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  1. #41
    Quote Originally Posted by PC2 View Post
    No, the French economy is just one economy, if they put too much burden on the most productive people and organizations then it makes more sense to invest in other places.
    So in your world zero dollars from not being in a market is better than millions in profit from being in it?

  2. #42
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    Quote Originally Posted by Draco-Onis View Post
    So in your world zero dollars from not being in a market is better than millions in profit from being in it?
    New businesses and investments will go to the places that offer the highest return-on-investment. As a country gets closer to 100% taxes there is less reason for wealth and business to grow in that place.

  3. #43
    I Don't Work Here Endus's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by PC2 View Post
    New businesses and investments will go to the places that offer the highest return-on-investment. As a country gets closer to 100% taxes there is less reason for wealth and business to grow in that place.
    No, if they can profit off a market, they'll do so. That's why companies never pull out when corporate taxes are increased anywhere. It's a myth perpetrated by corporate interests to try and confuse politicians into doing what the corps want.

    Even if they do pull out, that just opens up their place in the market for a competitor. Likely a more ethical one.


  4. #44
    The Unstoppable Force PC2's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Endus View Post
    No, if they can profit off a market, they'll do so. That's why companies never pull out when corporate taxes are increased anywhere. It's a myth perpetrated by corporate interests to try and confuse politicians into doing what the corps want.

    Even if they do pull out, that just opens up their place in the market for a competitor. Likely a more ethical one.
    That has nothing to do with what I was talking about. I'm saying France shouldn't double their taxes if they wan't to be economically competitive and if they want to attract new businesses and highly productive people.
    Last edited by PC2; 2023-03-18 at 04:05 PM.

  5. #45
    I Don't Work Here Endus's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by PC2 View Post
    That has nothing to what I was talking about. I'm saying France shouldn't double their taxes if they wan't to be economically competitive and if they want to attract new businesses and highly productive people.
    Which is exactly what I was contradicting. They don't have any need to "attract new businesses". Their economy's already strong, and they can fill any gaps with local companies. You're pushing myth, not fact.

    Global megacorps are good for global megacorps. They bring very little of actual value to a country, because their goal is to extract wealth from that country.
    Last edited by Endus; 2023-03-18 at 05:42 AM.


  6. #46
    Quote Originally Posted by PC2 View Post
    New businesses and investments will go to the places that offer the highest return-on-investment. As a country gets closer to 100% taxes there is less reason for wealth and business to grow in that place.
    That's a sweeping oversimplification (like everything is with you) of how investment works.

    There are various factors that determine where investment goes.

    Availability of labor, supply chain logistics, legal stability, market access, access to credit etc.

    Taxation is just one element.

    Would higher corporate taxes reduce the competitiveness of the French economy in some areas? Yes.

    But would also improve it in other areas.

    It's high time countries abandoned the race to the bottom in taxation. Especially developed economies.

  7. #47
    Quote Originally Posted by Endus View Post
    Like you note, corporate taxes are levied on profits. You could set a corporate tax rate of 99%, and it will drive precisely zero companies out of business or out of the market. It can't. Anyone arguing otherwise is either completely unaware of how taxes work, or actively choosing to lie to you.
    That's mostly meaningless bullshit.

    A big problem with corporate taxes is that often a product (like an iPhone) is developed in one country (the US), manufactured in another (China) and sold in a third (e.g, France).

    Trick question: after France increases their corporate tax rate to 99% who gets to tax the profit?
    Ireland - since they have low corporate taxes

    Traditionally countries have instead relied on other taxes on corporation, like VAT (and of course tax on property, wealth, and income).

    According to OECD the Frech government gets 12% of GDP from tax on goods and services (VAT and sales tax), and 2.5% from tax on company profit (and the official tax rate for profit was above 25% - so tax on corporate profits would still give less than the tax on goods and services even if the corporate tax were 100% and nothing changed).

    - - - Updated - - -

    Quote Originally Posted by NED funded View Post
    You could take all of the wealth from rich people and it still wouldnt be enough to finance pensions. People are wilding about this
    True.

    As far as I can tell if we look at the ten richest people in France and used their wealth to finance pensions it would only last about 15 months, with the Bernard Arnault being responsible for 6 of those months.

    In reality it wouldn't even work that well, since people would emigrate first; and France instead taxes non-movable wealth (houses etc) - at a more sensible rate.

  8. #48
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    Quote Originally Posted by Forogil View Post
    That's mostly meaningless bullshit.

    A big problem with corporate taxes is that often a product (like an iPhone) is developed in one country (the US), manufactured in another (China) and sold in a third (e.g, France).

    Trick question: after France increases their corporate tax rate to 99% who gets to tax the profit?
    Ireland - since they have low corporate taxes

    Traditionally countries have instead relied on other taxes on corporation, like VAT (and of course tax on property, wealth, and income).

    According to OECD the Frech government gets 12% of GDP from tax on goods and services (VAT and sales tax), and 2.5% from tax on company profit (and the official tax rate for profit was above 25% - so tax on corporate profits would still give less than the tax on goods and services even if the corporate tax were 100% and nothing changed).

    - - - Updated - - -


    True.

    As far as I can tell if we look at the ten richest people in France and used their wealth to finance pensions it would only last about 15 months, with the Bernard Arnault being responsible for 6 of those months.

    In reality it wouldn't even work that well, since people would emigrate first; and France instead taxes non-movable wealth (houses etc) - at a more sensible rate.
    And this is a problem! The bolded part that is!
    The EU ought to simply institute a law that forces multinational corporations to documment how much profit they've made in a country, and get taxed for that profit in said country. Then protect them from getting double taxation within the EU.
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  9. #49
    Quote Originally Posted by PC2 View Post
    New businesses and investments will go to the places that offer the highest return-on-investment. As a country gets closer to 100% taxes there is less reason for wealth and business to grow in that place.
    So as a business person you would leave money on the table because it's harder? there is no country with 100% tax rate.

  10. #50
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    Quote Originally Posted by Endus View Post
    Which is exactly what I was contradicting. They don't have any need to "attract new businesses". Their economy's already strong, and they can fill any gaps with local companies.
    If France wants to be economically competitive in the future then they will need to grow and attract new businesses/investments and they'll need to foster innovation.
    Quote Originally Posted by Endus View Post
    Global megacorps are good for global megacorps. They bring very little of actual value to a country, because their goal is to extract wealth from that country.
    No it's good when you have global megacorps that produce things in your country. It creates a lot of value.
    Last edited by PC2; 2023-03-18 at 04:06 PM.

  11. #51
    I Don't Work Here Endus's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by PC2 View Post
    If France wants to be economically competitive in the future then they will need to grow and attract new businesses/investments and they'll need to foster innovation.
    You keep forgetting that France is a country of 68 million people. Why are they having to attract new businesses rather than just having local businesses thrive? If foreign companies don't show up, that means French companies have less competition and can perform better, which is better for France.

    No its good when you have global megacorps that produce things in your country. It creates a lot of value.
    That value's created for foreign shareholders, not France and the French people.

    You keep pretending otherwise.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Forogil View Post
    Trick question: after France increases their corporate tax rate to 99% who gets to tax the profit?
    Ireland - since they have low corporate taxes
    Ask yourself why companies are based anywhere but Ireland and you're start to realize this argument doesn't actually hold water, at all.


  12. #52
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    Quote Originally Posted by UnifiedDivide View Post
    Nah, that's how he thinks it should be. He thinks billionaires are vitally important, morally and ethically superior people, and wants them to become trillionaires. Because that will somehow benefit humanity.
    Like, shit, I'm halfway through a 2nd playthrough of Cyberpunk 2077, and it's shocking seeing people in the real world defend the kind of dystopian capitalist hellworld shit that cyberpunk (small-c) as a genre embodies as if any of that is somehow a "good thing".

    You point to the orphan-crushing machine, and they're immediately gonna leap in with "Orphan-crushing is an integral part of the economy; if we did not crush orphans, those orphans wouldn't have any contribution to the economy, and by crushing them in the orphan-crusher, we can generate greater profits for shareholders in the penthouses of these megatowers, and profits are clearly more important than valueless orphans, right?"

    And they expect us to respect that as a legitimate point of view.


  13. #53
    Quote Originally Posted by Endus View Post
    Ask yourself why companies are based anywhere but Ireland and you're start to realize this argument doesn't actually hold water, at all.
    The point wasn't just that it ends up in Ireland, but generally that multi-national companies can control where they pay taxes, and thus trying to increase the corporate tax rate in one country has very limited success. Obviously large profitable companies can afford to better at reducing their tax - as it comes with some cost.

    If you look at the most profitable companies in 2022 we have:
    Saudi Aramco - mostly state-owned, so tax or dividends doesn't matter
    Apple - Ireland
    Microsoft - Using Ireland and others
    Alphabet - Unclear at the moment, but France unsuccessfully sued them earlier for routing ad-revenue to Ireland
    Equinor - state-owned

    And an additional point is that corporate profits aren't enough to pay for pensions. That's why countries use VATs and taxes on income (including social security).

    - - - Updated - - -

    Quote Originally Posted by Muzjhath View Post
    And this is a problem! The bolded part that is!
    The EU ought to simply institute a law that forces multinational corporations to documment how much profit they've made in a country, and get taxed for that profit in said country.
    That will not be easy to get right, for a vertically integrated company: how much is the IP worth? marketing? manufacturing?

  14. #54
    Quote Originally Posted by unfilteredJW View Post
    This should be easy to prove. Show your work.
    Sure enough. The current french gov spends a total of 340 billion euros in pensions

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...s_by_net_worth

    Take a gander of the wealthiest people in this list. The wealthiest one doesnt have enough wealth to cover a year of pension spending (Assuming you sell all of it to get money). The rest have significantly less wealth

    The only solution is to get more contributions from everyone or raise the retirement age so people can contribute for a longer time and take less

  15. #55
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    Retirement age is pretty much just a big scam overall. You can put whatever money into it in years and once you finaly get it, the goverment you supported over the years cuts down money by 80% or some bullshit.
    Not everyone lives the X age that some person said people do. Usualy cancer kills you, before you can even get to that age.

    So yeah French president 100% scruved some peoples plans by raising the age. Raising money taken from people or increased age are not a solution due to corruption and who knows how much of money gets stolen every year.
    Don't sweat the details!!!

  16. #56
    Quote Originally Posted by NED funded View Post
    Sure enough. The current french gov spends a total of 340 billion euros in pensions

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...s_by_net_worth

    Take a gander of the wealthiest people in this list. The wealthiest one doesnt have enough wealth to cover a year of pension spending (Assuming you sell all of it to get money). The rest have significantly less wealth

    The only solution is to get more contributions from everyone or raise the retirement age so people can contribute for a longer time and take less
    But you've changed the argument from "leverage more money from the wealthiest to fill the gap" to "leverage all of the money from the wealthiest to pay for the entire thing." I don't think anyone's arguing that the rich pay for all of society all on their lonesome. I mean I would like that, but I know they'd fund an OpenAI Death Robot to eradicate the human population before they let us get that far, so I'll settle for them losing a few extra zeroes after a decimal point so workers get a few more years of rest before the sweet release of death.

  17. #57
    Quote Originally Posted by NED funded View Post
    Sure enough. The current french gov spends a total of 340 billion euros in pensions

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...s_by_net_worth

    Take a gander of the wealthiest people in this list. The wealthiest one doesnt have enough wealth to cover a year of pension spending (Assuming you sell all of it to get money). The rest have significantly less wealth

    The only solution is to get more contributions from everyone or raise the retirement age so people can contribute for a longer time and take less
    So it sounds like France has an unsustainable pension system, and will have to pay for it in the form of heavy tax hikes or cost reductions like raising the retirement age.

    But it still looks like Macron went about reconciling it in a politically foolish manner. Top-down rammed-through edicts serve to inflame the opposition.
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  18. #58
    The Unstoppable Force PC2's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by UnifiedDivide View Post
    Even more weird that they're all about "optimism" and "human progress." I feel like he means individual "human" rather than "humanity." IIRC, he/his family own businesses, so I can understand, to some extent. Doesn't excuse being wrong about basically everything, though...
    I'm saying people should be optimistic about humanity and progress in general. Society has never been more advanced than it is right now and all of our current problems can be solved without authoritarianism. Also most people are pessimists but you should ignore them because most people don't really know much about how the world actually works.

  19. #59
    Quote Originally Posted by NED funded View Post
    Sure enough. The current french gov spends a total of 340 billion euros in pensions

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...s_by_net_worth

    Take a gander of the wealthiest people in this list. The wealthiest one doesnt have enough wealth to cover a year of pension spending (Assuming you sell all of it to get money). The rest have significantly less wealth

    The only solution is to get more contributions from everyone or raise the retirement age so people can contribute for a longer time and take less
    Much like when people talk about universal income for everyone, it just doesn't work out in the end. You could literally take the rich and their businesses 99.9% of their entire wealth/profits and you would get roughly 4 - 5 years of it for a universal income. After that, the money will have to come from somewhere. Either you raise taxes on everyone else(not sure how much as far as France goes), for roughly 30k per year, to around 50% or higher for the lowest end(for the rich, it would be over 100%) on all sources of income. I can do the math if people want but you would be literally talking about a 2 - 3X increase in government spending if they wanted to do universal income.

    Same with this. Either they will have to increase taxes(which has its own up and downsides to it) or increase the age.

  20. #60
    Quote Originally Posted by PC2 View Post
    I'm saying people should be optimistic about humanity and progress in general. Society has never been more advanced than it is right now and all of our current problems can be solved without authoritarianism. Also most people are pessimists but you should ignore them because most people don't really know much about how the world actually works.
    Yes, you always say that people should be "optimistic about humanity and progress". It's a great way to kick the can down the road.
    “The biggest communication problem is we do not listen to understand. We listen to reply,” Stephen Covey.

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