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Instead of worrying about whether school lunches or libraries should be prioritized let's focus on getting Amazon to pay its fair share in taxes so we can have

by maym86 8y ago

Instead of worrying about whether school lunches or libraries should be prioritized let's focus on getting Amazon to pay its fair share in taxes so we can have both. In Alameda county we recently had a vote to raise taxes to fund libraries and it passed overwhelmingly - 76% voted yes. The people here think they're valuable.

rayiner 8y ago
Getting "Amazon to pay its fair share in taxes" is a pipe dream. The United States is, by design, a race-to-the-bottom internal free market. Any given county has to balance tax rates with attracting/keeping businesses in the county. So the tax money coming in is what it is. Especially if you're one of the 99.9% of counties outside the Silicon Valley halo. The policy question is how to spend that tax money, and what modes of analysis you use to justify your spending. Romantic notions are not a valid mode of analysis justifying expenditures of tax money.
- Djvacto 8y ago
  I think your discounting of a romantic notion, or the concept of "essential soul" overlooks the fact that this correlates highly with how the service is perceived, and thus used, as well as how it is run, which is something you can see discussed various other places in the comments. Replacing the library, whose purpose is the best interests of its users, with a business, whose purpose is the best interests of its shareholders, and expecting it to go well, seems like the real pipe dream to me.
  - kaitai 8y ago
    This is exactly right. There are two ingredients to making money: providing value and externalizing costs. When the value provided by an entity is essentially that it doesn't externalize costs -- that it's a sink for societal costs -- it doesn't make sense to commercialize it. We fund libraries because we want them to do unprofitable things.
- maym86 8y ago
  The romantic notion of a functioning free market where the largest corporations aren't subsidized by the tax payer and lobbying the government for tax breaks? The romantic notion that corporations can be used to run social services more effectively?
hvoiiita 8y ago
Amazon operated under a loss for so long they have a ton of carryover tax credits The fact they are not paying taxes right now is not a bad thing. We've benefited from them pushing commerce for the last decade
- maym86 8y ago
  It's a bad thing. They're actively avoiding tax and hiding profits. It's not accidental and it's not all because they are reinvesting. They have decided that they shouldn't contribute to things that don't directly benefit them while using the tax payer built infrastructure and lobying to keep it that way. They're using this tax advantage to kill competition. https://medium.com/bull-market/amazon-minimizes-profits-because-ceo-jeff-bezos-hates-paying-taxes-e1e626b1b873 https://medium.com/bull-market/amazon-minimizes-profits-beca... https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/technology/2016/feb/18/revealed-project-goldcrest-amazon-avoid-huge-sums-tax https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/technology/...

by maym86 8y ago

rayiner 8y ago

Getting "Amazon to pay its fair share in taxes" is a pipe dream. The United States is, by design, a race-to-the-bottom internal free market. Any given county has to balance tax rates with attracting/keeping businesses in the county. So the tax money coming in is what it is. Especially if you're one of the 99.9% of counties outside the Silicon Valley halo. The policy question is how to spend that tax money, and what modes of analysis you use to justify your spending. Romantic notions are not a valid mode of analysis justifying expenditures of tax money.

Djvacto 8y ago
I think your discounting of a romantic notion, or the concept of "essential soul" overlooks the fact that this correlates highly with how the service is perceived, and thus used, as well as how it is run, which is something you can see discussed various other places in the comments. Replacing the library, whose purpose is the best interests of its users, with a business, whose purpose is the best interests of its shareholders, and expecting it to go well, seems like the real pipe dream to me.
- kaitai 8y ago
  This is exactly right. There are two ingredients to making money: providing value and externalizing costs. When the value provided by an entity is essentially that it doesn't externalize costs -- that it's a sink for societal costs -- it doesn't make sense to commercialize it. We fund libraries because we want them to do unprofitable things.
maym86 8y ago
The romantic notion of a functioning free market where the largest corporations aren't subsidized by the tax payer and lobbying the government for tax breaks? The romantic notion that corporations can be used to run social services more effectively?

hvoiiita 8y ago

Amazon operated under a loss for so long they have a ton of carryover tax credits The fact they are not paying taxes right now is not a bad thing. We've benefited from them pushing commerce for the last decade

maym86 8y ago
It's a bad thing. They're actively avoiding tax and hiding profits. It's not accidental and it's not all because they are reinvesting. They have decided that they shouldn't contribute to things that don't directly benefit them while using the tax payer built infrastructure and lobying to keep it that way. They're using this tax advantage to kill competition. https://medium.com/bull-market/amazon-minimizes-profits-because-ceo-jeff-bezos-hates-paying-taxes-e1e626b1b873 https://medium.com/bull-market/amazon-minimizes-profits-beca... https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/technology/2016/feb/18/revealed-project-goldcrest-amazon-avoid-huge-sums-tax https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/technology/...