AT&T has decided its customers just have too damn much money.

they just happen to have religious beliefs that match the science on a few points.

Isn't that better than religious beliefs that don't match the science on any points?

For personal loans this is true - not so much as illegal as a lot of regulation to discourage it. Most bonds have penalties for early repayment.

When we're talking about public expenditures/loans to business, early repayment penalties don't make sense. As I said, the government isn't making these loans in order to profit from the interest. They're making the loans to help industry and the economy.

And your data on how government investments have been very profitable? profitable for who? and by who's standards are you measuring this profitability?

Do you really need data to tell you that the interstate highway system has been profitable for everyone? The Internet?

The fact that there is even an argument about whether government investment has been beneficial shows just how far the country has shifted from fact-based to tribal/faith-based when it comes to politics. All I can say is "Good luck with that".

There's a good risk of loss in many cases (see the history!)

Taken as a whole, government investments like have very rarely lost. Even in the contentious past 5 years, the government investment in emerging technologies have been very profitable, even with the poster boys like Solyndra which are used to argue that all government investment in technology is a bad idea. This argument is usually made on the Internet, which is more than a little bit ironic.

Did Tesla have to pay a penalty for early repayment?

Early repayment penalties are illegal in most of the US.

The benefit of this kind of loan program is not in the interest earned, but in the fact that you get a successful company that creates jobs and pays taxes, which used to be considered a good thing. Having an additional player in a heavy industry also creates competition in a fairly consolidated sector, which also used to be considered a good thing.

These kind of government loans to business in the US go back to the 18th century, and were considered a very good idea until recently, when one of the two political parties lost its mind.

First time I went down on a girl I was surprised to discover it was a little bit like licking a (dead) 9-volt battery. Turned out she had an exceptionally low pH level (high acidity).

You know how you can power a clock with a potato? I wonder...

It's even noticeable when you have sex with another partner who has a different PH.

I can only imagine the blank looks on the faces of Slashdot users reading that sentence.

Arthur Prysock.

Linking to Prysock gives you credibility.

Linking to a Fox News poll does not. Do I have to remind you just how far off Fox's polls have been when it comes to Obama?

This is a moral discussion.

it's worth noting that what Apple does is probably considered morally acceptable by Apple. Why should I give the original poster's opinion on moral acceptability any more weight than Apple's?

If you were to explain exactly what Apple has done to 100 Americans chosen randomly from the phone book, I bet you'd get 90-plus to say that Apple was acting immorally.

Apple doesn't have a defined share of taxes.

They kind of do. It's called the "corporate tax rate". Further, on the moral side, at least you could say that Apple's share of taxes should be enough to cover the expense that the US government goes through to protect Apple's patents, no? Given the number of government organizations that are charged with the enforcement of intellectual property (everyone from Customs, Dept of Defense, CIA, FBI, State Department, Justice Department, etc), we can come up with a number of what the government is giving Apple directly. You don't believe Apple should be getting welfare do you? Or do you? And that doesn't even include the use of the infrastructure and the legal system (of which Apple makes very profitable use).

The problem with my "representation" is that it is diluted by a lot of other people.

So, you admit that you don't like the American system of government and the Constitution. It's good that we get that out of the way because now we're actually having an honest discussion.

I'll just leave this here:

http://www.ibtimes.com/obama-approval-rating-not-suffering-benghazi-irs-ap-scandals-cnn-poll-1269577

Reading the above, I am *so* glad I live in a country with free healthcare for all.

Go ahead, rub it in.

I honestly can't see how anyone who can make a sane argument against that.

If you're the majority shareholder of a HMO organization that owns hundreds of hospitals and a US senator at the same time, you may still not be able to make a sane argument against it, but you're going to try like hell.

Nobody has shown that what Apple has done shouldn't be morally acceptable.

I know I'll regret responding to such an obvious troll, but...

1) When a company like Apple avoids/evades paying taxes, it hurts the free market by taking for themselves an advantage that other companies can or do not. Primarily, a company the size of Apple does this by using its tax advantage to press anti-competitive advantages by buying up other companies. If you or I wanted to buy a company that Apple also wanted to buy, and the company cost $1billion, Apple would basically be able to buy that company for $700million while we would have to pay the full $1billion. By using this advantage to destroy competition, there is greater consolidation and greater loss of competition. Pretty soon, it's not really a market at all, much less free.

If you believe a "free market" is a force for good, then what Apple is doing is bad.

2) By not contributing their share of taxes (the same share that other companies have to pay), Apple uses public assets without paying for them, forcing the shortfall onto the rest of us and their competitors. Bad for us, and bad for the free market.

3) Stealing is immoral. Even you would probably agree that taking something that you have not paid for is immoral. Apple uses a lot of common resources, from infrastructure to the legal system, at a much higher rate than most people (or companies) by not paying their share of the costs, those costs are shifted on to us. In the language of the American Right, Apple is "stealing from future generations".

4) Lying is immoral. Here's one of Apple's tax "avoidance" scams: They register a patent in the United States. This forces the United States government to use resources to protect Apple's patent rights. Then, Apple transfers the ownership of that patent to a company that does not exist in Ireland, which pays its fees to another company that does not exist in say, Holland (thus the famous "Dutch-Irish Sandwich"). Because the ownership of that patent is in the other country and removed further by paying license fees in the third country, Apple completely avoids any taxes at all. Yet, if an Apple patent is threatened, they sue in US court and the US government is called upon to protect Apple's patent. So, for the purposes of taxes, the patent is not American, but for the purposes of enforcement, the patent is American. I'm pretty sure you can see how this is immoral.

Further, I'm betting that Apple's claim that 2/3 of their profits come from outside the US and indeed outside the jurisdiction of any sovereign nation, Apple's lying. This is why they're going to settle this ASAP, because if the forensic accountants go to work on Apple's books, the penalties could be astronomical and Apple's already wounded share price would halve again.

5, 6 & 7: Corporations were given special status to protect investors and owners from direct liability, not to protect them from having to act in a moral way. You seem willing to absolve Apple from any moral responsibility for anything, yet you want them to be treated as a person for the purposes of political activities. So now the moral questions are directed at you, khallow.

Finally, if you believe that taxes are immoral on their face, I would remind you that the purpose of the American Revolution was not to achieve freedom from taxation, but rather from taxation without representation. You cannot make a persuasive argument that you are not represented. You may not like your representation, but that's the way our system was designed. If you don't like the American system, then we have a different discussion altogether.

As a matter of fact I never directly used Bitcoin.

Because you're not goofy.

Personally, I do all of my transactions in Darknet Credits, which is the new monetary system based on reputation and righteous deeds. I can't actually buy anything, but I'm in on the ground floor.

You've obviously not used Bitcoin a lot.

You could accurately say that everyone has obviously not used Bitcoin a lot.