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> Why is it the US's fault that they consider tech to be valuable to their economy and national security and we don't? USA has created monstrous monopolies tha

> Why is it the US's fault that they consider tech to be valuable to their economy and national security and we don't? USA has created monstrous monopolies that are very heavily subsidized by the government. Amazon, Apple, etc. do not pay taxes and yet get big sums of money to settle in cities. That is the money that USA is using to buy European companies. China blocked the USA from buying their tech, and the result is a healthy ever growing tech scene. I have worked for a couple of European tech companies purchased by USA corporations. First "nothing will change" is the message, two years later the reduction in quality is clear and all the tech is siphoned to the USA side of the business. It makes sense, it is good for the USA. Europe should follow the Chinese example and ban most of USA tech. No more Facebook radicalizing our citizens, no more Amazon taking over all business without control, ... When TikTok started to grow, the USA banned it. That is the game. Europe should follow, ban Facebook, Twitter, ... let local talent grow. There is much wasted talent in Europe overwhelmed by the current position of USA companies. "Just don't sell" does not work when your adversary puts all the weight of the state to protect and subsidize their tech industry.

wuschel 6y ago
Hi, > I have worked for a couple of European tech companies [...] all the tech is siphoned to the USA side of the business. It makes sense, it is good for the USA. Out of curiosity here: Could you name one/a couple of examples? Not necessarily the ones you worked at, if you are prohibited from disclosing this information. Email is in my profile, if you do not want to make any public statements. Cheers!
- Hokusai 6y ago
  I am going to talk about one that I have colleagues that worked here in Sweden: Skype It was a successful startup but $8.5 Billion is a lot of cash. I heard that developers were not happy with Microsoft way. Promotions/Pay/etc. became a competition between colleagues instead of a collaboration. Of course in that case my colleague leaved the company, maybe other people really liked it that way and stayed. But, my personal experience is similar. USA companies want employees competing for recognition instead of collaborating to compete with other companies.
bennysonething 6y ago
Erm, I quite like American tech. Google is an unbelievable resource. Provided for free. You want to ban it? I wonder how much business it drives to British companies. Also I couldn't do my job with out it. Amazon taking over all our businesses? That's a bold claim, any stats to back that up. A family member of mine runs a business on Amazon. You'd like to kill her business? There is literally no other platform that does something like fba. Also the reason Amazon and Google are successful here in the UK (and everywhere they are allowed to operate) is because they are way better than the competition.
- Hokusai 6y ago
  > I couldn't do my job with out it. Yes. That is the point. The need exists. European companies will offer that services creating high quality jobs in Europe and they will follow European cultural norms instead of American ones. > There is literally no other platform that does something like fba. That is the monopoly part promoted by the USA and financed with public money. Amazon is a monopoly protected by a friendly but in the end foreign power that has misaligned interests. I can assure you that if tomorrow Alibaba grew to challenge that number one position, it will be banned from doing business in the USA. The services are needed, here, in the USA and in China. USA has its own tech companies, China has its own tech companies, Europe has not anything at that level because USA just buys anything Europe creates backed up by USA tax-payers money. That is not fair.
  - bennysonething 6y ago
    What are european cultural norms? Are you really trying to claim Amazon is financed by tax payer money in the USA? Can you provide examples of this investment? Fba is monopoly because Amazon took a huge bet and invented it. Same with prime.
    - JetSpiegel 6y ago
      > Are you really trying to claim Amazon is financed by tax payer money in the USA? Can you provide examples of this investment? They don't pay taxes and pay workers like shit. The federal government gets no revenue, and still has to increase social spending and policing to avoid workers burning the place down, protecting Bezos' investment. Then there's Blue Origin, which involves direct handouts from Uncle Sam.
ChrisLomont 6y ago
On the claim these companies don’t pay US taxes, you should look at their SEC filings. Here [1], for example, is one for Apple, showing them paying an income tax rate north of 20%, for tens of billions of dollars. Then they pay payroll taxes, property taxes, import taxes, sales taxes, for many more billions. All the companies you claim aren’t paying taxes are. [1] https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/320193/000032019318000145/a10-k20189292018.htm https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/320193/0000320193180...
- Hokusai 6y ago
  That seem impressive numbers until you look at the total numbers that companies they move: https://fortune.com/2018/01/18/apple-bonuses-money-us-350-billion-taxes-trump/ https://fortune.com/2018/01/18/apple-bonuses-money-us-350-bi... You are taking the statement literally. In that sense you are completely right, that companies pay an amount of taxes above zero. But, if I pay $100 in taxes but I get back $110 then I have effectively not paid taxes. Even that is not literally true as I paid and then I got them back. > income tax rate north of 20% That is after all the accounting magic. As a non-tech example, did you knew that Harry Potter movies did not won any money (https://deadline.com/2010/07/studio-shame-even-harry-potter-pic-loses-money-because-of-warner-bros-phony-baloney-accounting-51886/ https://deadline.com/2010/07/studio-shame-even-harry-potter-...). Of course, that is ridiculous, but it is accounting truth.
  - ChrisLomont 6y ago
    Why would Apple, or any company want to pay US taxes on sales overseas, especially when they already paid income tax, property tax, VAT tax, and every other necessary tax in each jurisdiction where they did business? Should they also pay US Social Security and employment insurance on their foreign workers in foreign countries? If you want to look at the foreign country equivalents of these SEC filings, they're all public, and you can look through them. When you do, you'll find Apple pays north of 20% of worldwide income, when totaled worldwide. I've been through their biggest several markets looking through financial data. It's all there for you to check. You're just making my point - Apple paid all necessary US tax, and it's quite a significant rate (just like US law) compared to US profits. They also paid all required foreign taxes, also at a pretty high rate. Also, if you think somehow Harry Potter accounting implies Apple accounting, then if I point to a company paying the amount of taxes you like, is that evidence Apple did too? Of course not. It's an invalid comparison or implication in either case. Same for your made up $100 and $110 story. What if I make up the same story with $100 made and $110 paid in taxes - does that imply Apple paid more in taxes than they made? Of course not. >That is after all the accounting magic. What SEC number do you dispute, say for 2017: US sales of 229B, operating income of 61B, or 15B in taxes? These are all well documented, quite reasonable numbers. If they're lying on these, there are significant costs for them if caught. And there's thousands to millions of investors that also care a lot about how accurately Apple records numbers. It makes much more sense these are the legally correct tax numbers. I presented you Apple's legal filings to cut through all this opinion piece nonsense, since for every opinion piece one way there's one the other way. The truth in the matter are the legal filings: IRS and SEC. And they're pretty clear Apple pays more tax than the pop believer thinks. If you want to argue Apple doesn't pay the proper taxes on US income, show me a SEC or IRS filing that shows it. So you can believe opinion pieces that match your current beliefs. or you can look at the legal filings with the actual data, usually left out of opinion pieces. One will give you a much better and more accurate worldview. One is mostly designed to create outrage and pageviews - the more pageviews the more the opinion piece place gets paid. Otherwise they, like you and pretty much every entity, pays the tax their required to be law. And like you, and pretty much every entity, they do their best to not pay more than the required amount.

wuschel 6y ago

Hi, > I have worked for a couple of European tech companies [...] all the tech is siphoned to the USA side of the business. It makes sense, it is good for the USA. Out of curiosity here: Could you name one/a couple of examples? Not necessarily the ones you worked at, if you are prohibited from disclosing this information. Email is in my profile, if you do not want to make any public statements. Cheers!

Hokusai 6y ago
I am going to talk about one that I have colleagues that worked here in Sweden: Skype It was a successful startup but $8.5 Billion is a lot of cash. I heard that developers were not happy with Microsoft way. Promotions/Pay/etc. became a competition between colleagues instead of a collaboration. Of course in that case my colleague leaved the company, maybe other people really liked it that way and stayed. But, my personal experience is similar. USA companies want employees competing for recognition instead of collaborating to compete with other companies.

bennysonething 6y ago

Erm, I quite like American tech. Google is an unbelievable resource. Provided for free. You want to ban it? I wonder how much business it drives to British companies. Also I couldn't do my job with out it. Amazon taking over all our businesses? That's a bold claim, any stats to back that up. A family member of mine runs a business on Amazon. You'd like to kill her business? There is literally no other platform that does something like fba. Also the reason Amazon and Google are successful here in the UK (and everywhere they are allowed to operate) is because they are way better than the competition.

Hokusai 6y ago
> I couldn't do my job with out it. Yes. That is the point. The need exists. European companies will offer that services creating high quality jobs in Europe and they will follow European cultural norms instead of American ones. > There is literally no other platform that does something like fba. That is the monopoly part promoted by the USA and financed with public money. Amazon is a monopoly protected by a friendly but in the end foreign power that has misaligned interests. I can assure you that if tomorrow Alibaba grew to challenge that number one position, it will be banned from doing business in the USA. The services are needed, here, in the USA and in China. USA has its own tech companies, China has its own tech companies, Europe has not anything at that level because USA just buys anything Europe creates backed up by USA tax-payers money. That is not fair.
- bennysonething 6y ago
  What are european cultural norms? Are you really trying to claim Amazon is financed by tax payer money in the USA? Can you provide examples of this investment? Fba is monopoly because Amazon took a huge bet and invented it. Same with prime.
  - JetSpiegel 6y ago
    > Are you really trying to claim Amazon is financed by tax payer money in the USA? Can you provide examples of this investment? They don't pay taxes and pay workers like shit. The federal government gets no revenue, and still has to increase social spending and policing to avoid workers burning the place down, protecting Bezos' investment. Then there's Blue Origin, which involves direct handouts from Uncle Sam.

ChrisLomont 6y ago

On the claim these companies don’t pay US taxes, you should look at their SEC filings. Here [1], for example, is one for Apple, showing them paying an income tax rate north of 20%, for tens of billions of dollars. Then they pay payroll taxes, property taxes, import taxes, sales taxes, for many more billions. All the companies you claim aren’t paying taxes are. [1] https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/320193/000032019318000145/a10-k20189292018.htm https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/320193/0000320193180...

Hokusai 6y ago
That seem impressive numbers until you look at the total numbers that companies they move: https://fortune.com/2018/01/18/apple-bonuses-money-us-350-billion-taxes-trump/ https://fortune.com/2018/01/18/apple-bonuses-money-us-350-bi... You are taking the statement literally. In that sense you are completely right, that companies pay an amount of taxes above zero. But, if I pay $100 in taxes but I get back $110 then I have effectively not paid taxes. Even that is not literally true as I paid and then I got them back. > income tax rate north of 20% That is after all the accounting magic. As a non-tech example, did you knew that Harry Potter movies did not won any money (https://deadline.com/2010/07/studio-shame-even-harry-potter-pic-loses-money-because-of-warner-bros-phony-baloney-accounting-51886/ https://deadline.com/2010/07/studio-shame-even-harry-potter-...). Of course, that is ridiculous, but it is accounting truth.
- ChrisLomont 6y ago
  Why would Apple, or any company want to pay US taxes on sales overseas, especially when they already paid income tax, property tax, VAT tax, and every other necessary tax in each jurisdiction where they did business? Should they also pay US Social Security and employment insurance on their foreign workers in foreign countries? If you want to look at the foreign country equivalents of these SEC filings, they're all public, and you can look through them. When you do, you'll find Apple pays north of 20% of worldwide income, when totaled worldwide. I've been through their biggest several markets looking through financial data. It's all there for you to check. You're just making my point - Apple paid all necessary US tax, and it's quite a significant rate (just like US law) compared to US profits. They also paid all required foreign taxes, also at a pretty high rate. Also, if you think somehow Harry Potter accounting implies Apple accounting, then if I point to a company paying the amount of taxes you like, is that evidence Apple did too? Of course not. It's an invalid comparison or implication in either case. Same for your made up $100 and $110 story. What if I make up the same story with $100 made and $110 paid in taxes - does that imply Apple paid more in taxes than they made? Of course not. >That is after all the accounting magic. What SEC number do you dispute, say for 2017: US sales of 229B, operating income of 61B, or 15B in taxes? These are all well documented, quite reasonable numbers. If they're lying on these, there are significant costs for them if caught. And there's thousands to millions of investors that also care a lot about how accurately Apple records numbers. It makes much more sense these are the legally correct tax numbers. I presented you Apple's legal filings to cut through all this opinion piece nonsense, since for every opinion piece one way there's one the other way. The truth in the matter are the legal filings: IRS and SEC. And they're pretty clear Apple pays more tax than the pop believer thinks. If you want to argue Apple doesn't pay the proper taxes on US income, show me a SEC or IRS filing that shows it. So you can believe opinion pieces that match your current beliefs. or you can look at the legal filings with the actual data, usually left out of opinion pieces. One will give you a much better and more accurate worldview. One is mostly designed to create outrage and pageviews - the more pageviews the more the opinion piece place gets paid. Otherwise they, like you and pretty much every entity, pays the tax their required to be law. And like you, and pretty much every entity, they do their best to not pay more than the required amount.