[pvnick]

"My good friend and CFO, Larry, why didn't you set up that offshore account that would legally save us millions of dollars in taxes per quarter like we talked about? That way we could hire more workers so they could feed their families and receive adequate health coverage."

"Oh that wouldn't be fair to the people that couldn't do that."

"You're fired."

[skore]

Alright, you really are just trolling, got it.

So unless you are setting up multiple subsidiaries in tax havens and funnel the money around in a way that lets you narrowly avoid the laws that otherwise quite clearly determine what your fair share to society is, there is no way to have a proper business and in the end, the children get hurt and poor little Rebecca can't afford to pay for lunch at school and everybody points fingers at her. Boo, boo, haa, haa, money, money. Understood.

This kind of strawman argument really used to make me sick, but these days, I'm mostly bummed out about how I've become so used to seeing it.

[pvnick]

Here's my logic:

1. Your "fair share to society" is determined by the law.

2. These companies are following the law to the "t"

3. If you don't like it then change the law.

It's that simple. Case closed.

[skore]

No, the "fair share to society" is determined by the prevailing morals of society. You can make laws all day, if society doesn't agree with them, you run into problems (ask some leaders in the middle east).

Imagine a town at a lake. There is a law that all citizens can only take so much water out of the lake. Now there is a guy taking a lot of water out of the lake - to the point where he steps over the law. But wait! He is actually registered as the citizen of a different town! Phew. Law abiding citizen after all.

What happens is that some corporations extract more value from society than is healthy for that society. That they have so much money that they can bend the tax code to their will without breaking it is completely besides the point. The result is the same: They have a net negative effect on society. That's not fair.

The lake of the town is being sucked dry. Just look at how much money those Double Irish corporations have in their accounts while a lot of of countries struggle to pay their public employees and have to make drastic cuts that directly affect pretty much only the middle and lower classes. That's not fair at all.

Well, at least they can keep buying those iPads on credit that will ruin the rest of their lives.