Fuck You, Apple!

Well, to be fair, Trump's tax cut is what is making it possible. DOn't get me wrong, I hate Trump with the heat of a thousand suns, and believe that businesses should be taxed MORE, not less, because they will just keep the increased profits. Apple is the rare case of using the profits the way they are intended to be used, to create more jobs. The rest of the companies will just keep the windfall. But, yes, it is because of Trump that they can do it, but it is an isolated good deed.

This is a lie. Apple likely had this in the works already. NO WAY a company makes a decision like that in just one month.

They are crediting the tax cuts so this gets them on Trump's good side--as are many companies.

Apple was flush with cash already. The taxcut wouldn't do anything more for Apple that it was already doing.

R1 Apple was one of the most profitable company in the world prior to this tax cut. How did this suddenly change everything?

This will cost Americans $1.5 trillion over 10 years.

Not great news.

We should all still say a prayer for the Chinese children who make their phones.

It’s the least we could do.

you have to live 3 hours away from work because of the housing costs around there.

Tim Cook is Republican. Steve Jobs was never any fair minded, social democratic individual, either.

Steve Jobs was a "stable genius" like Trump who put himself in an early grave because he was so self centered he wouldn't believe in western medicine and was too vain to carry a scar. He could be alive today, but had to do things the "delicate genius" way

Never expect great social consciousness from Apple.

Duh! Big corporate concern making money hand over fist thanks to this cut. Corporate wet dream. They don’t give a rat’s arse about the countries they trade in. Or any long term effects on said countries.

There was a story a couple of years back here in Oz about how Apple off-shored something like 11 billion they took here over the years to Ireland. And so effectively paid zero tax in Oz. But we’re having to cut government services to the groups who can least afford it - because there’s a shortfall in the tax we collect...

We have to stop thinking of these huge multinationals as ‘American’ companies or ‘British’ or ‘German’ or whatever - they are multinational and have no loyalty to anyone and will play countries off against the other to get the most possible profit for CEOs and shareholders. They’re happy to make their products using virtual slave labour in one country and sell at a premium in another. It was ever thus. But what really grates is that they’re rarely called on their bullshit and as long as it’s all in this glossy marketing bubble that’s bright and shiny - we all eat their bullshit up.

The people running them are the new global aristocracy. And if they’re not careful about reining in their greed and excess - then one day - hopefully in my lifetime! - they’ll suffer the same fate as the ancien regime or the romanovs. At least i certainly hope they do...

The cool thing is, when the aggregate US economy takes off in 2018 with four to five percent growth due to the tax cuts and reduced regulations, its going to make the Democrats look exceptionally foolish to anyone not sucking on the government teat. JFK's tax cut fueled the boom of the 1960's. Reagan's tax cuts of the 1980's fueled another huge boom. If Presidents, such as Johnson, Nixon, Reagan, and both Bushes could have said no to the military-industrial complex, the US economy would have grown much more over the past 40 years. There is just so much waste caused by politicians seeking votes and favors from special interest groups on both the right and the left. Obama was the worst. He inherited a mess from the second worst president who preceded him, but he did nothing to fix W's cluster Fu@k and went though over ten $ trillion in budget deficits and never once achieved a year of three percent plus GDP growth. Trump may be quite boorish at times; however, his administration's economic policies are on the mark.

The economy improved dramatically under Obama, r9. And the tax cuts you cited were begun when the US was suffering from a poor economy or outright recession. A tax cut now when we're still benefiting from a decent economy is a bad idea and disaster waiting to happen.

It’s not like apple was really paying taxes before. R9 President Obama’s stewardship saved this country’s ass. The economic growth we currently enjoy is because of him, not, the current administration. The rest of your argument is myth based misinformation and disinformation.

r9 LOL. Reagan's tax cuts have been what decimated the middle class and was the beginning of this huge wealth disparity where the top 1% own 50% of the world. Every time a Democratic president fixes shit, some Republican asshole comes in and fucks it up. "Party of fiscal responsibility" the Republicans ain't.

Yes, fuck you Apple for not releasing the iPhone X Plus in 2017 alongside the regular iPhone X. Instead I have to wait until this fall.

Kennedy has been correctly called the first Keynesian president (of which more in a moment). Reagan was the first chief executive disciple of supply-side economics, the tax-cut monomania that now dominates the GOP. Over the years, however, a strange connection has grown up between the two men, at least in the minds of some on the right. Because JFK advocated a tax cut to stimulate the economy, conservatives have adopted him as an early prophet of the supply-side religion.

The notion of Kennedy as tax-cutting hero dates at least to the 1970s, when then Rep. Jack Kemp was writing the tax-cut legislation that Reagan would sign in 1981. Since then, political ads contrasting clips of JFK advocating tax cuts with the target Democrat of the moment have appeared regularly. See, for example, Scott Brown in Massachusetts and Linda McMahon in Connecticut last year.

[See 2010: The Year in Cartoons.]

The argument that JFK's economic policies are more closely aligned with the modern GOP than Democrats is doubly attractive for conservatives. They can paint their tax cut-centric policies as having a rich bipartisan past abandoned by the modern left—and tweak liberals by absconding with one of their icons.

The notion of Kennedy as supply-side forerunner is a powerful myth, but it is a myth. Context is key. Conservatives love to quote a speech Kennedy gave at the Economic Club of New York in December 1962. Here's one quote—I've italicized the crucial part often left out: "Our present tax system, developed as it was, in good part, during World War II to restrain growth, exerts too heavy a drag on growth in peace time; that it siphons out of the private economy too large a share of personal and business purchasing power; that it reduces the financial incentives for personal effort, investment, and risk-taking." JFK was not expounding an implacable economic philosophy; he was speaking about a very specific circumstance. The top marginal tax rate was 91 percent, which JFK wanted reduced to a "more sensible" 65 percent. Compare that with today's 35 percent top rate, and ask: If supply-siders are so enamored of JFK's tax policies, would they advocate a return to a "more sensible" 65 percent top rate? Applying Kennedy's tax talk to the current structure, JFK biographer Robert Dallek says, is like comparing "apples and watermelons."

Another important piece of context is the thinking behind the tax cuts. Kennedy's economic policies were rooted in a Keynesian belief in the stimulative effects of budget deficits. While FDR and his aides had embraced countercyclical deficits as necessary in times of recession or depression, Kennedy was the first to advocate planned deficits in a time of neither war nor economic emergency. The aim was for the tax cuts to stimulate demand, driving the economy from the bottom up.

Republicans, by contrast, argued that while tax cuts were desirable, running an $11 billion deficit, "with no hope of a balanced budget for the foreseeable future, is both morally and fiscally wrong." That balanced-budget fixation was the ruling GOP philosophy until the rise of supply-side economics, which saw tax cuts as a way to boost investment (the supply side versus the Keynesian demand side) by helping the wealthy and business. Deficits were handled with the magical declaration that tax cuts pay for themselves.

JFK might have been first, but Obama was also from Kenya

I think it’s fucking hilarious that r9 is trying to say Trump has thought-out “policies” like he actually has a strategy to make America great again, lmao? His only strategy is to enrich himself, so FUCK OFF with your normalizing a lunatic fascist.

Well who do you want to give credit to? Nancy "crumbs" Pelosi?

Wow. So we are supposed to congratulate Apple for repatriating profits that they had hid over seas using every dirty trick in the book?

Fuck them. And that faggot capitalist, Tim Cook.

Fuck my cunt, R15! They’re doing an X Plus? I thought the X was too small but got it anyway.

UGH. I’ll be spending my tax cut on that fucking thing now. Fuck Trump and Apple.

[quote]Tim Cook Panders to Trump, Claims the GOP Tax Bill Is Responsible for “Large Parts” of Apple’s New Investment Plan

[quote] As a thank you for his tax bill, Apple CEO Tim Cook has apparently decided to stroke Donald Trump’s ego a bit.

[quote]On Wednesday, Apple blasted out a press release announcing that it planned to invest some $30 billion in the U.S. over the next five years, while building a new campus and hiring an additional 20,000 workers. In the same statement, the company also explained that, as a result of the Republican tax plan, it would be required to pay only $38 billion to the IRS in order to repatriate the roughly $250 billion in profits it has stashed overseas.

[quote]Nowhere in the announcement did Apple say these two things were actually related. But juxtaposing the fruits of tax reform with its new investment projects certainly encouraged readers to interpret it that way, and Republicans, including president Trump, seized on the opportunity to take credit.

[quote] In an interview that aired Thursday on Good Morning America, Cook got a bit more explicit. “Without these policy changes, would you be able to announce today the creation of 20,000 new jobs?” ABC’s Rebecca Jarvis asked him. “No, there clearly—let me be clear, there are large parts of this that are results of the tax reform, and there are large parts of this that we would have done in any situation,” Cook responded.

[quote]You can choose to believe Cook or not. Personally, I don’t. As I wrote Wednesday, [bold]Apple already lays out billions of dollars every year on capital expenditures and has never been constrained by a lack of cash. Even the money it kept overseas was easily accessible. All the company had to do was borrow against it with low interest, which Apple did happily in order to reward its shareholders with dividends and buybacks. Cook is obviously thrilled to be bringing his overseas profits home with a reduced tax rate (Apple had more profits sitting overseas than any other U.S. company). But there’s no reason to think it would make a major difference in his company’s long-term planning. [bold]My guess is that when Cook says Apple would have made “large parts” of these investments in any circumstances, he means almost all of them.

[quote]But saying that out loud wouldn’t flatter our prickly president. And right now, it behooves any corporation that wants favorable treatment from the government to tie all of their investment decisions to the GOP’s tax bill, no matter how tenuous. As one analyst told the New York Times, “This is Apple putting its best foot forward consistent with objectives of the administration.” In other words, Cook is paying Trump back by giving him a precious win to tweet about.

[quote]Tim Cook is Republican.

He campaigned for Obama and Hillary.

Trump's facial features seem to be getting lost in his face. It's turning into all jowls now.

Treason Valley, at it again.

So they’re going to start making phones in the US?

Lol no, r27, they'll get the headlines for saying they're doing something and then they'll continue building them all in China.