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Panama Papers: Mossack Fonseca leak reveals elite's tax havens

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441–450 of 452 posts

Re: Panama Papers: Mossack Fonseca leak reveals elite's tax havens

#441
post #439

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For what it's worth, it's hard to see a Land Value Tax as being unfair, it's extremely hard to hide your taxable assets, and it works well for people as well as corporations.

Land Value tax can be extremely cruel if you happen to be poor living in a neighborhood that suddenly became popular. You are basically forced to sell your home (also not in the best of positions - you need to sell fast and can't wait out for the peak price) and move out because you can not afford to live next to some rich person. While income tax and VAT are proportional to what you earn and consume, and can vary ea…

I would say that this argument seems to imply that no neighborhood should ever grow (for its existing residents would be priced out.)

This, however, is a fallacy-- the higher valuation of the land implies a larger return on the land, consistent with increasing the amount of people who can live there. (i.e. replacing a small house with an apartment building.) This allows more people of modest means to live in this neighboorhood, instead of less.

Compare to the Palo Alto model, where land never appreciates in taxable value-- people are able to stay in their home, but only those who were lucky enough to buy at the right time. The overall capacity of the city does not grow, and people are priced away from buying into the city.

Re: Panama Papers: Mossack Fonseca leak reveals elite's tax havens

#442
post #436
post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Watched it and as I guessed you will again have, like in a distributed system, some management facility. Friedman call it a judge or arbitrator and everyone can have their own, where judges will work out contracts between themselves for disputes of their own. So, this all sounds like P2P with an evolutionary system of contracts between all kinds of parties, where there's no universal rule book (aka what we know as a…

> If this really works, good, but how do you solve that humans will see that the contract between two other parties is better and will want the same deal? Will you give it to them? Not sure I understand the question. Who is giving whom the contract? The idea is, if you don't like the laws your protection agency / law firm provides you with, you switch firms. And that way you have a lot more control under which set of…

Once another party is involved you end up coming up with another agreement and first you need to agree which arbiter is used. You have more choice but where's body that makes sure everybody chooses the better judge so that bad judges get nothing to rule?

Re: Panama Papers: Mossack Fonseca leak reveals elite's tax havens

#443

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Taxation is obviously not theft, any more than charging for goods is. "75% of your income" is a very different thing than "75% of your income beyond a certain figure"; I have no problem with basic levels of income being absolutely tax-free. I don't agree with many actions undertaken by my government, including launching illegal wars which I have protested on the street against. That doesn't mean I don't think everyon…

>Taxation is obviously not theft, any more than charging for goods is. Pretty sure when you force or coerce someone to buy something they do not want, it is illegal and immoral. And if the value of the item is significantly less than the price paid, it is theft in all but the most pedantic ways.

That sounds like "advertising" and "capitalism" to me - not that I entirely disagree with your opinion.

Re: Panama Papers: Mossack Fonseca leak reveals elite's tax havens

#445
post #440
post #438

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A villa in the jungle is not what I was talking about. Large corporations benefit from their customers being safe and secure, and from infrastructure to distribute their products. And the companies involved in "colonial corporate conquests" were huge, royally chartered monopolies, directly supported by their countries, and usually acting as their official representative; there was a symbiotic relationship between the…

>> Large corporations benefit from their customers being safe and secure Same way as the small ones do. Maybe even more so - you can find a market for luxury cars even in most brutal dictatorships (in fact, many brutal dictators are known for their love of luxury goods, and so are their henchmen as soon as they are wealthy enough) but trying to establish a small business with stable clientele might be quite hard. >>…

> you can find a market for luxury cars even in most brutal dictatorships

But you're unlikely to create a luxury car company in an unstable country.

> trying to establish a small business with stable clientele might be quite hard.

There are plenty of small businesses with stable clientele in Bangladesh, Haiti, Yemen, and pretty much every country in the world.

> "symbiotic relationship" is not a bad description of what is still happening.

I'm not saying it isn't. But you still can't have a large company in an unstable country, while you can easily have a fruit stand there. It is the large businesses that benefit disproportionately from the state.

> Startups - not so much.

Right, you probably need a stable country for startups, too. But most countries don't tax startups much anyway.

Re: Panama Papers: Mossack Fonseca leak reveals elite's tax havens

#446
post #440
post #438

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A villa in the jungle is not what I was talking about. Large corporations benefit from their customers being safe and secure, and from infrastructure to distribute their products. And the companies involved in "colonial corporate conquests" were huge, royally chartered monopolies, directly supported by their countries, and usually acting as their official representative; there was a symbiotic relationship between the…

>> Large corporations benefit from their customers being safe and secure Same way as the small ones do. Maybe even more so - you can find a market for luxury cars even in most brutal dictatorships (in fact, many brutal dictators are known for their love of luxury goods, and so are their henchmen as soon as they are wealthy enough) but trying to establish a small business with stable clientele might be quite hard. >>…

"you can find a market for luxury cars even in most brutal dictatorships"

But can you find a factory for them?

Re: Panama Papers: Mossack Fonseca leak reveals elite's tax havens

#447
post #442
post #436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If this really works, good, but how do you solve that humans will see that the contract between two other parties is better and will want the same deal? Will you give it to them? Not sure I understand the question. Who is giving whom the contract? The idea is, if you don't like the laws your protection agency / law firm provides you with, you switch firms. And that way you have a lot more control under which set of…

Once another party is involved you end up coming up with another agreement and first you need to agree which arbiter is used. You have more choice but where's body that makes sure everybody chooses the better judge so that bad judges get nothing to rule?

You sign up for a law firm and trust it with its choice of arbiters. Much like when you buy a cake, you trust the baker with ingredients and recipes. If you later feel sick, you never go to that bakery again and trash its reputation.

Re: Panama Papers: Mossack Fonseca leak reveals elite's tax havens

#449
post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope. His wife is the only one mentioned in the data according to the reporters: > The third Spaniard to appear in the giant leak is the wife of former Spanish Agriculture Minister Miguel Arias Cañete, Micaela Domecq Solís-Beaumont, who was "empowered to approve transactions of Rinconada Investments Group SA, a Panama company registered in 2005 which was in existence while her husband Miguel Arias Cañete held public…

His wife is not called "Miguel Arias Cañete" though.

That was what I was pointing out...

Re: Panama Papers: Mossack Fonseca leak reveals elite's tax havens

#450

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually it's a tax to being far from the central bank. The further you are the longer the price signal from the printed money will take to reach you. Inflation is cancer.

The problem is how the printed money is distributed. Central banks convert it into debt with interest, this is bad. Paying it as wages or a national dividend would get it to the leaves where it benefits people, then communities, then society and then banks. I argue inflation is not bad just how the printed money is distributed.

+1 because you're right about the importance of distribution.

My family are inflation "refugees". It's bad in of itself.

I agree that the distribution of the money is the worse part of the printing press. Giving money to soup kitchens is not as bad giving it to upgrade your military equipment. But, lets not kid ourselves. The central bank is a very powerful instrument of control. The powerful are hardly going to relinquish it!

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