I’m skeptical of this point. Growing up Baptist, I was taught that temptation itself is not a sin because Christ was sinless and he was tempted in the desert by the devil.
“Manage to live”? Is that the standard for the richest country in the history of humanity? That’s some short sighted thinking. Are those “managing to live” saving for retirement? Can they see a doctor? Can they afford to have children?
As for moving to a cheaper place… their jobs are in the city. That’s why they live there to begin with.
Have you missed the inflation crises? Have you missed the absolute fleecing of the middle class due to stagnant wages? Have you missed the student debt crisis? Have you missed the disinvestment in black and brown communities? Have you missed the ramshackle, near collapse of public transit and other infrastructure? Have you missed the teacher/police/fire/EMT/911 operator shortage? Have you missed the homelessnesss/housing crises?
There are so many built-in assumptions under your comment that I don't even know where to begin unpackaging what parts of it. Briefly though, I live in Vancouver, a city that's Canada's version of say, San Francisco, and yes, many people find ways to get ahead without being rich or falling into the degrading traps you seem to think apply much more broadly than they do.
“EV sales” includes plug in hybrids. I’m a big proponent of plug in hybrids as a good transition vehicle for those not willing / able to to full EV, but they should be reported separately.
> You can't sue someone for mimicking someone else's voice well enough to be confused for the mimicked creator's voice. Some people can do some voices quite well.
Oh you most certainly can. In fact, you can sue someone for sounding too much like himself. Just ask John Fogerty.
But as far as that specific trial - not anymore. Fogerty vs. Fantasy becomes case law, and so any future cases with substantively similar facts are going to be ruled the same way. That's how the law works.
>The agreement outlines that 35% of that local portion that is returned to Cupertino is handed by the city to Apple—to the tune of $107.7 million since 1998. California took notice and launched an audit.
So $4m a year?
>The Adopted Budget is budgeted at $130,587,325 and is funded by $130,244,157 in revenue.
So taxpayers are “missing out” on 3% of their budget in exchange for 65% of 1% of Apple’s online sales in California. How much does the city get in return for this deal? And, wouldn’t Apple just choose somewhere else to direct the funds otherwise?
Apple has to choose where to allocate the tax funds. That’s the law. That Cupertino offered the best deal for them is a quirk of the law, not a shady deal by Apple. As well: their headquarters are located there. It’s not like they shopped around for the best kickback deal by allocating it to some little town on the coast.
> Cupertino is facing a 73% reduction in local tax revenue. California is taking issue with the agreement and examining the extent to which the California purchases attributed to Cupertino are proper.
Err, what? There’s some math here there doesn’t add up. Did the article mean to say that Apple has contributed $107m per year since 1998 — so $2.6b? If so, Cupertino is facing a 96% reduction not 73%.
I must be missing something here. Could someone point me in the direction of the right math?
> Did the article mean to say that Apple has contributed $107m per year since 1998
No, Apple has received $107 million rebated from Cupertino since 1998.
Cupertino has retained (since the rebate is 35% of the total, so the total is 65/35 of the rebate) $198 million since 1998, and initially received $305 million.
But while that is probably increasing over time, not sure where the 73% comes from, as that’s ~$94 million/year.
Hmm… More research:
It’s 73% of sales tax revenue, not total city revenue. Cupertino currently gets $42.1 million per year in sales tax revenue, the deal going away is expected to drop it to $11.4 million per year. (And there are expected to be fines and returns of past funds, on top of that.)
From the linked article[0] in the first paragraph:
> Although Apple isn’t named in the city staff report, the company is Cupertino’s largest source of sales tax revenue. According to the audit, revenue will drop to $11.4 million in the current fiscal year from $42.1 million, and Cupertino may be required to return money to the state that it has received in previous years. The city may have to cut staff and other spending to cover the shortfall.
So I think the 73% number reflects whatever chagnes CDFTA are enforcing to take some of the online sales tax revenue away from Cupertino. Also from that other article, the $107m number appears to reflect total payments from Cupertino to Apple since 1998
> The company remits all sales tax it receives to the state tax department, which then allocates the local portion to Cupertino. The city passes on 35% of its total to Apple. Those payments to Apple have added up to $107.7 million since 1998, according to city payment records examined by Bloomberg Tax.
But TFA is very unclear about the specifics of the state-city-company revenue sharing...
> Where that lands ethically, morally or legally is up to interpretation
Maybe if this was Alice in Wonderland. Apple knows the law and they hire responsible people to balance their books. If they prioritize fixing those rounding errors above the law, that is an objective failure. It is about as morally, ethically or legally interpretable as killing a politician you disagree with.
Then why didn't some little podunk town elsewhere in California work out a deal more lucrative to Apple than what Cupertino offered? Clearly this has a lot to do with Apple's HQ location. The actual money is just a pittance.
Because that would have fucked up Steve's commute. Apple HQ wasn't picked based on how much they could drag out of the local government. Their lawyers, however, were.
It seems like everyone in these discussions sees only two worlds: lawless hellscape of intrusive, data-stealing apps that permit freedom or “walled garden” of good apps that restrict it and users’ freedom. The truth, as always, is already somewhere in between. And it will be after iOS 17.
Let’s see how Apple innovates in this space. It’s time. The iPhone is 16 years old this year. Time to users get behind the wheel if they want to.
My nightmare scenario is if every country and mobile reseller will come up with their own app store, and pre-load/make users use those. Once Apple gave in, they will press further to make this happen.
These stores would onboard Facebook and other big apps, but regular solo dev will have to submit each app to a dozen of different stores and comply with a dozen of different requirements and review processes or pass on user share to some local dev who copies the idea quickly enough.
The EU is pushing for (has already ratified?) rules against even pre-installing Apple apps, or at least making it easy to remove them. I’m certain that Apple, who sells their phones directly, will be able to keep the carrier bloat at bay.
But I also share that concern. It’s one reason I don’t use android as a daily driver.
Well, being the only country left with any manufacturing after a catastrophic world war is one major reason.
Also, navigable waterways. Transporting goods by water costs 1/100th what it costs to transport over land. After the US established a corp of engineers to dredge our waterways to make them passable, the ability to transport goods increased substantially, making internal trade extremely cheap.
> Well, being the only country left with any manufacturing after a catastrophic world war is one major reason.
This is not the reason. Post WW II Europe was able to rebuild and for a long time they had some of the biggest companies and for a long time EU as a whole was a bigger economy than the US. It's only in the last 2 decades where the US is significantly outpacing the EU. And there are no signs of slow down.
WW II can not be the reason EU has few big tech companies. (relatively compared to the US, few exceptions always exist)
They were able to rebuild… because the US funded it.
The Marshall Plan, also known as the European Recovery Program, was a U.S. program providing aid to Western Europe following the devastation of World War II. It was enacted in 1948 and provided more than $15 billion to help finance rebuilding efforts on the continent.
That’s about $187B in 2022 dollars. In addition to technology and trade.
… followed shortly after Breton Woods, which secured trade for the rest of the world in exchange for not joining up with the Soviets.
I think it's just luck. In terms of big tech most of the US is like Europe. It's only silicon valley that has this type of innovation.
But the innovation has been around a singular avenue of software. It is a mistake to think that software is the most important driver of economic growth.
