Will the Pope Declare Google Evil? 622
theodp writes "In the next few days, Pope Benedict XVI plans to issue his second encyclical, in which he is expected to denounce the use of tax havens as socially unjust and immoral in that they cheat the greater well-being of society. He is also expected to argue that the globalized economic world needs to be regulated. Prime technology companies playing the offshore 'profit laundering' game include Dell, Google, Microsoft, and Sun, who set up subsidiaries in Ireland, where the corporate tax rate is a low 12.5% and no taxes are charged on royalties (e.g. from patents)."
Says the man... (Score:2, Insightful)
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The Vatican perspective on money is interesting. Some background on what they were willing to do to get it while advancing their agenda. The background of the current Pope fits well with this:
http://www.shoahrose.com/vatican.html [shoahrose.com]
http://www.totse.com/en/politics/the_world_beyond_ the_usa/163217.html [totse.com]
sizzerb.com/images/images/pavelic_degenerate.pdf
htt [srpska-mreza.com]
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Factor in China, things more than even out. (Score:2)
Re:Says the man... (Score:5, Insightful)
Well I'll run over and tell the pope that he needs to edict all of the church's remaining savings to some non-profit (maybe a religious organization of some sort...) before he can issue any more moral edicts to his followers.
brb.
John 8:7 (Score:3, Insightful)
So your assertion is that it is hypocritical for anyone with access to money or power to ever make a statement supporting charity or paying one's taxes?
No it's only hypocritical for someone who doesn't pay taxes -- or runs an organization that doesn't pay taxes -- to make statements about others who also don't. It only becomes more comical when you consider that the Vatican itself is basically a tax haven, but for a single organization.
Humm, come to think of this, I think the Pope's own book has some advice for situations like this. I think it goes something like "He that is without sin...first cast a stone".
Re:John 8:7 (Score:5, Informative)
Or are you just upset that Uncle Sam is willing to give the church 501(c)(3) status?
In general, countries tend to not-tax non-profits for the same reason they don't tax government subsidiaries... it would be stupid. Why would you tax what is already a public service to collect revenues to provide public services? What's next, are you going to charge me income tax on the estimated value of my labor when I go volunteer with Habitat for Humanity?
If you don't like it, whatever... I used to be quite against 501(c)(3) status (for anyone), and am only marginally in favor of it now. But hypocrisy? No, that's ridiculous.
Says the man... (Score:3, Insightful)
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People don't "set up and operate" their businesses in tax havens. They operate the businesses in other places, which are usually much better markets than small, isolated tax havens, but then evade (usually democratically imposed) taxes by hiding the profits from those businesses in tax havens.
The summary (and maybe the encyclical; I'm not willing to read a piece of nutball religious propaganda to find out) obscures the issue by citing a couple examples of companies that actually operate their businesses i
Precious Irony (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Precious Irony (Score:5, Insightful)
The question is not taxes or no taxes. The question is how much taxation and how exactly are those taxes to be put to use.
Re:The pope sucks. (Score:4, Insightful)
Frankly, I've never seen any passage in the Bible describing the position or, or need for a pope.
Re:The pope sucks. (Score:5, Informative)
Frankly, I've never seen any passage in the Bible describing the position or, or need for a pope.
Historically disputes between Bishops were resolved by Metropolitan Bishops, a term that I believe is still used by the Orthodox Churches. These are merely Bishops of large cities which were influential, but have no position of spiritual superiority. Rome was one of these, and was the only Metropolitan Bishopric to never fall to a Heresy. (FYI see http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/07256b.htm [newadvent.org] for way too much information about Heresy.) Of course Matthew 13 shows Peter being elevated above the other Apostles when it comes to running the Church (You are Peter; and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.) Remember Peter==Rock, so it is a play on words.
The result is that the Bishop of Rome is just a "first among equals" who handles disputes. Mostly the Pope is juse the permanent tie-breaker if you will, and can only override the rulings of local Bishops in very rare circumstances. There are plenty of topics where US Bishops do things that Rome doesn't like, and there is nothing that the Pope can do about it. The whole infallibility thing only deals with specific points of doctrine, and almost never applies. It is certainly less useful than popular media makes it out to be. Remember that when the church does big shifts (Council of Trent, Vatican II), it is a coming together of large parts of the Church to form consensus, not the Pope making a decree.
And yes, this mechanism of Rome being the arbiter of disputes between Bishops is not Biblical. The Church is an artifact of Mankind, and as such is imperfect. Attempts are made to keep it working well, and somethings change over time. Remember that Bishops were installed due to popular decree (democratically, if you will) until corruption ended that process about a thousand years ago. Likewise the College of Cardinals is an attempt to shield the Papacy from local Roman politics. That hasn't been an issue for several centuries, but it is still the mechanism in use. A bit vestigial, somewhat like the US Electoral College.
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If you are accused of crime, say murder, you and the prosecution are dependent on witnesses. If there are say four witnesses whose testimony matches quite well, saying they saw you strangle the victim, and this testimony of ordinary people is generally BELIEVED by the jury, you get punished, as the law decrees. There is no absolute PROOF you did it, but the jury believed the witnesses. In court, it is assumed that
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Re:The pope sucks. (Score:4, Funny)
Thus began the least-successful marketing campaign in history, which we'll be examining over the next semester...
Re:The pope sucks. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:The pope sucks. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Actually, its mild compared to what a lot of us feel.
"denounce the use of tax havens as socially unjust and immoral"
Says the Pope sitting in his tax haven called Vatican City. "Fucking hypocrite" is mild ...
Says the Pope who signed up with the nazis because "he could get in trouble otherwise, and it didn't mean anything." Sig heil my arse! The only reason we can't call him a dirty nazi is because he (probably) takes a bath once in a while, when not figuring out ways to try to maintain respectability
Re:The pope sucks. (Score:5, Insightful)
I guess this makes sense if you presuppose a great deal of freewill, but not even the Church does that (if people had all the freewill they could, it would be possible to never fall into sin). By the Church and by reality, people are flawed and vulnerable to temptation. Not having sex is hard--that's why marriage is sanctioned in the first place, as an acceptable outlet for those urges. (1 Corinthians 7: 1 Now concerning the things whereof ye wrote unto me: It is good for a man not to touch a woman. 2 Nevertheless, to avoid fornication, let every man have his own wife, and let every woman have her own husband.)
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"Moreover, it's basically the biggest fallacy ever that maintaining the celibacy of the priesthood perpetuates child sexual abuse. The decisions that those priests make are THEIRS, and theirs alone... not the Vatican's. Hell, I guess since I'm not getting laid, I should be going and molesting little boys, by your logic. Well, except for the fact that no one's forcing it on me, I guess, so I have no one to blame the molestation on. "
The catholic church's own internal studies show that a celibate priesthoo
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The references section of this wikipedia article is a good starting point if you're interested: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_and_evil [wikipedia.org]
Taxing ? What is 'divine' about taxing ? (Score:4, Interesting)
does god levy 'taxes' ? taxes are an earthly thing and have no place in religion. or is the pope trying to appease some circles that have done 'charity' for the church ?
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Christ himself said to pay taxes that the government demands. Tax shelters would go against this statement, making them "immoral" from a Christian standpoint.
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They were all Jews. He was asked by the Jews if it was legal (according to God's law) for Jews to pay taxes to the Romans.
Re:Taxing ? What is 'divine' about taxing ? (Score:5, Insightful)
The Scientologists will be screwed especially hard over that one. Couldn't happen to a more deserving lot, honestly.
=Smidge=
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You can consider the Church to be doing that, I suppose.
(note: not defending the Church, just sayin... Christ said to pay the government what you owe them)
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In other words, C
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Yes. He taxes your free will as a retirement fund.
Re:Taxing ? What is 'divine' about taxing ? (Score:4, Informative)
I suspect you're not interested in knowing, but in fact the God of the Bible has a long history of taxation.
Citizens were required to pay a flat tax of 10% of all earnings.
Citizens were also assessed additional fixed taxes as civic needs arose, and were required to turn over some numbers of livestock on a regular schedule.
These taxes went to the religious state, whose responsibility it was to provide judicial, executive, and legislative services, as well as to provide for the common needs of society, including various primitive safety nets for those who had fallen on hard times.
Further on, according to the Bible, in Christian communities this developed into an entirely socialist system, where resources were jointly held and distributed by a central authority. Failure to comply was punishable by death.
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The crucial detail here being that it was citizens of the ancient theocratic state of Israel. It is pretty clear from the New Testament that God's people are citizens of heaven, rather than of an earthly state and that they should follow the laws of the states they reside in, so long as those laws do not force them to go against the l
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If you call what the early Christians had "socialism," then you must also think open source software is socialism*.
Repeat after me: "Socialism isn't voluntary. If it's voluntary, it's not socialism."
* (Which, by the way, instantly makes you unpopular around here, which I'm sure is the opposite of what you intended when you publically misinterpreted the Bible here.)
Divine taxing - AKA The Tithe (Score:3, Interesting)
Hang on, that last bit sounds like something Scientologists and strange cults do - "Here, join us and give up your worldly possessions. No, it's
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I can't remember it exactly (it was about fifteen years ago I think, when I would have been somewhere around eight or nine years old in Primary School) but we compared Church of England/Protestants and Catholicism and the differences in the church etc. I'm fairly sure that one of the reasons Catholic churches were so opulent was the money they acquired through
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He won't declare that Google is evil (Score:2, Flamebait)
Double Dutch Irony (Score:5, Insightful)
Just one more hypocrisy from the church, I am wagering.
Re:Double Dutch Irony (Score:5, Insightful)
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I can think of a few frauds for whom that might have been the case anda few weak-willed people who gave in to the temptation of money, but can't think of any major Chrstian denominations which require a monetary contribution to 'advance' in it. In fact, given the equality in Christ of all members of the church (including between laity and clergy), the concept of advancement is meaningless
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The day the Catholic Church starts paying taxes is the first day anyone should listen to them on tax questions.
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Do you think charities should be taxed? I imagine that the Pope, in common with a lot of people, would consider charities to be a better model for church finances than corporations. You might disagree, but just because someone disagrees with you doesn't make them a hypocrite.
So
Re:Except that the Corporation can do NO wrong. (Score:2)
This isn't even about Google (Score:2)
All Global Corporations, I should say. (Score:3, Insightful)
This not a matter of the church (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:This not a matter of the church (Score:5, Informative)
Um, that's kind of the point. Tax evasion means you are not rendering unto Caesar that which is Caesar's. I'm from Maryland, and it was recently discovered that large corporations have avoided paying around 500 million USD in taxes this year. This isn't just cheating the government - it's cheating society, taking away revenue that could be used to fight the numerous problems we face.
I somehow doubt though, that the pope's admonitions will have any effect on corporate financial policies.
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The US government? No. Our state government? Possibly. At the very least, it would reduce Maryland's budget shortfall by a third.
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Re:I'm missing how this is bad... (Score:5, Funny)
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Goatherds with sunstroke. You have to account for the visions and the voices.
Re:Tax Haven 101 (Score:2)
I don't see anything "evil" about it (Score:4, Insightful)
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hmm (Score:4, Interesting)
the corporate tax is low (12.5%) and income tax is ok as well (20%) tho EU slaps 20% VAT on everything
a lot of countries look enviously lately it seems at ireland and the low-ish taxes here (the country is doing fairly for last decade)
still i wouldnt call this a tax heaven, compared to Dubai lets say
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Who gives a shit what he thinks? (Score:2)
I happen to agree with him on this particular matter (ie, tax havening is often immoral), but I fail to see why his opinion should carry any more weight than mine.
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Because, you, Mr. Mad.Frog, have an audience of perhaps 10, whereas the Pope has a committed audience of several hundred million, a distribution channel that extends into neighborhoods in every corner of the Earth, and a - if not so committed - at least tentative audience of a billion+.
I suspect we could agree upon a fairly precise causal accoun
MSM and Religion (Score:5, Insightful)
Mixing up issues and non-issues (Score:3, Informative)
On one hand we have the way in which company profits can be moved around by changing the rates charged between subsidiaries in different countries. If your research division is in a high tax country and your manufacturing in a low tax country then you can shift profits to the manufacturing division by treating the research as a cost centre. If its the other way around then you can treat the research as a profit centre and charge manufacturing for all the valuable IPR they are using. This is a known bug in international company tax, and needs dealing with.
On the other hand there is generally low taxation on individual earnings and product sales within a country. The Alternet article gets into the politics of envy here by citing highly paid executives who also pay a relatively low rate of tax. But hey, they live and work in that country, so its an entirely local issue. Its up the the voters in a democracy to decide what taxes to charge and what they ought to get for that money. For instance the UK tax rates look much higher than in the US (35% GDP as opposed to around 26% of GDP) until you factor in the extra money paid by US companies for employee health plans. At that point the UK, with its tax-funded NHS, suddenly looks like a much cheaper place to do business.
Paul.
Pope (Score:2)
Because the politicians are more ethical (Score:2)
Corporate law is at fault (Score:2)
I'm not sure what a Catholic is supposed to do unde
Absolutely (Score:4, Funny)
Just pope bashing nothing else? (Score:2)
Any state should be free to set their tax rates to any level they like, but please only for money really earned in that state and not
track record (Score:2)
It is not that I disagree with the sentiments. In fact I believe the biggest problem we have in this country is people earning great deal of monies in the co
what would the world expect from Pope is (Score:5, Funny)
(b) Blue-Ray vs HD-DVD: what would Jesus watch?
Tax Havens are evil? (Score:2)
Typical religious hypocritism.
Typical (Score:2, Insightful)
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make over sized collection plates then (Score:2)
It's governments responsibility to regulate how businesses operate withing their boundaries. IMO.
LoB
One world order (Score:2)
And i suppose if there is a clash of morality between countries, he gets to choose?
Somebody slap the Pope...wake hime up... (Score:2)
There are bigger fish to fry than businesses mentioned..
As in:
http://www.unesco.org/education/tlsf/TLSF/theme_a/ mod02/www.worldgame.org/wwwproject/index.shtml [unesco.org]
On second thought, somebody just send the pope this post and let him slap himself awake with it.
Yes but.... (Score:2)
Rendering (Score:2)
In other words (Score:2)
Pope revived after 500 years in a glacier (Score:2)
Low taxes are bad? (Score:2)
Seems to me Ireland is competitive. What is wrong with low taxes? In 20 years Ireland went from being one of the poorest countries in Europe to one of the richest following these outrageous policies. Seems to me we should congratulate them and seek to imita
Local Sevices and Laws not paid by Foreign Taxes (Score:5, Insightful)
The point being made is that rich individuals and corporations are setting up a minimal presence in a foreign tax country (tax haven) in order to avoid paying taxes in the countries where they actually live or work. This is "bad" because by not paying local taxes, they're not supporting their local government and social programs. If you live in the [insert your country here] and use the Netherlands as a tax haven, then you're not paying your fair share for your country's universal health care, or 911 services, or military that keeps your democracy free, or whatever.
If you're going to benefit from your local country's laws and services, is it really too much to ask that you pay your fair share? If local taxes are too burdensome or wasteful, then work to improve them instead of hiding from the problem(s). We all complain that money influences politics. If people are allowed to hide money overseas, then they have no motivation to reform existing local laws. If they were forced to resolve the issues locally, they would be subject to local laws and publicity, thus making it difficult to corrupt the reformed laws. By hiding money overseas, there is little legal or public oversight to prevent abuse (such as laundering drug money.)
Thus tax havens create at least two problems: local services, laws, and legal protections are not being paid for, and local laws, morals, mores, and publicity are being evaded. The latter is probably the greater of the two sins.
A third problem that the Pope appears to be concerned about is that local taxes pay for social programs. You know, homeless shelters, health care for the poor, etc.. By turning to a tax haven, you are implicitly turning your back on your fellow man. Do you really think that anyone using a foreign tax shelter is actually using the money they saved back to build up their local community? Granted, the Catholic Church shouldn't be throwing stones, but a Christian who hides tax money isn't much of a Christian. Belittle the Pope all you want, but he is probably the only individual who has the ability to bring worldwide attention to global morality. You don't have to like the guy shining the light on the cockroaches, but do be glad that someone is doing it. (But we do keep a mirror handy to throw some of that light back.)
Re:And Why Is He Such An Expert? (Score:5, Insightful)
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The Papal authority has (debated) Biblical backing, in the little part where Jesus says something to the effect of "Behold, I give you the keys to the Kingdom of G
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There is constant redefinition of what is considered infallible and what isn't, in order to keep contradictions from being troublesome. The modern definition of having to use particular phrases to declare a teaching to be infallible is simply a way of wiping out the old inconvenient doctrines.
When Boniface VIII wrote Unam Sanctum, declaring that nobody could be saved without being under the authority of the Pope, he certainly understood that to be infallible; but he didn't know the magic words that are re
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It really doesn't matter. Either way, the pope's alleged authority is based on muddled metaphysical nonsense. And if you examine the actions of the church over history -- which ought to be the compelling basis for its authority -- you will most likely find its claiming to speak on "morality" to be a sad joke.
Re:And Why Is He Such An Expert? (Score:4, Informative)
Attempting to stay on topic: since you agree that they've strayed from the Bible, you can't conclude that his statements today about taxation are biblical.
Straying further off topic: Once you've "gone quite a far way" from the Bible, it's not your basis anymore; you regard something else as foundational. Also, it was the early, and truly catholic, church which collected and distributed the New Testament and developed the Creeds. Note that the canon was not dogmatized by Rome until the Council of Trent, after the Reformation.
Re:And Why Is He Such An Expert? (Score:5, Informative)
Of course the Pope is concerned about money.
The Roman Catholic Church has been funding schools, hospitals, charitable institutions and enterprises of every sort for 2,000 years.
In 1952 Mother Teresa opened the first Home for the Dying in space made available by the City of Calcutta. With the help of Indian officials she converted an abandoned Hindu temple into the Kalighat Home for the Dying, a free hospice for the poor. She renamed it Kalighat, the Home of the Pure Heart (Nirmal Hriday). Those brought to the home received medical attention and were afforded the opportunity to die with dignity, according to the rituals of their faith; Muslims were read the Quran, Hindus received water from the Ganges, and Catholics received the Last Rites. "A beautiful death," she said, "is for people who lived like animals to die like angels -- loved and wanted." Mother Teresa soon opened a home for those suffering from Hansen's disease, commonly known as leprosy, and called the hospice Shanti Nagar (City of Peace). The Missionaries of Charity also established several leprosy outreach clinics throughout Calcutta, providing medication, bandages and food. Mother Teresa [wikipedia.org]
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Kinda like the GWB, as the AC who responded to you said heh.
Influence is influence, whether we're talking a pope or other dude who manages
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Here's a hint: 'separation of church and state' is only to specify that the state cannot endorse a religion or foist one on its citizens. It also, of course, doesn't apply to the Vatican, which knows no such separation. It has also never meant that the church stays out of politics, or that politics stay out of churches. The church can't be granted government pow
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For example, the hundreds of millions spent by the Catholic Church to settle out of court rather than be exposed as a pedo haven is doing useful financial damage. Considering the level of legal representation that money would buy, they must be hiding a far vaster problem than the settlements indicate.
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who skipped out on their rallies and only joined because everyone was basically forced to
is evil because he still prohibits birth control. Ever poor family of 12 that loses kids to starvation or the side effects of malnutrition can look to the Pope for why they couldn't just have two kids that they were able to take care of.
No, they can look to their own genitals for that reason. I know plenty of families that don't use birth control and have a reasonable number of
Re:Poor people are responsible: they have lots of (Score:3, Informative)
In fact that is exactly what the Pope tells them to do. They are not allowed to have safe sex, birth control is prohibited. Recently there was a secession for married couples to use condoms if one of the partners had an STD. So clearly the church expects married people to be having regular sex, yet they forbid the use of contraception. The rhythm method doesn't really work so well. I'm pretty sure oral sex is rather frowned upon by the Pope as w
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The cooperation between the Vatican and escaping Fascists taints anyone rising to Pope, because those approving him for the position would have either been involved or known of it and kept silent. They would not appoint a "boss of bosses" who would turn on them. Remember the age of the Cardinals when you consider what they do and who they elevate.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ratlines_(history) [wikipedia.org]
http://www.thetrumpet.com/index.php?p [thetrumpet.com]
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