That's absolutely not true. There are countries with low and even non-existent tax corporate rates that have civil societies, where the citizens do just fine. Hong Kong and Singapore come to mind. Ireland has a very low corporate tax rate relative to England or France and they do just fine. The only thing higher taxes pay for is more pointless excess in government. More waste, more unneeded unaccountable agencies, and cool gadgets that an ever more draconian system is using to take away more of your liberties.

Did you just use the term fair and equitable, when you're talking about taking equity away from people that have earned it? How is that fair? What did a government do to deserve Google's money? Exist? I'm sorry friend, that's not enough.

That's the issue, isn't it. They are paying their fair share. They're paying what is legally required of them, given their organizational setup. And yet, this still isn't enough.

In no country is a corporation ethically bound to do anything but build a return on investment to stock holders. By insisting Google should pay more in taxes than they are, you are depriving those stock holders of money they're entitled to. Many, in fact the vast majority of those stock holders are every day, normal people with jobs, even retirements. Regular people depend on this money. Why would you rob them like this? I don't know man, that sounds a lot more unethical to me.

All the more reason they shouldn't be entitled to more than they are legally due.

Everybody needs to make a living. Governments harm people's ability to do so. And they're never satisfied. They're always asking for more, even when they don't deserve or require it. Google isn't evading taxes. Neither is Amazon or Ebay. And technically, governments can't require they pay more without completely revamping the tax system. So now they're taxing your personal information, and you (the entity that actually owns it) get nothing. How on earth is that fair and equitable to anyone but the government?

Just saying man, countries with reasonable tax rates (3%-5%) don't have these problems. It's simple business logic, and you can watch it play out time and time again. If it costs more to configure a tax avoidance scheme (pricey to begin with, especially the one Google uses) that it does to just pay the things, then paying taxes becomes worth while. Incidentally, what's wrong with avoiding taxes if you're not breaking the law to do so?

Look, if the tax rates were reasonable, you wouldn't see people going to extremes to avoid paying them.

For the last two years or so, the French have been extremely hostile, and Google has been tolerating it. But I think it's only fair to remember that Google does have its limit, and it has pulled out of countries before. China, for example, no longer has it's own Google. France is going exactly the opposite of what it needs to be doing. Rather than doing everything it can to try to get more money out of companies like Google, what it needs to be doing is incentivizing the development of local technology companies, which it's not doing. This whole fetish on taxing American innovation is harming the local technology ecosystem, and they're going to feel this one soon, when nobody in their right mind will want to do business in France.

So Microsoft owned Slate for the longest time. A few years. Everything was going swimmingly until Slate named Firefox the browser of the year. Microsoft never told them they couldn't do that, but it didn't take Microsoft long to divest themselves of the media outlet.

What it does show is how someone will react under pressure. And it will show you the worst possible quality work from someone who is intentionally trying to impress you. As a general rule, I won't do these. I did one a few years ago that made it's way into production at the company I was applying for, I never got the job, and I never got paid for doing it.

I think the technique that works better is hiring the person, bringing them on site and paying them for their time, and then throwing something big and impossible to fix. That'll really show you how they think, what happens when their wheels are turning, and it'll intimidate them in the same way a coding test will. The difference? There's no false piety with it. No promises that need to be made. If they come back for a second day, you've usually got a winner.

Then again, it's also possible that the things I find valuable as a manager are different than the values of people who give you false unpaid test projects which they turn around for profit.

And this, children, is why you actually need to know and understand SQL before you go off and start writing database applications, without depending on a "framework" to do it for you.

I'm glad the old Macromedia group is still around and up to their old tricks.

Not just dangerous, but outright poisonous in some cases. Like those cows that died after eating GMO grass a few months back. The problem isn't GMO's themselves, though, it's the lack of sufficient regulation and disclosure. Truth of the matter is that the public simply isn't being made aware of what they're eating, and how these food products were created. That's a huge problem, and I totally agree with you. Crony politics is another part of the problem.

For about five seconds. You can copy or modify a bank card. It's so easy, I don't know why nobody's up in arms about it. If it's a variation on the technology, the same is true here.

Governments don't like IP6 because it makes tracking people more difficult than IP4.

"They" say it's a sign of insanity, but I would argue that "they" have never worked in the Information Sciences.

Wait wait wait. If I'm reading this properly (hoping I'm not), then you're actually claiming that pirating a video game diminishes the value of a hypothetical blockbuster movie that's potentially never been pirated. How does that even begin to make logical sense? I'm not trying to be snide. It's an honest question.

Hey John,

Thanks for the insight. Great answer.

Yes, but then Mark Shuttleworth would need to admit that he's no Steve Jobs. I think the reduction in the size of his ego might cause the tides to rise, which would not be a good thing for the environment, small island nations, or marine life.