With the way the current economy works and current farming and manufacturing methods the number of people is definitely a problem but those are fixable problems. You fix the problems rather than look for ways to get rid of people because down that path is war and/or genocide.
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Factory Replaces 90% of Human Workers with Robots, Production Rises by 250%
- Thread starter Megalith
- Start date
Well, yeah, the more obvious solution that is better for all is just to encourage an environment in which people choose to have less kids. All civilizations, without exception, have had lower birth rates during peak prosperity. Many people argue cause and effect, but either way we know when a society is pumping out craptons of kids, it breeds poverty (which makes sense on a micro-level, you can invest far more in say two children as a mother and father, than you can with six children as a mother and father, or worse single mother if all else is equal).
The way the current relationship between business and taxes work is they don't build factories where they get taxed and they won't build factories where strong labor or environmental laws exist either.
Of course certain folks in govt. are trying their very hardest to cater to those needs so you may still see those factories get here in the US but I don't think you'll care about them being here at all at that point since they'll of no economic benefit to the US govt. or labor at that point. They will in fact be a drain on our resources since they'll be using our infrastructure and dumping waste products into our food/water supplies which will have to addressed somehow.
This is already happening in developed countries anyways. Developing nations are still producing a surplus of people but as their economy improves that goes away.
I'm sorry, but this makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.
Lets contrast a simple choice of say a Ford factory in Mexico vs US.
If the Ford plant is in Mexico, its paying zero dollars in taxes to the US, and all of the taxes are being collected by the Mexican government. If the Ford plant is in Mexico, yes the pollution is in Mexico, but generally speaking being so close its still affecting our shared environment in North America when they dump into say the Gulf Coast, and the US government (ie you and I) have absolutely no say in pollution controls being put in place unlike domestically. All of the supporting industries for the factory will again be Mexican, with money being dumped into the Mexican economy accordingly.
I have no idea where you came up with this concept that major businesses can somehow be a DRAIN on the US economy. How do you support that? Without even looking at numbers, how do you explain why its so vital to state economies to get companies to setup their businesses in their state? C'mon now.
Not really, unfortunately what is happening is that the native populations are doing the right thing and stabilizing their population, but the developing nations with such a massive surplus of people and insufficient jobs has many emigrating (legally and illegally) to those countries that have their birthrate under control.
So instead of a finally stable population, you just have more growth and a demographic shift as natives are replaced with an ever larger number of people from foreign developing nations. I mean, just look at the numbers comparing 1980, 1990, 2000, 2010, and projection for 2020. The numbers don't lie.
The only exception to the rule I can think of is Japan, because of their very strict immigration enforcement.
Its simple economics.
If they're not paying taxes AND they're creating factories which are heavily automated (reducing employment) AND put wear and tear on the infrastructure (by using it, remember factories need a constant stream of goods to/from them, and large trucks trash the roads) AND dump waste products into the food/water supply (which has to be dealt with by the local or federal govt. which costs money = mo' taxes) THEN the only reasonable conclusion is they're a drain on the economy.
Cite one single example of a large corporation that is not paying taxes. Depending on who you talk to, the corporate tax rate in the US is either the highest in the world or far above average. The idea that they are NOT paying taxes is, well, wrong.
Yes really. What you're describing is a immigration issue. That is a different issue from birth rates altogether. Its not like they immigrate to a given country and then maintain the same high birth rates either BTW so the long term effects on population don't mean much. For instance even with relatively large numbers of illegal immigrants over decades of time the US population birth rate isn't all that high at this point. IIRC its barely positive.
Japan has actually been trying to get huge numbers of people to immigrate to their country without much success. Their culture isn't very tolerant of different people and is somewhat xenophobic and immigrants pick up on that FAST. The EU doesn't have a very high birth rate at this point either though no one else is as bad as Japan. They're sort of the poster child for falling birth rates.
I can give you more than 1. http://www.usatoday.com/story/money...-profitable-companies-paid-no-taxes/81399094/
Here is a different source: http://money.cnn.com/2016/04/13/pf/taxes/gao-corporate-taxes/
Its known as a tax inversion BTW and its well known to be a issue.
And you know better than to just look at the peak possible statutory tax rate. The actual tax rate paid in the US by corps is much lower than that. The actual effective rate tends to hover around 20%.
https://www.treasury.gov/resource-c...ocuments/Average-Effective-Tax-Rates-2016.pdf
If you don't want to bother reading that then here is the relevant part in one easy chart from that document: http://imgur.com/a/Mv1k7
Nobified[H]
[H]ard|Gawd
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I will look it up! When you got millions of hungry people......something gotta break!
rudy
[H]F Junkie
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People have been saying this for thousands of years. There is always another efficiency gain to be had, but somehow humans keep finding new jobs to do. This massive layoff of workers already happened in the USA. Factories in a lot of developing nations have way more employees than similar factories in the USA in many cases. Here is the kicker, once you automate almost everything then the whole cheap labor dynamic goes away and you can bring those jobs anywhere in the world, once again you may see a shift to bringing the factories close to the consumers.
There's no beating around the bush.
If you've invested time in researching and read your own sources, you are willfully LYING right now.
The only reprieve would be if you did a quick google search "corporations not paying tax" and didn't actually read your own sources, which either way is pretty bad.
You stated, and I repeat, that companies "pay no taxes". We know that companies don't specifically pay income taxes on years they take a loss... that's kind of, well, obvious right? Income tax is a tax on income profits. No companies take a loss forever, or they go out of business. Most of the time, they have to be turning a profit, or they don't exist so most of the time they are paying income taxes as a net positive. So if nine out of ten years you make a profit, and you have a loss one year, not paying income taxes that year because you had suffered losses doesn't mean corporations are paying no taxes. Now I don't support it, but GM took such a loss that in the government bailout they received a massive tax credit as a parting gift to get back up on their feet. Nevertheless, your article for example says that GM paid $1 billion in taxes to Uncle Sam that year, even on the article that says they paid no income taxes (globally, not in the US). Last I checked, $1 billion > $0. Can you verify my math? Income taxes are also only one form of taxes along with gross tax, property tax, excise tax, payroll taxes, unemployment contributions, state and city business taxes, customs, license, etc.
For example, technically Verizon Wireless in 2014 cited a loss with downsizing, and so they paid zero in income taxes (comes out to negative 660 million in income tax), however, that doesn't mean they didn't pay taxes even on loss years. Their total tax expenditure for 2014, with zero income tax paid, was $3.4 billion.
Furthermore, you then go on to contradict your statement that companies pay no taxes, by saying that they pay around 20% in taxes (even though that's wrong, as adjusted federal and state taxes average at 39.2%, the highest in the world). Which is it? No taxes or 20% taxes? Please stop.
revenant
[H]F Squad Captain
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So I give you exactly what you asked for (proof of at least 1 corp that paid no taxes) and you call me a liar? What is wrong with you??
Quote exactly where I said all US corps pay no taxes. Not where you think I said it, where I said exactly that.
You didn't read the articles at all. I can tell because the first one was explicit in that it mentioned clearly they were referring to companies that were turning a profit.
From near the top of the 1st article:
USA Today article said:
Hell all you had to do was read the dang URL. Man you aren't even trying here.
Are corporations the same thing as factories? Because the discussion was originally about factories and then you started talking about corporate tax rates and I was replying to what you said. Where is your reading comprehension?
Also your article is shit and you're misreading it on top of that. Its combining the federal corporate tax rate and state/local taxes to inflate numbers as well looking only a few companies. Other countries have similar local taxes too that aren't usually brought up when talking about tax rates of a given country since they vary so much but they're there.
I also gave you Treasury numbers which are more accurate and broke down tax rates by sector as well as gave you the national average for several years. So address the information I've given you or stop posting. Or better yet just add me to your ignore list because if you're going to ignore quality data at will then you're hopeless anyways to talk to.
You'd think so but look at South America or Central America or Africa even in the 20th century.
All those countries have been subject to influence by outside powers to the detriment of their peoples but quite a lot of their poverty is due to their own leadership and businessmen.
Its all too possible that what will "break" is the average people and not the will of the powerful. Certainly seems to be the trend in the US for at least the last 4 decades. Historically reversals of the influence and power of the wealthy have happened (Progressive Era so late 1800's to 1920's-ish) so I try to remain optimistic.
You're doing it again. You did not. Just stop already. I don't mind honest differences of opinion, but you are intentionally being disingenuous (that's the nicest way I can put it).
If there was any confusion, my statement is that factories here produces a tax benefit (which is patently obvious and reason that localities and states fight tooth and nail to win those businesses because of the massive economic benefit), and you made up nonsense citing that domestic businesses are actually a tax drain on the economy because US businesses don't pay taxes. Rather than just drop it, you doubled-down not even reading your own sources hoping that sufficient google-fu spaming would exhaust anyone bothering to debate you, and ignored that billions of taxes are paid whether there's a profit or not. Citing a few loss years for businesses or special circumstances like Democrat provided income tax credits to GM in no way supports your claim of "no taxes" or more outrageously that they represent a net tax drain on society.
I asked you to provide ONE example of a major corporation that doesn't pay taxes, and now you're all over the place making a simple question confusing by looking only at income taxes and ignoring carry-over tax credits.
I don't know if you are agenda pushing or just too invested in your original nonsense and so are entrenching, but if we aren't going to stick to facts and honest debate, there's no further point.
I gave you exactly what you asked for, I even gave you 2 different sources to read on it, so yes I actually really did.
Neither article did that and I even quoted the section from the 1st article (the most easily read one) that showed you're wrong here.
Nooope. You're making up stuff now. I don't know who you think you're going to convince here because I gave links to everything. You're coming off as if you're in denial.
"Cite one single example of a large corporation that is not paying taxes." - Ducman69
Which specific part of that was confusing to you? I'll explain this again, since you are pretending like you don't understand or that I was referencing income tax only.
American companies pay taxes.Ducman69 said:
American companies pay a LOT of taxes, with estimates ranging from the highest in the world to far above average. That's the range from experts "highest in the world" or "far above average".
No American companies pay no taxes, and your claim of being a net tax drain by "using our infrastructure and not paying" is unadulterated nonsense which you cannot support by spamming random links that have nothing to do with that claim.
I gave you 2 links. Multiple companies were listed in both those links. They were both quite clear they were listing corps that made money. Address them or stop posting.
Nope. You keeping citing the statutory peak rates which is facetious since none of them pay that. Effective US corp tax rates are not the lowest but are quite middling at best.
The Treasury .pdf shows this quite clearly.
edit: even your politifact article notes that this is only true when talking about statutory peak rates.
Politifact article said:
You're not even reading, or even understanding them if you do read them, your own articles at this point WTF man.
No. Name one that "pays no taxes". Not income taxes. Taxes. Its been explained to you three times now that there are many forms of taxes that companies pay. You understand this. Stop pretending you don't.
That word doesn't mean what you think it means, and, again, no. This has already been explained to you (and is moot anyways, since we're now arguing about HOW MUCH taxes they are paying, versus your "not paying taxes" nonsensical outlandish earlier claim).
1) Statutory: Out of the 34 countries in the OECD, America ranks first with a 39.1 percent corporate tax rate, compared to an OECD average of 24.1 percent. The OECD figure is what’s called the statutory rate, meaning the base rate applied to corporate profits.
2) Effective: The most recent estimate comes from the World Bank and International Finance Commission, which put the United States’ effective rate for 2014 at 27.9 percent. That’s second-highest behind New Zealand among OECD countries. In 2011, the Tax Foundation published a survey of 13 prior estimates of the United States’ effective tax rate from 2005 to 2011. All 13 studies pegged the U.S.’s rate as above average.
Of course I understand this. My understanding doesn't seem to do a thing if you're in denial though. (edit) Bear in mind originally under discussion was FACTORIES. Obscene tax breaks on factories are the norm BTW. You're the one who started talking about businesses/corps. You probably perceive it as just a throw away insult but I was being serious when I said you're reading comprehension is terrible.
Yes I know what this. You keep citing this as if its what they actually pay. Its the effective rate that actually matters.
Heeey congrats you finally figured out what effective tax rates are but you just so happened to link to a neoliberal organization which surprise surprise lists US effective tax rates as really high in comparison to other countries AND a actual shill conservative think tank ran by the Koch bros. You can find different studies such as those by Hasett-Mathur which present it as lower or even higher but generally its accepted by actual economists the US effective corporate tax rate isn't all that high.
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Yeah, FINALLY, am I right? LOL!
Its a shame I didn't post that twice already showing that whether the actual or estimates on effective rates its high either way... oh wait, I did.
Starting all the way back on post # 91 no less. Oops.
Also pretty interesting how you're pretending that you haven't moved the goal post by arguing over how much taxes are being paid, versus your ridiculous assertion that they aren't paying taxes and are a net tax burden on society.
In any case, you were going to show us all a single major US corporation that doesn't pay taxes... anytime now would be great. Just give a name, it can't be that hard. For example "Walmart" or "Microsoft" or "Exxon-Mobil".
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Nooooope. I don't even know how you can get that out of what I posted. I've been harping on the difference between statutory and effective tax rates for a while.
You don't even mention the words effective or statutory in post #91 and the article you posted agrees with me on the issue. Your reading comprehension is legit bad man. Or you're not even reading what articles you post as a cite.
Again, quote (edit: spelling) exactly where I said all corps don't pay taxes. Listing a effective corp tax rate and pointing out that some corps don't pay taxes isn't a goal post shift or a contradiction. And again the original context was FACTORIES which you seem to be equating with businesses/corps.
You haven't actually shown anything I've said to be wrong or even really tried to do much of anything to refute what I said in post #90, here it is again:
You basically got stuck on the first few words, probably didn't even bother to read or consider the rest. Hell the parts about reducing employment through automation and infrastructure wear and tear is enough to make a factory a net negative for the economy.
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Its a copy and paste from post #91, oh and posted again in case you missed it, and then finally a third time. Hey, they're right, the third time is the charm!
Its literally the same post that started this painful conversation, post #91: https://hardforum.com/threads/facto...n-rises-by-250.1924168/page-3#post-1042801296mesyn191 said:
Your claim is that they aren't paying taxes and are a net tax drain, which you can't support because its the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard.mesyn191 said:
They are paying taxes, factories in the US cannot possibly reduce employment compared to factories that are not in the US (I mean, how do you not get this, even if the factory in the US employs only a single person that's one American more than would otherwise be employed if the factory were not in the country), and only in the US do we have control over pollution controls into our atmosphere/oceans. Which is a regurgitation of what we've already gone over several times.
But you were going to show us a single major US corporation that doesn't pay taxes. Just post the name. Not articles. Just post a name. Are you afraid that someone might, I don't know, look up how much they paid in taxes and if the number is not $0, then you'd be wrong?
Did I say it wasn't? Address what I said, not what you think I said or some strawman like you're doing now.
Again not paying taxes on a factory isn't the same as not paying taxes for a corp. They get (and abuse) tax breaks constantly to build stuff as an incentive. Read the article in post #106.
If the factory eliminates more jobs than it replaces then its a net negative. They won't even add 1 job net since that is the only way they'll make sense financially in the US where labor is more expensive than China and even in China labor is too expensive to not be replaced by automation.
Horseshit. They have tons of them in the EU. My understanding is they're even more strict about pollution in the EU than the US. Even in China they have pollution regs. In China they're just more lax or not enforced due to graft. In the US they're being loosened already. They'll also be cutting enforcement drastically too.
I did and you rejected it for BS reasons. You even rejected the GAO article without even giving a reason even though its clear cut too.
Kind of how unions have convinced poor people that illegal immigrants are good? You know by increasing supplies of low skilled works, that lower wages?
freeloader1969
2[H]4U
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Unfortunately it is more complex than that and one reason immigration is used by various western countries is to support growth of their economies due to their own population aging.
Now I am not entirely sure how well those models have been studied/updated but that is one of the primary drivers why western countries push for immigration, however it could be argued it is not balanced and is also open to political ideas and moves (Labour here in the UK pushes broad-any immigration because statistically most will vote Labour) and here I agree it is not implemented correctly.
The risks of robotics is to employment economics and the domino effect it can cause if left to a similar framework-control as immigration, especially when they become more advanced, needs a thought out and balanced framework for what they can be used for but it would in theory reduce the model on why immigration is needed in the 1st place around the context of supporting a countries' economics due to an aging population.
To me that is a good thing because no western country considers and builds the infrastructure (think not just roads-trains but importantly houses/water/sanitation/etc) and services (hosptial/GPs/schools/etc) to accomodate immigration and that can be balanced correctly going forward when using robotics.
Cheers
Make it really simple for us. Do you believe there are corporations in the United States that do not pay taxes, and that generally speaking these corporations that would be building their factories here in the US versus in Mexico would be a net drain on the economy, as you plainly stated earlier?
You're getting more and more divorced from reality. Large factories, as we were discussing, are owned by companies. All companies pay taxes. I have no idea how you are rationalizing this in your head that no taxes are paid.
Who is they? Why are incentives put in place by the government for these companies? Why do cities, states, and countries fight so hard to get these companies to setup shop in their jurisdictions? Just take a step back, stop talking, and think for a moment. They generate a metric shit ton of TAXES. Governments operate primarily on the collection of TAXES. If they were a net tax burden, no one would be throwing out incentives and red carpet and everything to get these companies to move in.
Wait... what?!?!? Replaces what jobs? How is say a Ford factory launched in the US vs Mexico somehow "eliminating jobs". Think rationally.
Dude... I just... I don't even understand how this makes sense to you. How can you run even a heavily automated factory and supply chain without a single employee? Its 2017, and there's no Skynet. If Ford for example has a plant in Mexico that employs 4,700 Mexicans, and it moves to the United States to avoid tariffs, but is heavily automated to the point it employs say 1/5th that workforce at around 1K employees, then that is +1K Americans employed. Yes, there is a net negative of humans employed, but a net increase in Americans employed. Here in America, we kind of care about, you know, Americans.
I just... is there a language barrier? The United States government, our government, only has control over pollution legislation and enforcement for businesses operating domestically. The US government cannot force a plant in Mexico or China to clean up its act, only the Mexican and Chinese government have control over that.
Pretend I'm retarded. I made a very simple request of you. Don't post articles. Don't link to wikipedia. Just give a simple name of a company you believe pays zero taxes.
You stated that companies in the US don't pay taxes. I clarified for you that income tax is only one form of taxes, and that in spite of income tax credits from previous fiscal years applying to profitable years or non-profitable years paying no income taxes, that they still pay a plethora of other taxes including but not limited to gross tax, property tax, excise tax, payroll taxes, unemployment contributions, state and city business taxes, customs, license,etc. I gave you an example of Verizon Wireless specifically in 2014 who cited a loss with downsizing, and so they paid zero in income taxes (comes out to negative 660 million in income tax), however, that doesn't mean they didn't pay taxes even on loss years. Their total tax expenditure for 2014, with zero income tax paid, was $3.4 billion.
Please simply name a company that pays no taxes. I will look it up, and see if I can find what their tax expenditure was for the past decade. I think you know this, and rather than drop it or admit you're wrong that there's no such thing as a for profit business that doesn't pay taxes, you keep going on tangents.
Oh you naieve doom sayer. You have it all wrong.
The robots might not spend that cash, but it will be invested. With fractional reserve banking, that will yield 1000% profit over time. The economy will be find. it's 99.999% of the population that will be fucked.
Plus, why do you even need the masses?
For example, in India there are 1.3 billion people. If India somehow suddenly sank into the ocean, and all 1.3 billion died, would that matter to the US economy? Not really.
If in some future-world there are say fifteen people that own all the factories that produce everything, then those fifteen people only need to trade between themselves. The robots will build their house, their car, their airplane, their spaceship, their roads, be their security forces, etc. so you don't need the other 300 million+ people at all. So whether or not those people have money to buy stuff, or heck even die, is irrelevant and wouldn't impact the wealth and quality of life of the few guys that own the means of automated production. That's a long way off though, and not something we are going to have to worry about in our generation.
Yes. I've already outlined why several times.
Nope. Read the article I've already mentioned a couple of times now. The factories themselves can and do get special tax incentives to get built. Sometimes they even get the land for reduced price or even free. Its entirely possible for a company that owns a factory to pay no taxes on any profits from goods from that factory but still get taxed for other business elsewhere that it does. Happens all the time.
State, county, and national govt. Again read the article. Here it is again: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/02/u...ankroll-corporations.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0. It was in post #106.
Politics, lobbying, and graft are all it takes for companies to get their way. They help elect the appropriate officials who will play ball and help get the ones who won't voted out of office too. This is no secret and has been true for decades. Scott Walker for instance is the Koch Bros. lackey and does damn near whatever they want in Wisconsin. He is probably the most obvious example today but there are plenty of others.
Because the Ford factory either already exists here in the US or they'll shut down a different factory and have the new one take up the slack. Automation not only allows you to reduce work force it also increases productivity. That is why the Chinese factory in the OP had such a massive increase in productivity. If they can get 1 factory to do the work of 2 or 3 others they'll shut those other ones and just keep 1 open. Much cheaper that way.
They'll have employees but it'll just be a handful of them. That is why I keep saying net negative. If you create 20 jobs but wipe out 1000 in the process that is a net negative. You got a practical example of this in the OP's article. Skynet mythical super bots aren't needed. I have no clue why you'd think they would be needed after reading that article.
If that was your intent to say that you worded it weird. Especially as a reply to that comment of mine.
The articles give the names already. If you can't or won't read them that is your problem. And articles are proof dude, far more so than anything I could say. If you won't accept articles as proof then there is no reason to continue talking to you and I'll just put you on my ignore list since this is getting pathetic at this point.
They're pro legalizing illegals because the illegals are already here and driving down wages on the low end. By making them legal employers will no longer be able to underpay them less than min. wage as is common now. That will help stop any downward pressure on wages from employers.
Old but still relevant article on union leader's stance on immigrants.
The problem is, in numerous examples above, you never say anything yourself. You say "read the article" when the article doesn't support your original claim in the first place. I can't debate an article. If there is a company name that is in the article that you assert pays no taxes, how hard is it for you to just say the name.
Just say the name of the company that YOU know pays no taxes.
Most of that article, and the one that it referenced are all about how unions just want more members. So they really dont care about workers or employees but about dues.
They would go insane from lonliness. Most wealthy people need their ego's stroked. They need 1.3 billion people to bow down to them. Very few wealthy are humble, as Washington can attest to.
dali71
Limp Gawd
- Joined
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- 247
Your kids are starving. Carl's Jr. believes no child should go hungry. You are an unfit mother. Your children will be placed in the custody of Carl's Jr. Carl's Jr... "Fuck You, I'm Eating."
I really enjoyed that movie. LOL
So. What does the human race need to do to avoid being crushed under the metallic boot heel of our robotic overlords?