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Paul Buchheit reports via Common Dreams
An emotional response to any criticism of the Apple Corporation might be anticipated from the users of the company's powerful, practical, popular, and entertaining devices. Accolades to the company and a healthy profit are certainly well-deserved. But much-despised should be the theft from taxpayers and the exploitation of workers and customers, all cloaked within the image of an organization that seems to work magic on our behalf.
1. Apple Took Years of Public Research, Integrated the Results, and Packaged it as Their Own
2. Even After Taking Our Research, Apple Does Everything in its Power to Avoid Taxes
3. Overcharging Customers
The manufacturing cost of a 16 GB iPhone 6 is about $200, and with marketing it comes to about $288. But without an expensive phone contract with Verizon, AT&T, or one of the other wireless carriers, the cost to the customer is at least $650.
4. Underpaying and Mistreating Employees
5. Apple Has Figured Out How to Spend Most of its Untaxed Money on Itself
Apple's View:
The tax-avoiding, research-appropriating, cost-escalating, wage-minimizing, self-enriching Apple Corporation has, according to CEO Tim Cook,[1] a very strong moral compass.
[1] Link in article redirects.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Wednesday May 20 2015, @06:24PM
Clickbait? Though some of the specifics and details of this story are undoubtedly wrong, the overarching accusation that corporations have too much power and too little moral sense rings quite true.
The powerful are always trying to grab even more power and wealth, and must be constantly watched and restrained. Prominent members of the powerful are of course large corporations. Naturally, many large corporations are guilty of all kinds of stupid, destructive, anti-social, and downright murderous decisions. Apple is certainly far from the evilest of these organizations. British Petroleum, Exxon Mobile, and the rest of Big Oil are guilty of far worse, such as the Deepwater Horizon accident.
Clearly Apple, and Microsoft, don't know what to do with all their wealth. It's a common problem among the superrich. They cannot use their wealth efficiently. If they spent an hour thinking over each $10,000 of expense, they would pile up money faster than they spent it. They have to make hasty decisions. Haste makes waste.
The poor can't make efficient use of what little they have either. We wait for sales, send in rebates, clip coupons, and otherwise scrounge for pennies. Don't get much return on the time it takes to seek out bargains. The poorest and weakest among us are preyed upon by loan sharks and profiteers of various stripes. What is especially egregious is when special interests and the rich co-opt local governments to help prey upon the people. Things like red light cameras, speed traps, property seizures, and parking meters. When I see that, I can understand the hate for government. Recall the case of Sylvia Stayton, the nice little old lady who got into trouble for kindly putting money in parking meters. Then what do these governments do with all this revenue they unfairly extracted from the people? Give it to the rich, keeping a little for themselves of course. Big corporations play the game of "give us big tax break, or we build our factory elsewhere", and local governments race to the bottom to lure these parasites.
The playing field favors the rich right now. Our checks and balances are weak. The people are taking too much of this lying down, too preoccupied with petty bourgeois problems to appreciate how we're all being cheated and do more about it. The rich think they're the doers, and that the rest of us are lazy moochers. Could it be they're sort of right? If we don't step up and take more responsibility, we could lose it all. We've got a big problem: Climate Change. Solve that, and at the same time show the arrogant rich that they're not superior, put them in their place. Civilization really could be hanging in the balance.