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>Transfer pricing and tax havens are draining money out of the economies of most European countries, breaking the virtuous cycle where consumer spending also le

>Transfer pricing and tax havens are draining money out of the economies of most European countries, breaking the virtuous cycle where consumer spending also leads to salaries, taxes and more investment in the community, to keep the economy going - instead we have a shrinking middle class, as the fuel is drained from the engine. An alternative interpretation is that the high degree of taxes and regulations in Europe is preventing the growth of new companies there, resulting in fewer jobs, opportunities and investments. If Apple was a European company Europe would be getting a lot more taxes from it. In spite of Europe's larger population, in the past few decades it has produced way fewer new Fortune 500 companies than the US (and now also fewer than China).

fladrif 6y ago
What are the benefits of a fortune 500? Who are the beneficiaries? The main ones would be investors and management, including a subset of employees. Given the tax loopholes that are often taken advantage of, I would hardly say that the countries or cities they reside in are beneficiaries in as far as tax income, though they definitely have a hub effect of drawing people into the locations they are in. Whether that is beneficial for original inhabitants is debatable, given gentrification and increased inequality of those who the city warps around to serve, and those who serve them. On the other hand, Europe has lower inequality amongst citizens, and an argument could be made to say that this increases happiness. What they are missing out on wrt fortune 500's is creativity that creates new technologies that pushes boundaries and revolutionizes the world (perhaps an oversimplification of the argument). Though they may not be at the forefront of this, it would be inaccurate to say that they do not benefit from innovations occurring in the world. My argument is that they currently occupy the coveted position to benefit both from the inequality of other countries yet retain the benefits of a more equal society. Viewing the entire world as an unequal society, the winners would be the ones at the top of unequal countries, followed by the equal countries, with those at the bottom of unequal societies trailing. Ideally the entire world would all have equal societies, but in no situation would I think countries with equality strive for the benefits of those with unequality
- yolomcsuperswag 6y ago
  > Who are the beneficiaries? Literally any entity they interact with. And F500's interact a lot with a lot of entities!
  - myspy 6y ago
    As long as there is shareholder before stakeholder, I don't see this as a good argument. Take Amazon. Employees in warehouses are low wage and hire and fire jobs. The CEO is getting richer and richer, not everyone is profiting as well as it could be. What Europe would need is to excel in computer science as well as design and engineering. The topic is pretty lacking here and would need a push. The result would be companies that could deliver experiences equal to the US or better. Take Facebook, a European version with the data protection laws here would be infinitely better.
    - chii 6y ago
      > Employees in warehouses are low wage and hire and fire jobs. The CEO is getting richer and richer, not everyone is profiting as well as it could be. same old argument that marx has - that capital ownership (and by extension, capitalism) is the cause for such inequality. I personally don't think all inequality is the same, and inequality is what drives people. There's a reason why communism, and their strive for equality, has so far failed as a form of governance, and as a form of market economy.
      - 6AA4FD 6y ago
        Does inequality drive you? Personally, I don't work because I want to enjoy more goods, services, or life stability than my friends or family. I work because I want to be able to afford my own health insurance and pay my own grocery bill. I don't think my interest in doing that is really a function of anyone else's insurance or economic status.
      - jokethrowaway 6y ago
        > Does inequality drive you? Absolutely! If there is no inequality there is no profit for working more. If I can't earn more by working more then I'll just do the bare minimum and still receive my equal share. Luckily I never lived under a communist regime to witness it, but I've seen this happen in companies with middle managers who don't care: a few employees start working very little, a few more follow suits, motivated individuals complain, see that nothing happens and then start slacking as well.
adventured 6y ago
> In spite of Europe's larger population, in the past few decades it has produced way fewer new Fortune 500 companies than the US (and now also fewer than China). The situation is far more dire in the EU than even that would suggest. Spain and Italy (#3 and #4 largest economies in the EU) will spend the next 20 years just trying to get back to where they were in 2007, and will have lost a minimum of 30 years to net economic stagnation. That's the good scenario. Prior to the virus, France had seen zero net economic growth for 12 years. That's despite adding three million people to their population, which means the pie is shrinking for each French person. Germany had seen zero net economic growth for 11-12 years. With the virus hit they'll probably go a net 20 years with zero GDP per capita expansion. The same scenario is playing out across most of the EU's members. There's no growth to be found anywhere outside of the Baltics and Ireland (11m population combined), while social system costs continue to climb and demographics continue to age. You can see this erosion effect playing out for example in the collapse of EU spending on infrastructure (which has fallen below the US level as a share of GDP).
- IAmEveryone 6y ago
  None of that is remotely true: https://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&met_y=ny_gdp_mktp_cd&idim=country:DEU:FRA:ITA&hl=en&dl=en#!ctype=l&strail=false&bcs=d&nselm=h&met_y=ny_gdp_mktp_kd_zg&scale_y=lin&ind_y=false&rdim=world&idim=country:DEU:FRA:ITA:USA:ESP&ifdim=world&hl=en_US&dl=en&ind=false https://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&...
blp 6y ago
Yet happiness, productivity, and lifespan are all higher in Europe. Regulation is different, and in some areas less. Who are you optimizing for?
- logicchains 6y ago
  Going by https://time.com/4621185/worker-productivity-countries/ https://time.com/4621185/worker-productivity-countries/, the US is more productive than most countries in Europe. Going by https://worldhappiness.report/ed/2017/ https://worldhappiness.report/ed/2017/ , figure 2.2, the US is happier than the majority of European countries. >Who are you optimizing for? I'm not trying to optimise for anything, rather I'd prefer people are given the chance to optimise for themselves how they spend their time and money, and the less bureaucracy they have to deal with, the easier it is for them to do this.
  - m12k 6y ago
    A quote from that World Happiness Report you just linked to: "Happiness has fallen in America The USA is a story of reduced happiness. In 2007 the USA ranked 3rd among the OECD countries; in 2016 it came 19th. The reasons are declining social support and increased corruption (chapter 7) and it is these same factors that explain why the Nordic countries do so much better." > I'm not trying to optimise for anything, rather I'd prefer people are given the chance to optimise for themselves how they spend their time and money, and the less bureaucracy they have to deal with, the easier it is for them to do this. You've bought into the propaganda propagated by the ultra rich via cable news and other outlets in order to justify their continued accrual of more and more of the world's wealth: That economic freedom is just freedom from taxes - it's not freedom from ever worrying about going bankrupt or becoming homeless if you get sick. That society works better when nobody cares about the well-being of their fellow citizens, that the freedom to care about nobody but yourself somehow makes us stronger as a society, not weaker. That publicly run institutions are always just 'bureacracies' and 'inefficient' - not the solid foundations upon which other parts of society and the market can rest, which many public institutions prove every day, by freeing citizens and companies that rely on them from having to pay for one or more layers of shareholder profits, freeing them to invest in other things instead. The talking points you are reiterating sound good on their surface, but in reality they are just that, talking points. The reality of what the world becomes when they are used as policy is being felt all around the world these days.
m12k 6y ago
The US experienced massive growth in the 50s and 60s while having very high tax rates. The US, until recently had a higher corporate tax rate than many European country - the latest US tax cuts brought it down to the same 21% that my native Denmark has. I'm sorry, but this 'deregulation and low taxes will fix everything' myth has been so thoroughly debunked by now that I'm sad to see it rearing its ugly head in an otherwise thoughtful and fact-based forum like HN. What is it with this obsessive focus on supply-side economics, and complete disregard for the demand side? If the middle class has no money to spend, it doesn't matter how cheap the goods are to produce. And China, if anyone, has shown how protectionism, and making sure outside companies can only reach your internal market if they play by your rules, and favoring national companies over international ones, is a winning strategy in the 21st century.
- logicchains 6y ago
  >The US experienced massive growth in the 50s and 60s while having very high tax rates. The effective rate actually paid by the top 1% was around 42%, which is not much higher than now: https://taxfoundation.org/taxes-on-the-rich-1950s-not-high/ https://taxfoundation.org/taxes-on-the-rich-1950s-not-high/. . The US had also emerged as pretty much the only unbombed industrial country after a global war, giving it a significant advantage. >so thoroughly debunked by now Debunked where? Here's a random paper I found showing a strong correlation between economic freedom and GDP: https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/49220/ https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/49220/ . https://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/pubs/efw/efw2019/efw-2019-chapter-1.pdf https://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/pubs/efw/efw2019/e... also has a graph on page 18 showing a strong relationship between economic freedom and income per capita. >What is it with this obsessive focus on supply-side economics, and complete disregard for the demand side? Demand is a factor in short-term market dislocations, but demand cannot create long-term economic growth. Growth requires that some of the value created be saved and invested, in order to increase capital, and no amount of demand will compensate for a long-term fall in investment.
  - m12k 6y ago
    > The US had also emerged as pretty much the only unbombed industrial country after a global war, giving it a significant advantage Ding-ding-ding - you hit the nail on the head! The US' competitive advantage and special position in the world, including all those fortune 500 companies, doesn't come from its special adherence to laissez-faire capitalism, it comes from other historic advantages. The supply-side trickle-down cult didn't start until the 70's and incidentally real median purchasing power in the US has been in decline ever since. > Debunked where? Here's a random paper I found Here's a very non-random book I found: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_in_the_Twenty-First_Century https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_in_the_Twenty-First_Ce... Also, do I really need to remind you that correlation is not the same as causation?
tw04 6y ago
Globalization has broken the social contract. You've got countless companies that truly "form" in western countries with high standards of living - the founders and leaders all reside there. But then they offshore their profits to keep more for themselves, draining that western economy and creating an unsustainable funnel of money. The problem isn't taxes, the problem is founders who believe they are above the social contract. They want the benefits of a highly stable society with high taxes and high standards of living, but they don't want to pay their share of keeping that system alive.
- m12k 6y ago
  The problem is exactly taxes and tax laws. These founders live in a society where if you structure your company one way, you pay 21% in corporate tax, and if you structure it another way you pay 0%, and both are legal - which one do you think they will choose? We need to make profit shifting illegal, but it currently isn't. We can't count on founders being 'ethical' enough to not play the game optimally, we need to change the rules of the game, so optimal play from them isn't bad for the rest of us.
  - nickpp 6y ago
    If you think the founders have an unfair advantage, why don’t you go ahead, become one and lead by example? The world needs more founders anyway. They are the ones who created the amazing wealth we are enjoying right now, not the politicians, bureaucrats, regulators or commissioners.
  - nodamage 6y ago
    In the case of Apple it's not really accurate to say they paid 0%. Instead, their taxes on overseas sales were deferred until they were repatriated into the US. Upon repatriation they paid $38 billion in taxes on $252 billion of income, or a tax rate of 15%.
fluffy87 6y ago
The main reason behind the lack of EU successful startups is that they can’t attract talent because they can’t pay employees in stock options which means that when one happens to succeed only few people get rich, instead of what happens in the US were most employees get rich and some of them go on to create beer startups. There is no such cycle in Europe, and it’s all because the lack of stock options. Without them, startups only offer very low pay with little to no reward, and good luck trying to attract the top talent startups actually need to succeed.
- IgorPartola 6y ago
  Why can’t they offer actual stock instead at that point?
  - rfrey 6y ago
    Then employees would need to immediately pay tax on the stock based on the last valuation.
    - messe 6y ago
      I'm not sure about stock options, but RSUs are reasonably common in Ireland. Tax isn't paid on them until the vest date.
      - smachiz 6y ago
        RSUs work because they're typically for already public companies. At vest, in the US, a percentage of shares are immediately sold to cover taxes. With illiquid stock - as in a startup - where there's no public market for it, and no one to sell it to, you can't really do that, and you're creating a tax problem for your employees. The company can pay those taxes on your behalf - but that's expensive when a startup is explicitly paying in stock because they need the cash to grow.
    - holoduke 6y ago
      most European countries use Sars (stock appriciation right) tax is collected at the very end. against a 50% tax cut though (in most EU countries)
boudin 6y ago
I'm not sure it's a bad thing... Most of the taxes aren't paid by big companies that can optimise everything at a world level but by the multitude of much smaller companies. If you would replace Apple, Google, or Amazon by a multitude of smaller companies, they would pay taxes.
tsimionescu 6y ago
Would the Irish loop hole not work or the company was European? Sure, maybe it would have been France and Ireland that would have gotten some of the profits instead of The US and Ireland, but the rest of the EU would still be SoL.
cosmodisk 6y ago
Europe isn't USA or China with very large single market. It is broken into small pieces,where each speaks different languages,have different cultural habbits,and different financial means. While I have no doubt that an average Californian does differ a bit from a Texan, ultimately they still share lots of things in common. A Romanian and Norwegian do differ much more.
pietrovismara 6y ago
Why have new tech corporations if they don't bring anything to the table except very few specialized jobs and no taxes, compared to the huge profit they make every year? What would Europe stand to get from having more Fortune 500 companies? It doesn't seem like it's helping in the US at all. On the other hand, Europe still has a much better lifestyle for people who are not rich. We must end the concept that nations are subject to the market and corporations whims. That's the narrative they are spreading, but they can't do without Europe's profits, so it's better we realize that as states we have more power over them than they'd like to admit.

fladrif 6y ago

What are the benefits of a fortune 500? Who are the beneficiaries? The main ones would be investors and management, including a subset of employees. Given the tax loopholes that are often taken advantage of, I would hardly say that the countries or cities they reside in are beneficiaries in as far as tax income, though they definitely have a hub effect of drawing people into the locations they are in. Whether that is beneficial for original inhabitants is debatable, given gentrification and increased inequality of those who the city warps around to serve, and those who serve them. On the other hand, Europe has lower inequality amongst citizens, and an argument could be made to say that this increases happiness. What they are missing out on wrt fortune 500's is creativity that creates new technologies that pushes boundaries and revolutionizes the world (perhaps an oversimplification of the argument). Though they may not be at the forefront of this, it would be inaccurate to say that they do not benefit from innovations occurring in the world. My argument is that they currently occupy the coveted position to benefit both from the inequality of other countries yet retain the benefits of a more equal society. Viewing the entire world as an unequal society, the winners would be the ones at the top of unequal countries, followed by the equal countries, with those at the bottom of unequal societies trailing. Ideally the entire world would all have equal societies, but in no situation would I think countries with equality strive for the benefits of those with unequality

yolomcsuperswag 6y ago
> Who are the beneficiaries? Literally any entity they interact with. And F500's interact a lot with a lot of entities!
- myspy 6y ago
  As long as there is shareholder before stakeholder, I don't see this as a good argument. Take Amazon. Employees in warehouses are low wage and hire and fire jobs. The CEO is getting richer and richer, not everyone is profiting as well as it could be. What Europe would need is to excel in computer science as well as design and engineering. The topic is pretty lacking here and would need a push. The result would be companies that could deliver experiences equal to the US or better. Take Facebook, a European version with the data protection laws here would be infinitely better.
  - chii 6y ago
    > Employees in warehouses are low wage and hire and fire jobs. The CEO is getting richer and richer, not everyone is profiting as well as it could be. same old argument that marx has - that capital ownership (and by extension, capitalism) is the cause for such inequality. I personally don't think all inequality is the same, and inequality is what drives people. There's a reason why communism, and their strive for equality, has so far failed as a form of governance, and as a form of market economy.
    - 6AA4FD 6y ago
      Does inequality drive you? Personally, I don't work because I want to enjoy more goods, services, or life stability than my friends or family. I work because I want to be able to afford my own health insurance and pay my own grocery bill. I don't think my interest in doing that is really a function of anyone else's insurance or economic status.
    - jokethrowaway 6y ago
      > Does inequality drive you? Absolutely! If there is no inequality there is no profit for working more. If I can't earn more by working more then I'll just do the bare minimum and still receive my equal share. Luckily I never lived under a communist regime to witness it, but I've seen this happen in companies with middle managers who don't care: a few employees start working very little, a few more follow suits, motivated individuals complain, see that nothing happens and then start slacking as well.

adventured 6y ago

> In spite of Europe's larger population, in the past few decades it has produced way fewer new Fortune 500 companies than the US (and now also fewer than China). The situation is far more dire in the EU than even that would suggest. Spain and Italy (#3 and #4 largest economies in the EU) will spend the next 20 years just trying to get back to where they were in 2007, and will have lost a minimum of 30 years to net economic stagnation. That's the good scenario. Prior to the virus, France had seen zero net economic growth for 12 years. That's despite adding three million people to their population, which means the pie is shrinking for each French person. Germany had seen zero net economic growth for 11-12 years. With the virus hit they'll probably go a net 20 years with zero GDP per capita expansion. The same scenario is playing out across most of the EU's members. There's no growth to be found anywhere outside of the Baltics and Ireland (11m population combined), while social system costs continue to climb and demographics continue to age. You can see this erosion effect playing out for example in the collapse of EU spending on infrastructure (which has fallen below the US level as a share of GDP).

IAmEveryone 6y ago
None of that is remotely true: https://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&met_y=ny_gdp_mktp_cd&idim=country:DEU:FRA:ITA&hl=en&dl=en#!ctype=l&strail=false&bcs=d&nselm=h&met_y=ny_gdp_mktp_kd_zg&scale_y=lin&ind_y=false&rdim=world&idim=country:DEU:FRA:ITA:USA:ESP&ifdim=world&hl=en_US&dl=en&ind=false https://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&...

blp 6y ago

Yet happiness, productivity, and lifespan are all higher in Europe. Regulation is different, and in some areas less. Who are you optimizing for?

logicchains 6y ago
Going by https://time.com/4621185/worker-productivity-countries/ https://time.com/4621185/worker-productivity-countries/, the US is more productive than most countries in Europe. Going by https://worldhappiness.report/ed/2017/ https://worldhappiness.report/ed/2017/ , figure 2.2, the US is happier than the majority of European countries. >Who are you optimizing for? I'm not trying to optimise for anything, rather I'd prefer people are given the chance to optimise for themselves how they spend their time and money, and the less bureaucracy they have to deal with, the easier it is for them to do this.
- m12k 6y ago
  A quote from that World Happiness Report you just linked to: "Happiness has fallen in America The USA is a story of reduced happiness. In 2007 the USA ranked 3rd among the OECD countries; in 2016 it came 19th. The reasons are declining social support and increased corruption (chapter 7) and it is these same factors that explain why the Nordic countries do so much better." > I'm not trying to optimise for anything, rather I'd prefer people are given the chance to optimise for themselves how they spend their time and money, and the less bureaucracy they have to deal with, the easier it is for them to do this. You've bought into the propaganda propagated by the ultra rich via cable news and other outlets in order to justify their continued accrual of more and more of the world's wealth: That economic freedom is just freedom from taxes - it's not freedom from ever worrying about going bankrupt or becoming homeless if you get sick. That society works better when nobody cares about the well-being of their fellow citizens, that the freedom to care about nobody but yourself somehow makes us stronger as a society, not weaker. That publicly run institutions are always just 'bureacracies' and 'inefficient' - not the solid foundations upon which other parts of society and the market can rest, which many public institutions prove every day, by freeing citizens and companies that rely on them from having to pay for one or more layers of shareholder profits, freeing them to invest in other things instead. The talking points you are reiterating sound good on their surface, but in reality they are just that, talking points. The reality of what the world becomes when they are used as policy is being felt all around the world these days.

m12k 6y ago

The US experienced massive growth in the 50s and 60s while having very high tax rates. The US, until recently had a higher corporate tax rate than many European country - the latest US tax cuts brought it down to the same 21% that my native Denmark has. I'm sorry, but this 'deregulation and low taxes will fix everything' myth has been so thoroughly debunked by now that I'm sad to see it rearing its ugly head in an otherwise thoughtful and fact-based forum like HN. What is it with this obsessive focus on supply-side economics, and complete disregard for the demand side? If the middle class has no money to spend, it doesn't matter how cheap the goods are to produce. And China, if anyone, has shown how protectionism, and making sure outside companies can only reach your internal market if they play by your rules, and favoring national companies over international ones, is a winning strategy in the 21st century.

logicchains 6y ago
>The US experienced massive growth in the 50s and 60s while having very high tax rates. The effective rate actually paid by the top 1% was around 42%, which is not much higher than now: https://taxfoundation.org/taxes-on-the-rich-1950s-not-high/ https://taxfoundation.org/taxes-on-the-rich-1950s-not-high/. . The US had also emerged as pretty much the only unbombed industrial country after a global war, giving it a significant advantage. >so thoroughly debunked by now Debunked where? Here's a random paper I found showing a strong correlation between economic freedom and GDP: https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/49220/ https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/49220/ . https://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/pubs/efw/efw2019/efw-2019-chapter-1.pdf https://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/pubs/efw/efw2019/e... also has a graph on page 18 showing a strong relationship between economic freedom and income per capita. >What is it with this obsessive focus on supply-side economics, and complete disregard for the demand side? Demand is a factor in short-term market dislocations, but demand cannot create long-term economic growth. Growth requires that some of the value created be saved and invested, in order to increase capital, and no amount of demand will compensate for a long-term fall in investment.
- m12k 6y ago
  > The US had also emerged as pretty much the only unbombed industrial country after a global war, giving it a significant advantage Ding-ding-ding - you hit the nail on the head! The US' competitive advantage and special position in the world, including all those fortune 500 companies, doesn't come from its special adherence to laissez-faire capitalism, it comes from other historic advantages. The supply-side trickle-down cult didn't start until the 70's and incidentally real median purchasing power in the US has been in decline ever since. > Debunked where? Here's a random paper I found Here's a very non-random book I found: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_in_the_Twenty-First_Century https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_in_the_Twenty-First_Ce... Also, do I really need to remind you that correlation is not the same as causation?

tw04 6y ago

Globalization has broken the social contract. You've got countless companies that truly "form" in western countries with high standards of living - the founders and leaders all reside there. But then they offshore their profits to keep more for themselves, draining that western economy and creating an unsustainable funnel of money. The problem isn't taxes, the problem is founders who believe they are above the social contract. They want the benefits of a highly stable society with high taxes and high standards of living, but they don't want to pay their share of keeping that system alive.

m12k 6y ago
The problem is exactly taxes and tax laws. These founders live in a society where if you structure your company one way, you pay 21% in corporate tax, and if you structure it another way you pay 0%, and both are legal - which one do you think they will choose? We need to make profit shifting illegal, but it currently isn't. We can't count on founders being 'ethical' enough to not play the game optimally, we need to change the rules of the game, so optimal play from them isn't bad for the rest of us.
- nickpp 6y ago
  If you think the founders have an unfair advantage, why don’t you go ahead, become one and lead by example? The world needs more founders anyway. They are the ones who created the amazing wealth we are enjoying right now, not the politicians, bureaucrats, regulators or commissioners.
- nodamage 6y ago
  In the case of Apple it's not really accurate to say they paid 0%. Instead, their taxes on overseas sales were deferred until they were repatriated into the US. Upon repatriation they paid $38 billion in taxes on $252 billion of income, or a tax rate of 15%.

fluffy87 6y ago

The main reason behind the lack of EU successful startups is that they can’t attract talent because they can’t pay employees in stock options which means that when one happens to succeed only few people get rich, instead of what happens in the US were most employees get rich and some of them go on to create beer startups. There is no such cycle in Europe, and it’s all because the lack of stock options. Without them, startups only offer very low pay with little to no reward, and good luck trying to attract the top talent startups actually need to succeed.

IgorPartola 6y ago
Why can’t they offer actual stock instead at that point?
- rfrey 6y ago
  Then employees would need to immediately pay tax on the stock based on the last valuation.
  - messe 6y ago
    I'm not sure about stock options, but RSUs are reasonably common in Ireland. Tax isn't paid on them until the vest date.
    - smachiz 6y ago
      RSUs work because they're typically for already public companies. At vest, in the US, a percentage of shares are immediately sold to cover taxes. With illiquid stock - as in a startup - where there's no public market for it, and no one to sell it to, you can't really do that, and you're creating a tax problem for your employees. The company can pay those taxes on your behalf - but that's expensive when a startup is explicitly paying in stock because they need the cash to grow.
  - holoduke 6y ago
    most European countries use Sars (stock appriciation right) tax is collected at the very end. against a 50% tax cut though (in most EU countries)

boudin 6y ago

I'm not sure it's a bad thing... Most of the taxes aren't paid by big companies that can optimise everything at a world level but by the multitude of much smaller companies. If you would replace Apple, Google, or Amazon by a multitude of smaller companies, they would pay taxes.

tsimionescu 6y ago

Would the Irish loop hole not work or the company was European? Sure, maybe it would have been France and Ireland that would have gotten some of the profits instead of The US and Ireland, but the rest of the EU would still be SoL.

cosmodisk 6y ago

Europe isn't USA or China with very large single market. It is broken into small pieces,where each speaks different languages,have different cultural habbits,and different financial means. While I have no doubt that an average Californian does differ a bit from a Texan, ultimately they still share lots of things in common. A Romanian and Norwegian do differ much more.

pietrovismara 6y ago

Why have new tech corporations if they don't bring anything to the table except very few specialized jobs and no taxes, compared to the huge profit they make every year? What would Europe stand to get from having more Fortune 500 companies? It doesn't seem like it's helping in the US at all. On the other hand, Europe still has a much better lifestyle for people who are not rich. We must end the concept that nations are subject to the market and corporations whims. That's the narrative they are spreading, but they can't do without Europe's profits, so it's better we realize that as states we have more power over them than they'd like to admit.