Right. Just the other day the Motley Fool published effective tax rates. That takes into account not just federal taxes but aveerage state/provincial tales and other tax-related burdens that actually get paid in real life by actual companies doing actual business in all the countries they list. The effective rate for businesses in the US is 40%. The second highest, behind only the UAE.

So instead of a crusty old veteran "maverick" and a cheerleader of debatable intelligence, we got a miserly career politician with impossibly white teeth (polished by repeatedly putting his foot in his mouth, no doubt) and a community organizer who demanded 10 years of tax returns from his opponent but deemed producing his own birth certificate a challenge.

Sounds like a WIN

Right. Usually, that's because:

1) We want people to risk their money making investments to start and grow businesses. That creates economic activity, which is taxed.

2) If the person risking their money on such an investment loses it (as most do - most new businesses fail), they do NOT get to write that loss off on their own income taxes. It's just gone, goodbye. 3) The lower rates only apply if you let the investment site for a good long time. Those who throw money in and yank it back up pay a much higher rate.

Employees ARE people who profit from a business. In fact employees account for the vast majority of the outbound cash that most businesses spend. And its taxed at normal payroll rates. And the taxes levied on the money those people are getting out of the company are a big part of what pays for the public infrastructure that they (as the people who are making money daily in the business) use. Why do you think that city, county, state, and federal programs to encourage business presence and growth aren't hesitant to wave, for some period of time, taxes charged directly to the business? It's because the net result of establishing that business in place and keeping it there is MUCH MORE TAX REVENUE - from all of the other activity and employment that results.

How would jacking up income tax rates help with that problem? It only makes it worse.

But the company doesn't do anything with the money except spend it on growing the company, or in compensation to employees and investors. When those investors or employees take money home from the company, it's taxed. And if those same people take that already taxed money and invest it that or another company, and it makes money, they get taxed again.

The company doesn't benefit from services and education, etc., the people WHO TAKE HOME THE MONEY do (at which point it's taxed). They other group that benefits are company's customers, who spend money (on which they've already paid other taxes) to buy goods or services from that company. And that means nothing until, again, somebody takes it home as pay (taxed) or dividends (taxed) or cashed out stocks (taxed).

The company's actual profits shouldn't be taxed because all that money does is sit there until somebody either spends it on the company as reinvestment (which isn't taxed anyway), or it gets turned over to somebody designated to receive it - at which point it IS taxed as income.

Of course they will, if they're competing with companies that operate elsewhere with a 15% lower tax rate.

You mean, like Canada? It has a 26% rate, compared the US's 40% rate. Yeah, third-world hell holes like Canada always whore around with those low numbers, right?

There are other ways to generate more tax revenue from business operations in the US: quit making elsewhere so much more attractive. The US has the second highest effective business tax burden in the world (second only to the United Arab Emerates, which mostly taxes foreign oil operations). Gee, I wonder why businesses born in the US look to mitigate that in whatever ways the law allows. If the law no longer allows it, there will simply be more companies actually moving, entirely, to places with a lower burden. Then the government will still miss the revenue, and they'll miss all the tax revenue they're already getting on the income taxes levied on and other economic activity generated by all of the company's current domestic employees, partners, vendors, service providers, etc.

Indeed. The newfound ability to do very bad things always relates to operational capability.

Next this needs to be done with what we call "autism". There's a reason it's called the "autistic spectrum"; it's a MUCH bigger but nebulous target than schizophrenia. There's so much symptomatic comorbidity that the diagnoses would be funny if the consequences weren't so depressing.

Grrr.

Sure if thing A is inexpensive, then thing B which costs a fraction of that price might indeed be said to cost X times less. Implying that thing A is already less than some other option, and thing B is even MORE less.

But if thing A is very expensive (as in the example cited in TFA), thing B would be better described as being not a hundred times less ... but one hundredth the cost.

They call E. coli a virus later in the article...

Aside from the other thread arguing that they were still guilty of unethical behavior whether anyone criticized them for it or not, there's another potential bit of misdirection here:

What if Snowden's means of raising concerns had nothing to do with e-mail and he only used verbal or hard-copy means, and the NSA knows it?

This. You have to return the equipment anyway. And the service center can do all the paperwork-- so why bother with the phone? It doesn't even take that long, unless you decide to show up at lunchtime or something.

In 1994, we already had 64-bit CPUs in the server and professional workstation spaces, and the benefits were clear.

Going past 64-bit CPUs, the advantages are not so obvious, and much of the effort is being expended on changing the game to quantum computing.