple innovations in the commodity direction and it will start having a negative effect.
> relentless smear campaign against Trump conducted over a period of about 10 years. He's no saint, but if you look at it objectively then this breathless hysteria is unwarranted and downright harmful.
it is almost like Trump has been a public figure his entire life and in politics (after being best buds (as well as a donor) with the Clintons and the likes his entire life) only small percentage of his life. so we know who he is and we have always known who he is well before this "10 year smear campaign" - too funny to always read about this "oh Trump good, everyone's out to get him"
Trump was very popular till he decided to run against Hillary. He was known as kind of a character, but was generally well-liked and invited on many TV shows (in addition to his own TV show, and starring in movies). The smear campaign escalated with Russiagate lies (yes, lies, and commissioned by Hillary). Trump has his flaws but he has put up with more shit than any other president I remember. Seeing how bad they had it out for him naturally makes me take his side, even though he is not my ideal candidate lol...
Trump was popular with a certain segment of people. Like the kind of person who doesn't understand how to constructively manage a business and thinks that being "the boss" revolves around firing people, presumably because they're generally on the receiving end of it. If you weren't in that segment, occasionally seeing him was more like "oh wow, that guy is still around?"
There is no conspiracy here. Running for president gave him widespread attention, where he became relevant to many more people - relevant in a negative way. And while the actual facts have become heavily politicized, that Trump's policies are so beneficial to Russia and China is itself quite damning, regardless if he himself is aware of it or whether it's merely being susceptible to foreign agents in his orbit.
For reference where I'm coming from - I was telling my aghast blue tribe friends in 2016 that Trump had a good shot at winning and was talking about a lot of longstanding problems other politicians would not. The problem is that it was, and continues to be, just empty talk.
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