Apple has more money than the US government

The republicans don't want to raise taxes because that would hurt the economy even more than it already has been. Lower taxes encourage businesses to spend money and hire, which creates more taxpayers.
More taxpayers is what we need, not higher taxes. And being able to live within its means is something else the government needs to learn.
Increasing the debt ceiling periodically does NOT mean you cannot live within your means. If your economy is growing and therefore the tax collected grows with it, you can indefinitely keep repeating this cycle without risk of over-borrowing.

Analogous to your pay being increased every year. What you could do is raise the credit limit on your credit card each year a certain amount to match what you can now afford to repay.
 
Darth Shiv said:
The republicans don't want to raise taxes because that would hurt the economy even more than it already has been. Lower taxes encourage businesses to spend money and hire, which creates more taxpayers.
More taxpayers is what we need, not higher taxes. And being able to live within its means is something else the government needs to learn.
Increasing the debt ceiling periodically does NOT mean you cannot live within your means. If your economy is growing and therefore the tax collected grows with it, you can indefinitely keep repeating this cycle without risk of over-borrowing.

Analogous to your pay being increased every year. What you could do is raise the credit limit on your credit card each year a certain amount to match what you can now afford to repay.

Very well put. It seems several people here actually understand finances and discuss it intelligently.
Nice change from teh intarweb status quo who rail against whatever they don't understand.
 
"You can't work for high wages, and simultaneously demand cheap goods. It's a very simple concept, that nobody here seems to be able to grasp. Cue China's industrial revolution. "

Good point, but who decides what is considered "high wages"? Is it $30,00-$50,000 too much for teachers? What is the threshold, who determines it, and what is the living wage index? This isn't 1932 anymore, it's 2011 and EVERYTHING is expensive. Heck our family makes almost 6 figures, and where we live we just getting buy (no extravagant spending/housing/etc). Real estate costs being a good chunk of the reason of the mess we in. it is a larger % of everyone's salary than ever before. Only now has real estate falling to what it should have been before the low borrowing rate rush.

Union membership is a popular whipping boy, but in reality we have lowest levels of union membership nowadays:

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/union2.nr0.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_unions_in_the_United_States

So the adage "its unions holding us down" isn't enough of a straw-man argument anymore.
The corporation and their politcal/lobbying powers has hurt us than unions ever did. Corporations send jobs outside the country, they pay low or no taxes thru MANY existing tax shelter loopholes.
 
"You can't work for high wages, and simultaneously demand cheap goods. It's a very simple concept, that nobody here seems to be able to grasp. Cue China's industrial revolution. "

Good point, but who decides what is considered "high wages"? Is it $30,00-$50,000 too much for teachers? What is the threshold, who determines it, and what is the living wage index? This isn't 1932 anymore, it's 2011 and EVERYTHING is expensive. Heck our family makes almost 6 figures, and where we live we just getting buy (no extravagant spending/housing/etc). Real estate costs being a good chunk of the reason of the mess we in. it is a larger % of everyone's salary than ever before. Only now has real estate falling to what it should have been before the low borrowing rate rush.

Union membership is a popular whipping boy, but in reality we have lowest levels of union membership nowadays:

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/union2.nr0.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_unions_in_the_United_States

So the adage "its unions holding us down" isn't enough of a straw-man argument anymore.
The corporation and their politcal/lobbying powers has hurt us than unions ever did. Corporations send jobs outside the country, they pay low or no taxes thru MANY existing tax shelter loopholes.
Well suppose I say that 30 to 50 grand a year is too little for a good teacher, will that make you happy?

As far as the rest of your doggerel, try and wrap your head around these concepts:

1: "Currency" is the avatar of commodity, not services!

2: A self contained "service based economy" cannot exist because there are no commodities either manufactured, dug up, or grown".

3: If you want to maintain a working "service based economy", then you must take your, "service" (IE teaching) into an economy based on commodity, and bring that money back into yours.

4: People seem to embrace the idea that services can generate "currency". They cannot,! It's that simple.

And in example of that, let me point out that a nurse wiping an elderly person's a** doesn't generate anything other than s**tty rags. These are certainly not a "commodity", and consequently can't be exchanged for currency.

5: Look how far we've come from the Gutenberg Bible! Now we have gigantic printing presses that churn out tons of "currency" on a daily basis.

Suffice it to say, that automatically doesn't really make it worth anything.

I'd consider it a personal favor if you'd explain how you can print something, call it currency, then owe it to yourself, and still expect it to have a tangible value.

Let me remind you that the US has abandoned both the gold and silver standards. We're on the "paper standard" now.

At the end of the day, you could actually print money, then pay someone as much of it as they want! The only drawback would be, they wouldn't accept it at the grocery store.

People and Unions alike suffer under the illusion that any "big company" has pockets endlessly lined with gold. They do! And that's why the US has such a "thriving" steel industry. Non union made steel, now available at a Japan in your area.
 
much of the money apple has is due to exploitation of its developers. apple takes 30% of the price of an app sold in the appstore (which cannot be sold elsewhere). instead of paying developers for generating revenue for apple, apple forces them to pay an ANNUAL fee of $100, even if its a free app, or just to test a non commercial app on an iphone.

u have more that enough money, steve.

this piggery should stop.
 
Ugh. This is an Apple press release masquerading as "news".

Lots of companies, especially tech companies, have billions in cash reverse. This month it's Apple who are the number one spot, but was there a media fanfare when it was another company? No. It's not news.

The comparison to the US Government is a cheap ploy to make it seem like news, but it's utterly meaningless. For starters, I agree with others that the title is misleading. And there are reasons why a company might build up large cash reserves, but this doesn't apply to Governments, who have things that need doing with that money - they have to run a country. Would it be a good idea if the US Government decided to raise taxes, have a load of cuts, just to build up a stockpile to sit around doing nothing? No.

I have 70 million times less debt that the US Government - do I get a story?

We then have ignorant nonsense like:

"The key difference is that Apple knows how to live on less than they make, a concept that the US government hasn’t quite figured out yet."

Last time I looked, Apple aren't maintaining a military, paying people welfare, paying people's education. This kind of comment is worse than ignorant - it's disgusting; that Apple should be praised for sitting on billions, whilst the US Government is mocked for spending money on the public!

The idea that this is spun as being pro-Apple is itself just an example of the Apple bias in the media - when was the last time you ever heard a Microsoft fan say "But Microsoft have so much money!"?

"Key to Apple’s success is their growing smartphone market share, which now ranks number one ahead of Nokia and Samsung in the global smartphone market."

Er sorry, false. Nokia are still number one ( http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/mobile/display/20110731135325_Nokia_Remains_World_s_First_Maker_of_Smartphones.html ), and also in total sell around ten times what Apple sell.

Even if it was true, it's funny that it's only news when Apple were number one, but all the years that Nokia outsell Apple, it's still Apple that are hyped. If being number 3 or number 4 was good enough for Apple, why not for other companies? "Smartphone" is also usually defined in an arbitrary and misleading way that includes the IPhones, but doesn't include phones like Nokia's S40 phone line, which sells hundreds of millions a year, with total sales estimated at 1.5 *billion*. Sorry, Apple aren't anywhere near close.

Pathetic really - Apple get all this free advertising from the media (if they're so rich, maybe they can pay for the adverts like everyone else?), but are still outsold by other companies.
 
I am quite sure now that Apple is stupid enough to draw attention to this, our marxist administration will figure a way to "redistribute the wealth." After all, profit and prosperity is evil to them. Can have a business that will create jobs and produce quality items now can we?
 
Ted - I think you might have left out a few characters towards what you wanted to say....
 
Lol title is misleading but oh so true at the same time. The government is like a 12 yr old kid when it comes to money. Give them both 100 bucks they'll blow 110.
I wonder if apple gets a refund every yr in taxes or even pays any taxes at all like thes hoosiers..
1) Exxon Mobil made $19 billion in profits in 2009. Exxon not only paid no federal income taxes, it actually received a $156 million rebate from the IRS, according to its SEC filings.
2) Bank of America received a $1.9 billion tax refund from the IRS last year, although it made $4.4 billion in profits and received a bailout from the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department of nearly $1 trillion.
3) Over the past five years, while General Electric made $26 billion in profits in the United States, it received a $4.1 billion refund from the IRS.
4) Chevron received a $19 million refund from the IRS last year after it made $10 billion in profits in 2009.
5) Boeing, which received a $30 billion contract from the Pentagon to build 179 airborne tankers, got a $124 million refund from the IRS last year.
6) Valero Energy, the 25th largest company in America with $68 billion in sales last year received a $157 million tax refund check from the IRS and, over the past three years, it received a $134 million tax break from the oil and gas manufacturing tax deduction.
7) Goldman Sachs in 2008 only paid 1.1 percent of its income in taxes even though it earned a profit of $2.3 billion and received an almost $800 billion from the Federal Reserve and U.S. Treasury Department.
Citigroup last year made more than $4 billion in profits but paid no federal income taxes. It received a $2.5 trillion bailout from the Federal Reserve and U.S. Treasury.
9) ConocoPhillips, the fifth largest oil company in the United States, made $16 billion in profits from 2007 through 2009, but received $451 million in tax breaks through the oil and gas manufacturing deduction.
10) Over the past five years, Carnival Cruise Lines made more than $11 billion in profits, but its federal income tax rate during those years was just 1.1 percent.
No wonder usa is broke they try to squeeze blood out of a turnip which is the working class while these guys and others get away with to much.
 
Lol title is misleading but oh so true at the same time. The government is like a 12 yr old kid when it comes to money. Give them both 100 bucks they'll blow 110.
I think that's probably a charitable estimate of what the government would spend if given $100.00. I can't speak to the ten year old.
 
bq. The key difference is that Apple knows how to live on less than they make, a concept that the US government hasn’t quite figured out yet.

Social policy costs money. Social media makes money.
 
bq. The key difference is that Apple knows how to live on less than they make, a concept that the US government hasn’t quite figured out yet.

Social policy costs money. Social media makes money.
Well then, would it be fair to say that many people receiving social entitlements are buyers of Apple product? So if you use social entitlement to purchase social media, would it also be fair to say that Apple is at least partly responsible for the government's debt problems?
 
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