western countries aren't in russia, and you think too highly of those making billions' ability to pull out of anything)
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Russian Parliament Votes to Force US Tech Giants to Open Local Offices or Face Punitive Measures
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Step One is to get Apple operating within their borders. Step Two is to tax the hell out of them. This move is about control and revenue. Force Apple to invest more in Russia and then be more under Russia's control when it comes to things like the App Store, users' data, etc.
Apple should keep all their in-country servers mirrored elsewhere and if the time comes, cut ties and thermite everything they have in Russia.
Apple should keep all their in-country servers mirrored elsewhere and if the time comes, cut ties and thermite everything they have in Russia.
When I was growing up all I ever heard was the miracle of free trade and free exchange of ideas. I think that idealism is coming face to face with reality.
Once the government controls the healthcare, the education, and our welfare, they control us. There is no freedom anymore. You'll have to agree with everything the government likes in order to attend. Even in other areas where the government tries to help, the track record is so poor...
Take college, for example. The US government decided to get into the student loan business. Colleges went on massive recruiting sprees and enrollment skyrocketed, then the price of college went up exponentially. Now we have a student loan crisis, which people want the government to fix, forgive, and make college free. This sounds like a wonderful idea, but we really don't need everyone to go to college. Why should I pay (via my tax dollars) for someone to attend an institution to earn a degree in literature? This does not benefit society. Not to mention, from what I've experienced, these institutions are stifling free speech and slant toward indoctrination of liberal ideas only. I attended a basic midwestern state college almost 20 years ago and many of my required classes were against religion, the family, and anything conservative. I can only imagine what it looks like now.
Someone attending college to get a degree in literature doesn’t benefit society?
Ever heard of Yandex, VK, etc. ? You think people around the world use Facebook and Google exclusively? There are plenty of Chinese phones that the Russians can buy and never use one American platform and still have modern digital life. So, it’s clearly more important for Apple to remain in Russia than for Russia to keep Apple. There is also Linux running on Chinese hardware so that Russians don’t ever have to use Windows or macOS.
Get over your self-righteous wrath. Russians can build their own stuff, and with the ever-intensifying American sanctions, they have been doing just that - developing their own industries that are perfectly capable of providing modern amenities. Due to the American sanctions, Russia now has become the largest exporter of wheat in the world, whereas during the Soviet years, it was the largest importer of wheat. Russia doesn’t just import fossile fuels, as you are told by the MSM. Russia builds its own agricultural machinery, military equipment, has its own agriculture, food-processing facilités, produces the whole spectrum of food items without having to depend on any food imports, makes its own spaceships, its own civilian aircraft, has its own auto industry, science, pharmaceutical industry, medicine, etc. Russia has produced four different effective COVID-19 vaccines, each with efficacy well above 90%. Even most western countries couldn’t do that.
Most European countries and Canada couldn’t produce their own vaccine. The UK and Australia tried and failed miserably. Russia now offers four affordable and effective vaccines to the rest of the world. So, all you are doing is spouting anti-Russia propaganda.
is Russia a democratic country? No. Is UAE? Most Russians want to live in a safe society that provides a social safety net. Most of them do not care who is in charge of the country as long as their lives are improving.
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So do you want Apple to
1) don't have a commitment to social causes
or
2) Disobey the law in various countries they operate in?
The Scottish government control healthcare, education, and welfare. We have free prescriptions if we are sick, you can go through college/university twice for free, student loans(for living expenses, tuition is free) come of your wages like a tax once you earn enough and it is always a tiny amount. If you are sick you get paid time off. If you have cancer, treatment starts immediately. The population is not under some evil overlords control. And this is duplicated to various levels over the developed world.
The US government can follow any of the previously established models to get back on track and catch up. It has shown time and time again that it'll save the US a lot of money. Everyone having access to free university will increase economic output. Everyone having free healthcare and prescriptions will also increase economic output. When people aren't worried about being financially ruined by getting sick they tend to be able to work better. When everyone is able to get an education regardless of economic background you suddenly have more people contributing instead of sitting on their asses or working jobs that could never tax their intelligence. Having a second free degree allows people to retrain if their field becomes unviable. There is not and has not been a downside to this in the developed world.
Why on earth do you not want to see everyone in your country able to prosper and make your life better as a result?
Scotland's middle class income tax rate, just at the federal level, is 41%!!! That's before the National Health insurance tax.
If I made $60,000 in Scotland I'd pay almost $20,000 in taxes. No. Thank. You.
It is a fallacy to think that everyone can prosper. You are looking for a utopia, or a fairy tale. The USA has many issues and so much debt that it's absurd to think we can make everyone prosper by increasing our spending. You wan't to tell people who are working, sometimes multiple jobs, that they need to pay more in taxes so a stranger can get a literature degree while housing, food, cars, education, and other necessities are skyrocketing in price. Meanwhile, there are labor shortages across the board. We have limited resources. Temporary safety nets are one thing, if strictly enforced, but barring a disability, you should be working to pay your own way.
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"Russia has also targeted apps and services more directly if it considers them to be in breach of local digital laws. For example, Russia tried to ban encrypted messaging app Telegram after it refused to comply with requests that it hand over the encryption keys that would allow it to access users' data."
Germany is trying exactly the same now.
Germany is trying exactly the same now.
I would much rather pay a serious student to go to college than waste money babysitting many teenagers in high school who have no desire to learn and grow up to be middle aged adults no more enlightened or sophisticated in thought than they were as children.
No you wouldn’t, 41% is paid on that portion above around $61k, below that you pay 21% on the portion above $16k and on the portion below $16k you pay no tax. Total tax around $12k.
You also forget with the NHS you do not need to pay health insurance premiums or co-pays.
Yes! Russia wants tech offices in Russia in order to better threaten execs with imprisonment, as well as to raid their offices for data/espionage when desired.
All Western corporations with ANY degree of respect for the rule of law should remove themselves from the Russian market. See whether the people in these nations enjoy the equivalent of their own ‘Pravda-Freedom’-phones! Putin IS a monster, and there haven’t been free elections in Russia since at least 2000. No one can run against him because they all suffer FATAL ‘accidents’ (like running headfirst into a BULLET in front of their home). Or he has them imprisoned, tortured, and starved, hoping they’ll be forgotten by the public. He also has the families of political opponents murdered. Look up just a few of his enemies of the past 20 years, and you’ll see that many of their sons have died quite young in ‘accidents’. It is very sad. Yet, Russia is allowed to masquerade as a modern nation—with free elections—and the EU in particular is guilty of supporting Putin with direct petro purchases.
All the tech companies should just give Russia the finger and a few MAGA hats and pull out. Alas, They $ure won't. 144 million victims, er, citizens living there is too large a market to shun for something as trivial as values and principles.
Tax the hell out of them is definitely on the agenda... but it's more about spying, controlling, and curating what the people see to create a false narrative that keeps them in line. Chinese citizen are required to install government spy ware apps on their phones or they will be jailed. Russia is at least a slight notch above
The US government could get on any of those tracks if it saw fit to defend it's own territory, and not subsidize the international security of half the globe.
I would more than welcome a removal of all US defense assets and backing of any EU or UK country in order for that spending to go to paying for university and medical care for US nationals.
Same for the Western Pacific. Let Japan, Korea, and Taiwan take care of their own problems (China). Let the EU deal with Russia on their own as well.
You would need a second trip to university just to learn Cyrillic. Putin would have no trouble at all steamrolling his way to, and crossing the English Channel quickly enough to make the Third Reich look like they were doing a crab walk across the continent if the US decided to let NATO and the EU go it alone.
So save the Scottish high horse for someone else. If you had to pay for the actual cost of defending it, you couldn't have all those wonderful perks you get.
That's not how taxes work. Your monthly take-home on £60,000 is £3,624. Your mortgage or rent will be £500-£700 a month unless you are in Edinburgh. Also, the people working multiple jobs would pay less tax. Our lowest earners pay £0 in tax since you have a tax free allowance. With free education, those people would have a basic income from student loans while having free tuition so they don't need to work 3 jobs in the future. You cannot have people work their way up if there is no way out of those three jobs to pay the rent.
A basic income for a graduate starting out is £20,000. They'll pay £0 student loan, £1,486.00 Tax, and £1,251.84 National insurance. Given them, a monthly take-home off £1,438.52 with maybe £300 of that going to rent assuming a single person. They should have around £600/month free to save up or squander on video games. And they will never have to pay a single penny for medicine, dental work, hospital treatment, GP services. If they lose their job they get their rent paid and can still get free treatment. No one will ever bang on their door asking for the student loan to be repaid.
At £30,000 a year the numbers change a wee bit. The take-home is £1,968.18. £3,486.00 paid to tax, £2,451.84 to NI, and £444.00 of that £30,000 went to pay their student loan automatically.
Even at £45,000, you paid £6,486.00 in TAX, £4,251.84 in NI, and £1,800.00 in student loans. With £2,705.18 to spend on rent, food, cars, video games, holidays.
It is an absolute fallacy that working hard will pull people out of poverty. There is no one here needing to work 3 jobs. You work one job with a living wage and you get the same benefits of society as those that pay tax. You have the same right to get an education as everyone else, and that is fantastic because we have had people come out of decades of poverty now being doctors, scientists, and engineers. America is leaving real talent on the table, untapped, and unused.
Why on earth would anyone want to keep the US population behind? Just get the basics of modern democracy in place and you have another hundred million people working in top jobs, pushing the USA towards becoming a world power. All those scientists flipping burgers because of an accident at birth put them in a household education couldn't remotely afford college.
No one asked the USA to bring democracy and hamburgers to oil rich nations that want to blow up their neighbours.
Not to mention all the jobs those would create.
Dude, you're so incredibly full of a certain substance that I don't even know where to start. Now, before you start screaming how I'm an American hater - I was born in Russia and lived there long enough to know what's what.
Now, with that out of the way let's see. The only way Soviet Union was able to sustain itself after the 1960s was to export huge amounts of oil. When oil prices went down in the 80s the whole economy collapsed. As much as I personally love Ladas the entire Soviet Union was unable to produce any car in the last 40-50 years that wasn't copied off some Western counterpart one way or another. To this day Lada doesn't produce its own designs but only French ones. That's because of the planned economy, btw.
The only reason SU was able to produce military equipment, machinery and so on was because they oriented all of their economy towards the military and the basic consumer received very little. Because the big bosses couldn't care less, they were busy trying to outrun the US in a military race. Russia by itself isn't doing much better and I read about many of your so called "technologies". Most of them are either a blatant copy of the Western stuff or something so silly that nobody cares about it. I'm yet to see anything original to come out of Russia in the last 10-20 year when it comes to IT or High Tech. What's more, your damn government pays basically nothing to the retirees, steals from your own people constantly and murders any sort of political opposition in the most horrific ways stifling any chance of fair elections. So please spare me about your industries, most of them are a major joke or owned by oligarchs.
As for the vaccines, most people in the US who wanted to get vaccinated have already done so. Is that the case in Russia? Not from what I hear.
P.S. I've heard of Yandex and VK because I have to communicate with other Russians. Nobody heard of them in the US because nobody cares. Not to mention that Yandex is basically a localized copy of Google and VK is nearly carbon copy of Facebook. And I rest my case.
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