Zfactor

Wow…

This is kind of sad, especially since you weren’t even on the money (according to the rumor) either.

Get over it dude.

I mean if I can’t catch it in 1st or 2nd weekend I just don’t see it in theaters, not that I just choose never to see the movie.

Agreed, I go to the theaters often and the most annoying part is the other people. Be it talking, using phones, bringing babies to the theater, or whatever. It seems that very few people have any regard for others anymore; its all about what they want to do regardless of how it affects others.

If I can’t catch the movie in the 1st or 2nd weekend, I just don’t see it anymore. At least then you get the people who went to the move to watch the damn thing and are less likely to be disruptive.

It’s sad, really. (Yes, yes, first world problems, I know)

I love the logic in this post…

“When I do something annoying, I only do it a little bit; but when I see others doing it it makes me furious”

They don’t make money from the stuff you put up on your Google Drive like they do from YouTube videos.

Wouldn’t it be 0.432 hours of not-crap per hour?

If I lie* 50 times and then tell the truth, does that mean that it isn’t the truth.

So if I like 50 times and then tell the truth, does that mean that it isn’t the truth?

Eh… I assumed you were asking because you wanted to invest.

tl;dr: Most of the complaints about this guy are about emotional perceptions and the perceived unfairness of the tax code with respect to mechanisms available to the rich to avoid taxation.

I think that you are missing my point. I was explaining why people are viewing Saverin’s actions as pure greed. A lot of it has to do with emotion and the perception of fairness when one compares his/her own situation—i.e. being subject to roughly 30% taxation on a moderate income with no means to avoid that taxation—with the situation of Saverin, who will become fabulously rich and due to that wealth can take steps to avoid taxation (albeit an extreme step)

I’m not trying to argue that our tax system is fair. There is a lot of waste in government and a lot of frustrating bureaucracy. One only needs to look at our Congress for examples. There are also many facets of the tax system that simply don’t make sense.

This may be beyond the scope of the article, but: it seems to me that the main sticking point for many people is the fact that people with money, power, and influence are able to take steps to avoid the very tax laws that the middle and lower class have no way to avoid. When you hear of “fairness” it’s more about the fact that everybody should be subject to the same rules, and that simply isn’t the case.

As a result, people living on moderate salaries who are heavily taxed don’t want to hear rich people bitching because a few hundred million of their multi-billion dollar paydays goes to the government. It simply doesn’t affect the rich in the same way that it affects the rest of society and nobody in the middle and lower class cares.

The kinds of problems Saverin is even complaining about has to do with equity, investments, and venture capital. Many things which are completely outside the realm of possibilities for the majority of people. He could give a shit about income tax being too high for the working stiff, which is why the working stiff could give a shit about his problems. Not to mention that Facebook structured their stock offerings so that they could avoid certain rules about going public. That’s why Saverin has to pay all that tax. It’s funny that he didn’t complain about it when his company was benefiting from the perks of paying everyone in stock without having to go public like a normal company would.

It would be like if you went up to a homeless person and complained to him that your neighbors throw a wild party once a year and it really annoys you. That homeless guy doesn’t give a shit—he’s worried about where his next meal is coming from or where he is going to go when it gets cold. To him your problems are bull and you should just be happy.

If its any help, I saw an article in the WSJ the other day about these types of IPOs. It indicated that the individual retail investor is better off waiting a month for the stock to cool off before buying in. This is based on historical trends.

I see. I also read up on this after I posted “Why?” because I was curious. Admittedly I should have just done that in the first place. Mea Culpa

On the topic of these employee shareholders getting hit with tax up front, this is because Facebook chose to structure their stock offerings in such a way that they could avoid going public before they wanted. When you enjoy the benefits of a given strategy you also have to deal with the consequences. In this case I can’t imagine that the employees, who accepted stock in lieu of cash compensation, were not aware that this would happen.

That’s not to say that I can’t sympathize with the fact that they are getting hit with this tax bill (which includes federal, state, and local tax by the way; not just federal as the highest federal tax is effectively a 35% flat tax) and will likely have to sell their shares. Technically they took a risk in working for Facebook at a reduced pay rate in the hopes of turning a profit (as any investor technically does).

Still one has to assume that they took the unique factors affecting their stock option into consideration, since they are clearly highly intelligent people to work for Facebook. Therefore they fully accepted all of the risks associated with this strategy and can’t complain now that it’s payday.

Two problems though.

First, you responded to my post which had nothing to do with the wiki source that you just replied with. You seem to have lumped me in with a particular group that may share some of the views I expressed but other than that we have little in common. I was sort of explaining why people view this as pure greed. Somehow after your first reply I got wrapped up in a more political discussion that is completely divergent from my original post, which I shouldn’t have let happen; but it did happen so…

Second, when you conduct business in the US you benefit from things like clean, breathable air, national defense (i.e you don’t have to worry about the constant threat of terrorism or war which many people around the world deal with all of the time), courts to hear patent trials and protect IP, road infrastructure, air infrastructure, etc (all of those things you need to conduct business well; and I didn’t provide an exhaustive list).

So when I say that businesses benefit from the preservation (etc) I’m not referring to merely police protection (which, by the way, is also a cost of the local government that would be taxing this man’s profits).

I’m not sure where that 60% figure came from, unless you are including Social Security and Medicare. Medicare I could kind of give you (not really, but for argument sake) but social security is not an entitlement. It was a promise by our government that made our parents and grandparents OK with working themselves weary for relatively garbage pay in order to benefit the US as a whole and make it great.

At this point we’ve left the objective and entered the highly opinionated zone.

Why?

I’m in the first situation you described. But guess what? I don’t blame rich people

I was tempted to stop there since I didn’t say I blamed rich people for anything, but I read on in fairness. That government spending that you hate so much goes partially to the preservation of law and order, which allows you to make a profit and execute ventures without worrying about being ripped off (see: software piracy in Russia, for example). Of course there is a lot of waste in our government that I don’t like and believe should be eliminated as well.

Anyway my point was that the “unfairness” that this individual feels is different from the unfairness that most of the rest of us feel, hence the general sentiment that it is pure greed on his part. I wasn’t blaming him for any of my problems and I’m not acknowledging anybody else blaming him for their problems.

When the government takes $17,000 of your $55,000/year (rough number that are close to reality in NYC, at least) then it really sucks and makes life harder in expensive cities like NYC or LA or Silicon Valley, etc (and comparably lower salary for lower income areas, but the principal applies).

When the government takes $1.4 Billion of your $4 Billion (assuming worst possible damage, 35% top flat tax) it sucks on principal but you are still going to live a kickass rich life with your $2.6 Billion dollars in hand.

You’ll understand that not too many people living with the realities in the first situation (even people making in the hundreds of thousands!), and who can’t avoid taxes like corporations and the fabulously wealthy do, find it hard to swallow the whole “Well he did it because he felt unfairly taxed” pill.

They need to demonstrate how the tech works. If the person typing was gong fast nobody would understand what was going on.

I’m sure its much faster when you are used to it and using it yourself.

I’m actually interested in this tech, but its too bad I won’t get a blackberry or jailbreak a phone.

Is Dropbox the ultimate troll for starting this during finals time for college students and grads? I think so.

… Can’t tell if that anger is directed at me but…

OP asked why other companies don’t get as much attention as Apple. I replied with what I believe to be the reason.

In what way is it a “copout” and how does it show a lack of concern?

When you become the big player and get all of the attention you have to take the bad attention with the good. You don’t hear about all of the other companies because the public doesn’t care about the other companies.

Yes because when reading your own work its practically impossible for your brain to compensate by registering the correct word, whether or not it is spelled correctly.

Oh wait.

Information which is shared only with designated friends is not public information. The principal allegedly used subterfuge to gain access to this information (vis-a-vis friending them under false pretenses).

The students allowed access to this total stranger and therefore have no presumption of privacy. Still, the deceptive act by the principal is not really excusable, no matter how dumb the students acted.

As I said above, these students need a talking to by their parents about trusting people on the internet. Of course since parents these days seem less apt at talking to their kids with the right approach, I’m not sure how they will learn.

More importantly, these students are friending people that don’t exist and thus giving access to their personal information and possibly whereabouts… Not good, someone (PARENTS) needs to talk to those kids.