If you think thats how the tax system is in the us you should check the facts I'm afraid.
Nm though, I'm lucky to have a good life, just saying the world is getting more and more unbalanced... And the US economic system is probably the most uneven system of any modern society I can think of. That's just what I think.
The facts are that that the highest tax bracket in the US pays 39.6% in federal income tax. Some places pay even more because of state and local taxes. For example, the highest tax bracket in California pays 13.3%. This doesn't even account for sales tax (which is also very progressive because wealthy people typically purchase more) or property tax. It's also a fact that the lowest tax bracket in the United States is 0%. Another fact is that the US has the highest corporate tax rate in the industrialized world at 39.1%.
There's been a ton of political BS spouted about wealth inequality the past few years but it really boils down two things..
For personal income tax it comes down to the tax rates on capital gains and dividend payments. You probably remembered Warren Buffett saying that he pays a lower tax rate than his secretary. I love Buffet. He's brilliant, modest, and extremely generous. That being said, he achieves his "lower tax rate" through capital gains and dividends. This is probably the most hotly debated topic when it comes to taxes. When you own stock in a company you actually own a portion of that company. If the stock goes up you can sell your stock and pocket the gains (this is a capital gain). If the company has more profit than is needed for the business then the company can pay the owners (shareholders) a dividend payment.
Right now dividends and long term capital gains (stock held over a year) are taxed at 20%. This is how Buffett claims to lower his effective tax rate. The issue is that as an owner of the business (a shareholder) this money was already taxed 39.1% on the corporate level. Simply transferring it from his company to his personal account costs an additional 20%. Basically the business owners are being taxed twice on the same money. If I were personally in charge of taxes I would lower the corporate tax rate to make American business more competitive globally and raise the dividend and capital gains rates to the 39.6% taxed. This would help American business and get rid of the perception that some people are avoiding massive amount in tax.
The second thing being spun for political gain is the corporate tax rate. Apple has come under fire recently for dodging taxes. If Apple sells a phone in the US then they pay the corporate tax rate of 39% but the issue is that Apple sells a great deal of phones all over the world. The people saying that Apple is dodging taxes are basically saying that Apple should pay the US government for profits made elsewhere. So instead of bringing the money back to the US Apple is simply letting it sit in a bank overseas. Apple would like to be able to get to the money and the government would like a piece of it, but the tax rate is so high that it's prohibitive. As the global economy continues to grow and other countries continue to progress more business is being done outside of the US. This is the reason that US companies are holding record amounts of cash offshore. It's also the reason that multinationals have started doing what is called a "tax inversion." Basically they are buying companies overseas and moving their headquarters there to pay a lower tax rate. This will continue as long as the repatriation tax is obscenely high.
I know that was a lot, but that's basically a summary on everything going on with US taxes. We live in a very progressive tax system where the wealthy pay significantly more than the poor.
Progressive tax systems are nothing but a move by a bunch of cronies who are suppressing the latest generation from replacing their stoic butts.
Eliminate both welfare and the minimum wage, you will see a resurgence in the economy beyond anything since the Roaring '20s when the Federal Reserved moved in and created the Great Depression with their lapdog, FDR taxing the hell out of new money keeping the cronies in power.
Care to clarify? I fail to understand how a progressive tax system is an attempt to suppress a new generation? Wouldn't a regressive tax system be much more effective? If the rich "cronies" are in charge and just want to keep the latest generation down then why not just tax the young/poor at a high percentage and tax themselves nothing? And you do realize that welfare and minimum wage are both in place to help poor people right? That neither of these things are available to the wealthy?
Apple normally acquires companies that have technology that they want, and walks away from deals where the terms are too onerous.
Here they have paid significant amounts of money for something that is not their core business,
and where there is apparently no technology on offer. There is not obviously much more money to
be made from the music industry (or by selling headphones as computer accessories), and Beats does not have any key patents in the area (Bose seems to have those). Apple are also acting out of character by maintaining the company as a separate business rather than simply absorbing it.
Conclusion: something unusual is going on! Wearable fashion technology, perhaps?
I agree with much of what you say here. I don't think something unusual is going on though. Don't over think it. It's still pretty obvious that streaming is the future of music and Beats already has a product (a fairly good one) in this market. It's a market that is growing rapidly. Past that, there are other synergies... Apple doesn't currently offer speakers or high end headphones so there is no conflict on product lines there. Also Apple can immediately take these products to a global scale with their retail network. Last was Jimmy Iovine and Dres relationships in the music industry. These guys have worked in the industry for their entire life and they know people there. Maybe Jimmy can help Apple negotiate lower rates than competitors for streaming (maybe he already has with Beats and Apple inherited this advantage). Tim said that this deal would be accretive to earnings in 2015. Thats remarkably fast to acquire a company and make more than you paid for them. And if streaming takes off like I think it will then Apple will have made much much more than 3B when it's all said and done.