> In all, the top 1 percent of taxpayers accounted for more income taxes paid than the bottom 90 percent combined. The top 1 percent of taxpayers paid $864 billion in income taxes while the bottom 90 percent paid $599 billion.
https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/federal/latest-federal-in...
The second paragraph is the actually relevant stat, though: for all that they avoid the nominal tax rate, they still pay the majority of all taxes.
No, that's the effective tax rate for the top 1% in aggregate:
Adjusted gross income: $3,309,589,000,000
Tax paid: $863,631,000,000
What does "the most tax" mean? If you mean "most of the tax" how is that a tautology? If everyone paid $1 the top 1 percent would pay 1% of the total - which is far from "most".
Also, the language can be ambiguous in some places but it says "by Income Group" so the top 1 percent of tax payers probably refers actually to the top 1 percent of (adjusted) earners.
> GP talked about the uber wealthy.
And GGP talked about how "a minority of taxpayers finance the government".
5% is a minority paying 61% of the taxes.
25% is a minority paying 87% of the taxes.
> And GGP talked about how "a minority of taxpayers finance the government".
Your reply was to GP, and it wasn't one pointing that out.
(And actually GP would only make sense at all as a reply to GGP if he meant lower tax amount in dollars - not just a lower tax rate.)
The uber-rich aren't the top earners.
Capital holdings and labor income aren't the same thing.
Incredibly wrong. You're talking about paying "as a percentage of their income/wealth"[1], whereas the GP is talking about actual dollars into the treasury.
The other response to you has the stats.
[1]and you might not even be right about that
Obviously, it's widely reported that the very richest of the rich pay very little tax.
But according to table C-1 of [1] the richest 20% of US households have an average income of $418,100 and, after taxes and benefits, contribute $101,300 to the treasury. The middle 20% of households have an income of $86,500 and overall contribute $200 to the treasury. And the poorest 20% of households have an income of $22,500 and receive $26,200 from the treasury.
Which makes sense when you think about it - the garbage truck visits the household on $40k just as often as it visits the household on $400k. Taxes are progressive, benefits are (mostly) equal.
So even though the richest 0.1% of people might be dodging tax entirely, the richest ~30% are the ones financing the government.
[1] https://www.cbo.gov/system/files/2024-09/60341-income.pdf
That opening reads wrong. Yes, the study was funded by Apple but the conclusions are of the authors. But yet it reads as "Apple today announced that .., according to a study".
It will be like Pizza Hut saying "Pizza Hut today announced that their pepperoni pizza is the best ever, according to a review posted by pizzalover123 on Yelp"
Do you think Ford needs to get a cut if a user buys Michelin tyres of their Ford Car? Will you argue that Michelin needs to "pay into Ford for access to their market"?
In a fair universe people would stop going to this store and visit other places with lower margins. But Apple conveniently took steps to prevent you from leaving their shop, so they can charge whatever they consider a fair price. You cannot rationally defend this, jurisdictions worldwide are suing Apple for this, because it's a blatant racket. It is indefensible.
This is the part that is monopolistic.
Kroger collecting money when Bryer sells ice cream in their store is fine. Kroger prohibiting Bryer from selling ice cream else where is not.
This should honestly blanketly apply; as-in Bryer should not be allowed to enter a contract with Kroger where they'll only sell ice cream at Kroger. Bryer can choose not to sell at other grocery stores but it should never be a contractual requirement.
> You cannot rationally defend this, jurisdictions worldwide are suing Apple for this, because it's a blatant racket. It is indefensible.
Even if Bryer's ice cream was zero-margin, if you go into Kroger's store to buy it then Kroger is entitled to some compensation. The practice of collecting a commission from products you are an intermediary for is highly defensible. The practice of prohibiting others from selling their own goods to people not under your control is not (i.e Schools can ban an ice cream vendor from visiting a school).
The apple webpage says
> Why buy iPhone anywhere else?
> When it comes to purchasing a new iPhone, there’s no better place to buy than Apple. For all your questions about payment options and getting your new iPhone set up, we have the answers you need.
If you don't agree, don't sign it.
I understand a one time fee ($99 or something) for hosting the app and allowing downloads, but why does Apple get an ongoing 30% cut?
And of course the absolutely massive SDK that makes it easy to build all these apps natively without rolling your own computer vision framework or audio processing engine.
Giant and Safeway mark-up food they sell.
The shop that stocked and installed those Michelin tires charged a premium.
Etc.
If you're arguing the App Store shouldn't exists, or Apple shouldn't limit their users to a single App Store, that's an argument with some merit. But, it's not what you said.
Does Apple sell the app? Or are they only facilitating the transaction, but you're buying from the app author? Because grocery stores are selling you something, they are not middlemen who only connect you with the manufacturer. They've bought the products from the manufacturer and are now selling them to you.
My main point still stands... there is a real cost to hosting an App Store, and the entity doing that hosting should be compensated for doing so.
The "problem" is Apple (and now Google?) want to be the only App Store for their platforms. So, you can't pick between Safeway and Giant. But, that's not what the parent suggested - they only suggested the host of the App Store shouldn't be paid.
They shouldn't be a permanent middle man between consumer and manufacturer is what I took away from that comment. The app stores are only money printers because they are (largely) exclusive on their platforms. Would users and developers choose Apple's app store and its hefty fees if there was fair competition? Possibly, but likely not at the same conditions Apple can dictate today.
Plus, since when is a middleman connecting you to a party with the product or service you want not a party you have a business relationship with (as GP claims)? Brokers have been a thing since forever.
[0] https://www.businessinsider.com/r-wal-mart-to-impose-charges...
Brokers are a thing, but would you consider Apple's "app store" a broker? A broker's value-add is making the connection, but Apple's app store's is "being the only app store available on Apple devices".
If you forced them to let users choose like Microsoft had to with browsers, that would be different, and I predict their perceived "value as a broker" would drop of a cliff because others could provide the same at a fraction of the cost.
In a sense they do. You can think of it as Apple buying a license and then selling the license to the end user.
I don't disagree that morally Apple is problematic in holding a monopoly on apps on their devices, but charging fees for their shop is not inherently problematic as a standalone issue.
You mean $99 per year that developers pay? Or $1000+ dollars per phone that customers pay? Or multiple devices that developers pay for?
Yes, absolutely they are entitled to that. What they shouldn't be entitled to do (and we should pass laws to enforce) is not offer owners a choice as to whether to have Apple be the exclusive software/hardware source or not. By law, at purchase time anyone should be able to choose to have access to their device's software certificate root of trust, hardware rot, or both. Apple should have to compete on the merits of the App Store, on their service, curation, etc. And fwiw I think that for a large number (maybe even the majority) of regular people they'd perfectly well be able to do so. There's significant value there, particularly if the threat of straightforward alternatives kept Apple's incentives better aligned.
But within their own store, in a world with the choice to opt out, sure I don't see why there would be any problem with them charging for their role anymore then for any other store of any kind ever. The core issue is the required technical lock in.
When I buy stuff from an app, it's not happening "in apple's own store". It's happening between a person and a business. Why is Apple entitled to a cut of that transaction?
additionally, iphone owners buy the phones.
If I pay comcast to access the web, it is amazing to me that comcast would charge websites for access to my traffic.
This is a bald-faced lie. To develop an app for the App Store, you need to spend:
1. $100 a year on the certificate.
2. Around $500 a year on Apple hardware (amortized).
This is way more than you need to develop for Microsoft, even with their official tools.
But look, everyone is not gonna be happy with whatever structure Apple or the courts come up with. The courts might come up with a structure where people pay nothing unless the users use Apple payment systems to buy in-app. Guess what Spotify, you're still gonna be financing all the developers who'd rather choose to pay nothing and instead put up with the headaches and chargebacks of using payment systems outside of Apple.
Spotify doesn't want to finance the rest of us? Fine, when the time comes, make that choice not to use Apple payment systems. Now you're not financing the rest of us.
But you can't say, "I want to use Apple payment systems because the chargebacks are lower and people trust them more", on the one hand; and say, "but Apple should not use any of the money I generate to float infrastructure for other developers to also use their payment systems", on the other.
To make it fair, have it as a separate unit, that Apple itself has to use for internal apps.
Windows, by default, will block apps from lesser known developers unless they shell out quite a bit more than $99 a year for an Extended Validation (EV) Code-Signing Certificate from a certificate authority that Microsoft finds acceptable.
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/48946680/how-to-avoid-th...
Also, Mac Minis are a one time $500 purchase, and will be good enough to use for more than one year.
The cheapest Mac Minis ($600, btw) are barely usable for serious development, a more reasonable one is $1000. You also need at least a couple of iOS devices for testing, which works out to ~$200 a year.
And if you want a laptop, then it's even worse.
Moreover, they currently *are* charged to distribute, the apple developer program isn't free.
The Apple Developer Program is $99. Note that this is not just for the App Store but also for distribution on the Mac outside the App Store, as well as access to other developer resources.
I didn't mention it because it's a drop in the bucket, totally negligible compared to the billions of dollars per year in App Store commissions that Apple collects from developers. If $99 were the only fee, then hardly any developers would complain, except perhaps hobbyists. For professional developers, and for Apple's overall revenue, $99 is practically nothing.
My kid asked if we could buy an iPad game last week, that was like $12. I can't remember when I last bought something in the App Store (iPhone or macOS) beyond that. Some people would have to buy insane amounts of stuff. Are they counting their own subscription products as well, like AppleTV og iCloud?
People are not spending $1.3 trillion per year on IAPs, it's not the game whales as the other comment suggests.
"Apple violated antitrust ruling, judge finds", 600 comments, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43852145
"Judge rules Apple executive lied under oath, makes criminal contempt referral", 300 comments, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43856795
"Apple App Store guidelines remove ban on encouraging external payments in US", 300 comments, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43867692
The idea that you pay to have your merchandise in someone else's store and then keep paying a commission for any ongoing revenue beyond the point of sale is ridiculous and I can't believe even a single person agreed to do it.
that’s how barbers works: they pay for a chair.
that’s how many professions works. you pay for access to customers.
This is money that apple can get for free and they choose to give up some of it because it benefits them to have more apps and more developers so they can sell more devices. You just don't notice it because they have built their business to a size where they have a network effect advantage and aren't desperate to get every developer they can if they were a smaller player.
oneplane•8mo ago
I don't know if they do, but I do know the universal answer to all of it: because that's what makes the big bucks. While there will always be inefficiencies and weird situations, multinationals that stick around for a long time and make lots of money do so because there are a bunch of people working there who have to figure out how to make money and keep making that money.
jocaal•8mo ago