Your smug assertion that I expect to live off other's taxes despite knowing nothing about me aside, let me respond.

You trimmed the first quote. I didn't say that Apple isn't paying you dividends, I said they're not paying it out of that cash pile (which they are not). Their EPS and their dividend is respectable enough without it so they don't need to.

Your basis is irrelevant to the general point I was making (and I still bet that things did look better at ~$700 per share)! The point I'm trying to make is that the size of that the cash pile is giving no value to shareholders. If Apple increased their dividend by 100% by bringing back some of their billions and paying taxes on them, how is that losing stockholder value? The truth is, no stockholder value is diluted and any stockholder who took a case would lose.

That money is not being used and cannot be used without taking the tax penalty. Expansion and investment in infrastructure comes out of the budget before taxes are assessed (and in many cases can be offset against the tax bill anyway), so it does not hinder either of these. You could argue that it's underpinning the share price but I strongly disagree - Apple's performace as a company is what affects the share price and Apple's amazing performance continues which i'm sure delights you as an Apple shareholder.

On to your point number 2. Whether you hate your government or not (and the state of political discourse in the US at the moment is deeply saddening), surely you must see that govenment investment in infrastructure and education is important? Personally, I pay all my taxes and while it doesn't delight me I make sure they are paid because I believe that the benefits are worth it. That goes double for every company - their employees were educated by the state, they travel on infrastructure built by the state and they are largely safer than they have ever been before from crime due to society agreeing to give the state powers to punish criminals. They can trade internationally within a structure that enables exactly this, and ship their goods, both manufactured and virtual, on infrastructure that largely comes from investment encouraged by or flat out made by their governments. They are standing on the shoulders of all those invested in this beforehand by contributing by way of taxes. Why shouldn't the companies that have benefited from this long-term investment contribute back when they are successful?

No, I'm not high. If they bring that money anywhere they have to pay taxes on it. This is not used for funding expansions - that comes out of another budget (and all gets written off as investment against revenue anyway). This is money sitting in a pile that they don't really have a use for right now in a tax haven.

Traditionally a proprtion of this would be re-invested in the business (it's not because a) they don't need to and b) it's cheaper for them to borrow money using their cash pile as security than it is to use it for tax reasons), used to buy back stock, or distributed as dividends. Apple is paying dividends, but that cash pile is not actually doing anything.

The cash pile is making some large investors nervous because historically companies with big cash piles end up wasting them.

That's not correct, the company has to be tax-resident somewhere. So of course they are tax resident somewhere there is a 0% tax rate (Bermuda, in this case).

Except Apple employs thousands of people in Ireland - it's not a shell company.

Except that's wrong.

The money is not in Ireland, or in the EU. It's in the carribean somewhere. The company has it's HQ in Ireland but is tax resident somewhere else, so it only pays tax on revenue it makes in Ireland. For the US it's an Irish company, and the money that never comes back to the US isn't taxed either so they are piling it up somewhere. But, like Google, they cannot actually use that - they're all holding out for the next tax amnesty.

That's the loophole being closed - it will no longer be possible to set up a company with its HQ in Ireland if it's not tax-resident there. It's about time, too.

No, you don't. Apple isn't paying you dividends out of their massive cash pile so instead of real money, you have notional value that you may or may not recover if you ever sell the shares. It looks OK now, but I bet it looked better when the shares were ~$700 each.

Except that that value is NOT GOING TO STOCKHOLDERS.

Apple is not paying any of those billions in dividends because they cannot reciprocate them to the US without paying tax and don't want to. So it might as well be magic faerie dust for all the value it's giving shareholders. This is directly affecting shareholder value in a negative manner but the shareholders are making money on trading at the moment so they don't give a shit. If the shares flatten out for a couple of years Apple will be sued by the instituional shareholders for not paying dividents, exactly as happened to Microsoft.

In Japan, for instance, the Shinkansen between almost anywhere is significantly faster than driving (the exception would be for short hops inside a single city, which is not what the shinkansen is really for), and is cheaper, faster and more comfortable than air travel. So that's one strike. I haven't been on high speed rail in any of the other locations you mention but unlike you, I'm not willing to spout off about how my experience on regional trains/metros means that High Speed rail in different locations will never work ever.

The Islands don't belong to Argentina. There's no historical record supporting any interpretation that would have the Falklands part of Argentina, and I'm Irish (and hence would not generally be in favour of the British colonial holdings).

No-one lived there before, and British settlers have continuously inhabited the islands for two centuries. This is only an issue because the Argentinian Junta needed a PR coup to avoid collapse, and the British handed them a disaster, which sped up the collapse. It's a shame that the Argentinian people are being whipped up by their president over this non-issue, and for similar reasons that the Junta whipped them up - her government have made a mess out of the country and need a distraction.

One of the most interesting things to come out of the current round of declassification is that the Soviets were absolutely terrified of the Americans. They saw the US as extremely aggressve and paranoid, as well as unpredictable and believed totally that domestic political pressures could lead as far as a nuclear first strike.

Reply reformatted for readability. Sorry about that

I think you've just defined "religious position" in the second part of the quoted section. It is an opinion, perhaps even a position, on religion? But not a religious position? Not sure you've got your thinking cap on there.
If I were being more accurate above, then I should have written "The one you're thinking of is agnostic atheism". Or apathetic/pragmatic agnosticism, which is also wonderfully called Apatheism. I definitely overstepped in saying atheism can be described as a religion itself, but there are groups of atheists who are behaving very much like organised religions and as it is de-facto a religious position then the stretch doesn't look too far.

Oh, my. From the point of view of the ~7billion theists it looks like faith. Not that that's going to hold much water if you're atheist, I admit!
Atheism has a very weak scientific foundation - in that it's the null hypothesis. And those who claim it is stronger than that are as self serving as that retard who "did calculations", presumably with a crayon up his nose, and gave an age for the earth from the Bible.

I direct you to Thomas H Huxley's words on agnosticism:

Some of the wisest words I've ever read.

As I said in response to another comment
If I were being more accurate above, then I should have written "The one you're thinking of is agnostic atheism". Or apathetic/pragmatic agnosticism, which is also wonderfully called Apatheism. I definitely overstepped in saying atheism can be described as a religion itself, but there are groups of atheists who are behaving very much like organised religions and as it is de-facto a religious position then the stretch doesn't look too far.

I think you've just defined "religious position" in the second part of the quoted section. It is an opinion, perhaps even a position, on religion? But not a religious position? Not sure you've got your thinking cap on there.

If I were being more accurate above, then I should have written "The one you're thinking of is agnostic atheism". Or apathetic/pragmatic agnosticism, which is also wonderfully called Apatheism.

OK, I definitely overstepped in saying atheism can be described as a religion itself, but there are groups of atheists who are behaving very much like organised religions and as it is de-facto a religious position then the stretch doesn't look too far.

Oh, my. From the point of view of the ~7billion theists it looks like faith. Not that that's going to hold much water if you're atheist, I admit!

Atheism has a very weak scientific foundation - in that it's the null hypothesis. And those who claim it is stronger than that are as self serving as that retard who "did calculations", presumably with a crayon up his nose, and gave an age for the earth from the Bible.

I direct you to Thomas H Huxleys discussion on this:

Some of the wisest words I've ever read.

My jaw drops at the sheer nonsense of:

I take it you're a social media consultant, then?

Atheism is a religious position. It's not an organised religion, sure, but it can be described as religion.

The one you're thinking of is agnosticism.