Posts by Tom 13

Re: What is the point of 12 billion humans compared to 10 billion

Well, I count that as 2 billion more of the most precious and productive resource we have: human beings who come up with creative solutions to problems.

Something all the Malthusians wannabes ignore the same way he did.

Re: we either resource limit ourselves

Malthus is long dead. That long disproven piece of tripe should have died with him.

@YARR

So what you are saying in essence is:

If the hussies hadn't been wearing such provocative clothing they wouldn't have been raped.

That doesn't work for me.

Re: Problem is, as with most economic theories it doesn't actually work.

Actually, it did. Reagan cut taxes, revenues went up. Problem is, commentards like you ignore that fact in favor of the deficits going up on the assumption that spending was fixed. What actually happened was Tip O'Neil (D) increased spending $2 for every $1 in increased revenue.

Fix your tax rate at historical norms (18-22% for the US) and things will work. If you make it so it requires less effort to game the system than to pay your expected tax rate, people will. The issue is similar to music prices.

Re: It's totally spurious.

And the author (and possibly El Reg) should count his lucky stars he lives in the US. If he lived in the UK and the politicians he was criticizing were UK citizens, he might just get sued for libel. Not that El Reg has been covering anything like that locally the last few days or anything.

@tom dial

The situation isn't much different in Maryland, although there the corruption is a bit more transparent. A libertarian running on the Republican ticket originally proposed allowing Pimlico racetrack to open a slots parlor as part of a deal to save the racetrack. But since MD is a Democrat only state, it didn't go anywhere until he was out of office and a Democrat could propose it. It similarly then went to public ballot to protect the polls. Only now it was 4 slots style parlors including Pimlico. Move through a couple more election cycles and then there's a proposal to allow all the existing casinos to expand into table games plus add a fifth casino (never mind that the tax revenues promised from the first four weren't materializing).

Which means that while when I was a kid the only place in the US where it was legal to gamble was Las Vegas, we now have pretty much the whole mid-Atlantic region, Louisiana, Mississippi, Florida just to name the ones I know.

Re: hand guns legal, but gambling must be banned???

Not banned, regulated. I thought you Brits were all in favor of that.

The reasons are pretty much historical. Gambling has a long association with organized crime, hence the heavy regulation. And since it is an easy way to launder money from other illicit trade, I can see proper regulation might have a place in this instance.

@The Axe: For a change it isn't the politicians at fault.

It's the leftist Reg author who lives in Frisco trying to smear Ohio politicians because they happen to be Republicans (as do a majority of the House and Senate).

Proper title would have been: Ohio makes it Illegal for Internet Cafes to Skirt Gambling Laws.

If the Internet Cafe is an honest to goodness Internet cafe, it will still be in business. But if their business model depends on patrons gambling, they are toast.

Of course an honest portrayal of what is happening wouldn't generate the necessary rage and Commentard remarks.

Re: It ain't exactly Dane-geld

Except it ain't Dane-geld. In this case it's more a case of government-geld, and they're just passing along the cost. I suppose to put it in the Kipling context it would be Brit-geld.

Re: Who are usually subcontractors employed by the oil companies.

Salary-wise it is always cheaper to keep them with the company. If they are internal cost is salary + benefits. If they are subs, cost is salary + benefits + profit mark-up for the sub.

What subcontracting may buy you is liability protection. If the sub fails to uphold Chapter 7, Section 43, Paragraph 5, subsection iii of some regulation, they're on the hook for it not you.

Re: I'm retiring in 24 months

Don't kid yourself. That wasn't loyalty to staff, that was ensuring his retirement was fully funded. If he brought in the new hardware and reduced staff, the next staff reduction probably would have been him.

Re: evidently you're unfamiliar with the concept of retained earnings.

And evidently you're unfamiliar with the name "Carl Ichan."

If you're not familiar with him from US news reports and his antics in the 80s and 90s, I would have thought you'd at least be familiar with him from some recent Reg stories.

Re: US Corporation tax

Because just like the UK we've got enough professional activists that corporations have been deemed Evil regardless of what they do. So it's handy for the politicians to set a high tax rate to be seen as punishing the Evil Doers. Then they make exceptions for their pet companies who are Good Companies (TM pending). So many exceptions that neither the IRS nor the professional accountants who are supposed to provide advice know WTF the law actually is. Until you wind up in court and the last appeal at SCOTUS is heard.

Yes, it will vary by State. Hell there may even vary by county and city. And each of those districts may have as many exceptions to their general rules as the federal government does for theirs.

A mom and pop shop might be able to start up in most places. They can probably expand to a couple of locations. Start moving out of state (that'd be province in the UK) and things get trickier. The bigger you get, the more complicated it gets. But you have to be truly international to take advantage of the loopholes. The assumption is that as you get bigger you can afford more accountants and lawyers to work around the rules for you. Whether or not it is true is a whole different story.

@Greg 16 Re: every country has large companies taking advantage of it

I'm quite sure that if any country in the chain truly felt they were being taken advantage of, they would change their tax laws. The fact of the matter remains that Ireland (who seems to be the linchpin in the current arrangements) felt they would gain by changing the tax law to force Apple to pay more than they currently do, they would. By whatever calculus they are using, the Irish deem their law fit for purpose.

Re: But haven't Apple been avoiding paying dividends to shareholders as well?

Apple aren't under an obligation to pay dividends. They are under an obligation to provide a return on the investment. If that return is in the form of increased share price, that is as much a return as a dividend. In fact, in some cases in the US, boards have been sued because they paid dividends instead of pursuing business plans that would have expanded the share value and generated even larger share price returns. The issue being that increases in share price are not subject to the income tax the company has to pay, only the capital gains tax to which the dividends are also subject.

@Robert Long 1

Meaningless to you perhaps, even more so because you misquote it, but quite meaningful to even the least capable lawyer who has passed the bar.

Management and Board (all of it, not just senior but only the top executives are typically held accountable because once you get too far down the chain there's no extra money to recover) have a fiduciary responsibility to the shareholders. "Fiduciary" means financial interests. No other. And if you don't take it seriously, you will be sued. I know this based on sitting on the Board for a 501(c)3 [not profit making to you Brits] where the lawyer brought this up every session because we were all "amateurs" in the field of corporate governance. And lawyers get antsy when the budget amateurs are handling approaches $1 million (I hear through the grapevine that they are now approaching $3 million).

@AC 24-May-2013 19:52 GMT

I suspect you the one loosely using the language in a filing. I expect what actually was told to the US investors is that the UK operations are generating significant net revenue and therefore they plan to continue expanding in the UK. They then told the UK taxman that they didn't have significant profit because they've invested that net revenue into expanding business. Typically this is an allowable business expense. And US investors will be happy with that because their shares will continue to appreciate in value, even if no revenue is taken as profit and returned to them after two taxmen take a bite out of the profits.

Frankly, to me that seems like a decent deal to the UK. They get more jobs as Starbucks expands, and they get more VAT revenue as more cups of coffee are sold.

Re: demonstrate lack of social responsibility.

I am socially responsible. You're the one who is socially irresponsible.

The law isn't supposed to allow either of us to impose his concept of social responsibility on the other. Only impose responsibility for following the law.

Re: @Roger Stenning

Yes that is common sense. However I would say there is a world of difference between

"If the following evidence can..." and "I believe the government will..."

The first leaves open the possibility of impartiality. The second one? Not so much. She's supposed to have the good sense to know the difference.

Re: An honest question...

Increasing traffic.

For example, more and more people are searching for "anonymous coward" and "trending" on Google.

Re: Britain is pathetic

As I stated above, in the US this would be par for the course in politics. And as seems to be the case in this example, it is usually a leftist insinuating something about a conservative. So for me the expectation in this case would be that the accused has to take it like a man, denounce the libel/slander in public, and defend himself as best as he is able given that the media will also be against him.

So I have to applaud the UK on this one. Here in the States we had a far worse case. We had a District Attorney go after a couple who ran a day care center. The children were coached on how to testify. The couple was convicted and at the time the public was of the opinion that at the very least the key should have been thrown away. Some years later after one of the children had grown up, for some reason they revisited the case and realized what happened. They were legally exonerated, but their lives were ruined. Charges of pedophilia are (thankfully) serious matter to serious people. Those kinds of charges shouldn't be thrown around lightly.

Re: How is it defamatory

You'd need to be a 'Merkin who was unaware of the reports (like I was before reading this article) for any chance at it being an innocent question. And if I were a 'Merkin claiming that as a defense and I included an "innocent smiley face" or worse "angelic smiley face" in my tweet, you'd pretty much have me for perjury were I to make such a claim in court.

Re: The Law is an Ass

The trending topics section is accurately reporting on what people are tweeting. It therefore has a large measure of protection. I expect that for the UK site the result would be an letter/notice requesting possibly requiring a court to issue a take down notice if the tweeting itself was libelous. Normally the point of the UK law seems to be to sue all those who are involved in promoting the libel. This is course the plaintiff was headed until he realized what a horrendous cost it would be to pursue.

Little of that would apply in the US, where the standards for libel are much looser (almost non-existent in some cases, especially public figures and as far as I can tell, none for elected public officials).

Re: That tweet read like a question?

Given the "innocent smiley face" yes, that moves it from question to dig.

Of course, being from the other side of the pond, this is all very strange to me. That innuendo accusation was par for the course for explicit accusations over here.

What I find more offensive is that the so called news agencies which are the actual source of the accusation seem to be being held to a much less severe standard. But that's true on this side of the pond as well.

Re: encourages the party that would eventually loose out

You really need to remove the rose colored glasses.

The loser won't necessarily be the troll.

Re: Real substantial reform

Particularly given that while there may be broad agreement that the current system is broken, there is likely to be a great variety of opinion about the proper method of correcting it.

For instance, I generally agree with the proposal as presented in this article, but think the bit about loser pays has a great deal more risk than its proponents think it does. I think that because they can initially afford the better lawyers, the abusers are likely to still go after the small fry and score a bonus in that not only do they get money from the small fry, they also get to decrease their expenses for lawyers. I'd much rather see the system be corrected by granting judges more latitude in granting those damages if they have cause to believe the law is being abused. Even at that I would be worried the judges would still show too much deference to either not awarding lawyers expenses or would favor the trolls over legitimate organizations.

Re: Arizona laws requiring immigrants to carry documents at all times

If you live in the US, you pretty much do have to carry "papers" all the time that would prove who you are. I expect it's mostly the same in the UK, only you don't think of it that way. Over here we mostly call them 'drivers licenses' although a few states have opted to issue them to illegals and thus undermined their validity. You need them to drive a car, buy alcohol, cigarettes and usually to cash a check. If you apply for a job, you not only need one of these*, you also need your Social Security Card*.

These things are known by those who denigrate others as "cockroaches," but they don't like to let facts get in the way of their two minute hates.

*There are alternates for each of these, but the noted option is usually the easiest to supply.

Re: Why are people so against innovation in the US?

It's simple:

against government funding of private corporations =/= against innovation

And that won't change no matter how many times you and Herr Himmler assert its reverse.

@Thomas 4

1) If you're claiming government profitability from Musk because of a government "investment" you have to count all the government "investments" before you tally the profit. Because that's how it works in REAL investment companies.

2) Your point is completely irrelevant. The relevant point is government picking and choosing winners. Like they did with IRS tax exempt groups.

3) If I could power a car with unicorn farts I could make a fortune. I don't have a supply of unicorn farts and you don't have supply of cars saving a wad of cash for anyone. In fact, you've got a lot of cars costing wads of money from tax payers who aren't necessarily rich, even if it is progressive to meet your perverted definition of fairness.

4) ---

5) No, you don't get to ignore bad results and only count good ones. Doesn't work that way at the blackjack tables either.