Hanson: Silicon Valley Billionaires Are the New Robber Barons

And you’re supporting a company that holds fundraisers for Hillary Clinton. . .

And again, you are conflating Apple CEO Tim Cook's hosting fundraisers for Hillary Clinton with Apple holding such fund raisers. Apple Inc cannot do any such thing under the FEC rules and regulations, ergo, they did not. You want to ascribe to a corporation the actions of individuals associated with that corporation. You fall for the click bait headlines.

Bill Gates, Chairman of Microsoft, Erich Schmidt, Google's Chairman, and Mark Zuckerberg, the head of Facebook, did far more than Apple for Hillary. . . and in fact Google and Facebook put the resources of their companies, especially Google's search engine, available to her campaign, most likely completely illegally. . . yet you'd rather pillory Apple which, as a company, did no such thing. You are a hypocrite.

You're the one obsesssed with your comrades at Apple. I'm happy pillorying all of the Commies in Silicon Valley--unlike you who want to pretend Tim Cook has nothing to do with Apple's blatant support and funding of Communism.

Apple Inc: Money to congressional candidates: 2016 Cycle

Top recipients

President: Clinton, Hillary (D): $653,633

Senate: Sanders, Bernie (D-VT): $131,618

Tech giants Apple, Google and Facebook are fighting President Trump’s immigration ban

Apple Caved to China, Just Like Almost Every Other Tech Giant

Edison was hardly Edison. Crony capitalism was alive and well in Menlo Park. It doesn’t lessen his impact, but he deserved no hagiography for his business scruples.

Musk may suck at the public teat, but the odds of him producing some public good far exceed the likelihood of any return from direct social spending. NASA once spent money like a drunken sailor, but they accomplished some great things. Now, they have been reduced to spreading diversity across the galaxy like a defective colostomy bag. Give it all to Musk—at least he’s entertaining.

Apple Caved to China, Just Like Almost Every Other Tech Giant

A company that OBEYS THE LAW IN COUNTRIES WHERE IT DOES BUSINESS is "caving in"? Don't swallow the fake news. There is almost as much fake news in tech news as there is in the main stream news media, especially when it applies to political issues.

You really don't get it do you? You really can't be that much of an idiot! Here, I'll spell it out for you: if you don't follow a host country's laws, you simply can't do business in that country! It really is very simple. You either follow the law, or THEY WILL SHUT YOU DOWN!

As for "Apple Inc" making "money" donations to political candidates. it did not happen. Those donations came from an independent organization called the Apple Employees PAC which is the only way such donations can be made. . . and they came from individual employees' donations to that PAC, not from Apple which, by law, is prohibited from re-imbursing the employees for those donations.

Corporations are legally enjoined by law from making political contributions by cash or in-kind donations. For those who are intellectually challenged: THAT MEANS IT IS ILLEGAL! A corporation CANNOT MAKE POLITICAL DONATIONS! The only non-personal entities permitted to make donations are labor unions. . . who are permitted to make both cash and in-kind donations.

Even if a corporation were permitted to make political donations it would be limited to the same dollar amounts any individual would be limited to because a corporation is a fictitious individual. . . it certainly would not be in the multiple 100s of thousands of dollars. Nice try. Look up the FEC regulations. . .

But you just said it was okay for Apple not to obey the tax laws in the EU because they're socialist. Why are you praising them for obeying the law to help repress dissidents in Communist China, then?--is it okay to bow to Maoist dictatorships but not Fabian ones? And you admitted that Google and Facebook illegally put their resources at the service of Hillary's campaign, yet you're trying to claim it's impossible for Apple to illegally skirt FEC regulations--like the Clintons never skirted FEC regulations, right?--and like Apple never skirted tax regulations. Wow, they must really sell you some whoppers at those cell meetings in Berkeley.

Apple CEO Tim Cook was considered by Hillary Clinton as US Vice President pick according to leaked emails

"In May 2013 when Tim Cook, Apple CEO, told a US Senate panel that Apple does not transfer intellectual property to offshore tax havens to avoid US tax and does not hold money on a Caribbean island. He was drawing a sharp contrast with the likes of Google, Microsoft, Intel, Oracle and Facebook. In effect Apple was different to US companies that used well-known island tax havens using loopholes such as the Double Irish Dutch Sandwich. . .Apple had a similar model to Microsoft's. Both transferred the economic rights of some of their intellectual property (IP) to their Irish units and Apple had a shell firm subsidiary in the British Virgin Islands besides Irish non-resident subsidiaries with addresses at its Cork campus. . . .Apple Computer Inc. Limited, the main overseas subsidiary of Apple, dated from 1980 when Apple opened its Irish facility in Cork — it was non-tax resident from the outset and had no employees.". . .In effect allocating 65% of earnings as foreign is a fiddle and no tax is paid on most (or deferred long-term) of it because it is booked through fake Irish firms. Tim Cook was asked by The Washington Post about comments by Joseph Stiglitz, the Columbia University economist, made on Bloomberg [television], where the latter called Apple’s profit reporting in Ireland a “fraud”. . .: How Apple found a bigger tax loophole than the Double Irish

But you just said it was okay for Apple not to obey the tax laws in the EU because they're socialist.

Don't raise strawman arguments by trying to put words in my posts I never wrote, idiot. I never said what you claimed.

I said, quite succinctly, that Apple is obeying Ireland's tax laws and that the Treaty signed by all nations that created the EU, it's basic constitutional document, prohibits the central EU government or any of its entities, from interfering in any way with member nations' tax laws or regulation. Even Ireland, the US's Internal Revenue Service, and international tax law experts, all of whom are appealing the EU Commission on Competition's overreaching order—which is beyond the scope of that Commission's authority—agree that Apple was in complete compliance with the Irish tax laws, and international tax laws. They are ALL pointing out the fact the violation of the Treaty, which supersedes all regulations and statutory laws, just as a constitution does.

You are using the tactics of the leftist socialists and your blizzard of meaningless drivel from those same socialist sources means NOTHING. . . nor do you propagandistic photoshopped images with Apple logos with communist symbols prove anything except your delusional mindset.

I am an Economist also, and I've also been a CEO. After being accused of exactly what you are claims as fact now, Apple CEO Tim Cook testified under oath before the US Senate Investigating committee that Apple has not transferred any intellectual property out of the US. It is held here and licensed here. He also submitted documentary evidence backing his sworn testimony. The investigation was dropped.

Besides that provable testimony, idiot, Apple does not make a large profit from licensing intellectual property. It licenses intelectual property from other entities to build its products and uses its library of IP to trade licenses with other companies who need the license. It's NOT A BIG PROFIT POINT, Apple just is not a major vendor of IP licensing. Apple is not in the business of selling software, which most IP is related to, but rather sells HARDWARE. What you described works as a business model for Microsoft and Google, companies that sell digital rights, not Apple.

Your diagram was a theoretical example of what Apple could be doing is exactly identical to the chart drawn by the Senate committee staffers that was thoroughly debunked in Senate testimony in May of 2014. There's not an iota of difference. Nor does it matter when the income is taxed in the US no matter where it's earned under international tax law. Apple owns every one of its subsidiaries and their income flows through to it, and is taxed here. As was pointed out in the testimony, that's why those few entities PAID NO INCOME TAX, the money they received came only from Apple owned entities and went to Apple owned entities. . . they were essentially accounting way stations coordinating and consolidating and holding APPLE OWNED FUNDS on a short term basis. PAY ATTENTION. In a way it's an internally Apple owned and operated private BANK with only one class of customer, Apple wholly owned subsidiaries. That's why the only actual income they ever reported, as noted, was interest, which these know nothing socialists found "suspicious" only because they haven't a clue of how businesses in the real world need to operate. However, it's standard practice under GAAP. look that acronym up if you don't know what it means.

My small company even has one such legal entity like that. It receives our credit card transactions. It has no employees, just an address, and a bank account. It prevents our primary business account from being in chaos from multiple deposits and withdrawals from the service agencies. We transfer the balances in that account to our business account after they get done with all their deposits and fee withdrawals.

Are you at all familiar with the Sarbanes Oxley Act of 2002? I doubt it, because if you were you'd realize that over and above the minor matter of perjury charges for lying to Congress, if Cook were lying about the facts of where Apple's intellectual property is owned (again these are matters of PUBLIC RECORD, Fedora), then Cook have would opened himself to having uttered FALSE STATEMENTS AFFECTING the well being and financial condition of Apple, causing Sarbanes Oxley to kick in and the literally draconian PERSONAL FINES AND PRISON TERMS associated with violating SOX rules and regulations. Cook would have been personally liable for mandatory $10,000,000 and possibly maximum $20,000,000 fine for EACH false statement, and either ten or twenty years incarceration in a Federal penitentiary. . . and Apple cannot reimburse him for those fines.

Do you really, seriously think Tim Cook is that stupid or that Apple is worried so much about a few measly millions in royalties to the point they are going to play IP games with multiple companies and double Dutch sandwich schemes, when their hardware profits generate MULIPLE BILLIONS OF DOLLARS EVERY QUARTER? Use your brain for something besides fertilzer for hair.

As for "Apple Inc" making "money" donations to political candidates. it did not happen. Those donations came from an independent organization called the Apple Employees PAC which is the only way such donations can be made. . . and they came from individual employees' donations to that PAC, not from Apple which, by law, is prohibited from reimbursing the employees for those donations.

You might be interested in this, from your own linked source on the donations you claimed as proof that Apple inc made donations to Hillary Clinton, which actually PROVES MY FACTS, (from the source document, bolded emphasis theirs):

METHODOLOGY: The numbers on this page are based on contributions from PACs and individuals giving $200 or more. All donations were made during the 2016 election cycle and were released by the Federal Election Commission. Figures for the current election cycle are based on data released on May 16, 2017.
This table lists candidates receiving money from this organization in 2015-2016. The organizations themselves did not donate,rather the money came from the organizations' PACs, their individual members or employees or owners, and those individuals' immediate families. Organization totals may include subsidiaries and affiliates.

In other words, this source went even further than just using the Apple Employees' Political Action Committee, they included everyone who could in some way—by their own determination—be connected to Apple Inc and included their PERSONAL DONATIONS as somehow being attributable as donations FROM Apple Inc. This methodology would not stand up to ANY even cursory cross-examination in a court of law as having any validity as being probative of anything at all related to Apple in any way what-so-ever.

The creators of this so-called database of donors by organization or company, by employing the kitchen sink approach of including whomever and whatever the researchers merely to wanted to increase the bottom line of donations (perhaps in a zealous effort to be totally inclusive), they destroyed any credibility their database may have had, regardless of the accuracy of those data's original sources.

This database Is merely an attempt to make a connection or correlation where none can legally, or even rationally, exist to the headline organization. By adding the phrase "and affiliates" the compilers add in a multitude of ancillary organizations that are unknown, perhaps are not in the control of the headlined organization, and can be added by mere membership in a trade organization. Absent the raw data of which PACs were included and exactly how they were related (union, trade organization, affiliates, family trust PAC, etc.), and who the individual donors were and how they were selected (how far down the employee list was the search extended?) as being in some way related to Apple Inc, it is impossible to attribute ANY donations to Apple Inc for political purposes except as an exercise in propaganda.

It's interesting only in that it is a summation of a list of donations not made by Apple inc even though illogically attributed to that company, but rather made by a set of disconnected organizations and people who were determined by subjective criteria determined by unknowable employees of a liberal think tank that MAY have some tenuous connection with Apple inc. RIGHT. SURE. . . and for which they have turned out hard number data.

Fedora, open your eyes. it's smoke and mirrors expositive of nothing except the fact that the employees in the Silicon Valley tech industry are, for the most part, liberal young people; it's a foregone conclusion.

What surprised me most from these data was the change in the overall percentages from the past, which is actually good news. Here is the chart they provided of the mix of Democrat to Republican donations from what they euphemistically called Apple Inc donations:

in 2016, almost 28% of the donations from "Apple" related PACs and donors went to Republican candidates. Fedora, in past elections, that percentage averaged around 12%!

Keep in mind, this money is not money that is directed by a PAC committee deciding which candidate receives it. It's money the EMPLOYEE or Donor decides gets it, or rarely sometimes, just which party gets it as part of his donation check off form.

There is a major change going on in the Silicon Valley that has yet to reach a level that can be clearly seen in actual results in elections as 28% is not going to win any elections any more than 12% could, but it is happening, according to these data.

By. the way, Fedora, who made your computer, its OS, and your phone and its OS?