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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: tejek who wrote (608510)	4/21/2011 7:10:42 PM
From: TimF	Respond to of 1579940

It was, like most headlines, designed to get attention, but that doesn't change the point that at the time it was written it was accurate. Yes, they do.....or they go broke. No they don't for the most part, and to the extent that they do it helps them to go broke. Its a way of generating revenue for the city. There is nothing personal about it. Maybe there is something "personal" about it, in that they don't like businesses so they want to hit them with taxes, maybe there isn't. I can't read minds. By "anti-business" I didn't mean "intended to harm or discourage business", I just meant that it does actually harm or discourage business. I don't care as much about the intentions as I care about the results. Twitter and Zynga wanted to stay in SF because its a cool place and its easier to get good employees. But they wanted it on their own terms. Of course, everyone wants situations to be on their own terms. If San Franciso doesn't like those terms, its free to reject them, but San Francisco apparently wants the benefits of having Titter and Zynga headquartered in their city. Its unfortunate that it had to resort to giving them a special break, but not because it would be so good if they did pay a lot more in taxes, but rather because other companies are still forced to pay those taxes (or are pushed elsewhere if they don't want to pay them). Tax competition, like other forms of competition, is a good thing. If we didn't have it taxes would move to intolerable high levels, businesses and individuals would have little defense against the raw naked power of the government coming to seize larger and larger portions of their income (or sales, or payroll, or property, or "value added", or whatever is specifically being taxed)