If these companies avoid paying taxes by not being registered/incorporated in the US, how could they possibly be eligible for help from the US government?
That just seems like a contradiction, like a huge case of having your cake and eating it.
Carnival Corp and Norwegian both posted negative income tax expenses — that is, they received more in refunds or deductions than they paid or set aside for taxes — with Carnival reporting an income tax expense of $71 million and Norwegian reporting an $18.9 million tax benefit.
They don’t contribute to the public fisc in good times, they should have no call on it when times are tough.
Actually they did, see Panama Papers. So many higher-ups turned out to have a lot of money stashed away abroad.
Politicians are corrupt. I mean take Trump; while he 'officially' renounced control / ownership of his properties (I think?), he's still pumping hundreds of (tax payer) millions into his own resorts by going golfing every week in his own resorts. Said taxpayers are the common folk as well, not the actual resort itself.
And all of that without paying taxes.
Let them go bust. Almost nobody is missing them.
Outlaw ocean is an eye opening book (and a great read) about how lawless the sea is, how slavery is still very very real out there, and how it’s virtually impossible to keep eating fish once you know what’s going on (both in terms of human trafficking and in terms of quotas violation/fishing in U.N. “protected” natural reserves)
Strange.
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[0]: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/asithappens/as-it-happens-wednesday...
[1]: https://www.transportenvironment.org/press/luxury-cruise-gia...
Now sulphur oxide is nasty stuff, and regulated out of vehicle emissions for good reason. Fuel conditioning and catalytic convertors take care of this. But those things add cost, and why would a cruise ship company do it if they are not compelled legally and their customers don’t mind?
I don’t feel bad for giving my friends who go on cruises a hard time over this. Most will say they simply do not care about the environment. They are not immediately threatening their own immediate habitat. These are the people who go on cruises. The fact that the cruise industry exists is a sad mark on humanity.
Europe maybe not, but places like Honduras would be worse off without them.
The industry and shipyards are advancing technology in ways that other industries do not. New ships use LNG, batteries and renewables. A carbon neutral cruise ship is not too far away.
The intensive childcare offered allows parents who cannot otherwise get such services to relax.
Pixar's Wall-e was prescient in that most people would choose to live this way.
The demand for cruises is not going to go away.
In that case why the need for a bailout? If they are viable businesses either as is or after reorganization in bankruptcy, then what’s the issue that needs solving by the government? That the very rich owners and lenders lost money and wish they hadn’t?
> The demand for cruises is not going to go away.
Good, then there will still be cruise ships after the industry felt the consequences, and perhaps they will have learned something.
Have you got some good links? This would be amazing, but sounds extremely unlikely.
Well I have been on one. A friend thought it would be a good idea to hold his 60th birthday on a cruise ship.
It is exactly as you say - a hotel, laid sideways. But unlike a hotel there no way to out, and in my case no internet worth using.
The primary ways people seemed to keep themselves occupied were drinking alcohol, eating food and watching other people in various ways. None of those thinks work for me. Exercise consisted doing the same brisk walk around and around the ship every day. There were other options, but you had to pay for them.
Counterpoint: they absorb a lot of tourist demand for visiting particular places, while taking up a minimum of space. Building the equivalent hotel capacity in the same places would be far more intrusive.
There are cruises which are "just looking" but the ones which visit heavily touristic areas tend to stop and let passengers off. Also these ships are enormous, loud and polluting. I think most locals would prefer hotels which at least contribute to the economy.
Everybody uses the same touch points, all day long. Most get their food from the same buffet line, touch the same food, the same drink dispensers, sit down at the same tables (which aren't cleaned often enough), sit on the same deck chairs at the pool, hold on to the same railings on the stairways (especially since the boat is moving), etc., etc.
They're all packed into the same space, making the same movements every day (room, to the stairs/elevator, to the buffet, to the stairs/elevator again, to the pool, to the stairs/elevator, etc.) Any virus that makes it to any common touch point is going to infect everybody in a matter of hours.
They won't make money, but they're not going to go bust.
I think this is a major problem with a lot of businesses; they consider time not spent earning money as loss, instead of just a period with less income. And I think it's the responsibility of ALL businesses to keep a savings account so they can weather economic downturns for a few months (at least 6), while paying their staff in full.
I mean it's only been a few months and they're already asking for handouts? Besides, whatever happened to pulling yourself up by the bootstraps and how communism and the state is evil?
I don’t like the idea of bailing out debt-laden, mismanaged companies. Let them go into bankruptcy and let a more competent group of people buy them and run them. This is doubly true for Boeing. Get those monkeys out of the executive positions.
Why do people get this impression a pandemic, combined with an unprecedented economic drawdown, combined with one of the most vitriolic political climates we've ever seen is just going to "blow over", and in 6 months we'll be going along like nothing ever happened?
Covid19 might go away (or it might not, there's always that). But many things are going to change. Who's to say we don't now decide that cruise ships are a stupid idea, because they spread disease, pollute like crazy, don't pay taxes and need bailouts? Many industries disappear.
It depends if you still have expenses, like e.g. rent.
The reason to justify employers/share holders getting paid so much more than workers should be that they take so much more and higher risks.
Now we have it backwards. When business is profitable the top takes all the bonus and dividends. During downtime however, workers get to swallow all the loss.
One of these ships is basically a 10 floor high city block that can sustain itself off grid for over two weeks. Surely we have a good use for that.
Dear God no. Please don't create a covid19 death ship. Covid19 has proven to be a ruthless killer on recycled air systems. It would be impossible to screen for the virus - it would certainly find it's way on board.
Though whether or not recreational cruise ships could be reasonably repurposed, and staffed, in time is a bit of a stretch.
Add to this that cruise ships are notoriously bad in containing viruses. Before we had this massive mess there were regular noro virus outbreaks on cruise ships.
ASo no, I don't think that's a good idea.
If the world congregates and places blame on the CCP for asking us to keep our borders open while knowing all along how contagious and deadly this virus was, that's criminally negligent. Maybe even malicious.
The behavior of the CCP after the virus spread internationally is equally alarming. They threatened to shut off access to medicines manufactured in China, placed blame on Italy and the US for the virus' origin, and shut down European and US travel to China.
Defaulting on debt is bad. But what if every nation collectively "cancelled" their debt to China? China would protest, but given the circumstance it doesn't seem like a credit downgrade would be necessary if this were taken as repayment for damages caused.
If we owe zero to China, we can then lend all of that money to businesses and individuals impacted. Pay off domestic debts.
I really like the idea of "cancelling Chinese debt". Now someone please tell me how this couldn't work. Would they retaliate? Would they consider it an act of war?
(I shouldn't have to say this, but I harbor no ill will towards the Chinese people. I love Chinese culture and studied Mandarin in college. I dislike the CCP and their actions.)
It also relies on not needing to borrow again in the foreseable future, and probably not on good terms when you do (decades down the line).
Trying to arrange 'every nation collectively' doing so sounds like a risky exercise in getting everybody to agree to your plan, and not side with China instead and make your (and anybody who did agree's) situation even worse.
Strictly worse than just firing up the printers, IMO.
I’m European though, so I may be more of a social democrat than most Americans.
Additionally, I think the government should be buying equity at a steep discount - something reasonable but not disastrous like 67%.
The US bail outs that bought the bad stuff from the banks and slowly sold them off as the market allowed made a nominal profit.
(TARP recovered funds totalling $441.7 billion from $426.4 billion invested, earning a $15.3 billion profit or an annualized rate of return of 0.6% and perhaps a loss when adjusted for inflation.)
The other kind is what the central bank does, basically quantitative easing, just providing low interest loans to financial institutions - and basically to the government too (by buying US Treasury bonds on the open market). And then it becomes the banks' job to determine who to give loans to, and if they make bad calls eventually they will lose a lot of equity, so there market forces usually help separating the worse from the less bad.
The Norwegian government for example still owns more than a third of the biggest Norwegian bank as a holdover from a much earlier financial crisis (1990), and decided not to sell down further as a strategic decision to prevent future meltdowns.
The UK similarly bought a lot of bank assets during the 2008 crisis.
It's not a bailout for the cruise industry. It's a bailout for nearly every island nation in this hemisphere. We keep the tourism money flowing and they'll keep flowing exported raw materials and food.
Even if there are, if their economy were hurt by the lack of cruises, why would they hurt it further by refusing to sell anything?
Yes, I agree the system should not be that fragile, but for now it is.
I mean, so what? If there's so much demand, presumably new cruise lines will show up at some point when the current ones collapse. In general, "[a small minority of] people like it" is not a sufficient reason to bail something out; government bailouts are inherently limited and should be targeted at where they will do the most good. Realistically, where they will do the most good, by _any_ metric, is not cruise lines.
Why don't we have a discussion about which industry provides important services to society? And particularly how helpful it is likely to be in the larger crisis we have looming over us - climate change - and which won't go away? It seems like the absolute worst idea to bail out high carbon industries, and that's not just true for cruise ships, but also for airlines and many others.
When I was a kid we crossed the Atlantic in the SS United States. For a kid, that was a blast, especially when we steamed through a huge storm. Wowsa! I'm sad to see the rusty hulk it has become.
The Norwegian coast can be quite rough in the wintertime - a friend of mine is the steward on one of the ships, and she assures me every winter there are numerous passengers who insist on being dressed up in full survival kit and quite literally being tied to the mast - to experience the full wrath of a winter storm from a safe position.
To each his own. It probably isn't boring, at least. :)
Sorry for OT/meta.
But Carnival cruises, who cares if they go under? another one will prop up with a better business model that is sustainable.
Every company should be able to weather a couple of months if they rode the bull for the best 11 years of stock rise in history. If your executives fucked it up, too bad. You can get a low interest loan, but no free bailout money.
Bailout money should be used to help people during unemployment.
For non-public and small business there can be funds set aside to help them.
And then yes, simply increase unemployment distributions for the time bring to 80% previous income for a couple months.
If the gov't bails out the cruise liners, they may be able to force them to continue paying the employees in the intrim, and so "save" them from being unemployed and "save" welfare. The gov't can also end up owning equity in the business (which is not a bad thing - it's basically extra income for the state/treasury in the future).
Many hundreds of people come on the streets in groups, go throught the streets loudly and fast to take photos, than go back to the ship.
People who really go to these places and spend money for staying and try to blend in to have a peaceful vacation can't.
I have seen videos of how they're also reducing the usage of cars to make it a walkable/bicyclable city, I would love to see Amsterdam some time (probably not this year due to coronavirus though :( )
It is a popular port for cruise ships doing the Norwegian coast. I assure you, during summer season one could have 2-4 vessels in port - effectively a DoS attack on town.
Getting from A to B on foot was nearly impossible, forget any shopping or café visits - a town built for 10,000 suddenly had twice as many people in the streets. Go figure.
While the cruise tourists leave a little cash behind, it is much less per head than, say, camper van tourists do.
I didn't mind all that much - but I can see valid reasons for not wishing to have a cruise entourage come crashing down on your hometown on a regular basis.
I love to travel, but I try to stay at least 10 days on any place I go to and learn a bit of the local language and customs.
For that I really need the airlines to work, but if they get more expensive, I understand, and will just make longer vacations at less places.
did you just no true scottsman vacations?
It is impossible to "blend" somewhere in vacation. You have to live many years somewhere to blend. You are exactly like the cruise ship tourists if you stay for a few weeks.
You can do that as a plane tourist too, but it's far less common.
As soon as you stay even one night you are NOT like cruise tourists. You probably had at least one dinner and one hotel stay. Good tourist.
Cruise ships manage to contain norovirus[3], but we’ve seen how different the consequences are when NCoV is present on a cruise ship.
[1]: https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/travel/notices/warning/coronavirus-cru... [2]: https://www.cruise1st.co.uk/blog/cruise-holidays/how-old-is-... [3]: https://www.cdc.gov/nceh/vsp/pub/norovirus/norovirus.htm
It's better to prop up companies and industry for the short term if it means thousands of people continue receiving a paycheck and can afford to live.
Suddenly laying off all those people while companies and vendors collapse will lead to major cascading effects that can be far more disastrous.
Fuck em.
Cruise ships, however, do not. They are purely recreational and the economy would not fall apart if they were to go. They also share some of the blame for spreading Covid-19 in the first place!
Why? The planes are not going anywhere. If airlines fail, someone will be able to buy them at a discount. They will need to hire pilots and cabin crews. Shareholders in airlines will be hit - as it should be.
What critical industry will suffer if air travel suddenly becomes much more rare?
Maybe the replacements will create an ethical, sustainable, and environmentally friendly business instead.
Multi-million (let alone billion) dollar corporations, however, are not in a comparable situation, and re: them I fully agree with your take. If they accept bailouts, they should be prepared to also accept "We the People" democratically controlling them as publicly-owned cooperatives; the moment you depend on taxpayer money for your existence is the moment you forfeit the "right" to anything but taxpayer ownership.
