41–50 of 63 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's a success of federation - competition has lowered effective tax rates. The failure is that mom and pop grocery stores can't do the same because they can't easily move to another state, so states don't make special deals for them.
But is lowering effective tax rates a success if it is a race to the bottom?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Lots of jobs during build. But after that, 10 guys on a security rotation 24/7, 5 guys on 'take stuff out of boxes and put it in racks to replace failed components' duty, and 5 more to do all the certifications and paperwork (who might be offsite).
I think an Amazon datacenter is going to have a few more people than that because it's so huge. I just looked at the satellite image of their Ashburn datacenter in Google Maps. I saw maybe like 50-ish cars.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Virtually every item on the list is categorized as a "tax abatement", "tax deferral", or "tax exemption". I think it's misleading to call those 'subsidies'. As always, the existence of such taxes gives politicians a tool to amplify their corruption and incompetence. The right answer is to take such tools out of politician's hands by ending the taxes in the first place. It feels good to tax a corporation, but it's muc…
I'm not an economist, but not taxing corporations leads to increasing income inequality, and gives companies the wrong economic signals. It costs money to run the government -- the court system, the armed forces, the legislatures, the police and fire departments, etc. Companies consume these resources and that cost should be factored into the cost of their products. In fact, it seems pretty obvious to me that especia…
When was the last time you were able to lobby congress to write laws to your liking, or create trade agreements, or author a bill to advantage your financial interests?
I'm suggesting that you bypass the problem by eliminating corporate taxes, and replacing them with taxes on investors, who individually would not have the leverage to avoid them. As an added bonus, you'd deprive politicians of a powerful tool that they are demonstrably incapable of wielding fairly and effectively.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think an Amazon datacenter is going to have a few more people than that because it's so huge. I just looked at the satellite image of their Ashburn datacenter in Google Maps. I saw maybe like 50-ish cars.
Which, by way of context, is about how many people work at two McDonalds'.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
But is lowering effective tax rates a success if it is a race to the bottom?
If a state can still do all the functions their people expect of them with fewer taxes, I think most people would call that a win.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why don't you argue the point and offer an alternative opinion or rebuttal instead of profiling the messenger?
The messenger is relevant, at times, and is at least worth mentioning . I'm skeptical of "everyone agrees with me!" coming from any think tank, left or right. https://taxfoundation.org/case-not-eliminating-corporate-inc... , for example, argues that relying on taxing shareholders instead of the corporation ignores foreign shareholders whose income isn't subject to US taxation. (For similar disclosure, they're general…
And that is a good point to discuss/argue, regardless of the messenger. You could do the same with the previous resource as well; pull out points that you like/dislike and we discuss around that as opposed to shooting down any discussion because you don't like the messenger.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Virtually every item on the list is categorized as a "tax abatement", "tax deferral", or "tax exemption". I think it's misleading to call those 'subsidies'. As always, the existence of such taxes gives politicians a tool to amplify their corruption and incompetence. The right answer is to take such tools out of politician's hands by ending the taxes in the first place. It feels good to tax a corporation, but it's muc…
>It feels good to tax a corporation, but it's much more practical, efficient, and transparent to keep taxes at the personal and consumer level. That is a very, very bold claim. Please provide bold evidence or reasoning. >The right answer is to take such tools out of politician's hands by ending the taxes in the first place. So there is a corrupt system, and the only solution is to just destroy it? I don't get it.
There's merit to this idea. Often enough the correct fix for a broken system is to throw it away and replace it with something more resilient, even if you lose some theoretical optimality.
This is similar to the people that want to legalize all drugs to reduce crime.
We do this kind of weird dance in which we create subsidies to incentivize desirable behavior and then when it works and we get more of the desirable behavior we complain about the handouts. I understand that democracy implies multiple constituencies, not all of which agree on the need for any particular policy (and so arguments about the necessity of specific subsidies are reasonable and inevitable), but it's always…
It's a race to the bottom, though. The entire premise of subsidizing e.g. an Amazon datacenter is that Amazon needs a datacenter, and it's going to be built somewhere, so you need to offer them a lot of money if you want the jobs in your state/city. It's not a question of if the "desirable behavior" of opening a datacenter and "creating a lot of jobs" is going to happen or not, just a question of where. So there's th…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why don't you argue the point and offer an alternative opinion or rebuttal instead of profiling the messenger?
The messenger is relevant, at times, and is at least worth mentioning . I'm skeptical of "everyone agrees with me!" coming from any think tank, left or right. https://taxfoundation.org/case-not-eliminating-corporate-inc... , for example, argues that relying on taxing shareholders instead of the corporation ignores foreign shareholders whose income isn't subject to US taxation. (For similar disclosure, they're general…
They aren't? What about withholding tax?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's a race to the bottom, though. The entire premise of subsidizing e.g. an Amazon datacenter is that Amazon needs a datacenter, and it's going to be built somewhere, so you need to offer them a lot of money if you want the jobs in your state/city. It's not a question of if the "desirable behavior" of opening a datacenter and "creating a lot of jobs" is going to happen or not, just a question of where. So there's th…
Sure, and I broadly agree that there's a collective action problem here; it's just that accurately understanding and addressing that problem requires a different level of analysis that's removed from raw anger about "handouts."