re: #5 Barflytom

Not sure what you mean by “global citizenship”, and you’re missing my point. If there were no tax havens of any kind, what incentive is there for governments to keep tax rates down ?

The incentive that there should be; keeping tax rates at a level they don’t hinder the economy.

Some EU bigwig a few years ago used to go on about “harmful tax competition”, meaning that countries like Ireland with very low corporate tax rates were drawing investment from high tax countries. So, harmful to who ? The only people “harmed” are the big government mandarins who want to expand their own power.

It’s harmful because it becomes a race to the bottom, and turns the marketplace into a zero-sum game. The ideal situation would be roughly equal economic distribution, which would help spur competition and markets and all those other good capitalist things. Whenever capital gets concentrated, in capitalism, it is bad for capitalism. This is a simple concept that most people who think they’re pro-capitalist don’t get, because they’re not really pro-capitalist. Like you. The velocity of money is what is important.

Money that is taxed is not destroyed. It is almost immediately spent by the government, almost all of it in the local economy. Money given to corporations may be spent or may not be, and large amounts of it are funneled into profits for a small amount of people who, likewise, don’t spend it at the same rates as ordinary people do. So the velocity of money is slowed, and the economy suffers.

If you like the idea of the US government being able to grab you or your money anywhere in the world, then either you haven’t thought the thing through, or you’re afflicted with the common lefty assumption that bigger government is always going to be on your side.

The US government should be able to tax all money made by US citizens, because that’s the responsibility of citizenship. Tax-dodging is unpatriotic in the extreme, it’s theft from your fellow citizens.