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> "Today the European Union has taken a crucial step towards tax fairness and social justice," EU economy commissioner Paolo Gentiloni said. There is a saying

> "Today the European Union has taken a crucial step towards tax fairness and social justice," EU economy commissioner Paolo Gentiloni said. There is a saying in Poland: "The difference between <<justice>> and <<social justice>> is the same as the difference between <<a chair>> and <<an electric chair>>. I wish we would actually listen to the those countries, when it comes to topics like socialism and communism. Though I suspect the Western European countries need to taste that themselves first to be able to understand what that means.

orangebeet 4y ago
You're absolutely right. When we are all fully fledged EU-colonies and the non-democratically elected Urzula has bought out all corrupt politicians to the benefit of Germany, "we" will understand what it means.
consumer451 4y ago
I am sitting in Poland, grew up under the thumb of the Soviets, but I don’t see the connection to a global minimum tax. Are you saying it’s like communism?
- dadjoker 4y ago
  IMO yes. As I see it, this is countries with high taxes being jealous of countries with lower taxes, and so instead of maybe lowering taxes to become more competitive, they - along with the bloated EU leadership - bully the countries with a logically lower tax into raising theirs, so the bullies feel better about themselves and don't lose "their" tax money. This is the inherent problem of the EU, from both a social and economic standpoint; the member countries lose their competitive advantages over other countries because the socialistic EU bureaucrats can't handle any one country a) having any type of competitive advantage over another and b) not conforming to what they want.
  - realityking 4y ago
    In the past, before the EU single market and widespread free trade agreements, a country would simply raise a customs duty when another country would overly subsidize an industry. Or they would raise the customs duty merely to protect their domestic industry. Or because they don’t like that country for some other reason. A large purpose of the EU is to remove those trade barriers to make the economy more efficient. Of course some countries figure out how to take advantage of the single market using regulatory arbitrage, quickly entering a race to the bottom. Thus the EU is becoming the regulator in a lot of (non-tax) areas to prevent this. This is just the next logical step in this regard. It’s worth noting that any EU rules on taxation are decided with unanimous consensus. No country here has to do anything against their will.
  - consumer451 4y ago
    This is such a hyperbolic point of view that even though it's been on my mind for days, I still don't know how to respond.
- tstrimple 4y ago
  The word communist has lost absolutely all meaning today. Biden is communist. Taxes are communist. Wanting universal healthcare is communist. None have anything at all to do with a classless society without private ownership of property.
manmal 4y ago
What are you criticizing, the wording or the fact that big corps are being taxed?
- poszlem 4y ago
  A bit of both. I don't mind corps being taxed if that's what a country wants to do. I do have a problem with making this a "global government mandated" thing though. And as I mentioned in other comments, I despise the revival of the communist vocabulary ("reactionary", "bourgeois", "social justice", "equity").
  - jameshart 4y ago
    Survivors of an abusive relationship might struggle with the fact that their partner told them that they ‘loved’ them, and yet that supposed love took the form of cruelty and abuse. They might struggle to trust anybody else who talks about ‘love’. But that doesn’t mean that other people who use the word ‘love’ are secret abusers.
    - poszlem 4y ago
      That is true, but there are certain "red flags" that you will hear from most abusers. In the case of governments one of those is "we do it for social justice [not normal justice]".
    - 62951413 4y ago
      A participant in an abusive relationship can move back to her parents any day, all she needs is a bus ticket. For a person born under Communism the best case is to go to the Gulag if he tries to cross the border. It gets better, in the USSR until the early 70s the peasants were not even allowed to leave their villages. Technically, they were simply not issued passports which were required to register themselves to live in a town. I bet nobody in your family was born within the reach of the Commies. In places such as the US the people have always been free to go if they felt marginalized. To another state or even abroad without asking the government for permission. So you fail to conceptualize what it means when the Socialists come to power.
vkou 4y ago
If we're going to listen to reactionary wisdom of folk sayings, I've got a long, long list of ones that will provide us with all sorts of simple-to-grok, contradictory, and utterly pointless advice for how to steer our politics. And this particular one works just fine if you reverse the adjectives. After all, the justice system is generally the one responsible for executing people. It does tend to apply itself in a rather... Unjust way - but that's just one of life's little ironies. If you're asking people to listen, you're going to need to actually express your arguments, instead of vaguely gesticulating in the general direction of a 'Four legs good, two legs better' poster.
- poszlem 4y ago
  It's kind on interesting that the word "reactionary" is also really disliked in Poland too (alongside with the likes of "comrade"). Both of those (plus "social justice") have been used to silence and oppress there. It's really disheartening to see that kind of vocabulary coming back to fashion in English.
  - vkou 4y ago
    Reactionary has never left the lexicon, and is a perfect term for describing the bones of most modern conservative movements. It may become less relevant when the latter stop behaving in that manner, but you can't blame me for calling a spade a spade. When they start talking about things like Laffer curves again, and stop trying to turn the clock back on things like marriage and contraception, then it will stop being an appropriate moniker.
  - baal80spam 4y ago
    Another one is "collaboration". As someone working in IT, I had a hard time getting used to it meaning "work with your peers toward the common goal". In Poland it has a completely different (negative) meaning.
woodruffw 4y ago
- poszlem 4y ago
  The only difference is, I suppose, the fact that one comes from a people that got very close to experiencing the "social justice paradise" and the other is just a made up phrase by an internet troll. Otherwise, they are practically indistinguable.
  - woodruffw 4y ago
    I'm not a troll. And I don't think most people, including the majority of strident believers in social justice, would consider the 20th century Soviet Bloc to be a paradise.
    - LawTalkingGuy 4y ago
      Perhaps the more ideological wouldn't enjoy the Soviet union but they approve of and use their methods. The current focus on purity of thought is remarkably like the communist struggle sessions, how they tortured people to correct their thinking not just to achieve a confession, how there was always room for more ideology and more purges as the party continually turned on its heroes. Here's an example. At ~25s the officer talks about people who want to help (lower-case social justice) being faded out by people who know nothing of the situation and are just using it for political clout. He's black and trying to discuss the protests with black protestors and they're being interrupted by white protest leaders (upper-case social justice) who need to stoke conflict to remain in power. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hm2aFTTuLek https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hm2aFTTuLek
      - woodruffw 4y ago
        I have no idea what this has to do with taxation. It feels like a culture war diatribe.
  - jameshart 4y ago
rsj_hn 4y ago
I wouldn't call a 15% tax on corporations "communism". The actual policy objective is reasonable even if many can argue both sides with rational debate. The main problem is this idea that a bunch of people on the liberal side of the Western world can create "global goals" and try to strong arm the rest of the world into following, which then leads to the inevitable outrage and disappointment when the rest of the world does not follow. And yet it never seems to happen in the other direction -- e.g. Africa deciding on global rules and then trying to force Europe to follow them, assuming they have a right to set global goals. The global goals only flow in one direction. The idea that corporate tax policy is something that countries outside of the EU have actually thought of, and are doing their best to address in their own way, and for their own purpose, is something that never occurs to these self-described "global planners" who are in reality deeply provincial and trapped in their own micro-culture. It is also something that people on the other side of this debate have thought of, which is one of the reasons not to tax corporations at all, but to tax those who receive the profits of corporations and that are domiciled in a particular tax jurisdiction. There is a lot of self-contradictory results when you try to tax the business separately from the owner of the business -- for example, a corporation can deduct interest payments but not dividend or share repurchases, when all three are basically the same thing, and a corporation has the option of doing all three. So this incentivizes corporations to take on debt, which then promotes financial fragility. Lots of distortions happen in a vain fight against "tax loopholes", when the real problem is that you are trying to tax the company separately from the owners. So then you say, "I agree that trying to define 'profits' is prone to tax loopholes, so I will tax corporate revenue". Good idea! But then you will penalize business that have high expenses, e.g. a retail store that buys an item and sells it for a 20% markup would be driven out of business by a 15% tax on sales. So you say, "I will tax revenue net of input prices". And all of a sudden you have a value added tax, which is a form of sales tax, which is regressive. And then people complain about that regressivity and say "we should be taxing income instead", which was my original point! So you keep chasing your tail because you are making decisions without really thinking things through, much like the decision for the EU to cavalierly set "global goals" even as it's relative importance is rapidly shrinking, even as Asia is pretty much ignoring all these goals because they are following their own interests and don't care about EU global goals.
- 4y ago

orangebeet 4y ago

You're absolutely right. When we are all fully fledged EU-colonies and the non-democratically elected Urzula has bought out all corrupt politicians to the benefit of Germany, "we" will understand what it means.

consumer451 4y ago

I am sitting in Poland, grew up under the thumb of the Soviets, but I don’t see the connection to a global minimum tax. Are you saying it’s like communism?

dadjoker 4y ago
IMO yes. As I see it, this is countries with high taxes being jealous of countries with lower taxes, and so instead of maybe lowering taxes to become more competitive, they - along with the bloated EU leadership - bully the countries with a logically lower tax into raising theirs, so the bullies feel better about themselves and don't lose "their" tax money. This is the inherent problem of the EU, from both a social and economic standpoint; the member countries lose their competitive advantages over other countries because the socialistic EU bureaucrats can't handle any one country a) having any type of competitive advantage over another and b) not conforming to what they want.
- realityking 4y ago
  In the past, before the EU single market and widespread free trade agreements, a country would simply raise a customs duty when another country would overly subsidize an industry. Or they would raise the customs duty merely to protect their domestic industry. Or because they don’t like that country for some other reason. A large purpose of the EU is to remove those trade barriers to make the economy more efficient. Of course some countries figure out how to take advantage of the single market using regulatory arbitrage, quickly entering a race to the bottom. Thus the EU is becoming the regulator in a lot of (non-tax) areas to prevent this. This is just the next logical step in this regard. It’s worth noting that any EU rules on taxation are decided with unanimous consensus. No country here has to do anything against their will.
- consumer451 4y ago
  This is such a hyperbolic point of view that even though it's been on my mind for days, I still don't know how to respond.
tstrimple 4y ago
The word communist has lost absolutely all meaning today. Biden is communist. Taxes are communist. Wanting universal healthcare is communist. None have anything at all to do with a classless society without private ownership of property.

manmal 4y ago

What are you criticizing, the wording or the fact that big corps are being taxed?

poszlem 4y ago
A bit of both. I don't mind corps being taxed if that's what a country wants to do. I do have a problem with making this a "global government mandated" thing though. And as I mentioned in other comments, I despise the revival of the communist vocabulary ("reactionary", "bourgeois", "social justice", "equity").
- jameshart 4y ago
  Survivors of an abusive relationship might struggle with the fact that their partner told them that they ‘loved’ them, and yet that supposed love took the form of cruelty and abuse. They might struggle to trust anybody else who talks about ‘love’. But that doesn’t mean that other people who use the word ‘love’ are secret abusers.
  - poszlem 4y ago
    That is true, but there are certain "red flags" that you will hear from most abusers. In the case of governments one of those is "we do it for social justice [not normal justice]".
  - 62951413 4y ago
    A participant in an abusive relationship can move back to her parents any day, all she needs is a bus ticket. For a person born under Communism the best case is to go to the Gulag if he tries to cross the border. It gets better, in the USSR until the early 70s the peasants were not even allowed to leave their villages. Technically, they were simply not issued passports which were required to register themselves to live in a town. I bet nobody in your family was born within the reach of the Commies. In places such as the US the people have always been free to go if they felt marginalized. To another state or even abroad without asking the government for permission. So you fail to conceptualize what it means when the Socialists come to power.

vkou 4y ago

If we're going to listen to reactionary wisdom of folk sayings, I've got a long, long list of ones that will provide us with all sorts of simple-to-grok, contradictory, and utterly pointless advice for how to steer our politics. And this particular one works just fine if you reverse the adjectives. After all, the justice system is generally the one responsible for executing people. It does tend to apply itself in a rather... Unjust way - but that's just one of life's little ironies. If you're asking people to listen, you're going to need to actually express your arguments, instead of vaguely gesticulating in the general direction of a 'Four legs good, two legs better' poster.

poszlem 4y ago
It's kind on interesting that the word "reactionary" is also really disliked in Poland too (alongside with the likes of "comrade"). Both of those (plus "social justice") have been used to silence and oppress there. It's really disheartening to see that kind of vocabulary coming back to fashion in English.
- vkou 4y ago
  Reactionary has never left the lexicon, and is a perfect term for describing the bones of most modern conservative movements. It may become less relevant when the latter stop behaving in that manner, but you can't blame me for calling a spade a spade. When they start talking about things like Laffer curves again, and stop trying to turn the clock back on things like marriage and contraception, then it will stop being an appropriate moniker.
- baal80spam 4y ago
  Another one is "collaboration". As someone working in IT, I had a hard time getting used to it meaning "work with your peers toward the common goal". In Poland it has a completely different (negative) meaning.

woodruffw 4y ago

poszlem 4y ago
The only difference is, I suppose, the fact that one comes from a people that got very close to experiencing the "social justice paradise" and the other is just a made up phrase by an internet troll. Otherwise, they are practically indistinguable.
- woodruffw 4y ago
  I'm not a troll. And I don't think most people, including the majority of strident believers in social justice, would consider the 20th century Soviet Bloc to be a paradise.
  - LawTalkingGuy 4y ago
    Perhaps the more ideological wouldn't enjoy the Soviet union but they approve of and use their methods. The current focus on purity of thought is remarkably like the communist struggle sessions, how they tortured people to correct their thinking not just to achieve a confession, how there was always room for more ideology and more purges as the party continually turned on its heroes. Here's an example. At ~25s the officer talks about people who want to help (lower-case social justice) being faded out by people who know nothing of the situation and are just using it for political clout. He's black and trying to discuss the protests with black protestors and they're being interrupted by white protest leaders (upper-case social justice) who need to stoke conflict to remain in power. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hm2aFTTuLek https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hm2aFTTuLek
    - woodruffw 4y ago
      I have no idea what this has to do with taxation. It feels like a culture war diatribe.
- jameshart 4y ago

rsj_hn 4y ago

I wouldn't call a 15% tax on corporations "communism". The actual policy objective is reasonable even if many can argue both sides with rational debate. The main problem is this idea that a bunch of people on the liberal side of the Western world can create "global goals" and try to strong arm the rest of the world into following, which then leads to the inevitable outrage and disappointment when the rest of the world does not follow. And yet it never seems to happen in the other direction -- e.g. Africa deciding on global rules and then trying to force Europe to follow them, assuming they have a right to set global goals. The global goals only flow in one direction. The idea that corporate tax policy is something that countries outside of the EU have actually thought of, and are doing their best to address in their own way, and for their own purpose, is something that never occurs to these self-described "global planners" who are in reality deeply provincial and trapped in their own micro-culture. It is also something that people on the other side of this debate have thought of, which is one of the reasons not to tax corporations at all, but to tax those who receive the profits of corporations and that are domiciled in a particular tax jurisdiction. There is a lot of self-contradictory results when you try to tax the business separately from the owner of the business -- for example, a corporation can deduct interest payments but not dividend or share repurchases, when all three are basically the same thing, and a corporation has the option of doing all three. So this incentivizes corporations to take on debt, which then promotes financial fragility. Lots of distortions happen in a vain fight against "tax loopholes", when the real problem is that you are trying to tax the company separately from the owners. So then you say, "I agree that trying to define 'profits' is prone to tax loopholes, so I will tax corporate revenue". Good idea! But then you will penalize business that have high expenses, e.g. a retail store that buys an item and sells it for a 20% markup would be driven out of business by a 15% tax on sales. So you say, "I will tax revenue net of input prices". And all of a sudden you have a value added tax, which is a form of sales tax, which is regressive. And then people complain about that regressivity and say "we should be taxing income instead", which was my original point! So you keep chasing your tail because you are making decisions without really thinking things through, much like the decision for the EU to cavalierly set "global goals" even as it's relative importance is rapidly shrinking, even as Asia is pretty much ignoring all these goals because they are following their own interests and don't care about EU global goals.

4y ago