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So in any case, EU is something a lot deeper than the UN. Wrt to wrongness, yes, it is wrong that a small country takes advantage of the openness and loopholes

by return0 12y ago

So in any case, EU is something a lot deeper than the UN. Wrt to wrongness, yes, it is wrong that a small country takes advantage of the openness and loopholes of global economies to funnel money in their direction. There is a simple asymmetry at the core that thei exploit: a big democratic country will never be able to lower corporate taxes because the citizens/wealth generators will protest. A tiny dictatorship or otherwise tiny country with no other resources will be able to convince its citizens that a sustainable future can be built by leeching off funneled money made in other countries. To me that is immoral Or are you suggesting that any of these countries could survive financially with such low tax rates without the foreign money? PS. With respect to the amount of control over indebted countries government, consider the case of Greece. Yes they could have opted out by voting in a referendum, but when the prime minister proposed to do that he was deposed overnight.

mike_hearn 12y ago
Yes, the Greek people really really didn't want to see the Drachma come back. They know that their corrupt and inefficient government would inflate away their currency at a prodigious rate if they went back to having their own currency and the rules imposed by the foreign lenders are really the best way to reform their governments. Kind of messed up, but there it is. Do you seriously think Luxembourg is actually some kind of third world state that is only doing well because it has low corporation taxes? I think you should review the economies of countries painted as tax havens before concluding that. And of course big democratic countries can lower corporation taxes. If the citizens prefer not to do that, OK, that's their choice, but companies leaving is the expected outcome of that. It's not some kind of immorality on the behalf of other citizens of other countries to exploit that. Unless you're going to paint all Irish people as immoral, for example, which is absurd.

by return0 12y ago

mike_hearn 12y ago

Yes, the Greek people really really didn't want to see the Drachma come back. They know that their corrupt and inefficient government would inflate away their currency at a prodigious rate if they went back to having their own currency and the rules imposed by the foreign lenders are really the best way to reform their governments. Kind of messed up, but there it is. Do you seriously think Luxembourg is actually some kind of third world state that is only doing well because it has low corporation taxes? I think you should review the economies of countries painted as tax havens before concluding that. And of course big democratic countries can lower corporation taxes. If the citizens prefer not to do that, OK, that's their choice, but companies leaving is the expected outcome of that. It's not some kind of immorality on the behalf of other citizens of other countries to exploit that. Unless you're going to paint all Irish people as immoral, for example, which is absurd.