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Well, if it's simply returned to the shareholders, then the shareholders will invest it. Economy wide it makes no difference, the money will be invested

pavlov 9y ago
What makes you think they’ll invest it in the US? Rich person/fund X will get a larger dividend than before, and they’ll invest in the same way as before. It’s not like this money is somehow earmarked. If giving more money to the rich were the solution to America’s problems, it would have worked by now.
- vasilipupkin 9y ago
  it shouldn't matter where they invest it. investing it in the US when the optimal thing to do is to invest it elsewhere is bad overall, regardless of which entity is doing the investing. World economy is not a zero sum game.
pg314 9y ago
> then the shareholders will invest it. Or use it for consumption. And that consumption or those investments are not necessarily in the US. Where do you think that money is now? It's not like it is stored as dollar bills in some warehouse abroad. The 'repatriation' they are talking about is purely an accounting/tax fiction. If you look at Apple's yearly report [1], on page 49, it details how its cash and equivalents are invested. Most of it is in US treasury securities ($42 billion) and commercial securities ($131 billion). Repatriating it will not magically make it somehow more productively invested in the US. In some cases, quite the opposite: as a foreign Apple shareholder, any dividends I receive are spent outside the US. [1] http://investor.apple.com/secfiling.cfm?filingid=1628280-16-20309 http://investor.apple.com/secfiling.cfm?filingid=1628280-16-...
- vasilipupkin 9y ago
  well, that money does belong to shareholders. if they choose to spend it rather than invest it, that means they saw no good investment opportunities. Spending in that case is the optimal thing to do anyway rather than for apple to hoard it.

pavlov 9y ago

What makes you think they’ll invest it in the US? Rich person/fund X will get a larger dividend than before, and they’ll invest in the same way as before. It’s not like this money is somehow earmarked. If giving more money to the rich were the solution to America’s problems, it would have worked by now.

vasilipupkin 9y ago
it shouldn't matter where they invest it. investing it in the US when the optimal thing to do is to invest it elsewhere is bad overall, regardless of which entity is doing the investing. World economy is not a zero sum game.

pg314 9y ago

> then the shareholders will invest it. Or use it for consumption. And that consumption or those investments are not necessarily in the US. Where do you think that money is now? It's not like it is stored as dollar bills in some warehouse abroad. The 'repatriation' they are talking about is purely an accounting/tax fiction. If you look at Apple's yearly report [1], on page 49, it details how its cash and equivalents are invested. Most of it is in US treasury securities ($42 billion) and commercial securities ($131 billion). Repatriating it will not magically make it somehow more productively invested in the US. In some cases, quite the opposite: as a foreign Apple shareholder, any dividends I receive are spent outside the US. [1] http://investor.apple.com/secfiling.cfm?filingid=1628280-16-20309 http://investor.apple.com/secfiling.cfm?filingid=1628280-16-...

vasilipupkin 9y ago
well, that money does belong to shareholders. if they choose to spend it rather than invest it, that means they saw no good investment opportunities. Spending in that case is the optimal thing to do anyway rather than for apple to hoard it.