Ireland joins OECD International Tax agreement
gov.ie
gov.ie
In other words, they relied on tax advantages as a differentiator for companies to choose Dublin over London for their EU HQ. But now, what would you choose if not Dublin? Obviously Paris and Berlin are candidates but if you're a straightforward multinational, or certainly a company that is actually based/headquartered in the US, you're going to experience a lot less of a shock in a natively-English-speaking country.
So it seems to be that Dublin wins now, tax advantage or no tax advantage. Which likely makes drawing the ire of other countries for being a "haven" less worth it.
In what way? A ton of businesses are moving to Texas for more favorable tax treatment, fewer regulations, and lower cost of living. Is that a happening with Poland, too?
Oh, EU has got ways to screw Poland all right, don’t you worry.
Like right now lots of local governments there are reverting certain anti-LGBT laws to get to EU grants or whatever it’s called.
What I'm saying is that EU has means of causing negative consequence for Poland (and any other member) should they decide to engage into activities that are incompatible with EU values (like violating human rights, breaking trade agreements made by EU, etc).
That's very weird? Wouldn't the state legislature, being elected by local people be more likely to be popular with local people than the federal government with is largely elected by people outside of Texas?
(Or do you mean 'unpopular' with people outside of Texas?)
Gerrymandering is a problem, yes. But even a gerrymandered state would arguably have more democratic legitimation within the state, than the federal government, which is still largely voted for by non-Texans and also with somewhat idiosyncratic election rules.
Conservative policies including strong stance against any abortion.
Anti abortion laws.
— Davy Crockett…and also me
"But, Mr. Crockett Texas is hell."
In a similar vein, this also from the 19th Century: A woman is only a woman, but a good cigar is a smoke.
"But, Mr. Kipling a good woman is a ... oh wait."
In terms of GDP, the ranking goes California, Texas, New York, Florida, and then Illinois.
As much as Florida gets dunked on in the US, it's still an economic powerhouse of the region. Orlando is a major financial centre, there's a number of major ports, there's a strong agricultural base, and the state has a considerable amount of high tolerance manufacturing industry (primarily electronics, biomed, naval, and aerospace).
The state gets ragged on a lot (justifiably so for some of our political leadership) but it's still one of the strongest states in the US by a pretty healthy margin.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_states_and_territories...
Edit: forgot to mention that the state is surprisingly progressive once you get through all the election suppression. There's quite a bit of gerrymandering (not quite as bad as Texas), the state makes every effort to strip poor or predisposed people of their voting rights, and we have a lot of other issues but the state by and large despite that has been considered a split/swing state. And despite the voter suppression, the state continues to grow a strong/dedicated voting populace particularly with focuses on environmental protection.
Edit 2: Sorry if this seems a bit defensive.
Just looked at the linked list and when sorting by GDP per capita, Florida is rank 38. Not exactly what I'd call an economic powerhouse, just a state with lots of people?
This is a bad comparison.
Texas is a rich, stable state with access to the U.S. federal court system and unambiguously subservient to the U.S. Poland is unchecked, unbalanced, and much, much poorer. Its lawless regime is legitimately popular, evoking comparisons to pre-collapse Russia and Venezuela.
In an alternate timeline, Warsaw could have rivalled Berlin or Amsterdam. Not in ours.
Speaking as a former Irish language teacher in a English speaking school in Ireland (now a software engineer in a tech multinational), I don't think most schools teach in Irish, not English. Perhaps you meant it the other way round?
2019 Irish Times: "Number of primary school pupils taught through Irish at record level". Article notes that Irish as primary language of education has risen from 6.4% in 2000 to 8.1% in 2018/19. https://www.irishtimes.com/news/education/number-of-primary-...
Repeated surveys have shown that secondary students taught through Irish have higher Irish language exam results, but not significantly lower English (or French, German, or Spanish) results. The vast majority of adults in Ireland cannot speak Irish fluently, or at all except for some school-learned phrases. It is not the common language of commerce.
For anyone thinking of relocating to Ireland and confused by my comment or the school system, there is a difference between 'Irish is a subject everyone does in primary/secondary school' to 'Every subject is taught through Irish in schools'. In over 90% of schools, Irish is just one subject across 7 curriculum areas in primary: https://www.curriculumonline.ie/Primary/Curriculum/ and one of 3 mandatory subjects at secondary (with English and Maths).
But indeed Galway is exceptionally focused on Irish. I didn't know the rest of the country was different. Sorry for that.
I did notice that most Irish people have almost no grasp of the Irish language at all, which I found very weird because everyone is forced to learn it for many years (12 even according to one colleague)
Most schools teach in English and teach Irish as a second language. Irish is rarely used in normal day to day interactions and never at work unless you work in an Irish language related area or government department that supports Irish as an official language.
There are some niche exceptions:
- "All Irish" schools where you optionally learn through Irish
- "Gaeltachts" which are pockets of Ireland where Irish is promoted and spoken. Even here the locals will happily switch to English if you prefer.
I like Irish and wish it was more widely spoken as an everyday language but in reality you have to make an explicit effort to experience it.
My colleagues all said that all the good schools were Irish spoken (as in everything taught through Irish). I extrapolated this to the rest of the country which is clearly incorrect. Sorry. But I wasn't too much into this as I don't have any kids myself.
If I did have kids I would have left Ireland anyway... At least in the area where I lived most schools were Catholic and I would never accept my child being raised with religious values. I wouldn't want to constantly have to deprogram them.
In fact one of my colleagues had a child who was giving a presentation about the dinosaurs. His parents were called to the school and told off because this was a subject that could not be discussed because evolution was "unscientific" and they shouldn't spread this kind of "nonsense" to the other pupils. Another colleague was shunned for being a "lone parent".
And this was actually a colleague who was living in Athlone, not in the Gaeltacht at all. So forgive me if I hold the Irish education system in low esteem :) Perhaps in Dublin it's better but I've only lived in the more remote areas.
There are of course a lot of things doable fully in English. But when running a company not mastering the native language (even when all of the people you talk to speak English!) can be a big drawback.
"Trickle down" in the US is a term used to disparage the idea that a strong economy benefits the poor even in the absence of explicit redistribution.
[0] admittedly she was starting to develop signs of Alzheimer’s at the point she called it that around me, but that was a legitimate use of the phrase when she was young.
I still remember hearing two Dutch guys speak in Dutch, I thought there were speaking in English but then I realised I dont understand what they are saying.
It should not be too surprising, given that Scots in large part derived from Northumbrian Old English, with various admixtures including from Scandinavia.
The versions of English spoken in Northern England also had a large input from Norse due to the Dane Law period, and that is part of what drove the change to modern English.
That said, in viewing un-dubbed (but subtitled) Dutch, Belgium, and Swedish TV programs, I have been surprised by the amount I get the gist of directly from the speech. Generally from the core Germanic portion of the languages. Belgium was also interesting due to the occasional mix of stock French phrases and words.
There were a non trivial quantity of 'English' words used, and usually for identical meaning, or a similar gloss.
So 1.5m out of 5.1m, which works out as 29%. I'd suggest these being folk who learnt it as their 'mother' tongue, since Scots is not taught as such in the school system.
I'm not sure how that and the 1.1% figure for use at home can be reconciled.
So if we take that 29% figure, despite being a minority, it is still in a better overall position than Gaelic.
One would expect that Scots could be fairly easily saved from extinction if it got official support, but there seems little political will within the Scottish establishment (Parliament and Government) to do so.
This means the significant other has to find a job and fit it, kids have to go to school.
While many countries have a very decent proficiency in English, you're whole family must fully invest in learning the local language. And that in addition to using English in the office of at least one of the adults (since many big companies use English officially)
Like e.g. Berlin, the large Dutch cities are very much internationally-oriented and usually it's not problem to get a job and integrate if you don't speak Dutch. Sometimes the issue is quite the opposite -- my wife wanted to learn Dutch, but people would just switch to English or German and she would have to ask them explicitly to speak Dutch.
This means the significant other has to find a job and fit it, kids have to go to school.
Kids pick up other languages in no time. A lot of friends/colleagues moved between countries (academia) and the kids would usually pick up a language in 2-3 months. I have lived in Australia for six months when I was four. When we returned, I spoke English with an aussie accent (though that's gone now ;)).
Some people can deal with this, even long term, but it's definitely not for me.
However most of us naturally switch to some variation of RP (or as heard on the BBC) while interacting with non locals. It has often been said that there is more variation in the way that English is spoken within the UK, than there is in the rest of the world.
I once had an experience in the USA while sitting at a Restaurant bar and conversing with the barman. He eventually asked where I was from, presumably due to my manner of speech (in English).
I then went through the rigmarole of asking him if he believed I was a native speaker, or knew it as a second language. He picked native, but was unable to enumerate the short list of countries where I was possibly from, and could not guess the answer.
At no point did he try England. He was surprised when I eventually told him I was British, and from England.
It seems too many folk in the US expect that all of us sound like Hugh Grant.
Flemish people might be an even more logical choice for the EU. Similar English, Dutch and basic German fluency, plus with most uni educated people there, pretty decent French.
And if you recruit me, you'll get fluent Latvian on top :-)
- Most native Latvian language speakers born in Latvia post-1991 will have low or non-existent Russian language skills, especially in the west (Kurzeme) or north. Very few native Russian speakers there. The situation in and around Riga is a little bit different. Try getting a customer-facing job in the private sector around Riga if you don't speak any Russian...
My significant other is young and speaks Russian fluently by accident. Native Latvian language, but raised in a "Khrushchevka" (Soviet apartment block) full of native Russian speaking families. Playing with the other kids meant learning Russian...
- Very very large differences amongst native Russian speaking youths in Latvia's three largest cities. A significant number hardly speak any Latvian. I've asked kids for directions that had trouble finding the words for "left" or "right". Which is somewhat surprising, given that officially, they're taking a significant part of their school in Latvian. Another group speaks both languages fluently. I've had chats over lunch with people I could hardly detect their native Russian background.
- Surprisingly, _a lot_ of young people in both groups speak abysmally bad English too.
That’s a non-trivial issue.
A big difference between the larger and smaller EU countries though is unrelated. The smallest countries don't have the budget for dubbing movies and TV series. This really helps with English proficiency in the smaller countries such as the Netherlands.
So while what you're saying is technically true, a lot of shows were only subtitled instead of being dubbed, it is also factually false, that is not the main reason for the proficiency.
I do think the subtitling really helps with proficiency though. School can only teach you so much. Consider Ireland where people get taught the Irish language for 12 years and hardly speak it.
The understanding of different accents, slang, drunken conversation etc can only happen with exposure to native speakers. Content in the original language really helps with that.
Half of English is Latin based, the other half is Germanic based. Dutch is a Germanic language so maybe that's where you're getting the idea from.
If UKoGBnNI decided to set a low tax rate ...
The name of the state is not the Republic of Ireland - that is the description of the state.
Additionally, we don't call Ireland Éire unless we're conversing in the Irish language.
Imagine moving Wall St from NYC to Austin TX.
* This is the somewhat cryptic name for the financial services enclave in the middle of London City.
This explains far more than just the name … thanks!
The (Secret) City of London: History Edition: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=LrObZ_HZZUc
The (Secret) City of London: Government Edition: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=z1ROpIKZe-c
I'm sure soft power pressure from the EU was a big factor in this, sure. But they weren't forced to as such.
You condescending fool.
The world needs organizations like the oecd but they hardly have “brass” like, say, the EU does, much less national governments.
* ok, if your job is to track, say, land usage and you don’t do your job you have a boss who can presumably fire you but that’s about as exciting as it gets.
Hollywood accounting can take several forms. In one form,
a subsidiary is formed to perform a given activity and the
parent entity will extract money out of the film's revenue
in the form of charges for certain "services". For example,
a film studio has a distribution arm as a sub-entity, which
will then charge the studio a "distribution fee" — essentially,
the studio charging itself a sum it has total control over and
hence control the profitability report of a project.
Essentially, Apple USA makes billions selling iPhones in the USA, then pays those billions to Apple Ireland for the right to put little Apple logos on iPhones. Likewise, Google USA pays billions in US ad sales profits to Google Ireland for the right to use Google tech for Google search.
When the Irish loophole closes I'm sure they'll think up another "One Weird Trick" to make taxable profits mystically transmute into untaxable expenses.
Eg they could tax land value. It's very hard to move land out of the country or hide it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_value_tax
Or they could tax sales / consumption instead of trying to tax company profits.
Company profits are just a bit too nebulous to tax properly.
Eg you can reduce your profits just fine by shifting your capital structure from being financed by equity to being financed largely by debt. (And as we all know, too much leverage is not all that great for the resilience of the economy.) That doesn't even need any Hollywood accounting, it's very orthodox accounting.
Yet, we keep pushing companies in that direction with the incentives that most tax systems around the world set.
(Though the companies you mention do use quite a bit of real estate by value.)
Taxing corporate profits is silly, and we shouldn't even try to do it.
I suggested LVT just as the least bad way to get revenue for the fisc.
Remote work would be their solution.
If I was a bit unclear: I am not suggesting LVT as a better way to tax corporate profits. In fact I think taxing corporate profits is a silly thing to even try.
LVT is just the least bad way to raise general revenue for the fisc.
Should countries not compete with each other and simply bow down to accept whatever corporate taxation rate the Americans tell them to have?
We[2] have tax loopholes because we want to continue to have tax loopholes.
1. BS example I'm unfamiliar with the actual numbers.
2. Where "We" is lawmakers or maybe society as a whole as weighted by political power.
3. Edited: s/revenue/profit/
As an example in Canada one newly recognized tax exemption for 2020 was a 400$ flat tax deduction for remote working.
You can argue that more tax burden should be shifted initially to corporations but I think that expenses and taxes have aligned in a way that makes a predominantly revenue based individual tax fair - corporations could also easily carry revenue based taxes, some low margin business would become infeasible but every economic policy shifts that line in some manner.
Either way seems a long way from business which gets to remove 100% of the cost of rent, maintenence, and pretty much anything else. If I employ a gardener to mow a lawn because my time is more valuable spent inventing a cure for cancer, I can’t deduct that. It makes far more sense from a personal perspective to work less and do a given job myself (lowering GDP and productivity, a lose/lose situation). Won’t say 35% marginal tax, I’d have to do $1000 overtime to pay $650 to put in a new shower, and the builder would only keep $422. It might take him 2 hours and me 6 hours, but if it takes me 10 hours to earn that $1000 extra it’s worth doing it myself and denying the world the cure for cancer I could have developed in that time.
A business on the other hand will just take the extra $1k revenue and offset the cost of the plumber against the revenue before paying tax.
[0] This loophole started being closed in the late 90s/early 00s and continues to be closed in the remaining countries that haven't yet addressed it.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IR35
[2] https://www.ato.gov.au/Business/Personal-services-income/
The purpose of IR35 is to stop people from avoiding national insurance contributions.
If you’re an individual and need to pay for a car to go to the office or supermarket, that’s post tax.
Heating a home is post tax. Heating an office is pre tax.
Say I create a business that receives $2000/m in contracting revenue instead of personal 1099 income. What if this business then acquires a property with a $2000/m mortgage and in turn rents that property to me for $1/mo. As all revenue is consumed by expenses would the business not be taxed? It seems like there has to be a reason why this strategy can not be used to avoid tax on all personal expenses?
> To be deductible, a business expense must be both ordinary and necessary. An ordinary expense is one that is common and accepted in your trade or business. A necessary expense is one that is helpful and appropriate for your trade or business. An expense does not have to be indispensable to be considered necessary.
Your particular example with free or below-market rent would almost certainly be considered tax evasion -- in fact, I believe this is one of the things that Allen Weisselberg is charged with [2].
[1] https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p535.pdf
[2] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-11-02/trump-per...
You can only (legally) deduct business expenses, not just all expenditure.
For example (where I work) you can deduct a cost for a uniform if it’s required for work. But you can’t deduct the cost of a new suit.
But you’re not wrong to be upset about this. It really doesn’t seem fair. And I’m not sure the government could get away with it so easily if they weren’t able to deputize employers to withhold taxes from your paycheck.
Btw, IMO this is also part of the reason for targeting 1099 status of the gig economy – collection rates are much lower for contractors (who must pay their own taxes, and may not have the funds available to do so) than for employees (who have their taxes withheld from their paycheck so they don’t need to pay tax on their salary).
I’m of the firm belief that the first $100k in individual income should be taxed exactly $0. Taxing unsophisticated, frequently barely profitable contractors – and penalizing them for failure to maintain savings or meet filing deadlines - is counterproductive to a successful economy.
The IRS collects 80% (or more) of its revenue from Americans with more than $100k income. On the other hand, Americans with 1099 status and under $100k income almost certainly feel a greater relative psychological and financial burden of tax compliance than anyone making over $100k.
Many of them need to choose between paying bills or paying the IRS – whereas for higher income earners, tax compliance is much less stressful as there is never any doubt whether they’ll have enough money to both pay their taxes (on time) and survive.
In this sense, the tax system feels disproportionately unfair to a large segment of the population that contributes to a comparatively small percentage of tax revenue.
Eg. someone making $100k is better off than someone else making $100001, but also maybe $120k (depending on the tax rates). Basically, at $100k, there is no incentive to earn more because your net, take-home figure will be lower if you do, until you jump significantly over the hoop.
The proposal to start taxing only amounts above $100k is not fundamentally different from the standard deduction or personal allowance that already exists (YMMV by jurisdiction). My proposal is simply to increase this floor by 10-20x.
Thanks for the clarification though: this makes more sense indeed.
I sell my labor on the market for as much money as I can get for that labor. I do this for the same reason a business is formed to provide for myself, my family, and to enjoy my life
This is the entire purpose of the "Standard Deduction" as that is viewed by the IRS as the "cost of living", and in their view it would be to complicated and allow for too much tax evasion if they allowed you to itemize every cost of living you had. Personally I think that is excused just to over tax people.
One should be able to deduct on an itemized schedule every grocery bill, every utility, even housing from their income taxes. Paying only taxes on that income they earned above and beyond the "Needs" of a person.
A tax on revenues would also kill a great many low profit businesses
Oil and gas extraction: -7.6%
Support activities for mining: 0.6%
Beverage manufacturing: 0.8%
Grocery and related product merchant wholesalers: 1.9%
Lawn and garden equipment and supplies stores: 2.0%
Miscellaneous durable goods merchant wholesalers: 2.3%
Petroleum and petroleum products merchant wholesalers: 2.4%
Grocery stores: 2.5%
Automobile dealers: 3.2%
Building material and supplies dealers: 3.2%
Continuing care retirement communities and assisted living facilities for the elderly: 3.3%
Other motor vehicle dealers: 3.3%
Home furnishings stores: 3.3%
Furniture stores: 3.4%
Beer, wine, and liquor stores: 3.4%
And also low-margin businesses. If you tax a business on its total sales rather than profits, a low-margin and high-volume operation cannot survive as easily.
Example. A supermarket chain makes many sales, collecting average 5% margins on a sale. A seller of high-end automobiles moves fewer units, but can take a 15% margin. Assume both businesses make the same $1m sales in a year.
If you're taxing profits at 20% the supermarket pays $10k on $50k profit while the car dealer pays $30k on $150k profit, for a total tax take of $40k.
If you're instead taxing total sales at 2%, each will pay $20k on their $1m sales. The same total taxes were raised, but the tax burden (at least in terms of retained earnings that are now available for reinvestment) has fallen differently. The supermarket is paying 40% of their profits in taxes, the car dealer is paying 13.3% of their profits in taxes.
And if a business makes only 1% average margin on their sales, they are underwater by this scheme. ($1m sales, $10k profit, $20k tax).
Which is the real reason countries tax profits, it can’t be passed on to consumers. Aka a company that maximized profits at some price point can’t raise prices without lowering profits.
But since prices will adjust, the question is really one of tax incidence. Who gets to raise prices to cover their taxes? And that’s complicated.
With VAT, you can deduct from it all the other VAT that you paid. E.g. you bill someone 100 + 10% VAT for a total bill of 110. You receive 110. You are now supposed to pay that 10 VAT to the government. But before you pay it, you can subtract the VAT that you paid in the last month, so if you bought, say, scissors, that had a VAT of 2, and a pencil, with a VAT of 1, you have to pay a total VAT of 7 back to the government.
Not being able to subtract the cost of goods sold would be ludicrous and farcical.
Yes, but Hollywood Accounting[1] transforms taxable profits into untaxable expenses. (Search this discussion for 'Hollywood Accounting' for a longer post I made.) A revenue tax is more difficult to game with creative accounting methods.
If you buy $10 of flower (including VAT) and turn it into $15 of bread (including VAT), you effectively only pay value added tax on $5. If you're generating no real margins and just have a lot of volume, you're effectively also paying no real VAT.
The difficulty is with cross-border transactions.
Lets not do that, We have enough hidden taxation in prices as is it, I am not a fan of this style of taxation as it allows for government to increase taxes (and prices) on consumers while never having to answer for those increases because the people take it out on companies and vendors not on the government where their anger belongs
VAT taxation is terrible and should always be opposed
Multinational companies chose Ireland largely because:
1) Low tax basis
2) English speaking EU country
3) Part of the Euro zone (less important than #1 and #2 to be sure).
Given the OECD tax agreement there are fewer low-tax destinations for companies to pick from. And because of Brexit there are no other English-speaking EU countries.
Companies in Ireland aren’t going anywhere and it remains a pretty good option for any new HQs looking to expand into Europe. Ireland is just making more money off of each of them.
Both are pretty small though.
> No change to the 12.5% rate for businesses with revenues below €750 million
More accurately, this is a form of alternative minimum tax- a higher floor than the normal brackets specifically for those who cross a specific threshold.
That does carry a hefty incentive to play games with your accounting, and is ultimately rather foolish since the people it was really aimed at when introduced in the US shifted their income to capital gains instead.
Now, it is mostly a way to punish people for becoming upper middle class.
Personally, I think the tax rate should be higher than 15% for all corporations so I'm not so worried that a company might miss out on an even better deal of 12.5%, but I see the concern that a small change in revenue might change their tax bill by millions.
Speaking specifically for America, the government can barely even agree on where it wants to spend its current "budget".
Say you have a couple who constantly fights over how to spend their $10m/yr budget, of which nearly half is borrowed, and 11% of which is spent on policing their entire neighborhood. Each year, they nearly default on their debt because they can't agree on a budget for the next year to keep paying interest.
You wouldn't give them even more money to solve their problems, because the problems are clearly with the amount and poor allocation of their spending. Why would you do the same with the US government?
Free trade is not a one direction story.
Some of the US states operates one of the biggest tax havens in the world, is the US govt going to shut them down?
It’s kind of like if people argued that a bridge construction must be unsafe because they tried to make something similar in their kids sandbox and it fell apart when it got wet.
Sure, the companies will have to pay a bit more to their lawyers, but the way I see it, is that all it does is making offshores even more attractive.
assuming they don't get sanctioned and/or tarrifed.
For example I doubt airbnb could pull its Ireland trick on EU countries from Panama (otherwise they'd already be doing it)
"Paying" £1,000,000 for intellectual property in the virgin islands? There's a 12.5% tax on that, not VAT, so no, you can't offset it, thanks!
Ireland is not joining this agreement for no reason, they're doing it because non-membership will hurt them more in the end.
136 Countries agree to minimum corporate tax rate - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28801599 - Oct 2021 (170 comments)
When and how will the taxes help you and me? The money just ends up going to a black hole for the government to spent inefficiently. And if you are in the US, the money gets spent on funding the military industrial complex for bombing more countries, regime changes, intelligence agencies, sent to other countries for random gibberish studies and hiring more admin or useless jobs.
I would recommend listening to the first few minutes of this "Walmart vs. The Morons" video to understand how inefficient the government really is:
> When and how will the taxes help you and me?
Well.. for example, you use roads I assume.
Paid for with money raised from ... tax
What would you say if your local big companies / rich people didn't pay tax in your state but managed to pay in the neighbouring state ? That's exactly what's happening in Europe
13 Baltimore City High Schools, Zero Students Proficient in Math
https://old.reddit.com/r/news/comments/7bvreb/13_baltimore_c...
http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2013-05-21/news/bs-md-ci-ce...
Just so everyone is aware Baltimore is 2nd in per pupil spending. This is not because the schools dont get enough money. In fact its just about as far away from that as you can get.
If despite getting the 2nd more funded, your students still can't do high school math, then the problem isn't about money or racism, it's probably about corruption, gangs, fatherlessness, teacher unions and lack of school choice.
Tax payer money literally just disappears.
Schools
Healthcare (in civilized countries)
Making sure companies selling medicine aren't killing people
Making sure companies don't dump toxic waste into rivers and lakes
Note that comparing Walmart vs the government is especially funny since most of Warlmart's expansion comes from the fact that it under-pays it's workers so much that the federal government has to support them since they aren't able to afford housing and food. It's also really funny that he brings up Fanny Mae as an argument against government efficiency since they are a private company that screwed up so badly they basically destroyed the economy. It's also really funny that he brings up healthcare since Medicare and Medicaid both run several times more efficiently than privately run healthcare.
When you say things like this, you just push back the goal of national healthcare in America. Stop. I want national healthcare and the only way to get it involves not pissing people off by calling them uncivilized.
And honestly, there is no perfect band-aid for how to treat views that you find honestly stupid. Sure, some people won't listen if you're out there calling them stupid, but some people won't listen unless you do. People are messsy, complicated, and different.
How so?
> And honestly, there is no perfect band-aid for how to treat views that you find honestly stupid. Sure, some people won't listen if you're out there calling them stupid, but some people won't listen unless you do. People are messsy, complicated, and different.
When you talk down to people, tell them that they are uncivilized, and call them stupid or “deplorable” they’ll sink the entire ship and take themselves down with you just to spite you.
If you want nation healthcare, or any number of other things the exact wrong approach is this approach.
I think most people’s stance on guns or capitalism is downright stupid. You think if I say to someone who wants to ban AR-15s that they’re stupid and uncivilized that they’ll have an epiphany? I doubt it. They’ll double down. If I approach them with an approach to partner and find solutions to problems and understand their point of view, I’m far more likely to gain their support or at least sympathy. People are certainly messy, but I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that when you’re trying to get someone to do something that starting off telling them that they are stupid or uncivilized is a sure fire way to get them to do the opposite.
Because you weren't having a conversation with someone trying to convince them of anything, you jumped in to police the speech of someone expressing their frustration with the state of their nation.
>When you talk down to people, tell them that they are uncivilized, and call them stupid or “deplorable” they’ll sink the entire ship and take themselves down with you just to spite you.
And if you go around pissing off the people who are trying to achieve the same goals as you, they'll stop putting in any effort.
So they were having a conversation and I’m not? I don’t really get your point.
> And if you go around pissing off the people who are trying to achieve the same goals as you, they'll stop putting in any effort.
…sure ok. I guess if they’re going to talk down to people and call them uncivilized then I’ll stop supporting the goal too. Everyone wins.
My point is there is a major contextual difference between someone entering a conversation between you and a third party to say rude things about the third party and someone making general statements in a public forum and you jumping in on behalf of a theoretical third party who may not actually be offended.
If that's difficult for you I don't think there is much to discuss here because it seems pretty clear to me and I don't want to waste your time or anything out of respect.
Also, there is no reason that the cap on SS tax collection shouldn't be lifted.
You get the quality of government you deserve. Remove corruption and regulate lobbying and donations and government money will be spent more effectively.
Between 1850 and 1872 extensive cessions of public lands were made to states and to railroad companies to promote railroad construction.[18] Usually the companies received from the federal government, in twenty- or fifty-mile strips, alternate sections of public land for each mile of track that was built. Responsibility for surveying and mapping the grants fell to the U.S. General Land Office, now the Bureau of Land Management. Numerous maps of the United States and individual states and counties were made which clearly indicated the sections of the granted land and the railroad rights-of-way.
https://www.loc.gov/collections/railroad-maps-1828-to-1900/a...
NYC public transit trains and subway were predominately privately-owned and -operated until 1940:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_New_York_City...
How long did the second avenue subway take to finish under benevolent government leadership?
A major cost, often the major cost, in new ground transport construction is land aquisition and accommodating conflicting uses. It's an irony of highway and railroad construction that it enables occupation and production of previously low-value land, but that the very increase in land values resulting transportation access makes additional transport construction far more expensive.
Another major cost factor is political opposition, quite often fuelled by competing transportation modalities. Today that's largely trucking and airline interests allied against rail, though the phenomenon isn't new, and as railroads were first emerging, it often came from exising canal companies and inerests.
See Bernhard J. Stern, "Resistances to the Adoption of Technological Innovations", 1937
https://archive.org/details/technologicaltre1937unitrich/pag...
Markdown: https://rentry.co/szi3g
In the United States when, in 1812, John Stevens wrote his Documents Tending to Prove the Superior Advantages of Railways and Steam-carriages over Canal Navigation addressed to the commissioners appointed by the State of New York to explore a route for the Erie Canal, his proposals were regarded as ingenious but visionary, and dismissal in the face of the recommendation for the canal by DeWitt Clinton, Gouverneur Morris, and Robert R. Livingston. The latter, Steven's brother-in-law, had been granted a monopoly to navigate the waters of New York State by steamboat and could, therefore, not be expected to be receptive. His letter, dated March 11, 1812, gives the reaction of an "expert" of the time...
And:
After New York had incurred a heavy debt in the construction of the Erie Canal, mass meetings throughout the State demanded that railroad competition should not be permitted to affect the receipts of the canal. When the charter of the Utica and Schenectady Railroad was granted in 1833, the line was prohibited from carrying any property except the baggage of passengers, a prohibition which prevailed until 1844, when permission to carry freight was granted but only when navigation was suspended and upon the payment of canal tolls.
Today, that role is often played by regional and budget airlines, rather famously, Southwest Airlines:
Texas Central Railway is trying to revive a part of that earlier project, a privately financed bullet train connecting Dallas and Houston. As the company prepares to do a federally required environmental impact study and hold public meetings along the planned route, its leaders say they expect to avoid the pitfalls of the earlier project, namely inadequate financing and intense opposition from Southwest Airlines.
https://www.texastribune.org/2014/03/07/firm-planning-texas-...
The pattern of privately-funded ventures undertaking early infrastructure development, typically in low-cost, high-value regions, but transitioning to either a government-subsidised, or operated mode under expansion or as the market matures is in fact common. One such subsidy is often mail service (the withdrawal of postal sorting cars from passenger rail proved the final death knell, a case of death delivered by ZIP Code). For electrical and telephone service, you'll see this in both rural cooperatives, handling final distribution, and in major generation projects such as the Tennessee Valley and Bonneville Power authorities, and major dam projects (Hoover, Glen Canyon, Grand Coulee, and many others). Early privately-operated dams proved to have their own issues (see Johnstown). Many urban transit systems began life as private ventures, but came to be operated under government or quasi-governmental agencies in time (where the weren't destroyed outright through corporate conspiracy). Again, land-speculation and high-value routes are attractive to private operators. Serving high-need areas though wih little revenue potential, not so much.
As you point out, the government's power is used to stamp out competition, or it subsidizes alternatives which drive the companies out of business.
> Serving high-need areas though wih little revenue potential
That's, by definition, not a high need. It's why our public transit is so expensive and such a small fraction of commute miles: because we don't have a focus on useful aka what people are willing to pay for. We let bums make it unsafe and dirty. We build it next to expensive, wide roads then wonder why people continue to drive when it doesn't actually go directly to where you want to go.
Every year (2000-2016) we added 30,427 lane-miles of road.
The priority is clear. I guarantee it's not this lopsided in Europe. There's not even anywhere useful those roads could go.
As for schools:
13 Baltimore City High Schools, Zero Students Proficient in Math
https://old.reddit.com/r/news/comments/7bvreb/13_baltimore_c...
http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2013-05-21/news/bs-md-ci-ce...
Just so everyone is aware Baltimore is 2nd in per pupil spending. This is not because the schools dont get enough money. In fact its just about as far away from that as you can get.
If despite getting the 2nd more funded, your students still can't do high school math, then the problem isn't about money, it's probably about corruption, gangs, fatherlessness, teacher unions and lack of school choice.
This is also not exclusive to Baltimore. Money just disappears from these places.
Everyone I know who works in the government themselves tell me how inefficient the government is and how much waste of money there is. For example, they have built the regulations in such a way that a hammer you may be able to purchase for $10 will cost $50 for the government or military.
Forever feeding it more and more money while they keep spending it without any benefit to people does nothing.
Look at what the US just did. 2 trillion dollars wasted in Afghanistan and then left 83 billion dollars worth of tax payer funded military gear for the Taliban. You want to give them more money?
How exactly is paying more taxes ensuring "companies selling medicine aren't killing people" or "companies don't dump toxic waste into rivers and lakes"?
Read Stephanie Kelton's Deficit Myth for details.
Funding is provided by congressional appropriation. When congress says spend on something at this price, that is all that is required.
At that point the issue is whether the something is being used by the private sector. If it is then you have to stop the private sector using it somehow. Tax is one way of doing that, or you can just ban the private sector using that resource (nationalising healthcare for example).
Money isn't a thing, it is a unit of account. It grows and shrinks within the banking system as required to ensure all transactions that can be undertaken are undertaken.
Regulating the business cycle, the Interstate Highway System, FDIC/SLIC, Social Security, Medicare, and the Affordable Care Act, the GI Bill, clean air and water, scientific research, public health, vast amounts of public information, the Library of Congress (largest collection of printed material in the history of Earth), anti-discrimination policies, investor protections, the military, the courts, air traffic control, airline safety regulation and investigation (including as a worldwide standard and often agent), GPS and weather satellites, the West, fire protection, farm information and training, student aid and support, food and drug safety, containerised shipping (who do you think created the unified-standard demand finally fixing shipping container dimensions?) Municipal freshwater systems, waste removal, sewerage, electric and gas utilities, rural electric and telephone service, railroads, highway systems, post offices, standards of weights and measures (Herbert Hoover (R)), police departments (and here I particularly recommend looking up the Peelian Principles of London's Metropolitan Police), public health systems, social welfare systems, port and harbour districts, national defence, air traffic control, the Internet, Silicon Valley, GPS, satellite weather systems, major oil and gas pipeline systems, stockpiles of critical strategic minerals (to prevent market-gaming by private individuals), the Texas Railroad Commission (which of course regulated global oil prices from 1930 - 1973 -- fascinating story), and a great deal more.
https://toot.cat/@dredmorbius/105504124162132201
V]ociferous attacks on successful government programs like Social Security reveal one of the dirty little secrets of anti-government conservatives and libertarians: they hate successful government programs even more than unsuccessful ones. Government programs that work contradict the conservatives' contention that government is bad and always screws things up. Worse, successful programs may actually encourage people to view the government and their taxes in a more positive light. So it is the very success of a program like Social Security that invites attack by conservatives. As Paul Krugman has explained, government haters "are not sincerely concerned about the possibility that the system will someday fail; they're disturbed by the system's historic successes. For Social Security is a government program that works, a demonstration that a modest amount of taxing and spending can make people's lives better and more secure. And that's why the right wants to destroy it."
https://governmentisgood.com/articles.php@aid=7&print=1 Citing Paul Krugman, “Inventing a Crisis” New York Times, December 7, 2004, p. A31.
Ezra Klein also recently addressed criticisms of government inefficiency in an interview of Tyler Cowan:
[O]ne thing I know from covering the government is it part of the reason things are bureaucratic and slow moving and you have to file everything in triplicate and things get checked over and over again and it’s way too cautious, is that there has been for decades and decades an organized effort on the part of libertarian and right- wing institutions to embarrass the government if it funds anything that can be made to look silly or that ends up failing, like Solyndra, that ends up seeming to people like a waste of money.
[I]t seems to me that if you want this faster, more agile, more risk- taking government, you also have to somehow quiet these players looking to point out every failure, because being too afraid of failure makes you too afraid of quick processes.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/10/podcasts/transcript-ezra-...
It's interesting when the interviewer has the more insightful lines than the guest, though I don't hold that agaisnt Klein.
But yes: government exists in an adversarial space, and has to both engineer itself against and work in the face of that adversity. Unsurprisingly, efficiency can suffer. Though in many, many cases, government does prove highly efficient.
(not saying there is no room for improvement)
In the US? On our 65th birthdays. Military spending is big, but Medicare is bigger.
- parks
- museums
- libraries
- free primary and secondary education
- subsidised tertiary/vocational education
- a (relative of course) functioning public transport system
- healthcare
- worker protections
- other stuff I'm sure I'm forgetting
Sure, government is inefficient. All large orgs are. But are you telling me for-profit corporations are going to create a society with all these things for everyone?
Beyond a certain scale, massive inefficiency is the natural state of most corporations. It's just hard to find because the dirty laundry is rarely made public, and even then it's often concealed behind consultant fees, marketing budgets and other opaque expenditures.
That’s why cities like SF are attempting to redesign trash cans and spending $20k on each prototype.
If you take capital away from people who are excellent capital allocators and give it to consumers we will just end up with more candy crush in app purchases.
Just think about the kind of profits corps that are on the CIA's short list get.
The US doesn't have the same history, culture, institutions, structures and views on what society is as Europe.
For having lived in the US and in several EU countries I can tell you it's extremely obvious to see where the money is going
The world is becoming a closed place where out of democratic reach bureaucrats are making most of the decisions.
Probably because lot of people on HN are Americans and most of them know that the US govt loves to waste trillions of dollars of taxpayer money in pointless wars.
It’s why when I look around the U.S. at the trillions we spent over the last two decades and I see... well looks pretty much the same as the 90s honestly
I think if you look around in the world you could see many countries where government works quite well, with little corruption, maybe a bit slow, yet offering services that are better and more efficient than businesses could. In the US people have been led to believe this is simply impossible.
Government may be the enabler of corruption but there is no alternative other than to fix it. Libertarians may believe you can mostly do without a government, but they are mistaken.
Probably not, which means that the game of tax competition just became less transparent.
Sure, the headline rate may now be 15%, but so what if the tax collectors don’t care?
Besides it’d probably still be significantly cheaper for companies to pay the fine for any “alleged wrongdoing” than to pay the headline tax rate.
That is still solid when it comes to advantages.