This is settled case law.
Heh, apparently not that settled.
It's just that the state chose not to enforce the law and throw executives in prison for tax evasion.
If it's not illegal, which is the case here, then it's not tax evasion (which is illegal by definition) and we wouldn't have cause to throw anyone in prison for tax evasion.
However the point is that Microsoft is a victim of unconstitutional, illegal government system that usurped power and is stealing people's money. Income taxes are illegal and are collected illegally for a wide range of reasons.
The state of Washington is not held to the constitutional taxation restrictions of the US federal government. Collecting income tax is quite legal for them.
The state chose not to pursue over a billion in unpaid taxes.
You also have to show that the business in question actually owed those taxes. We're not even yet to the moral statement where you state that corporations should pay their taxes. I don't see why that's supposed to be true. Sure, someone has to pay taxes for all the good things that government does for society. One also pays taxes for the bad things government does to society.
Congratulations, you're part of the problem. It seems that you expect all research funded in this way to have immediate, practical applications. Science does not work that way.
Funny, how the same silly rebuttal keeps coming up. Because we want to see return on investment, it is automatically assumed that we want "immediate, practical applications".
I think the point here is that the (relatively) uneducated people are making the decisions about what to fund and what not to fund, and it should be scientists who are in a position to know what the fuck they're talking about that should be making that call.
I'd take the scientists more seriously, if they take acceptance of public funding more seriously? Want funding without any sort of accountability? Then fund it yourself. Everything else will have strings attached.
You are what Reiss refers to as a self-hugger--you mistakenly believe that most individuals share the same motivations as you. Studies have shown that this simply isn't true.
Yes, that thing where humans are motivated by "different ranges of desires" which happen to be the same for everyone. And where's the evidence humans are biologically or mentally capable of being something other than a "self-hugger"?
The studies may well measure something meaningful, but you are running a traditional argument from ignorance fallacy.
Except no major political group actually acts on what you said (and I'm counting the Libertarian left in' major' there). Why fuss about the size of government if that argument leads to cutting only the parts of government that can't directly come and shoot you?
The "Libertarian left" is an obvious counterexample to your above assertion. Among other things, they advocate substantial decrease in the US military and an end to US military adventurism. It doesn't make sense to me how people can just assert things without even looking at what actually is happening.
Or we could, you know, just restore the massive State and Federal funding
Where's this money coming from? Tax increases have a cost too.
Further, I don't think people get that the massive funding in question just wasn't that massive or that different from today. Recall that college costs have increased for decades at a far greater rate than the US economy has. What was ample funding forty years ago just doesn't come close today.
From the above link, education costs increased by a factor of six in a 26 year period from 1985 to 2011. In that time, nominal GDP (not adjusted for inflation to compare apples to apples) didn't even increase by a factor of 4 (4.35 trillion dollars to 16.16 trillion dollars).
So it's not just a matter of just maintaining historical levels of spending, which probably has been done for most states, but to increase spending as a fraction of the overall economy by 60%.
Never heard of the mafia?
A group which profited immensely and rose to national scale power on the US's former prohibition on alcohol.
In America it started with Columbus cutting the hands of the native labourers if they didn't produce enough gold.
Columbus was sponsored by and appointed as a representative of the Spanish crown. And the Crown was to keep 90% of whatever profit he obtained from the various expeditions. From Wikipedia:
The Capitulations of Santa Fe between Christopher Columbus and the Catholic Monarchs were signed in Santa Fe, Granada on April 17, 1492. They granted Columbus the titles of Admiral of the Ocean Sea, the Viceroy, the Governor-General and honorific Don, and also the tenth part of all riches to be obtained from his intended voyage.
Moving on:
This went to the limit in the Congo Free State, the only privately operated African colony, where whippings and amputation were used regularly on labourers who didn't produce enough.
A private corporation owned by the head of state of Belgium and which used the military power of Belgium to help maintain profits.
There's also the examples of the various East India companies where private companies had whole armies to get what they wanted
Again, backed by military power of countries, particularly that of England and the Netherlands.
And back to America, the Pinkertons and such were private corporations that were hired by other private corporations to enforce taking labour for below costs, and often keeping the labourers working in the company town so they had to give their paycheck back to the company.
And backed by law enforcement at various levels from local through to federal. If one reads of their exploits, one notices that there are always some sort of government representative present (usually a law enforcement officer).
It's just that recently private companies have discovered it is better to socialize these costs and it's better PR.
How many millennia is "recently"? I recall several infamous cases during the times of the Roman Republic and Empire, such as Boudicca's rebellion (which happened because a bunch of politically connected Romans grabbed real estate via military force from her tribe in a very nasty and brutal takeover which included the flogging of Boudicca and rape of her daughters) or the various state-funded misadventures of Marcus Licinius Crassus, the richest man of the time in the Roman Empire.
Sure, business provides a ready motive to turn on fellow man, but the power of the state provides the means.
"Sometimes insanity is the only alternative" -- button at a Science Fiction convention.
