Why do people feel a multinational corporation HAS to bring their money to the US??

[RB TexLa]

I don't understand why that is thought. They can keep their money where ever they choose, why do people feel they shouldn't?

[nadinbrzezinski]

1. Popcorn

[Warren Stupidity]

2. Um, perhaps because the vast majority "their money" was earned right here?

[NoOneMan]

28. The money is "earned" by creating surplus value

Which is sometimes referred to as exploiting labor.

Their profit is basically the difference between production and gross sales. That difference is as much of a result as where they choose to produce as from where they choose to sell.

Looking at the end point to determine where they "earn" the money only figures in half the equation. Coincidently, such a place just happens to be where these people want the money collected, so it buffers their personal public coffers. Why not also demand that these profits are fairly tax and utilized where the workers are most exploited? Nevermind. I know why.

[quakerboy]

32. You do?

Do tell...

[NoOneMan]

42. Its due to a national ethos akin to a 5 year old child

We want all the glorious trinkets that a capitalistic system will produce for us and yet we want none of the inherent rot that the capitalistic system plainly promises. We want, we want, we want, and we cannot level with the reality that our choices bring. By in large, we give a damn about the exploitation and use it as a hollow rally call--a talking point--to promote an agenda that will deliver the taxation rules or jobs that we deem "fair" (our conception of which is formed entirely based upon what benefits us).

The system cannot be patched into benevolence. It is what it is. It will grow and swallow governments. It will hack its way into global hegemony. It will leave a decimated earth in its wake and a chasm between the classes. These are its characteristics. If you devote your life to tinkering with it to make it work for YOU, please realize such tinkering is merely making it work less for someone else. We cannot all have our cake and eat it too.

[Nuclear Unicorn]

52. If you have any extra toilet paper in the house

you could sell it to people in Venezuela and make a killing.

[quakerboy]

58. A lot of words meaning relatively little

Unless you have a solution.

And If you really think that "we all" dont care about anyone but ourselves, you may just be on the wrong website. I feel safe in saying most of us here care about the fact that people are being exploited all over the world. We dont like it. I will admit many dont know what to do about it, and feel powerless to stop any of it. But then we assume we need all those glorious trinkets like, say, clothing. Or towels for after a shower. And where do you find a t-shirt or a towel that was not made by someone in another country under less than humane conditions? It ain't easy. It gets a lot less easy if you don't have disposable income after paying for a roof and food.

So whats your solution?

[NoOneMan]

61. Solution?

There isn't a solution anymore, if there ever was one. We don't always have the power to fix things in the best way, or maybe anyway. Humans are little more than actors in self-sustaining, rule-based system whose inertia is beyond most of our ability to talk down. Why is it we always think we have the ability to solve things, and we always know the magic way to do it?

If you want a solution try and figure out how to rebuild after climate change and disparity wipe most of us out. In the meantime we are all mostly fucked. Find solace in whatever you can pretend gives you solace and enjoy your day.

[quakerboy]

62. so, nihilism?

Its not in my nature to go down the route of hopelessness, I am that guy who keeps playing the game to the end even if I am 50 spaces behind my opponents with no chance of winning. I suppose if your philosophy comforts you, run with it.

In the mean time, why bother to tear down what others want to try to do to see if it improves the situation any, if it all makes no difference anyway?

[NoOneMan]

64. To each their own. It doesn't really matter anyway

[HiPointDem]

35. it's not taxed *anywhere,* basically. why not demand that it's taxed *everywhere*? nevermind

i know why.

[Atman]

63. In Apple's case, that is not true.

There are many more countries than just the U.S. I was in Thailand, literally on the other side of the planet, and there are Apple dealers. Everybody has Apple computers and iPhones. Apple sells EVERYWHERE. They take the profits they make in other countries and shelter them using appropriate and LEGAL tax laws. Any other view of this is typical American self-centric ignorance. Apple is a great American success story. But the United States tax laws make if perfectly legal for this American company to sell it's good all around the world under various divisions. If you don't like it, quit bitching at Apple, because they won't change what is legal as long as they are paying dividends to shareholders. Instead, bitch to the Congress critters who write the laws of which Apple is taking advantage. Legally.

[Marr]

3. Well, why not jump in the ocean and cut an artery?

I mean, is there really any reason you should keep your blood inside your body instead of the ocean?

[cherokeeprogressive]

4. Um... family values?

[morningfog]

5. You have trolled better in the past. This is weak.

C'mon, give it some effort.

[RB TexLa]

9. It's a serious question. It seems the answers are simply because we are Americans and we deserve it

to be here.

[Gravitycollapse]

11. Yes, we deserve good jobs and a stable economy.

Why do you have a problem with that?

[RB TexLa]

12. People in other countries want that too. Oh, nevermind, they aren't precious Americans.

[Gravitycollapse]

15. Never in my life have I seen American outsourcing benefit foreign workers.

Excepting maybe Canada.

We drain them dry for pennies on the dollar.

If they want good jobs, globalism is not the answer. It never is.

[RB TexLa]

16. Right, anyone other than Americans are "better off the way they were," no sense in them trying

They are just better off knowing their place.

[Gravitycollapse]

23. Actually, supporting globalism is really "putting them in their place."

Your argument is basically that we should treat them like shit because, hey, it is better than what they have. Which is really quite terrible.

[Yo_Mama]

19. Now you have

http://money.msn.com/now/post.aspx?post=b44460f3-7780-4cf3-a45d-fc16bbf3b603

As Bloomberg discovered, pay for workers in China's manufacturing industry has nearly tripled in some cases as its labor pool thins and employees name their price at far-flung facilities. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, average hourly wages for China's manufacturing workers rose from 62 cents an hour in 2003 to $1.36 an hour in 2008.


Even that's a conservative estimate, as a more recent Japanese survey puts average monthly wages between $320 and $350. On the high end, that's roughly $2.20 an hour, or more than triple the average wage in 2003.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2078121,00.html

In the past decade, according to Helen Qiao, chief economist for Goldman Sachs in Hong Kong, real wages for manufacturing workers in China have grown nearly 12% per year.

[Gravitycollapse]

24. Nothing says benefit like making 2.20 an hour, amirite?

We pay them shit. And you are attempting to jusify that.

[quakerboy]

33. I wonder how that rise compares to actual spending power

Perhaps its an incorrect assumption, but I assume that as their wage rose, the costs of items have as well

Minimum wage in the US was 3.10 in 1980, or 6448/year at full time
Minimum wage in the us was 7.25 in 2010, or 15080/year at full time

So, in theory, we actually beat the increase shown on that graph for china. But that hasn't really done us any good. Though I cant find the graph in either linked article, and, to be fair, its not measuring the same thing, total income vs disposable income.

[Yo_Mama]

38. "Real" wages are adjusted for price increases

A real increase of about 12% a year is something US workers can only dream about.

The increase was continuing last year:
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/china-wages-jump-in-2012-despite-slowing-economy-2013-05-17

[HiPointDem]

36. it's not either-or. but you knew that.

[1StrongBlackMan]

6. Because ...

too many buy into the American Corporation frame.

I've said for the last decade, corporations store they work force in low wage/low regulation nation-states; their money in low tax nation-states and their executives in the U.S., where the American tax-payer will protect them and allow them to maintain their lifestyle.

But that said, it's not about where they keep their money, it's about whether they pay for the benefits they gain by pretending to be American businesses, e.g., security for their executive, a relatively effective court system to protect their business interests and a fairly affordable, high standard of living.

IOW, it's about playing taxes.

[davekriss]

27. Perfect response!

I couldn't say it more succinctly myself.

[Gravitycollapse]

7. Apple is an American company. End thread.

[galileoreloaded]

45. not according to where they make their shit and keep their money nt

[Gravitycollapse]

46. That's kind of the problem, isn't it?

That an American company moved its assets and manufacturing plants off shore.

[galileoreloaded]

47. agree. but are they still American, and what will really bake your noodle

is that if they aren't what are they?

i posit a company without a country, but do they really need one?

[Gravitycollapse]

48. Well, they need our consumption.

Their company was kickstarted here, gained fame here, continues to sell a shitload of products here...yet moved its assets offshore to reduce cost.

That makes them exploitative.

[galileoreloaded]

49. without doubt.

but who should police them?

[Gravitycollapse]

50. I still believe they are legally an American company.

Which means we should police them.

[Blue_Tires]

51. So charge them an import tariff, then

and see how long it takes for them to start waving the flag...

[galileoreloaded]

55. i like it. nt

[dogknob]

8. Because the 1% are the "gods" of our time & their media is our expected place of worship.

Everything they do is proclaimed on the news when it's already a done deal down from Up On High.

Anyone who tries to bring them back to Earth is magically fired, scandalized, arrested, accidented, suicided or overdosed.

[pinboy3niner]

10. I don't launder money with you!

[pintobean]

34. I'll drink to that

That's twice that you've made me laugh this morning.

[smirkymonkey]

59. Touche!

LOL!

[Nye Bevan]

13. Are you trying to suggest that Tim Cook should escape execution? (nt)

[denverbill]

14. Why does the US have to tax MY HARD EARNED WAGES!!!

I dunno. Maybe because I live here and work here and depend on the US military, the interstate highways, the police, the FBI, and 1000 other government agencies that protect my property rights, health, and well-being.

Apple, eg, makes 90% of it's profits in the US. It needs to pay it's share in taxes, just like I do and for the same reason. Apple, unlike other 'people' in the US, can't be drafted and can't go to jail, yet it enjoys all the privileges of actual US citizens, thanks to Citizens United. If they can't be persuaded to pay the same fucking taxes all the rest of us do and instead resort to trickery and games that ordinary Americans can use, fuck them. They are traitors to America and should move to Russia and suck Putin's dick. And that goes for the CFO's of every other US corporation that uses the same fucking traitorous gimmicks Apple uses.

[deathrind]

17. These companies...

Did not start up as multi national companies. They started up as small businesses in a garage or basement or rented space. They grew to their size thru the benefits afforded them from constitutional rights, thru protections of laws and enforcement of said laws, thru infrastructure that supplied power and water and communications to build their products, transportation networks that allowed acquisition of materials to build products and also a mean to send their products to market. People might like to think that the entrepreneurs of the Apples, Intels, Microsofts, Johnson & Johnson's, Boeings, Fed Ex's etc of the business world built their business by themselves but they did not. They did it on the backbone of thousands of Americans who spent decades laying the foundation they benefitted from. That is why.

[Starry Messenger]

18. Because the ones that originated in the US gained success by the labor and brains of US workers.

Especially the tech corporations who now want to whine about the lack of STEM education among students in the US, but won't help fund the robust educational system that they wouldn't have existed without. They should put back what they took in social capital.

[nobodyspecial]

20. Wow, why are you even still here?

I've never seen you post a Democratic thought or position.

[eShirl]

41. +1

[Chan790]

21. Because they're HQed here, earned the money here and benefit from government services here...

they should be required to pay taxes here on those earnings.

If they want to take it offshore...it should only be allowed post-taxation. Until then, they're tax-cheats the law has not yet caught up with.

[think]

22. To pay for THEIR WAR MACHINE to protect their ass in 3rd world countries they exploit

The only reason the US military is the world's policeman is to protect those assets of multinational corporations overseas PERIOD.

[Whisp]

25. Elizabeth Warren has something to say to you:

Turn it up Loud.

[tularetom]

26. That's kinda the whole point of being a "multinational corporation" isn't it?

I guess the chickens are coming home to roost on us. We elected the people who pushed through the tax codes and trade policies that let these companies take their $ and stash it in tax havens around the globe.

And they aren't all republicans either. A lot of the damage was done during the Clinton administration and President Obama seems determined to uphold the tradition as well.

Globalization is truly upon us now and I don't think we're going to like it very much. Of course what "we" like doesn't make any difference to the people who caused this.

[defacto7]

29. I don't care where they keep it.

Just as long as it's taxed properly in the corporation's country of origin. Taking advantage of tax laws that were constructed by those corporations is unethical. I do not aspire to the notion that ethics = law.

[Populist_Prole]

30. Because the people that feed the multinationals so much must in turn be nourished themselves

It's unsustainable. Basically my way of shilling for demand-side economics and shitting on supply-side economics. Trying to frame it as a "right" of the US is just overcompensating for any supposed US-centric hegemony by shitting on the US hoi-polloi. Don't do it.

[The Second Stone]

31. If you use the US economy in any way, you should pay taxes

just like real people.

[Sgent]

37. The US has always taken this view

We are one of the only countries in the world that taxes on worldwide income. Most only tax on income earned in their country.

This view especially hurts us with multinational corporations -- see the Apple example. They have 100b located off shore, and they will have to pay up to 35% in taxes to repatriate that money to either return it to shareholders or build their operations in the US.

In other words, it could be 34% more expensive to build a new factory in Germany, and it would still make sense for them to do so economically.

[KurtNYC]

39. +1 Tax laws are often written to encourage and discourage certain behaviors

For example alcohol and cigarettes are heavily taxed. So it is EXPECTED that Americans will modify their behaviors to avoid these taxes.

Many in government understand the problems created by the current tax laws and are proposing ways to change them.

The case of Apple is part of a broader trend in which companies use increasingly complicated tax maneuvers to claim more of their income is derived from overseas, or otherwise reduce their U.S. taxes. Companies can legitimately avoid paying taxes on that income, now an accumulated $1.9 trillion, until they bring it home.

Ideally, revising the treatment of overseas income should be part of a broader tax overhaul. It’s hard to separate the treatment of foreign income from the rest of the corporate tax code, which encourages companies to move their operations overseas.
...
There’s no point castigating Apple for taking maximum advantage of existing tax law. We expect the company to redefine the possible in the devices it makes, so it shouldn’t be a surprise that Apple exerts the same determination when it comes to keeping its money.

The consternation spurred by the subcommittee’s report should be directed toward pushing Congress to adopt a fairer, more reasonable system of taxation for the foreign earnings of U.S. companies.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-05-21/apple-s-taxes-expose-the-rotten-u-s-code.html

[hobbit709]

40. How about they should keep the money they EARNED here, here and pay taxes on it.

[taught_me_patience]

43. Please look up cost accounting and you'll find your answer

when you understand the tricks these companies pull to lower their taxable U.S. income and dramatically increase their offshore tax haven income.

[HughBeaumont]

44. Corporations and the wealthy use a shit ton of the U.S. largesse, THAT'S why.

[Blue_Tires]

53. Why are people so quick to defend supposed "American" companies

who invest so relatively little in America??

[Dreamer Tatum]

54. Because they enjoy all the benefits of being located in the US

Why didn't Apple locate in Burundi?

If you want access to US talent, capital markets, and the US rule of law, then guess what - you should bring your money here, too.

[LonePirate]

56. We should tax US sales and permit only US based expenses

Under no circumstances should we offer tax amnesty days to permit the repatriation of income.

[Pholus]

57. The entitled megacorps like your framing. But it isn't a one way street.

These guys sure have bought enough politicians to create the system that lets you even ask the question which blindly makes the assumption that this is some kind of leeching going on from the "job creators."

But let's get this straight -- they CERTAINLY don't have to bring their money to the U.S. But then have the decency to not mooch off the system the REST of us created.

Want our copyright protection? Pay for it.

Want our lawyers and contract law? Pay for it.

Want our infrastructure? Pay for it.

Want our markets and their regulated stability? Pay for it.

Want our publically funded research system? Pay for it.

If we kept that rule solidly enforced Apple could stay offshore if it wanted, but it would be irrelevant in a decade with a score of fully AMERICAN companies replacing it.

That's the cost of your multinationals. Socialize the costs and privatize and export the profits. These moochers want freebies and they think highly enough of themselves to think they have "earned" it.

[muriel_volestrangler]

60. Because what they're doing is waiting for a sympathetic Repub govt to lower tax rates

on bringing the money back - then they'll distribute it all to shareholders, with almost no tax paid on it, anywhere (they won't reinvest it in the US business - if that were their aim, they'd be looking at reinvesting it in the other countries at once).

What many multinationals are doing is looking for loopholes that allow them to transfer worldwide profits to a country (whether or not they have any employees there - the Apple Irish subsidiary has no employees, but has had billions of Euros of worldwide profits stashed there, at a corporate tax rate of just 2%), where they wait, while they lobby for a chance to bring the profits back into the USA at a small tax rate - which will allow them to pay it all out as a huge dividend to shareholders (or pay off the loans they take out in the USA that are currently paying the dividends the shareholders are demanding right now, because the US government so far hasn't given in to the lobbying).

It's all a game of playing off one government against another, looking for the changes in the tax codes from year to year to find loopholes - and lobbying for those loopholes to appear. If the Republicans ever get control of the US government so that they can have just one year of low tax rates for repatriated profits, all these companies will pull that money back into the USA, but they won't invest it in new development or production - it will be paid out to the owners in a bonanza of low tax dividends. Count on it.