My take on this is that Ireland is now willing to come into compliance because post-Brexit, they now have a monopoly on "urban core that could sustain an HQ for multinationals in a natively-English-speaking country in the EU."
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.
Official Ireland were dragged into this kicking and screaming. There really wasn’t much choice involved - unless the OECD brass were thinking in generous terms towards Ireland. If anything I’d say the timing of this is in part what drove Brexit - this has been coming for a few years now and “City”* of London is one of the worlds biggest hubs for processing funny money.
* This is the somewhat cryptic name for the financial services enclave in the middle of London City.
The "City of London" (also referred to as the square mile), whose proper name is "City of London Corporation" is a roughly square mile in the centre of London that closely matches the area of the Roman settlement of Londinium. Given it's age and heritage it has many foibles; it is its own ceremonial county, it has its own police force, it has quixotic ownership of lands (and sometimes even entire towns) outside its own borders (the city of Londonderry / Derry in Northern Ireland used to be wholly owned by the City of London, hence the name Londonderry). The City of London is a strange and almost anachronistic collection of a few dozen blocks surrounded by the much larger Greater London. Read up on it, it has some very interesting and strange history.
I used to live and work in the city and loved telling people about the dragons guarding the city borders and the often weird and funny traditions. As much as the city is a hub of corporations it's actually far from the soulless place many make it out to be, and there is lots of interesting history there if you care to look. My favorite gateway drugs to learning more about the city of London are probably CGP Grey's videos:
It's not just a financial services enclave. The City of London proper is a whole other thing unto itself. For an interesting read, check out what it takes to become the Lord Mayor of the City of London. Quite a trip.
It doesn’t have any enforcement power, but this is an agreement that Ireland have had to sign up to out of political necessity. It’s not the OECD forcing Ireland, it’s the other OECD members.
Excuse me? are there not senior officials [0] in these organisations that convene these things, set timelines and such? I’m sorry if I am using some definition of the colloquially term “brass” that you are not familiar with.
This fool has been well aware for decades that they have various deliberative and measuring staff but no ability to order anyone* around.
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.
Why? This comment is not about Berlin or Paris, it is mentioning then as examples of non English speaking cities. Is the author supposed to mention every city in Europe?
The Netherlands has the highest English proficiency in the world [0] (among non-native speaking countries) so I imagine it would be a compelling choice.
But I mean… Ireland has a higher English proficiency?
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.
Having lived in the Netherlands (Eindhoven - not even Amsterdam) I can confirm that the English spoken there was superior to the English I was raised in in rural Ontario where my teachers said "warshing" instead of washing. The Dutch have an incredibly faculty for language and I admire it.
I will have to mention that this varies all over, especially the bit older generation (not exclusively though) also has some weird quirks language wise. So while they might speak and understand the English language quite well the are some parts missing. As an example I like to mention the phrasing of Bolkenstein (a Dutch National/EU politician) of economic handouts to people as "Golden showers". So while proficiency might be high, it's not always ... perfect.
Even among native speakers, there are often inter-generational shifts: to my father’s generation (1939) “gay” meant “festive, joyous” rather than a sexual preference; my mother used the term “glory hole” to mean “a cupboard used for storage”[0]; and her mother used “Irish” as an insult, and lived just long enough for “wireless” to start to refer to WiFi instead of longwave radio.
[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 guess if you mean "money is a small amount of liquid" then the analogy is fair? Otherwise the terms are very different -- handouts are not called "trickle down" in the US. The principle is not the same, it is literally the opposite.
"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.
I'm from the UK and whilst working with a handful of dutch, I was blown away not only by their extremely good english but also their ability to understand and the subitle aspects of english - eg comedy/ sarcasium/ passive aggresstion etc..
No, that would have to be Scots. Especially compared to the region versions of English spoken in Northern England.
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.
Fair enough, but Dutch is a much more “major” language than Scots (which I believe even in Scotland only a small % of the population speak as their first/mother tongue rather than English).
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.
> Dutch is probably the closest language to English that isn’t a dialect of English.
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.
Part of that is probably because we have (grandfathered) access to BBC1 and BBC2 here, so ample opportunity to learn British mannerisms and expressions.
But the US company in Europe would have far more (big majority) of non-US employees. Those employees have far better understanding of Dutch English than Irish English in every day and in corporate life
There are some workers that would relocate with the whole family.
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)
There are some workers that would relocate with the whole family. This means the significant other has to find a job and fit it, kids have to go to school.
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 ;)).
Living in Berlin if you don't speak German you are limited in employment, in healthcare, and possibly socially depending on your bubbles. Short time you may not notice it but long term you are probably best learning German. A friend of mine is struggling to find a job right now and lack of German is a big problem for them. Another friend started dating someone who's not herself in the anglophone tech bubble and can't hang out with her friends. Have translated for a friend in hospital for a operation.
Some people can deal with this, even long term, but it's definitely not for me.
Maybe? A Polish colleague happened to spend some time with, IIRC, a Scott and an Aussie. The two native speakers would resort occasionally to use him as an interpreter, because the native English tends to diverge out of bounds of their tolerances.
As someone who recently moved from the UK to Switzerland, I can attest that "English proficiency" isn't the main issue - it probably helps (it would be even harder to move to Japan where I couldn't talk to pretty much anyone, nor read anything), but the main issue is bureaucracy - everything is in German - forms, contracts, etc. - and some foreign documents have to be translated (they sometimes accept English documents, at least).
There's a lot of weird accents here in the UK. Even cockney sounds odd, and that's local to London. In the same place you'll meet people from Liverpool, Newcastle, Birmingham, Scotland and so on, all with distinctive accents that are not so easy for your ordinary American or second language speaker.
Weird? Nah, but there is a lot of variation, and some of them can be difficult even for locals to understand.
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.
Another Irish resident confirming that this statement is not true.
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.
Indeed I was living in the Gaeltacht (West of Galway). I didn't realise the number of Irish-spoken schools was so low in the rest of the country.
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.
You must be thinking of an area with an unusually high number of Gaelscoils!
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).
Oh ok, all my friends with kids had them in Irish-spoken schools. There were some English-spoken schools in the area I lived (Galway) but according to my friends all the good schools were in Irish.
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)
I think Sweden and Denmark has the same level. They seem to take turn on which is the highest with 0 1% or so difference. Of course, they are further to the north end of Europe and may as such be a less suitable choice.
If language fluency would be the most important criterium - which it isn't-, the Dutch speaking 60% of Belgium are an even more logical choice. They're buried in that ranking below the less stellar English in the French speaking part of Belgium.
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 :-)
Are Latvians still learning Russian these days as well? In Georgia I noticed a big difference between the older (Russian) and younger (English) in their second language skills.
This is getting fairly off topic, but since you ask... My impressions about people born in Latvia post-1991 are numerous, but obviously anecdotal:
- 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.
I would guess that India is too large to meaningfully include in such a statistic. On average in the country English literacy could be quite poor while in the relevant tech hubs it is quite good. But that's just a hypothesis.
I believe the reason they mentioned it is that they have very large english speaking populations, famously a german conservative said he doesn't know if a person in a shop in Berlin can speak German or "only English".
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.
The Dutch are extremely proficient in English because they teach their children in it from 8 years old. And have been doing it since at least the 80s.
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.
No we haven't. I'm Dutch, I was in primary school in the 80s and I definitely didn't get English until I went to secondary school around the age of 12.
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.
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.
I don't know if Florida is apt. The state has one of the strongest economies in the US.
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.
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.
> As much as Florida gets dunked on in the US, it's still an economic powerhouse of the region.
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?
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?
You’re right, Poland is probably in worse position than Texas here. Texas at least has the promise of a federal system to reign in its more unpopular legislative instincts, Poland not so much.
> Texas at least has the promise of a federal system to reign in its more unpopular legislative instincts, Poland not so much.
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?)
State politics in the US is not based on how many people vote for or against something in a state. It’s based on how many legislative districts vote for or against something. The difference is important when you think about how legislative districts are drawn.
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.
I’m perplexed by the combination of “screw Poland” and the idea that what the EU is doing is making Poland respect the human rights of its own citizens. Are you implying that what the EU is doing here is bad?
Thank you for asking instead of just downvoting, it is very valuable to me to be able to see how my message can convey different meaning from what I intended.
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).
Take all the time you need. You'll find lots of specific agreements on wheat subsidies, travel restrictions, etc. But a general claim that EU courts can override Polish courts or EU law to supercede Polish law? It's not there.
If you think it is, please go ahead and cite the passage in the treaty. Otherwise please withdraw the claim.
1. The Czech Republic, the Republic of Estonia, the Republic of Cyprus, the Republic of Latvia, the Republic of Lithuania, the Republic of Hungary, the Republic of Malta, the Republic of Poland, the Republic of Slovenia and the Slovak Republic hereby become members of the European Union and Parties to the Treaties on which the Union is founded as amended or supplemented.
2. The conditions of admission and the adjustments to the Treaties on which the Union is founded, entailed by such admission, are set out in the Act annexed to this Treaty. The provisions of that Act shall form an integral part of this Treaty.
3. The provisions concerning the rights and obligations of the Member States and the powers and jurisdiction of the institutions of the Union as set out in the Treaties referred to in paragraph 1 shall apply in respect of this Treaty.
The Conference recalls that, in accordance with well settled case law of the Court of Justice of the European Union, the Treaties and the law adopted by the Union on the basis of the Treaties have primacy over the law of Member States, under the conditions laid down by the said case law.
"According to the precedence principle, European law is superior to the national laws of Member States. The precedence principle applies to all European acts with a binding force. Therefore, Member States may not apply a national rule which contradicts to European law.
The precedence principle guarantees the superiority of European law over national laws. It is a fundamental principle of European law. As with the direct effect principle, it is not inscribed in the Treaties, but has been enshrined by the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU)."
"To the extent that a provision of the Charter refers to national laws and practices, it shall only apply to Poland or the United Kingdom to the extent that the rights or principles that it contains are recognised in the law or practices of Poland or of the United Kingdom."
Rather, it is an agreement in which national parliaments agree to pass national laws in harmony with certain EU laws, or face some penalties. The reason why national parliaments need to do that is because national laws and national constitutions as interpreted by national judges remain the supreme law of the land, and so this treaty was required in order to provide a framework to urge members states to harmonize or give up various EU funding perks.
Look, I get that a lot of people want a Federal Europe, but you can't get there by pretending you've already arrived and being outraged at those who point out you haven't. The EU as presently constituted is basically the articles of confederation, where states need to pass local versions of EU laws, rather than something like a true Federal Europe.
"the Treaties and the law adopted by the Union on the basis of the Treaties have primacy over the law of Member States, under the conditions laid down by the said case law."
This does not read ambiguously. You asked for a citation, it was given, and now you're ignoring it. Unless you specifically show why this doesn't say what we think it does, you've lost your audience.
"
1. The Charter does not extend the ability of the Court of Justice of the European Union, or any court or tribunal of Poland or of the United Kingdom, to find that the laws, regulations or administrative provisions, practices or action of Poland or of the United Kingdom are inconsistent with the fundamental rights, freedoms and principles that it reaffirms.
2. In particular, and for the avoidance of doubt, nothing in Title IV of the Charter creates justiciable rights applicable to Poland or the United Kingdom except in so far as Poland or the United Kingdom has provided for such rights in its national law."
No, what is called the Charter of Fundamental Rights is part of the Lisbon Treaty (which itself is just a series of amendments to the previous treaties on the European Union). It is, btw, what the European Court of Justice is intended to enforce.
You can see this from the (lengthy) title:
"Consolidated versions of the Treaty on European Union and the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union - Consolidated version of the Treaty on European Union - Protocols - Declarations annexed to the Final Act of the Intergovernmental Conference which adopted the Treaty of Lisbon, signed on 13 December 2007 "
Now you are right that what prompted these carveouts was fear that the EU would promulgate various human rights provisions and force them on Poland, specifically abortion/gay marriage and other measures inconsistent with Polish Catholicism.
This is part of the strategic ambiguity of the Lisbon treaty, with conflicting claims in the treaty meant to satisfy different parties. Thus in one section it states that national laws will be respected, and in another it has a supremacy clause, and in a third it says the area of competence is subordinate to national parliaments.
All meant to create strategic ambiguity to get the thing signed.
But even more importantly for Poland as well as other countries, national Supreme Courts must enforce the constitution of each nation and that constitution is the Supreme Law of the land. A treaty cannot abbrogate a constitution. Thus Polish judges cannot side with a treaty when it conflicts with the Polish constitution. Recognition of this is respecting the rule of law, not violating it.
And when there is a conflict between a law and a treaty, the judges need to side with the law rather than the treaty. The treaty is an outward promise to the rest of the EU and the EU can find that Poland violated its treaty obligations, which would be a matter for the Polish Ambassadors and representatives to deal with, but unless the Polish constitution is amended to recognize the acts of the EU parliament as having the force of law in Poland, then the judges have to enforce the Polish law as enacted by the legitimate law creating mechanisms spelled out in the constitution.
Ironically, this insistence on enforcing the law and the constitution is what the EU calls "violating the rule of law".
And the same thing is true in the Czech republic -- when there is a conflict between an EU law and the Czech constitution, then judges have to side with the Constitution:
This came up as the Czechs are seeking to enshrine the right to bear arms in the constitution, so it is very relevant to know who ends up winning: EU gun regulations or Czech regulations. Well, the Czech regulations win.
This should be obvious, if the EU requires its rulings to override national law without being enacted by the national Parliament, then it should have required Constitutional changes to delegate the creation of lawmaking to the EU before letting the nation sign the treaty.
But then no nation would join the EU.
Therefore you have this strategic ambiguity and feigned outrage whenever a supreme court says it is beholden to its national constitution rather than to a treaty (in those cases where there is a conflict).
There is a process for changing the constitution, and it is much harder than the process for signing a treaty. This is because the constitution specifies how laws are to be created and interpreted, not treaties.
Treaties are agreements between nations, but within a nation, the constitution is supreme, and that will remain the case unless the Polish constitution is changed. Polish judges are expected to enforce that constitution, and if the EU finds that Poland has not respected its treaty obligations, it can try to withhold aid or take some other EU specific measure against Poland, but it's not the job of judges to allow treaties to change constitutions.
As others have said, you’re seemingly ignoring the existence of EU regulations which apply automatically without needing to be transposed into local law, and of the Court of Justice of the EU whose decisions are binding for local courts.
Both of these were established by the treaties that were in place when Poland joined, and further reaffirmed in the Treaty of Lisbon (which was supposed to be the clarified and rewritten European Constitution, but that was a bridge too far for some countries’ voters, so instead it became a web of amendments over the existing treaties).
"To the extent that a provision of the Charter refers to national laws and practices, it shall only apply to Poland or the United Kingdom to the extent that the rights or principles that it contains are recognised in the law or practices of Poland or of the United Kingdom."
" 1. The Charter does not extend the ability of the Court of Justice of the European Union, or any court or tribunal of Poland or of the United Kingdom, to find that the laws, regulations or administrative provisions, practices or action of Poland or of the United Kingdom are inconsistent with the fundamental rights, freedoms and principles that it reaffirms."
"In particular, and for the avoidance of doubt, nothing in Title IV of the Charter creates justiciable rights applicable to Poland or the United Kingdom except in so far as Poland or the United Kingdom has provided for such rights in its national law."
“Charter” referred here is a separate document mentioned in Article 6 of the treaty:
The Union recognises the rights, freedoms and principles set out in the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union of 7 December 2000, as adapted at Strasbourg, on 12 December 2007, which shall have the same legal value as the Treaties.
The provisions of the Charter shall not extend in any way the competences of the Union as defined in the Treaties.
So the Charter is about human rights, and as the treaty makes clear, doesn’t extend the competences of the Union. Poland and UK wanted to put a further point on this for some reason. It is not a carve-out from the treaty.
Go ahead and cite the passage in the Treaty of Lisbon that says Polish law can be overriden by EU law. I'll wait.
Hint: the reason why the structure of the EU was designed so that national parliaments would pass their own versions of laws agreed to in the EU parliament was precisely because it is the national laws that are binding. Similarly the EU courts rule on actions of the member states in the context of the EU, whether the member states are living up to their agreement. They do not directly rule on laws or override laws in the national parliaments.
If with "biased" you mean that they (europa.eu) are the official online resource which publishes the treaties in question, verbatim, you are correct. It's an unusual use of terminology, though.
The Conference recalls that, in accordance with well settled case law of the Court of Justice of the European Union, the Treaties and the law adopted by the Union on the basis of the Treaties have primacy over the law of Member States, under the conditions laid down by the said case law.
Yeah, that's the ideal. Unfortunately when the local government is worse than a bunch of faraway bureaucrats, it's just hard to justify supporting them.
Good quip, but you’re of course ignoring the issue that democracies can sometimes trample minority rights. This is precisely the issue in this context, with Poland trying to pass anti-LGBTQ laws, and the EU trying to stop them.
Democracies are often very convenient for coercing minorities into living the way the majority wants them to live.
I'm not ignoring any such thing, as Churchill famously said "democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried". It's inconvenient even for those who are persuasive, but especially for those who are not and for those who are authoritarian - sets that tend to overlap, in my experience.
As to Poland, there are no publicised plans for changes to laws that directly affect gays, and they actually have many legal protections that you'll find lacking elsewhere. No same sex marriage or civil partnerships though.
If you think stripping away democracy so that Polish gays can marry is worth it then you're entitled to that view, but I'd hazard a guess that they've got long enough memories to avoid that kind of short term thinking and will carry on with the long term effort of persuasion, which is going well[1].
> Meanwhile, support for the legalisation of same-sex partnerships – which are currently not permitted in Poland – now stands at 36%, up six percentage points since 2019 and ten since 2015. Surveys by other pollsters have in recent years found a growing majority now in favour of same-sex partnerships.
> If you think stripping away democracy so that Polish gays can marry is worth it then you're entitled to that view.
Ah, a straw man. Please don’t do that, it’s tiresome.
I’m not a fan of “stripping away democracy” per the words you tried to put into my mouth. I am however rather clear eyed about the drawbacks of democracies in how they tend to treat minorities. If that reads as being anti democracy to you, then there is no point in continuing this conversation.
The comment I initially replied to is choosing against democracy, you continued the argument, hence, it's not a straw man but the position you are defending. If you wish to distance yourself from that initial position then be my guest, but thus far you haven't, except to imply it through ad hominem against me - please don't do that, it's tiresome.
Have you been to Texas? From all my trips there it is a lot like California. Also California is very different once you get out of the big cities, which cover only a small surface of the state.
When it comes to state or federal politics, voting with your feet is not really feasible, since many people are not able to move based on political whim. Jobs, family, housing, all tend to create a lot of friction to moving. I didn't like any of the previous presidential administration's policies, yet moving out of the country was not a feasible option.
Heard of this big word called gerrymandering? Its when politicians do hijinks to ensure that voting with ones feet becomes more and more ineffective for people that don't support said politicians.
You're being sarcastic of course. However Houston is ~46% Hispanic. If you were Hispanic and wanted to live in a heavily Hispanic city in the US, that is also relatively nice, relatively safe, and economically thriving, Houston is a tremendous choice.
Not that anyone is still looking at this thread, but since I looked up some statistics out of curiosity: I think Portland, Oregon, not counting the part of the metro area in Washington, might be a decent comparison. Dublin city is a bit smaller in population but also quite a bit smaller in size. Oregon is a bit less than the population of RoI and Oregon + Idaho a bit less than the whole island (although much larger in area; Ireland is more like the size of the panhandle of Idaho). Also, Ireland (the island) is about the size and population of Tennessee and the Nashville metro area looks similar to the Dublin metro area (Greater Dublin on Wikipedia that looks closer to what is considered metro area in the US). The city of Nashville is larger in population but much larger in area (even compared to Portland).
I think one possible downside is the amount of major datacenters in such a small space. It's about 7 or 8? And you've got Facebook, Amazon, Google the likes. Recently there was almost a blackout in the city cause the grid just couldn't handle it after we got rid of the peat burning power stations
Everyone came on board this agreement. I'm guessing that there is enough wiggle room that low tax jurisdictions can still operate without much problem. Also, I think that defacto the 15% will become a maximum, not a minimum, similar to how posted speed limits are defacto minimums not maximums.
I don't think you realize which Ireland you are talking about. There's Éire which is the Republic and there is also Northern Ireland, which is the UK bit in Britain.
they are obviously talking about the one the article is also about. The other one is btw part of a country that joined the discussed agreement already at an earlier time.
With Hollywood Accounting[1], you make taxable profits transform into untaxable expenses that you pay to yourself for services you rendered to yourself, and Ireland has been a common destination for this sort of money to flow.
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.
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.
The extent to which you can take a sizeable cut of corporate profits by taxing land / real estate is pretty limited because many profitable companies don't need much real estate. There is no rate at which you can sufficiently tax Netflix, Apple or Jane Street just with LVT while not impossibly over taxing most other businesses that use more real estate per dollar of corporate profit. And the solutions to that are not any better than those that are based on taxing corporate profits directly.
So? The land is still in the country, and if it won't be used for offices, it will be used for something else.
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.
Probably, but it does seem over the last twenty years there has been real actual effort to close loopholes. It is slow which can be frustrating, but we’re also talking about changing the way many businesses work and quite complex topics which are not always obviously right or wrong.
I've always been baffled as to how this is seen as a multi-national issue. The US could always implement unilateral minimum VAT and profit[3] taxes on corporations forcing them to effectively pay whatever proportion the US demands to continue doing business in the world's largest consumer market. Just because you're only paying 3%[1] profit[3] tax in Bermuda doesn't mean you can necessarily skate around the remaining 12% when doing business in the US - the US could just pocket that additional 12% if nobody else wanted it. Implement a policy like that and the competitive tax advantage of havens disappears overnight and all this BS disappears.
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.
>A tax on revenues would kill a lot of high growth businesses
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, $20k tax).
A VAT isn’t a sales tax though. I think you can subtract the cost of goods since they were already taxed? Compared with income tax, there are fewer expenses you can subtract from revenue, but there still are some.
But since prices will adjust, the question is really one of tax incidence. Who gets to raise prices to cover their taxes? And that’s complicated.
I think you can subtract R&D costs somewhere else. At least I remember the accounting department being really picky about having accurate details on R&D hours.
Not out of VAT though. They are deductible from your income, which is how you come up with how much profit you made (which is taxed).
With VAT, you can deduct from it all the other VAT that you paid. E.g. you bill someone 100 + 10% VAT for a total bill of 110. You receive 110. You are now supposed to pay that 10 VAT to the government. But before you pay it, you can subtract the VAT that you paid in the last month, so if you bought, say, scissors, that had a VAT of 2, and a pencil, with a VAT of 1, you have to pay a total VAT of 7 back to the government.
That’s assuming there is competition from companies that can avoid the tax, otherwise their margins stay the same and the industry ends up with higher prices. In effect it’s roughly equivalent to sales tax, though one that also applies to suppliers and therefore promotes vertical integration.
Which is the real reason countries tax profits, it can’t be passed on to consumers. Aka a company that maximized profits at some price point can’t raise prices without lowering profits.
There are definitely expenses you can incur that result in either a taxable income reduction or a tax deduction - there aren't many of them (most individual expenditures aren't considered expenses in the way that profits are measured) - but there are some.
As an example in Canada one newly recognized tax exemption for 2020 was a 400$ 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.
In the US they’re getting fewer and fewer. Property tax + mortgage interest combined is now capped at $10k. This was no doubt to punish blue state residents where property values are higher
Mortgage interest relief was abolished in the U.K. decade a ago. Do you get relief on renting too, or just mortgage?
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.
As others mention, if you’re a 1099 contractor (even part time), you have more options to mitigate this (tradeoff being you pay the employer’s portion of social security contribution, and must manage your own finances to withhold enough to pay the next tax bill).
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.
The one reason to have continually growing "tax function" is to avoid a particular number be more beneficial than a larger number.
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.
That is not how marginal tax rates work. I’m not suggesting we abandon marginal tax brackets. In the case of your example, the person who earned $101k would pay tax on the $1k above $100k, i.e. they would pay $200 of taxes.
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.
There aren’t many tax schemes in the world where earning $1 more incurs > $1 in tax. Ironically it’s more likely to happen if you’re poor, and a gain in income causes you to lose social support or other benefits.
It's never that simple. Serbia still to this day has a scheme where you get a fixed amount taxation as self-employed "enterpreneur" up to 6M RSD (50k EUR/60k USD) of revenue, but are subjected to other taxation rules once you cross it (as a company or as an employee). It was heavily (ab)used by the IT crowd locally (until rule changes in 2019 about who can use this), and it was beneficial to stay under the 6M limit or you'd need to approach 10M (100k USD) to get the same net income.
That’s because there are no “low-margin” wage workers, who make large figures in gross salary, but also have extremely high “costs of earning wage”. I can’t think of any wage worker who would fit this bill. At best, this could apply to some self-employed people, but they can just incorporate. Maybe it would also apply to very low-wage workers, if you consider food and housing as cost of revenue, but then again low wage workers already pay basically no income tax.
That's not really true. There are and have been many states, provinces and cities where my line of work is rewarded with high pre-tax pay, but the cost of living in those places (especially housing) makes it uneconomic.
Most[0] countries would still make you pay income tax for whatever you earn for your personal services and not class it as part of the business' revenue. I believe in the UK this was addressed with IR35[0] and in Australia it is called as PSI[1]
[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.
I’m not sure what this has to do with taxing revenues vs profits. Regardless of whether you provide your services through a limited company and regardless of the IR35 status of any particular contract you can always deduct business expenses from revenues before getting taxed.
The purpose of IR35 is to stop people from avoiding national insurance contributions.
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?
Well, you're in luck! The IRS has prepared a 56-page document on just this topic [1]. The summary on page 3 is:
> 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].
People don't really have "profits". You could argue that some amount of money people make is used to pay for food, shelter etc and then treat the rest as "profit". In that case a progressive income tax system does tax individuals on "profit" because the first dollars you earn are either not taxed or taxed at a very low rate.
People aboslutely have profits, and that fact that it is not looked upon in this way is a problem
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.
... because the other money (expenses) was paid to someone else throughout the system. So it either ended up as another corporate revenue or as someone's income, which is taxed.
> Governments want to tax profits rather than revenues
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.
I mean, VAT is not a tax on revenue, it's a tax on added value. In essence it's a form of profit taxing already.
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.
> A tax on revenues would kill a lot of high growth businesses.
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%
I followed your link just because I couldn't understand what the percentages were ('profit as a percentage of revenue?') but it doesn't explain either, unless it's the same as earlier one - 'growth in sales' (and we assume year on year? Doesn't say) - but that has nothing to do with profit...
You probably have to be very clever to set this up so they can't be Company A (US) Ltd registering very little profit as they have to pay royalties to Company A (Tax Haven) limited without also inflicting massive collateral damage to smaller companies that can't afford the tax lawyers or preventing foreign companies from selling anything in the US.
Yeah, this is the real problem. It is hard for a law to disentangle whether payments to a foreign company are market rate purchases from an independent supplier (that can't be taxed due to free trade treaties), or transfers of profit to an affiliate shell company
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
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.
Of course. Cartels are always about reducing competition. Even if a cartel between countries like OPEC or this agreement. Irland just killed the competition
They wouldn't have to lose money, just avoid taking in additional revenue. An incentive certainly, but far from the worst in the tax code.
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.
Most progressive tax systems only have you pay the higher rated on the amount in that bracket to avoid the disincentive.
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.
Government should prove it can spend the money well before asking for more. The waste and incompetence I see in government is astounding. It's much worse than anything I've seen in private corporations.
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?
I have never heard anything worth remembering come form trying to argue about government spending or fiscal policy by treating it like household budgeting.
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.
This is not about asking for more money. This is about companies cannot fleeing rational tax rates of normal countries into countries which specialize in "stealing" the companies from normal countries and making this their code business.
Why shouldn't people or companies be able to move where they can grow, prosper or have rules according to their values or projects? Curiously, when we talk about taxes the focus is often in the country that is harboring people instead the one that made itself unattractive.
I think it does not matter where you put your company, you have to follow the rules of the market where you sell your goods. And these markets just said: you have to pay at least 15% tax to continue selling stuff here.
Surely all this does is makes offshore tax havens all the more attractive? Sure, some of them have signed up (i.e. Panama), but if they are not ditching the territorial taxation system, it changes absolutely nothing for them, and even if it would, Panama absolutely does not care about enforcing the exising law regarding taxation.
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.
this will push most countries to compete towards 15%, and 'legitimizes' 12.5% corporate tax that other countries in the EU have. If it s no longer seen as punishable offense to move profits to malta, cyprus, bulgaria etc, lots more companies will do it.
If the earnings are attributed to the country of evasion, and it is secretive as they all always are, how does the country of residence even know or prove how much they need to tax. The pandora papers would not be so revealing if it wasn’t for the secrecy part.
No, it just matters if countries are willing to implement consequences for non-membership. And that's frankly a pretty trivial thing from a political and technical perspective, so I'm assuming it'll come. Various countries already have lists, e.g. the EU has lists for 'non-cooperative third-countries', which can be used by member states to add witholding taxes for transactions with these countries in-particular as a preemtive measure to reduce aggressive tax avoidance.
Ireland is not joining this agreement for no reason, they're doing it because non-membership will hurt them more in the end.
I have never understood the whole "tax the rich" idea and I am not rich, don't own a house or car or stocks or anything expensive.
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:
Here's a short list of things tax money funds:
Roads
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.
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.
All that money we spent on roads has locked us into car-dependent infrastructure, killing 40k+/year directly and hundreds of thousands indirectly (air pollution, etc). Great job us.
Public transport, fire engines, ambulances, police etc all use the roads taxes paid for and maintain. Or at least they do in Europe - not sure what the deal is in the US these days
I still don't see private corporations building better public infrastructure.
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.
"Still required" does not refute the fact that early railroads acquired immense real estate holdings which were (and remain) fantasically valueable as directly exploited, sold, or used as collaeteral in securing loans and bonds. The land itself immediately increased in value as transportation was made available to and through it. One excellent example is the city of Denver, Colorado, bypassed by the original transcontinenal railroad, and a sleepy town of 5,000 until a spur line was constructed to the Union Pacific's track. In a decade Denver grew tenfold.
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
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.
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.
> low-cost, high-value regions, but transitioning to either a government-subsidised, or operated mode under expansion or as the market matures
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.
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"?
Than can be done with less taxes than the average europeans one. It is also debatable which of the estates attributed roles can't be done better by private companies.
I can't seem to think of any instances where that is the case. So my conclusion would be that it can not really be done. Or can you give some pointers?
That might be true in some countries, but in the USA it goes to the military, farmers to make GMO soya beans & corn syrup, and other random corporations.
Ok, yes, the US spends a lot on the military, but the vast majority of taxes goes towards social programs (specifically SS and healthcare programs) and the current administration and majority of Democrats are trying to spend more on common infrastructure and additional social programs with an emphasis on families. It sucks that we have a terrible implementation of government that requires using vastly inefficient loopholes to fund programs, but it is what it is and we should do the best we can with it.
Since when does the US have no roads or schools? Also not convinced that government spending to boost food production is a bad thing. Famines are really unpleasant
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.
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."
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.
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.
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.
Yes? Imagine if you had a goal and I just showed up and made fun of people who you need to convince of your goal and get their support. That wouldn’t make you mad as I undermined you?
You've completely reversed which party is inserting themselves into the existing conversation though, which gives it an entirely different context.
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.
> You've completely reversed which party is inserting themselves into the existing conversation though, which gives it an entirely different context.
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.
> 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.
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.
>So they were having a conversation and I’m not? I don’t really get your point.
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.
Didn't realize I can't comment on someone addressing a 3rd-party (is it 3rd-party?) in a condescending way as a less optimal way of getting that 3rd-party onboard with your ideas.
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.
- 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?
Generally Government is dramatically more efficient than a comparable private business—the difference is that Government failings tend to be publicly available information, while a corporation can blow thirty million dollars on ineffective marketing and unnecessary consultants and you'll never know.
Corporations are way more efficient than governments in most areas. We know this since there are simply not a single government in the world that has implemented efficient versions of many of the things that private corporations easily do efficiently. The services government do is pretty much the same everywhere, roads, school, healthcare, police, military etc. But you don't see them run food distribution, grocery stores etc even though food certainly would be important enough for governments to do, its just that governments aren't good at doing it and many of the worst famines humanity has experiences are due to governments trying to control food production and distribution.
I didn't mean to imply that Government is a good fit for every particular sector, only that where there's a good fit, Government tends to be more efficient. Healthcare is where this distinction is extremely stark, but it applies to pretty much all universally subscribed services.
That's a bizarre take. What incentivises governent workers to be efficient? What incentives workers & owners of a private business to be efficient? Government isn't at risk of going out of business, and within a government department, doing a particular thing more efficiently can result in lower budget and reduced headcount. You might be talking about certain large enterprises that have become bloated and top-heavy with non-productive hires & survive by lobbying government to regulate & discourage smaller competitors, but that certainly doesn't describe most private companies.
It's only bizarre—and I'd agree it would be bizarre—if you interpret what I said as comparing a behemoth Government with a small and agile corporation. For the avoidance of any confusion, I'm talking about private entities which operate at a similar scale to its equivalent Government department.
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.
You must work for some dipshit companies. Having worked with the government it’s like the most bureaucratic business you can imagine then multiple the bureaucracy by 5x.
That’s why cities like SF are attempting to redesign trash cans and spending $20k on each prototype.
That's probably only true for the developed countries. In the remaining ones, Government monopoly over anything is a path towards corruption and sub-standard work.
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.
The vast majority of roads are managed at the state and local level. The overall expenditure for roads at the federal level is a very small portion of the budget.
Do you know how big most countries in the EU are ? They're either smaller or not much bigger than the average state in the US.
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
I am really surprised by the HN community. I wasn't expecting people to downvote an user who politely expressed his point of view just because theirs is the opposite.
You shouldn't be surprised. There've been plenty of examples of people stating facts germane to the topic and nevertheless downvoted because some folk don't like that fact being referenced. Be nice if they had to offer a reason for their downvote. Quite a lot of bigotry around.
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.
You say it like it's a worse option. I'd argue it is actually better to burn money since then government won't have so much money which will make it an unimportant target for big corp contractors. And it is currently and there is vast amounts of corruption going on because of it.
Just think about the kind of profits corps that are on the CIA's short list get.
I'd like to see some domain experts chime in on whether CAIA neuters this headline, and whether Ireland will swan on down the road with multinationals continuing on as before.
All these greyed out comments about international taxation of all things really tells you something about the current state of the HN userbase and increasing political polarization. We even managed some completely off-topic insults of Texas and Poland. Fine work fellas!
> current state of the HN userbase and increasing political polarization
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.
Ireland is about to discover how unattractive it is as a locale for multinational HQs when the playing field is somewhat more level. And I'm in favor of the move as a middle class US taxpayer and a small business owner who pays through the nose, but this is a quite obvious self-own in the long run for them, much for the same reason why introducing a wealth tax was a self-own for France. Big Money is mobile, sophisticated, and quick on its feet.
I suspect that there was some amount of "persuasion" by other countries that weren't happy about Ireland's status as a tax haven. Factoring that in, joining the agreement may have been a wise move for them
Sure - but it's the process of making the world a better place. The more these tax havens get shut down the fewer (and riskier) places that corporations have to shelter their revenue.
Yes, but it'll make Dublin a worse place. That's something local governments should keep in mind. Also, the top corporations OWN the governments worldwide at this point. The suggestion that any of this will significantly affect them is naive at best.
I don't disagree - I can't imagine Ireland signed onto this without getting a serious benefit from it... and I think that ideally we should be looking at solutions that don't require any individual country to be altruistic - but still, I'm happy the change has happened.
I think it's literally a case of it was getting done with or without the Irish government, so they took the "all members will have a minumum of at least 15%" to "all members will have a minimum of 15%" change so they had something to present as a win and to avoid a later discussion raising the minimum further.
Yeah because governments use those funds so effectively.
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
By what metric? The crime rate is down and the stock market is up. Not to mention that given the scale of the country, just continuing the same level of government services costs trillions
That's not the full picture. Population adjusted, violent crime is at nearly the lowest level it has been at it decades. Murder has spiked, but is still way below the peak of the early 90s [0]
Government is the primary enabler of corruption in the first place. Don't know how it is in Ireland, but in the United States I can't really see it serving any other function at the moment. It abdicated all its responsibilities entirely, and for the past several decades it's been working only for its donors, not constituents. I would be surprised if Ireland is any better.
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.
And it's exacerbating those problems by driving out its taxable rich people (who both in the US and in France pay the vast majority of taxes already) while not actually collecting all that much money. I'm not ultra rich, but you can't imagine how quickly I'll leave the state I live in if it imposes a wealth tax of any kind. And I spend quite a bit of money here, all of which is already taxed _at least_ three times: business taxes, personal income / social security taxes (of which I pay not half, but the entire amount), and sales taxes. Taxing me 4th time? They can fuck right off with that shit.
Assuming Irish tax collections aren't idiots either one of those companies owns all the shell companies - or those "independent" companies will be cooperating in a very anti-trust vulnerable manner.
There's no way it's a genuine comment from somebody that has given the topic enough of a passing thought to actually comment on it.
The sheer number of things everybody interacts with everyday that are very directly related to tax-funded government actions is immense, and very blatantly so.
Yet they lead with "what have taxes ever done for anybody?" It's not a genuine or honest comment.
To me it seems like a honest criticism on the inefficiency of government allocation of tax payer's money. There's nothing wrong with voicing your opinions that way.
I feel that people just don't like it if someone disagrees with "taxing the rich", and that's why it was flagged.
It struck me as highly dishonest. I have a hard time believing that anyone one seriously thinks 0.000000% of government spending benefits common people
I don't mean to be curt, but if you really feel that way, nothing's stopping you from renouncing your US citizenship and moving to a developing country with vastly less government (and taxes) such as Afghanistan, the Central African Republican, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, etc. I personally enjoy the current arrangement I have where I pay taxes in exchange for (no offense to anyone) civilization & membership in the wealthiest country globally, but if you feel poorly served as-is no one's forcing you to live under your present government, so I don't quite understand the complaint
Yes, I did exactly that, but people shouldn't have to choose between leaving their home and not participating in killing innocent people around the world.
This is the one position on taxes I cannot believe is uttered in good faith.
There are many things people say about taxes I can agree with. There are many things people say about taxes that I disagree with, but I can understand their reasoning. There are even things people say about taxes that I disagree with, and I even suspect their purported reasoning is actually just post-hoc justification.
And then there's that statement. And I cannot fathom any way in which it is possible to honestly believe that without being utterly delusional, to a degree that makes me concerned the person is possibly incapable of caring for themselves. I can only conclude these people are most likely being intentionally disingenuous.
At least flat Earthers aren't continually confronted with blatantly obvious contradictions in virtually every aspect of their daily life.
You can't believe that some of us think governments generate negative value? Not sure what to say; can't really have a reasonable discussion with someone that refuses to believe your opinions are real.
There is not really an argument in their comment is there? It's pooling random facts together. You wouldn't be able to engage into a discourse because you can't start anywhere.
If your country is not designed to have taxes and do anything usefull with it you can't take it as an example how the "system wouldn't work if this one part would be different".
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.