61 ms·

or is it the American politicians trying to stop countries like Ireland hindering other countries' public services for their own benefit?

missedthecue 5y ago
That's a lot of words to say competition. Competition is good.
- permo-w 5y ago
  that's a very naive attitude. the financial regulators were competing before the 2008 crash. what were they competing for? who could give the most lenient ratings. what are nations competing for? who can afford to take the least tax revenue who can afford to take the least tax revenue? already rich countries, or countries that don't give a shit about distributing wealth equally who continues to get richer? I'll let you answer that one
  - mardifoufs 5y ago
    What do you mean? Credit rating agencies are not regulators. Plus, pretty strict regulations around credit ratings and their essential role in portfolio composition were already in place at the time. In fact you could arguably say that they were actually one of the reasons behind the severity of the crisis. And even if we put aside that very glaring error aside, if your comment was true Scandinavia or some parts of Europe would've a lot more multinationals than the US, since their corporate tax rates are already lower than in the US. You can also take for example, Spain which has had a ~similar tax rate than the US before 2017, why don't they have a bigger economy per capita if it was that easy and countries were competing to lower taxes? Corporations aren't individuals btw, and taxing the dividends or capital gains is much more efficient. Eventually, any money you don't tax from a corporation usually flows back to the investors in one way or another. So even if you want higher taxes, corporate taxation is usually just something that "sounds good" or is knee jerk reaction to "stick it" to the big corps rather than to actually get more tax revenue.
    - permo-w 5y ago
      >Credit rating agencies are not regulators That's very debatable, semantics and either way irrelevant. The point is that they were competing, and it was an extreme negative for everyone except the already rich. The second paragraph essentially just illustrates your lack of knowledge on the topic. Ireland and the Netherlands have an overabundance of multinational corporations. Why? Because Ireland has a crazily low corp tax, and Nl lets large corporations negotiate their corp tax rate when they come into the country. You're right, corporations are not individuals. They're big scary groups of people with no regard for your health or safety or welfare, who are trained and indoctrinated into a set of goals and beliefs that don't benefit anyone beyond themselves and a group of shareholders. They're cults. They're borderline religions. They should be reined the fuck in, and corp tax is a very good way of doing that

missedthecue 5y ago

That's a lot of words to say competition. Competition is good.

permo-w 5y ago
that's a very naive attitude. the financial regulators were competing before the 2008 crash. what were they competing for? who could give the most lenient ratings. what are nations competing for? who can afford to take the least tax revenue who can afford to take the least tax revenue? already rich countries, or countries that don't give a shit about distributing wealth equally who continues to get richer? I'll let you answer that one
- mardifoufs 5y ago
  What do you mean? Credit rating agencies are not regulators. Plus, pretty strict regulations around credit ratings and their essential role in portfolio composition were already in place at the time. In fact you could arguably say that they were actually one of the reasons behind the severity of the crisis. And even if we put aside that very glaring error aside, if your comment was true Scandinavia or some parts of Europe would've a lot more multinationals than the US, since their corporate tax rates are already lower than in the US. You can also take for example, Spain which has had a ~similar tax rate than the US before 2017, why don't they have a bigger economy per capita if it was that easy and countries were competing to lower taxes? Corporations aren't individuals btw, and taxing the dividends or capital gains is much more efficient. Eventually, any money you don't tax from a corporation usually flows back to the investors in one way or another. So even if you want higher taxes, corporate taxation is usually just something that "sounds good" or is knee jerk reaction to "stick it" to the big corps rather than to actually get more tax revenue.
  - permo-w 5y ago
    >Credit rating agencies are not regulators That's very debatable, semantics and either way irrelevant. The point is that they were competing, and it was an extreme negative for everyone except the already rich. The second paragraph essentially just illustrates your lack of knowledge on the topic. Ireland and the Netherlands have an overabundance of multinational corporations. Why? Because Ireland has a crazily low corp tax, and Nl lets large corporations negotiate their corp tax rate when they come into the country. You're right, corporations are not individuals. They're big scary groups of people with no regard for your health or safety or welfare, who are trained and indoctrinated into a set of goals and beliefs that don't benefit anyone beyond themselves and a group of shareholders. They're cults. They're borderline religions. They should be reined the fuck in, and corp tax is a very good way of doing that