OK, this snippet is from the Economist of about a year ago (yeah, spending the last of my frequent flier miles on magazine subscriptions. Hey, it allows me to sample some stuff for a short period of time that I wouldn’t ordinarily purchase).
It certainly is a Euro-centric philosophy expressed in its pages – and Big State to boot. Oh certainly, from time to time, I’ve been surprised that they’ve agreed with my outlook on something. That said, I could not say that their outlook other than Statist and almost always side with growing Govt.
Can you spot what caught my eye? Oh, heck, I’ll make it easy for you:
Higher earners can also be mobile. So many French professionals moved to London in the past decade that Nicolas Sarkozy, France’s president, pleaded with them (and offered tax deals) to come back. Britain is gradually losing its appeal to high-earning foreigners. calculations by pricewaterhouseCoopers, an accounting firm, show that British authorities will take a bigger tax bite out of the pay packet of a married exutive earning 250K Sterling ($370K) than any other G20 nation except Italy.
The need for…
…countries to maximize their take from their citizens has caused a renewed interest in preventing tax evasion. Countries in the G20 have been pushing hard for low-tax countries such as Switzerland to provide information on foreign depositors. Nevertheless, there are plenty of legitimate ways for businesses and individuals to move to countries with more favourable tax regimes.
So, they recognize that if high taxation is driving out a country’s high skilled (and earning) citizens, the answer is not to determine why that is so and to try to become more efficient and less costly. No, instead, they argue for something that would otherwise be illegal in most of these countries – colluding with each other, forming what would be called monopolistic in the private sector, to keep their "prices" high and "maximize" their profits – on the backs of their citizens. In essence, what would normally be a high offense and be rewarded with ginormous fines and regulations if a few companies engaged in it, is actively requested by this magazine.
Hmm, so, what IS the difference between companies trying to maximize their profits from their consumers and nations trying to maximize theirs from taxpayers? Not much from my standpoint – either is out just for the Benjamins….national, not corporate, collusion is fine.
The Economist, March 6, 2010, P98
