Could someone explain to me what "lobbying expense" term means, please ?
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Apple Has Spent Record $2.2 Million Lobbying Trump Administration Over Past Three Months
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Lobbying... institutionalized bribery and purchasing of favours.
Can someone define 'corporate lobbying' to the non-American rest of the world? What would they have spent this on?
How is Apple telling you to live your life? Be specific.
Do you get emails from Tim Cook or Apple? Perhaps it's iOS home screen messages on how you should behave?
https://www.opensecrets.org/
Great site to research looks like most of the money went to tax policies. But not even in the top 20 spenders
In the rest of the world it is a criminal activity called bribery, but in the land of the free it is legal.
Let's eliminate corporate lobbying all together, the reality is that all it does is serve the best interest of companies and causes headaches for individuals.
No but as someone very familiar with Apple inside management yes this is an issue.
Apple has BILLIONS in foreign earnings they don't want to pay the current corporate tax rate on. THAT is what this lobbying is almost entirely about. If they can get Trump to create a "corporate tax holiday" or just get the corporate rate lowered substantially, that would be a huge win for Apple. Whenever you see a massive uptick in spending on lobbying like this, there is almost certainly a huge financial gain motivating it.
Yeah, exactly and a perfect example of why corporate lobbying should be banned.
That's peanuts for Apple btw.
But why is Apple so concerned with climate change? If so, fine but it's not very Germaine to their business. You could argue climate affects everybody and that's true but to me Apple is morphing from a technology company and Tim Cook wants to be an oligarch to bend the world to his own viewpoints. Money seeking power seeking money....this is old as time.
But why is Apple so concerned with climate change? If so, fine but it's not very Germaine to their business. You could argue climate affects everybody and that's true but to me Apple is morphing from a technology company and Tim Cook wants to be an oligarch to bend the world to his own viewpoints. Money seeking power seeking money....this is old as time.
Sounds good...
My company in silicon valley employed many with H1B visas, not being able to find enough local degreed EE and CE engineers. They received the same pay and benefits.
How much money would you be willing to spend educating electrical or computer science engineers at the BS or MS level who would otherwise not be entering college?
And how much additional yearly income tax would you be willing to pay to help with those costs?
I with you here, but the reality is that the US government is just too large and is used to often to punish organizations with out of favor political views. All large companies organizations have to lobby in order to survive. The solution is to cut government. At that Trump is trying, but the deep state is fighting back.
The problem with Apple is they support the deep state and that is hurting everyone, even if the those with politically correct views cannot see it.
Ironically, your avatar doesn't pay taxes either. So I don't understand your point. Seems very hypocritical.
So since they are in such high demand with low supply, I assume the salary is like $400,000+ to reflect this?
Because if kids knew they were going to be making half a million a year as an engineer, I bet we would get many more.
To answer the way back question... here are some rational reasons I came up with in five minutes of thinking about Apple and lobbying.
1) First and foremost, taxes — as in, “not paying tax on sales outside the US.”
2) Immigration policy, which is to say, continuing to hire either the most qualified people regardless if nationality, OR hiring cheep people with abused H1B visas. IBM would likely lobby for the latter, I suspect Apple is doing the latter
3) ENCRYPTION, the elephant in the corner. That's a huge big deal for Apple. The US could cripple them.
4) China - lending US government support in Apple’s fight against some of the more corrupt parts of the Chinese government.
5) Not losing “same-sex spouse benefits”
6) Autonomous cars which may explain why a panel of Congress voted unanimously to override states and allow untested technologies to be used on the road
7) Trying to get bandwidth or other technical stuff from the FCC or whomever
8) Streamlined approval of this and that
9) Patent law reform
10) Preventing import duties, though really, those would affect everyone the same way since nobody makes phones here and any computer assembly, to my knowledge, is from parts made elsewhere
11) Allowing Macs to be used in more parts of the government
12) Allowing iPhones to be adopted by more parts of the government
13) Educational policy to encourage more engineers and coders so Apple doesn't have to worry about supply and/or can pay less — very important given the record and qualifications of the Edu Secretary
So that’s a rational nonpolitical look at it. Why lobby Trump more than Obama? Perhaps President Obama was already agreeing with Apple. Perhaps Apple had greater access to President Obama. Perhaps some of these issues are only now coming to a head. Perhaps they think the Trump people are more susceptible to lobbyists (they did end Obama’s self-imposed rules on lobbyist access). Perhaps it's all of these.
Someone here wrote, “That’s peanuts for Apple.” It’s true. Think about the Kochs for a moment; they spend hundreds of millions on lobbying and elections, and in return they get billions in profit. It’s no different for Apple. You put a few million into lobbying, you can save billions (or get billions).
1) First and foremost, taxes — as in, “not paying tax on sales outside the US.”
2) Immigration policy, which is to say, continuing to hire either the most qualified people regardless if nationality, OR hiring cheep people with abused H1B visas. IBM would likely lobby for the latter, I suspect Apple is doing the latter
3) ENCRYPTION, the elephant in the corner. That's a huge big deal for Apple. The US could cripple them.
4) China - lending US government support in Apple’s fight against some of the more corrupt parts of the Chinese government.
5) Not losing “same-sex spouse benefits”
6) Autonomous cars which may explain why a panel of Congress voted unanimously to override states and allow untested technologies to be used on the road
7) Trying to get bandwidth or other technical stuff from the FCC or whomever
8) Streamlined approval of this and that
9) Patent law reform
10) Preventing import duties, though really, those would affect everyone the same way since nobody makes phones here and any computer assembly, to my knowledge, is from parts made elsewhere
11) Allowing Macs to be used in more parts of the government
12) Allowing iPhones to be adopted by more parts of the government
13) Educational policy to encourage more engineers and coders so Apple doesn't have to worry about supply and/or can pay less — very important given the record and qualifications of the Edu Secretary
So that’s a rational nonpolitical look at it. Why lobby Trump more than Obama? Perhaps President Obama was already agreeing with Apple. Perhaps Apple had greater access to President Obama. Perhaps some of these issues are only now coming to a head. Perhaps they think the Trump people are more susceptible to lobbyists (they did end Obama’s self-imposed rules on lobbyist access). Perhaps it's all of these.
Someone here wrote, “That’s peanuts for Apple.” It’s true. Think about the Kochs for a moment; they spend hundreds of millions on lobbying and elections, and in return they get billions in profit. It’s no different for Apple. You put a few million into lobbying, you can save billions (or get billions).
No, that's silly.
I haven't checked in awhile, but I'm guessing a BSEE out of school is starting at $80K - $100K. And experienced engineers are at $150K+, on the average. Enginners with special skills make more, of course. At least in silicon valley. Apple, google, FB, etc hire a ton of engineers, the best qualified, leaving very few for small to medium sized companies.
This is what pisses me off about a lot of Corporate Apple defenders when it comes to tax evasion issues
"Apple is just taking advantage of what the system allows them to"
saying that, completely, and utterly is wrong and disingenous, sa Apple, and many other corporations have spent millions/billions over the years to "Lobby" politicians to keep tax loopholes open, if not create more.
So Apple has absolutely been part and parcel of creating and taking advantage of those very loopholes.
US government needs to figure out some way of limiting / prohibiting corporate lobbying.
The problem is the people who could make that possible, directly benefit from the current system.
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