The seven craziest findings in the US investigation of Apple’s tax avoidance practices

[davidthegnome]

32. Awesome post.

Worthy of it's own thread.

I think you hit the nail on the head a number of times here.

I just heard my Father discussing tax issues with my mother - at 29, it's depressing and a little embarrassing to be living with mom and dad, but, tough economy, blah blah blah...

Anyway, individually, they each pay more in taxes every two weeks than I earn in two weeks - approximately, what they pay out in federal and state income taxes is what I would earn with a full time job at nine or ten dollars an hour. They make decent money - approximately one hundred thousand dollars a year, before taxes, but they've also worked hard for it for well over thirty years.

I believe the rate they're taxed at is somewhere between thirty and thirty-five percent. Somehow though, people like Mitt Romney are taxed at half that rate, or even less. The funny thing? My parents are democrats, who might complain about taxes frequently enough, but it is because they are unfair. People like Mitt Romney (and, I imagine, many apple corporate officials) complain about takers, about food stamps, about medicare/medicaid... if it's a federal or state program that benefits the people they have been screwing for decades, they hate it, oppose it, will destroy it if at all possible.

It IS class warfare - and the political elites are not on our side, because they are elites. That is, they are, for the most part, members of the same class as Mitt Romney.

It's so damned depressing - and I have so little hope that we can actually do anything about it. I mean, these people basically control everything, they really aren't likely to be inclined to care what the "unwashed masses" think of them. They aren't likely to be inclined to care if the system is unfair, if we're getting screwed. The only way that I expect that they will ever care, is if people become angry enough to do something about it.... and I think that time is coming.

For all their rhetoric and self righteous babble, the political elite are some of the most despicable of all individuals on earth today.