How the City of London invented offshore banking • Hacker News Board

Re: How the City of London invented offshore banking

#41

Post by NeedMoreTea » Sun, Sep 09, 2018, 2:50 PM UTC

McP wrote: post #38

cm2187 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have anything to substantiate that? All banks were publicly against Brexit and, working myself in the City (and working on dealing with Brexit), I hardly know any banker who was pro Brexit. Banks are large organisations that can deal with the complexity of Brexit by setting up subsidaries and moving people, but this is perceived as a hassle and a distraction, not an opportunity. As for EU banking regulations,…

Please delete your third paragraph. At best it's a gross oversimplification. At worst, plain old racism. I found the rest of your comment insightful.

Plain old racism seemed to be a depressingly common reason some voted for Brexit. Made worse by the enthusiasm of the Leave campaign to pander to it with adverts about immigrants and Turkey joining the EU.

Re: How the City of London invented offshore banking

#42

Post by gdy » Sun, Sep 09, 2018, 3:19 PM UTC

McP wrote: post #38

cm2187 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have anything to substantiate that? All banks were publicly against Brexit and, working myself in the City (and working on dealing with Brexit), I hardly know any banker who was pro Brexit. Banks are large organisations that can deal with the complexity of Brexit by setting up subsidaries and moving people, but this is perceived as a hassle and a distraction, not an opportunity. As for EU banking regulations,…

Please delete your third paragraph. At best it's a gross oversimplification. At worst, plain old racism. I found the rest of your comment insightful.

Why is it racism?

Re: How the City of London invented offshore banking

#43

Post by Lazare » Sun, Sep 09, 2018, 11:15 PM UTC

hristov wrote: post #35

Lazare wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah. Netting it down to the essence, the proposed explanation for the collapse of Bretton Woods seemed to be "USD inflation". Which is sure, plausible enough, I suppose. Unfortunately they then threw up their hands, ignored everything we know about inflation in general or that inflationary period in specific, and come up with some weird story about how 70s stagflation was actually caused by South American dictators…

Obviously, if there is higher tax rate on higher incomes this will reduce inequality even if the net amount of taxes collected stays the same.

That's a lot less obvious than you'd think, in large part because people have so much scope to react to changes in tax rates by restructuring their income, sheltering it, etc.

The impact of taxation on inequality is empirically much lower than the impact of spending. You can see this, eg, by looking at the Nordic countries, which have relatively flat taxes skewed towards regressive taxes like a VAT, but low inequality, while countries like the US have very progressive income tax structures but high inequality. The difference, at a very high level, is that Denmark spends money on the poor, and the US spends it on the upper middle class. :)

You can see this clearly looking at the first graph here: https://lanekenworthy.net/2008/02/10/taxes-and-inequality-le...

Inequality is reduced via spending, not taxes; taxes are primarily useful as a revenue source.