Brexit: George Osborne pledges to cut corporation tax
bbc.com
bbc.com
Can Britain really afford to cut taxes ? It has already cut services to the bone, while running a large twin deficit.
Ireland can afford lower tax rates because its such a small country - Dublin is nothing like London and can survive on low investment, and Ireland does not have complex public health service like the NHS.
Also lower rates really doesn't mean anything if you are unable to access customers. What Brexit represents is a demand shock to British business, a kind of deflation that has caused the collapse of society in the past.
A market of 55 million people is too small for doing any serious 21st Century type globalized business.
Where exactly did you get that idea? As bbrazil wrote, that's certainly not the case. We also spend more on healthcare per head here in Ireland than is spent in the UK. We have one of the highest spends in the OECD and a complex legacy of the pre-independence healthcare system plastered over almost a century of half-hearted reforms to deal with.
People in Ireland envy the NHS for three reasons: compared to the Irish 'system', it's cheap and relatively simple, and the outcomes are better than our more expensive hodge-podge.
> Can Britain really afford to cut taxes
The answer is probably no to both, but one offers increased employment as a side-effect. It's a plan for making lemonade.
I take your point on asking whether Britain can afford to cut taxes but I reckon it will be funded by removing pension tax relief: It costs around £34 billion per year [1]. By this, I mean that the treasury loses out on £34 billion a year.
The solution will be to tax income as normal, no pension tax relief but to allow zero tax on the pension drawdown at the other end.
From the current chancellors point of view it's a win-win: He gets an additional £34 billion a year and the problem of zero tax at retirement age becomes someone elses issue.
[1] - https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachm...
Ireland has a complex public health system whose cost is comparable to the NHS, it is however not of the same quality.
That theory is actually very un-capitalistic: It assumes that only a few people know what is best for the majority. Because it's built into the system (and with a certain perverse logic, not at all irrational of course) that those who've had success are more likely to know how to have more of it.
So the system is actually incredibly anti-risk with money - in an age when "money" surely is not a limiting factor. Not overall - it is because a few have so much they don't find good investment opportunities (when you have billions, only hundreds of millions of opportunity at once make sense to even look at), but for the vast rest of us it is.
So it becomes a tautology: The system is set up to make it far more likely that the successful succeed more, and that is then used as justification for itself, "see, it's too risky to give resources to the inexperienced, data prove it". So we get ever more concentration of control ("money", "power" are indirect terms, "control" is what it comes down to. Th eproblem of the 0.01% isn't their jets, their yachts, their mansions, it is their control of too much of economic life at the expense of most everyone else.): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPKKQnijnsM
Do you have an example? I don't know of any serious economist that backs trickle-down theory except as a strawman, but many point to lower and flatter taxes that can be used to support market-based economics as enabling high productivity. The obvious country that backs this - the US - has done pretty well from it, as have a multitude of smaller nations (Hong Kong, Switzerland, Singapore, the UK, Canada, Australia).
Some countries with higher taxes but also based around a free market economy have done well - Germany is the prominent example and Sweden and Finland. Some have succumbed to corruption and are failing, or on the brink of failure (Italy, Spain, Greece).
The opposite - high taxes, lack of a market and extreme governmental intervention - has certainly been tried in many, many countries. Most (all?) have failed badly in a way that has destroyed generations of productivity (North Korea, Cuba, The Soviet Union, Venezuela, etc.) and really fucked-up their societies that way - usually accompanied by secret police squads, the crushing of liberties and very low quality-of-life.
> That theory is actually very un-capitalistic: It assumes that only a few people know what is best for the majority.
That's actually very 'capitalistic' - the man with the capital makes the ultimate decisions as to where it gets invested. Perhaps you meant democratic?
I'm not convinced by the rest of your argument either. The capital owner usually employs many people to invest portions of the capital into smaller investment opportunities - it's not like Bill Gates has to invest all of his fortune into just one opportunity is it? If anything, this site is based around the idea of giving capital to the unexperienced to start businesses with promising ideas - that's pretty much the exact theoretical definition of angel investors, incubators and VCs.
One might argue that these institutions suffer from cronyism and don't do their job as well as they should, but their job is after all to re-allocate accrued capital to value-producers in a risk-balanced way across a broad portfolio which, I think, is what you seem to want to advocate.
> Do you have an example?
If brexit was a vote against globalisation and austerity it makes no sense to cut taxes which simultaneously gives huge corps some benefit while reducing quality of services even further.
Britain has absolutely not cut services to the bone - that claim in incredibly hyperbolic. More could be done, but in general no-one goes hungry, people are not homeless, garbage is collected, clean water is provided, the rule of law is enforced, the court system is healthy, public transport is good, schools and universities are doing fine, pensions are paid and health care continues to be rather good and excellent value for money. Cash budgets have increased every year in the past twenty. It's not perfect but don't let the resentful wailey-wailey nature of those who want more public spending from 'moral' conviction convince you that the UK is anything other than a well-functioning first world country with good public services and a well-educated population. Public services are about the best that they have ever been. That will continue to be true even if the rate of corporate tax is reduced.
> Ireland can afford lower tax rates because its such a small country - Dublin is nothing like London and can survive on low investment, and Ireland does not have complex public health service like the NHS.
Other people have already told you that Ireland spends more and achieves less on health care. There are many large countries with lower taxes than Britain that are doing more or less just fine. There is much, much more to investment than tax-and-spend governmental intervention.
> Also lower rates really doesn't mean anything if you are unable to access customers. What Brexit represents is a demand shock to British business, a kind of deflation that has caused the collapse of society in the past.
I'd love to have an example of British societal collapse in the recent past as a consequence of demand shock, but you won't be able to give me one because it doesn't exist. At worst, we have the union-backed strikes in the seventies causing a collapse of public services, but there was no revolution, no breakdown in law and order and no termination of any major political entity. The current global system is undergoing something of deflation with almost all major currencies undergoing 'quantitative easing' to attempt to address it. This is not a Brexit phenomenon and affects the Euro area and the EU worse than it affects sterling. That will likely continue to be true.
> A market of 55 million people is too small for doing any serious 21st Century type globalized business.
In accordance with the rest of your claims, this is both subtly incorrect in fact and hyperbolic in claim. Your population figure is low by 15%, but the main point is that Brexit doesn't mean building a Trump-style wall around the island or pulling it into the mid-Atlantic. Cross-border trade will function just fine outside of the EU and Britain will continue to be a tier-2 globally trading nation behind the US, China and perhaps Japan, but on a par with or ahead of everyone else. Brexit does not mean a severing of all ties with the rest of the world and the breathless discussion of what it means really pisses me off. Some (not all) of the UK's interaction with European countries will change in some subtle ways. New accommodations will be reached. Predicting 'societal collapse' is chicken-little-style doom-mongering and hysteria - if you took the same approach to your regular life, you'd never go outside for fear of being hit by a meteor, catching SARS, being hit by lightning or some other flouncey, drama-queen, childish panic.
In short: Brexit - some stuff will change, but most of it won't be as bad as you think, and perhaps some of it might be good! :-)
Use of foodbanks is at record levels. Families in poverty are at the highest they've been for years; often those families are in work.
> people are not homeless,
If by homeless you mean "rough sleeping" then rates of homelessness are at the highest they've been for years. (numbers for 2015 are double the number for 2015) If you mean statutory homelessness then they're at the highest they've been for years. (But counting rough sleepers, statutory homeless, and vulnerably housed people in the UK is tricky).
> garbage is collected,
Amount of fly-tipping appears to have increased, although that might just be better reporting and recording. Most councils have moved from weekly collections to fortnightly collection, and some are thinking of moving to once every three weeks.
> clean water is provided,
This is a commercial service provided by tax avoiding private companies.
> the rule of law is enforced, the court system is healthy,
Legal aid has been cut from many many people, leaving a lot of people without access to justice. This is especially the case in family law. There's a risk that children's human rights to a family life are being interfered with.
> public transport is good,
Mostly private companies. Public transport is good in large cities; somewhat good in large towns; pretty lousy outside large towns.
> schools and universities are doing fine,
Cost of loans has increased, amount of debt that students leave university with is highest it's ever been
> pensions are paid
Tell that to the 50something women who've been fucked over by governments increasing retiring age several times, leaving those women thousands of pounds out of pocket. Or tell that to C&A workers.
> and health care continues to be rather good
A&E 4 hour targets aren't being met; consultant-led waiting times aren't being met; UK has pretty terrible outcomes for cancer; MH is not good.
Children with mental illness find it very hard to get a bed, and those beds may be hundreds of miles away from their home. Community care for children with mental illness has always been rough, but with the Young People's Transformation Plan we were supposed to see things get better. Some CCGs took that money for young people and spent it elsewhere.
Last month there were zero in-patient beds for adults with mental illness. This means that very sick people (because rightly nowadays you have to be very ill to get an in-patient place) are at increased risk of death and severe harm. Out of county in-patient treatment for adults with mental illness is at record levels.
Politicians lie if they say the NHS has had increase in spending. NHS deficits are at record levels; NHS budgets have been cut in anyway you define budget and cut. It isn't possible to look at current NHS budgets and say they've been increased.
Cutting wages (and removing bursaries) means there are many posts that are unfilled, and some of those are substantive posts.
> and excellent value for money.
We do a lot for not much money. But there are a lot of things that have excellent "spend to save" numbers that we don't do because they're too expensive, so we save today but spend tomorrow.
Austerity has had massive impact on public services, especially the NHS.
Argh, 2015 numbers are double 2010 numbers.
Foodbank use is up - but there is no measure of whether this is down to misplaced priorities instead of actual need. Flour and good quality fresh vegetables are the cheapest and most widely available they've ever been.
Clean water in Scotland is paid for by council tax so I count it as a publicly-provided good. I'd also argue that the framework for delivering the water and sewage systems are significantly connected to the government. Note that Tax Avoidance is not illegal, nor is it morally repugnant. A tax system that is reddled with loopholes and exceptions that can only be understood by the private entities making money off it is the problem there - perverse incentives rather than a nominally low rate. (Although the rate is not particularly low.)
Fly tipping may or may not have increased. But my local council runs several large recycling centres and collects refuse biweekly in addition. The fact that some people are breaking the law to avoid paying recycling charges has nothing to do with Brexit.
Public transport may be provided by private companies but these are often bidding to supply government contracts. Public transport has always been poor outside large towns and always will be - your neighbours should not be forced to pay for empty buses to drive about the countryside in case someone in a sparsely populated area wants to go somewhere.
Student numbers are up to the point where a lot of students are paying for degrees that they cannot use to get a job. International student numbers are good, which surely proves that universities are remaining globally competitive.
The unfeasible public commitment to paying old people using income from young people has problems - nevertheless, the government is meeting its commitment to pay retirees a state pension. Why should women get to retire earlier than men? They are equally capable of working and supporting themselves.
For the record, I don't believe that the NHS is a good system - anything that politicises something as important as healthcare is bad. I suspect that the French and German models are better (but still nowhere near perfect). But the NHS has, for as long as I can remember, had a funding crisis. There have always been headlines about funding problems and service unavailability - fifteen years ago the service was getting pilloried for leaving patients on carts in the corridor rather than providing beds. I'm not convinced it's getting rapidly worse. Mental health treatment has always been a disgrace - not just in the UK but worldwide. Nevertheless, the care provided for the money spent in the NHS is good - a lot of countries (e.g. US, Ireland) spend more and get less. The formal NHS budget will rise by £35bn in the period form 2009/10 to reach £133bn. Inflation (which the previous commenter claimed we shouldn't worry about as we will suffer deflation causing 'social collapse') will eat £24bn of that meaning that the NHS budget over ten years will increase at a rate of about 0.9% a year over inflation. No-one's lying and the total budget has not been cut.
"Austerity" has meant no overall cash cuts. Austerity has meant an increase in public spending year-on-year over the rate of inflation. There are lies going on about public spending but to imagine that public services are 'cut to the bone' is so nonsensical as to damage the credibility of anyone arguing thus.
> The formal NHS budget will rise by £35bn in the period form 2009/10 to reach £133bn.
Conversation is pointless with people who believe this. It's clearly, unambiguously, a misrepresentation of the facts. Why do you think everyone is writing STPs? (Do you know, without googling, what I'm referring to when I say STP?)
I am ashamed of this country and am applying for Polish citizenship as soon as possible.
Theresa May isn't the prime minister yet, nor head of her party. Article 50 hasn't been called, negotiations haven't started.
I think it's a bit early to start feeling ashamed.
> So if we all hold hands and say "I believe in Brexit, I do I do!" it will become a brilliant idea? Tinkerbell economics.
Surely the benefit of the lower corporate tax would be outweighed by the difficulties of accessing the EU market and the British market is not big enough in isolation (compared to other English-speaking markets or the EU as a whole). In terms of growth potential moving to the US (to stay English-speaking and find more investors) or to the EU (to be able to easily expand to other countries) seem the more obvious choices.
I can see how it might incentivise local startups to stay in the UK but at that scale the difference in taxation is likely not particularly noteworthy and simply an excuse to do what they already planned to do (i.e. "I don't want to leave anyway because I love working in Brighton but look how much money I'm saving by staying").
> would be seen as in effect the start of Brexit
> negotiations
> "No informal EU talks before Britain invokes Article
> 50, says Germany"[0]
Seems like a decent plan, why would they possibly want to negotiate something with the UK, only for them to potentially make a heel-face turn and not leave?
In other words, they have very little, if anything, to gain by negotiating anything before the UK makes a move.
> You're saying they shouldn't
Which would make sense if it was the EU's primary intention is to punish the UK for having the audacity to leave.
>In other words, they have very little, if anything, to gain by negotiating anything before the UK makes a move.
By being up front about precisely what an exit will entail it will reduce uncertainty about the outcome for everybody. That's a strong benefit.
If EU wants to be vindictive it can try but it probably will be economically damaging (both to the UK and the EU). That will only serve to give Farage-equivalent politicians in the EU enough ammunition to call for their own referendums and before you know it the EU is no more.
Edit: disagree by all means but please disagree with something I actually said rather than some crazy thing the leave campaign came up with or some rubbish you "implied" from what I said that I clearly didn't.
This is not about punishment or revenge. You want to leave? Fine. Let's be friends anyway. You want to talk about leaving before you leave? No thanks. Just do it, then we talk.
Seriously, some people from the exit league are promising British citizens full freedom of movement in the EU, while EU citizens are going to be submitted to immigration control. Is that the kind of things you want to talk about before leaving?
Regardless, you seem to be implying that the UK should have their cake and eat it too (I dislike that expression, I apologize). As the larger market the EU has a lot more power in negotiations, it's the downside of standing alone; if the UK want to get something significant out of the negotiations, they're going to have to give something significant back.
No, why they have to start negotiations if there is no change in the status quo.
> If EU wants to be vindictive it can try but it probably will be economically damaging (both to the UK and the EU). That will only serve to give Farage-equivalent politicians in the EU enough ammunition to call for their own referendums and before you know it the EU is no more.
How it is vindictive? Should the EU give the same deal the UK has right now?
It seems that for some of you, not giving to UK all they ask is being vindictive.
> No, why they have to start
> negotiations if there is no
> change in the status quo.
How many political compromises should the EU give UK?
Because talk is cheap and uncertainty is expensive.
>How it is vindictive?
Insisting on article 50 being invoked before starting negotiations will trigger a massive amount of economic uncertainty (and possibly panic). This uncertainty will be worse for the UK but it will be very bad for the EU too.
The EU is on tenterhooks even if it doesn't realize it. A wave of euroskeptic election wins in Europe could trigger cascading copycat leave referendums and ultimately the death of the EU. Its negotiating position really isn't as strong as it believes it is.
Then invoke the article 50 so the conversations can start. The ones triggering a massive amount of economic uncertainty are the ones that doesn't want to invoke the Article 50
As I said, some of you think that not giving all that UK wants is being vindictive.
The only negotiating position weaker is Britain's.
The UK has been using the threat of leaving as a trump card in negotiations for decades. They've basically opted out of all major agreements yet demanded having a say in every decision. They've basically been given special treatment like no other EU member and still complained about the "fascist EU" taking away their "sovereignty".
UKIP was the logical consequence to decades of telling your own people everything that goes wrong in the UK is the fault of those evil bureaucrats in the EU. Cameron tried to bluff in order to renegotiate the UK's special privileges but he made the mistake of promising a referendum he didn't foresee he would lose. He severely underestimated how much those decades of FUD had paved the road for the Leave campaign.
In the wake of the referendum the entire UK government has committed to following through. The result has been communicated as "a democratic decision", not as a tentative opinion poll to aide in decision making. Nobody has invoked Article 50 yet but everything in how the UK has handled this says "we're going to leave".
What the UK apparently didn't expect is that the EU's reaction can be summarised as "Good riddance; don't let the door hit you on the way out".
The UK has two options now:
1. Follow through and renegotiate everything.
2. Admit they were bluffing and try to handle the fallout.
Either way the brexit trump card is no longer on the table. Staying in the EU would mean effectively giving up on all the advantages gained in previous negotiations because nobody is going to take future threats serious anymore. Leaving means renegotiating everything from scratch.
The UK isn't being punished. It's just having the privileges revoked that it previously bargained for by continuously threatening to leave.
There's nothing vindictive about this. There's just no reason for the EU to be nice to the UK anymore. How the UK is being treated now is simply a reflection of how the UK has treated the EU until now. It's certainly not nice, but it's not unfair. There's simply no reason the EU should negotiate anything in advance to Article 50 being invoked.
BTW, in Germany the general appearance of the Brexit seems to be that the UK made a huge mistake and their country is disintegrating as a result. Scottish independence is perceived as a given and nobody sees any long-term point of having EU companies stay in the UK unless the UK can reach an agreement (e.g. staying in the EEA, which would mean upholding a ton of regulations the Leavers complained about with no way of affecting them). Nobody is worried about this setting any favourable precedent in the slightest.
And for the record: despite Leave campaigners' propaganda, Germany has its own nationalist anti-EU movement which had previously gained a considerable following as a result of the refugee crisis, which has hit Germany much more than the UK). Germans don't see the EU as some Fourth Reich tool of controlling Europe. Most Germans don't even seem to be aware of the amount of political power Germany has within Europe. During the Greek financial crisis the general reaction to the prospect of a Grexit was actually positive (again with some worries about how badly Greek would do on its own). The mindset is simply different: Germans seem to genuinely think of themselves as European whereas Brits seem to think of Europe as "the continent" (i.e. not them).
> They've ... still complained about the
> "fascist EU" taking away their
> "sovereignty".
> UKIP was the logical consequence
> In the wake of the referendum the entire
> UK government has committed to following
> through. The result has been communicated
> as "a democratic decision", not as a
> tentative opinion poll to aide in decision
> making. Nobody has invoked Article 50 yet
> but everything in how the UK has handled
> this says "we're going to leave".
> What the UK apparently didn't expect is
> that the EU's reaction can be summarised
> as "Good riddance; don't let the door hit
> you on the way out".
> The right-wing parties on the continent are far scarier, and generally have higher support.
Don't conflate nationalism with right-wing. The BNP already was a thing. UKIP is just less ostensibly racist. A similar thing happened in Germany actually: the NPD is blatantly racist (though always just constitutional enough to avoid being banned) and the AfD is almost a carbon copy of UKIP (just with more anti-muslim rhetoric as it seems).
> You are reading different papers to me.
Probably. I'm not even in the UK. However Cameron's speech after the referendum sounded pretty much like "okay, we're leaving but I'm not the PM to do that" and pretty much everything else I saw on BBC World within the days following the referendum sounded like the Brexit has been decided -- plus the various statements by "the remaining 27" EU members certainly are phrased in ways that no longer count the UK as an EU member.
> No, that's exactly what Cameron said would happen - that we'd have to trigger Article 50 the next day.
I guess I should have avoided saying "the UK" because politics are too complex to put everything in terms like that. The Leave campaign certainly seems dumbstruck they won't get to negotiate prior to triggering Article 50, however.
And there are an awful lot of people who seem to think the UK isn't already leaving or that there's still a way -- though I guess that's mostly wishful thinking (or the "bargaining" step on the grief progression).
I absolutely understand a desire to say "fuck 'em" to us Brits, but the margin was tiny, and EU-scepticism is rampant throughout the EU. Please don't pin the sins of our ex-PM on holding a referendum on the whole country - EU history is chock-a-block with countries rejecting various parts of the EU via referendum.
I personally hope the UK will stay because I would hate to see them leave but I'm not sure what would be better for the EU from a pragmatic point of view (rather than my idealistic one). OTOH if the UK leaves I'm excited to see what will happen with Scotland. Not like I personally can do anything but watch, either way.
Came across this figure earlier:
> according to News channel N24, 62% of Germans now
> want decision-making powers transferred from Brussels
> back to Berlin"
Yet Angela Merkel (I hear she's a German) just came out and... doesn't agree with your assessment. At all:
http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2016/07/merkel-tells-juncker-br...
Bye bye Juncker.
That ought to be a lesson to other officious EU bureaucrats that want to teach the UK a lesson. Greece may be a punching bag. Cyprus may be a punching bag. The UK is not.
Merkel is a conservative in the truest sense of the word. She doesn't like change, and she especially doesn't like rapid change with snarky comments. Also keep in mind Schulz is from the equivalent of Labour while Merkel is from the equivalent of the Tories. Schulz wants more EU, Merkel just wants something stable. That they're not in agreement isn't surprising.
Merkel doesn't want anyone leaving the EU at all and ideally she doesn't want the UK to leave, or at least not leave entirely. She's not interested in a destabilized EU or a destabilized UK.
As I've said before; unlike what I've seen Leavers spout on the Internet for months: Germany (in general) is not consistently promoting the idea of a United State of Europe and the EU certainly isn't our Fourth Reich. Remember how I said that the impression in Germany is that the UK is falling apart because of this? I was talking about the man on the street, not politicians.
It's the summit of irresponsibility.
Regardless, it's not the EU's fault that the leaver leadership thought that political sabre-rattling would be more important than actually having a plan.
The key player in those talks, Germany, openly wants the crown jewels: the banking sector; Chancellor Merkel has already started playing hardball to get it. How is looking less prepared going to help?
[0] http://www.theguardian.com/politics/video/2016/jun/28/nigel-...
But don't forget there are countries with lower taxation in the EU (10% in bulgaria). UK can do better!
On second thought - this is probably not a fight. This is probably not even a plan. This is the result of not having any plans, no vision, except for letting the market dictate what to do. Do they want a healthy relation with the EU? I guess not!
At this point I think the UK would be better off just pulling the thermonuclear option and withdrawing without negotiating at all. Get the economic shock (depression) over quickly and then negotiate new trade agreements over time. Why waste two years in dithering dragging out the uncertainty to end up with nothing.
The point being that there's other ways to attract business that are more effective at growing revenue than cutting tax.
Not to mention that the money spent on corporate taxes is paid by the consumer.
A) Corporations that don't like paying UK corporation taxes (like Google and Facebook) already try to evade by declaring their income in Ireland. Except that doesn't work when it's plainly false as demonstrated when HMRC recognized this. If HMRC chose it could rake in even more via fines from Google (weird that they didn't).
B) Big shareholders and large corporations suffer the most from high corporate taxes since they earn the most in dividends.
C) The tax incidence of corporate taxes falls on big shareholders. At a time when corporate profits and inequality are at all time highs the space to squeeze shareholders has never actually been greater.
This is just cynical opportunism by Osborne. He sees a way to reward his friends and he's taking it.
Which is what happened: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-23019514
Turns out threatening large corporations actually works pretty fucking well. We could do a lot more of that.
Do you want all businesses (that can) to move out of the country?
That's not to say corporations should not be taxed (although a coherent argument could be made for zero corporation tax), but certainly taxing corporations out of existence is a bad idea.
So why would you want that?
In the last 60 years or more we've had a free-for-all of deregulation, slashing of tax rates for the upper tiers of society and an ever-widening division of wealth and prosperity as a result.
Tax the ever loving shit out of them. Bury them up to their eyeballs in regulation. Ban commercial and investment banks from being one and the same.
Obviously I've not thought this out fully, but I'm pissed off at how much of a disgrace our current societal bias towards the the already wealthy and privileged is.
That's how it's suppsoed to work. What actually happens is they lobby for evebn more favourable tax arrangment and deregulation, for weaker worker protections and focus primarily on short-term returns for their shareholders at the expense of all else.
The whole 'job creator' myth needs to be put to rest. It's straigh out of trickle-down Reaganomics. Corps are self-serving, psychopathic and amoral and cannot be trusted or expected to behave with a social conscience.
I'm all for worker rights. I don't think running companies and worker rights are mutually exclusive things.
It comes down to people. Some people are good people and will run a company well. Regardless of its tax status. Some are bastards and will act accordingly. This kind of thing, as cliche' as it sounds, starts at home. Bastards are cultivated, not born. The thing is by saying to someone you can run your company but I'll take 90% of your profit comrade, you are basically telling them not to bother. And to those that already bothered you're saying - stay as you were. Do not attempt growth. Besides, why stop at 90%? Why not just take it all?
If it was a co-operative then I'd agree.
Just because they are better off now in relative terms, it doesn't justify how much more of the share in terms of land, resources and overall wealth the rich and and elite are taking for themselves.
"He who doesn't pay the piper doesn't call the tune."
Corporations don't pay corporation tax anyway: People do.
As an example, if suddenly corp tax jumped by 20%, prices would jump by 20% to cover it so customers must pay an additional 20% for the product.