You know you’re being churned by big business when you feel obligated to purchase a new mobile phone every 16 months.
One phone-maker has put out their new 7 model. It has fewer functions than 6 model, but it’s supposed to work better, or they have a better way to navigate something and it might even be sorta waterproof. That is code for meaning that after you have dropped it in the toilet, you can retrieve it, wash it off and stick it back on your ear or send a text or tweet to the world to let the global community know what you just did; as well as what you ate for lunch. We are dying to know these things dear diary.
I don’t mind paying to keep my now unfashionable No. 5 phone in business. It seems the primary maker of these phones, screens, pods, pads and laptops pays no taxes in North America. They are one of the companies who do a great deal of business in North America but apparently have their head office in Ireland, where it turns out, they pay a corporate tax of about 0.05 per cent as opposed to a 35 per cent tax in the United States or 25 per cent in Canada.
They, and Ireland, aren’t alone in doing this tax dodge shuffle.
And while that kind of stuff is all legal and above board, it makes me less appreciative of them and what they do.
There is another phone company whose latest product apparently has a propensity to burn up on occasion. So much for keeping text messages.
I think this second company had a huge shipment of these little burnable phones lost at sea when the company, who owned the ship they were on, was forced into bankruptcy while this vessel was in mid-trip. I presume the phones were being assembled in China or some other Asian factory hot spot. This company doesn’t get my sympathy or endorsement either. They could be making some phones in Canada, or at least in North America and paying the assemblers $9 an hour and paying “for real” taxes and declaring a profit of $4 billion a year instead of $6 billion while spreading around some cash and goodwill. After all, when push comes to shove on the political scene, who is going to protect them? China or North America? Henry Ford was right, pay the workers well and they become customers, consumers and advocates of your product.
The CEOs of these companies don’t need hundreds of millions of dollars in annual compensation. When you reach those stratospheric levels of so-called wages, does $120 million in annual salary, stock options and bonuses really serve you better than $95 million would? These people are way out of the world of normal anyway. They probably have no idea what their net worth is and couldn’t care less about money at this stage of their being. They are more obsessed with power, not money. But we dull normals know that in the real world, knowledge is power, not money. But then, it takes some people a little longer to figure that out. I know, money buys power, but I don’t want to get into those political debates.
Maybe that is why Don Trump is trying so hard to become president.It’s about the power. He would probably even move into the White House just to prove the point while he’d be more comfortable in a Trump Tower.
I did get a chuckle when I read that Don charged his campaign team a few million dollars for renting Trump-controlled facilities during the race to the Big House. Donate to Trump’s team, and pay Don for that privilege. What a scheme. I loved it. Win or lose, Don wins.
