Is it only me that find somthing fundamentally wrong with news yesterday??

Status
Not open for further replies.

Rob Keeble

Member
Messages
12,633
Location
GTA Ontario Canada
So by now everyone that owns Apple stock is rejoicing in the dividends that are coming their way.

But I have to ask myself is there not something fundamentally wrong with how they doing this.

Sure its all legal, its brilliant business strategy while the rules are what they are and in business you have to play with all the cards in the deck.

However when they become "too big to fail" who is going to be saving them. They borrowing 17 B for Billion $$$, sure they have more than enough cash offshore to back it.
There surely is a fundamental issue here that this whole exercise of theirs illustrates that needs to be addressed and not just in their case but on a global scale. Surely they should be legally bound to bring back their loot and pay their fare share to the government of the country where these corporations got their start and contribute in a socially responsible manner (not in public relations spin of how they support some or other charity or NGO ) to the coffers of said country.

We have seen the heat put on woodworking for issues such as sustainability and environmental damage or in Canada huge global pressure was put on seal hunting over seal pelts but this Joe public thinks there is something wrong here when gov's around the world find themselves in debt up to their eyeballs and certain places have unemployment that's beyond what most people can begin to grasp, I have to ask is it not time we started to have the guts to boycott the products of companies that conduct themselves in this manner.
They even get a tax break factored into the interest that their offshore cash earns. Someone tell me how this concept is sustainable. :huh:

I guess the problem is while pop culture spend time twittering about whatever a rock star said as some place or other and have their heads stuck in a video game, life is bliss. Way to go Angry birds. :rofl: What a great contribution to mankind.:D
 
As J.D. Rockefeller stated in his hearing on if his company was a monopoly or not, he said "You call it a monopoly, I call it enterprise!". It's all perspective and I guess they're playing by the rules until someone decides to change or "fix" them again.
 
Apple is borrowing by offering bonds. They will use this money to support the stock buy-back and payment of dividends. They will pay a very small amount in interest compared to the approximately 35% that they would have to pay if they brought the offshore funds back to USA. This is a good business decision. I don't think we should blame Apple's board for making that decision. They did not create tax loopholes.
 
so then a good business plan is to tke make the product with USA technology and workers to get it up and rolling then grab your cash and save the tax dollars and in time cause the USA folks to have less in the coffers for there elderly benifits??
 
Apple is borrowing by offering bonds. They will use this money to support the stock buy-back and payment of dividends. They will pay a very small amount in interest compared to the approximately 35% that they would have to pay if they brought the offshore funds back to USA. This is a good business decision. I don't think we should blame Apple's board for making that decision. They did not create tax loopholes.

I agree Mohammad its brilliant business strategy and move. I mean they even get to reduce the current corporate tax they pay by deducting the interest on the bonds from corporate profits.

But my thoughts are where is the corporate social responsibility.

I would think that you are just as outraged as I am over the 435 workers that have just lost their lives in Pakistan (in a garment factory making el cheapo clothes for western markets among them Loblaws of Canada) when a factory collapsed due to the building not having been built properly. Thing is factory owners greed meant he did not let workers out even when the cracks appeared.

New Yorkers witness a similar disgrace back in 1911 when the Triangle Shirtwaist factory burnt down and 146 garment workers were locked in on their shop floor and had to jump out the window crashing on the sidewalk to their deaths.

The owers were more concerned with theft on their shop floor than the lives of the people.

Good business strategy too???

In my view their is no difference between these things and tax avoidance of this kind. especially at a time of such huge national debt. Who does anyone think is going to pay the debt off if a successful corporation like Apple is going to do everything in the book to avoid paying tax.

Its not unheard of for guys that are multi billionaires to do the right thing with their fortunes.

I know Apple has not done anything illegal or outside of what exists as the rules but neither did Loblaw's do anything wrong by placing an order on a factory in Pakistan, yet out of guilt and public concern for how it appears they are going to be compensating the families that lost folk in that collapse.

The issue that is at the heart of all of these kinds of events to me is simply "Ethics" . Lets not forget that its us humans that run corporations. Could be your neighbor or someone you know that supposedly plays an active part in the community. Now suddenly we go to work and our greed for that profit share takes root and we forget the community??? and its fine and dandy. Why then do we get uptight about wages and conditions at Foxconn in China. What the heck its good business practice to treat people like slaves. Its not as if the enormous profits Apple has accumulated mean they cannot pay more for the product. I could begin to understand if they were battling to survive in the market place. But hey this is Apple so its a golden icon among the believers and what happens is one is attacking the "club" not unlike living in Toronto right now and saying the Maple Leafs aint gonna make it through the first round against Boston. :). Would it be different if it were an oil company we all like to hate for the high gas price. ???

I struggle to see a difference between us frowning on cutting down the trees in the Amazon and yet cultivating corporate culture with no conscience or ethics.

I met a young man this week at my hair dresser. This poor kid ( I call him) has been to one of Canada's top business schools. Just graduated and cannot find a job. So he is taking a part time job doing some retail kind of work just to keep busy during the summer hoping while he applies something will come through. He is not carrying a huge student debt and disillusioned. Everyone said go get an education. Now they say sorry we cannot use you because you have no experience. How the hecks he to get the experience if no one is going to take a risk on him.?

Not wanting to sound like a whining old goat given I am 55, but when I started out and where I started out it was common practice for companies to take on 10 to 20 youngsters each year and put them all over the place in the company. We even got moved from one company to the other. Back then it was called training and it was not funded by the government. And it was just the right thing to do. I personally even asked one of the managers after only being at work a week why the heck the company was doing it. This guy no slouch I tell you, said the company had a duty to society to do this. It made a lifetime impression on me.

Then in late 80's when change finally began to happen in South Africa the company I was with at the time took on and paid for 15 Black trainee techs( not a big deal elsewhere but in SA at the time it was a huge deal to do this) , sent them to Technikon and paid them while studying. They did not do it to be hero's it was not publicised, I am doing it here as an example of what can be done. We had the first female black technician in the country and she graduated with distinction. There was no law or government saying you had to do this and it could easily have been avoided and more profit made.

If business and people conduct themselves with no ethics or moral code or hypocrisy when they have to use the spin doctors to make it look like they angels when everyone well knows they not, do we actually think the intelligent youth of today do not see through it and then become radical elements in society. Its no wonder we see movements like Anonymous, Occupy movement and the likes today. These kinds of things in my opinion give them more than ample fodder to chew on for a naïve mind to justify their actions.

Sorry for my post I but hey Jack I think its important that community minded people think about this kind of thing and make the right noises to get change going.
 
after reading all of this, now is the time for me to speak, and it may sound awful ayn randish of me, i make no apologies for my opinions. one, corporations have no social responsibilities whatsoever, none, nada, zero. the only responsibilities that a corporation has, is to create a product at an acceptable cost (materials and labor), while selling said product at a price the market will bear, for a reasonable return (profit). the corporation does not exist to provide jobs, or to divert profits toward any social function at the behest of others. to continue in an ayn randish mode, to require a corporation to fund something "socially responsible" because someone else thinks that the corporation has what they think is an excess of profits, and if they do not, the corporation will be made to look evil through a propaganda campaign, is the mark of the "moochers", and is nothing short of moral, if not financial (read that as boycott), as well as moral blackmail. if this is done under the guise of government, it is the mark of what are called "looters", because unlike the moochers who only have the power of moral and financial blackmail, looters have the force of law.

"Looters" confiscate others' earnings by force ("at the point of a gun") and include government officials, whose demands are backed by the implicit threat of force. Some officials are merely executing government policy, such as those who confiscate one state's seed grain to feed the starving citizens of another; others are exploiting those policies, such as the railroad regulator who illegally sells the railroad's supplies for his own profit. Both use force to take property from the people who produced or earned it.
"Moochers" demand others' earnings on behalf of the needy and those unable to earn themselves; however, they curse the producers who make that help possible and are jealous and resentful of the talented upon whom they depend. They are ultimately as destructive as the looters — destroying the productive through guilt, and appealing to "moral right" while enabling the "lawful" looting performed by governments

ok, end of rant.... lol
 
after reading all of this, now is the time for me to speak, and it may sound awful ayn randish of me, i make no apologies for my opinions. one, corporations have no social responsibilities whatsoever, none, nada, zero. the only responsibilities that a corporation has, is to create a product at an acceptable cost (materials and labor), while selling said product at a price the market will bear, for a reasonable return (profit). the corporation does not exist to provide jobs, or to divert profits toward any social function at the behest of others. to continue in an ayn randish mode, to require a corporation to fund something "socially responsible" because someone else thinks that the corporation has what they think is an excess of profits, and if they do not, the corporation will be made to look evil through a propaganda campaign, is the mark of the "moochers", and is nothing short of moral, if not financial (read that as boycott), as well as moral blackmail. if this is done under the guise of government, it is the mark of what are called "looters", because unlike the moochers who only have the power of moral and financial blackmail, looters have the force of law.

"Looters" confiscate others' earnings by force ("at the point of a gun") and include government officials, whose demands are backed by the implicit threat of force. Some officials are merely executing government policy, such as those who confiscate one state's seed grain to feed the starving citizens of another; others are exploiting those policies, such as the railroad regulator who illegally sells the railroad's supplies for his own profit. Both use force to take property from the people who produced or earned it.
"Moochers" demand others' earnings on behalf of the needy and those unable to earn themselves; however, they curse the producers who make that help possible and are jealous and resentful of the talented upon whom they depend. They are ultimately as destructive as the looters — destroying the productive through guilt, and appealing to "moral right" while enabling the "lawful" looting performed by governments

ok, end of rant.... lol
Facebook-Like-Button.jpg
 
My apologies for starting this thread I think before it ends up off the rails I will lock my own thread and in future refrain from anything outside of woodworking.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top