I never get comments like this, as 100% of the time the person making it always fails to respond to the follow-up rebuttal:
"Please describe the last time you paid a single penny more on your taxes than you were required to pay legally." I have yet, after all this time, to find a single person who has said "I paid X more for the good of the US and its debt load."
I'm afraid that is a silly comment.
I'm believer in capitalism and small government, I don't want massive taxes etc. But the current situation we have is one where ordinary people simply have no way of avoiding tax while big companies and the super rich can and do all the time. To pretend this isn't so is just plain ignorant. And it is angering millions of people.
Apple is quite open about it. They have for example tried to get the Indian government to give them tax breaks in India - and that's a country in desperate need of infrastructure from the government etc. You won't find Tim Cook virtue signalling about poor Indians who don't have clean water to drink that those taxes might have put right while he and the rest of the board pocket tens of millions in bonuses.
So to answer your comment the rebuttal is very simple - ordinary people have no choice and have to pay every penny of tax and, you perhaps aren't aware, frequently do indeed accidentally pay too much, either through mistakes or not knowing some obvious loophole. Multinational corporations, including Apple, have a record of ruthlessly avoiding tax through all manner of means. They do this to the tune of billions, yes billions, of dollars per year. Does this end up making the average Apple worker better off? No. Due to increasing automation and, in the case of western countries, immigration from the third world, low end jobs are not seeing real terms increases in wages. However, no robot will take Cook's job and he is part of an elite which votes their own wages so his class see huge returns. It feels unfair and is unfair.
We all depend on society to work together and for everyone to accept the systems of taxes and honestly paying for things etc. Without that, capitalism falls apart. And in return capitalism provides incredible wealth and inventiveness but it's only fair that those who profit from this, especially to the obscene level that Apple's top execs do, have to pay back to keep the system going.
As it happens I don't blame the individuals in question that much. It's nauseating when the likes of Cook virtue signal on twitter of course but it's true most people would behave with similar greed if in that position. The governments simply shouldn't allow it.
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I am sure she is very valuable to the company. Just as Tim Cook is valuable to the company. And they both work very hard at what they do, I have no doubt. It's important to remember, however, that in this world, so much comes down to luck. That is the sad but honest truth – reason for the rest of us to be content with what we have, and reason for those of worldly renown to remain ever humble.
Thousands of geniuses live and die undiscovered — either by themselves or by others. But for the Civil War, Lincoln and Grant and Sherman and Sheridan would not have been discovered, nor have risen into notice. I have touched upon this matter in a small book which I wrote a generation ago and which I have not published as yet — Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven. When Stormfield arrived in heaven, he was told that … a shoemaker … was the most prodigious military genius the planet had ever produced.
-Mark Twain
That is indeed the depressing dirty secret of economics. It would be so nice to believe it isn't true but alas it is.
I think society to society you can make the comparison. There are valid reasons, and maybe some invalid, as to why for example the USA is wealthier than Zimbabwe on the basis of things like the rule of law and contract law etc.
But within any given society, having had a fair bit of experience of knowing some top execs, men one rung down from Cook in terms of wealth, but still in the top 2% they work hard but not really any harder than say a high ranked nurse or farmer or mid level engineer. I am quite happy for someone like Cook who is after all an employee, to earn a high wage but the amounts these days are just ludicrous.