Apple’s battle with Epic is a reminder that today’s tech companies behave like 19th-century monopolists. Installing democratic control over these modern throwbacks to Gilded Age robber barons is the only way to curb their power.
The US has one of the highest exit taxes in the world, if it’s any concern you can raise it even higher, but capital flight is something the rich try to say will totally happen but that they never actually ever end up doing because paying high taxes isn’t worth the hassle that uprooting and moving everything to a new country entails.
That’s the kind of effort that gets provoked by imprisoning them for just complaining against those taxes, or by seizing everything they own without even nominal compensation.
I view the “take my ball and leave” talk as gaslighting. The rich are rich thanks to infrastructure we fund on a public basis. Roads, police, fire departments, and the very function of society is something we all collectively fund that they benefit from. I wish them all the luck in the world going to some third party totalitarian shithole with minefields, far more broken roads than we have, and warlords.
Have fun, fuckheads, please leave and don’t let the door hit you in the ass. That’s my response to any talk about uprooting.
but that they never actually ever end up doing because paying high taxes isn’t worth the hassle that uprooting and moving everything to a new country entails.
Have you honestly calculated both to decide which is more expensive, or it’s just talk?
Because there have been a few instances of big companies doing just that.
Except not really because what that is is them saying they’re owned or headquartered internationally.
It’s not reflective of capital flight at the scale of hyper wealthy individuals, just of how fucked corporate tax law is in comparison to income tax law.
Similar exit tax laws for reheadquartering out of country or selling out to a foreign owner would probably help cut way down on the practice.
The US has one of the highest exit taxes in the world, if it’s any concern you can raise it even higher, but capital flight is something the rich try to say will totally happen but that they never actually ever end up doing because paying high taxes isn’t worth the hassle that uprooting and moving everything to a new country entails.
That’s the kind of effort that gets provoked by imprisoning them for just complaining against those taxes, or by seizing everything they own without even nominal compensation.
I view the “take my ball and leave” talk as gaslighting. The rich are rich thanks to infrastructure we fund on a public basis. Roads, police, fire departments, and the very function of society is something we all collectively fund that they benefit from. I wish them all the luck in the world going to some third party totalitarian shithole with minefields, far more broken roads than we have, and warlords.
Have fun, fuckheads, please leave and don’t let the door hit you in the ass. That’s my response to any talk about uprooting.
Have you honestly calculated both to decide which is more expensive, or it’s just talk?
Because there have been a few instances of big companies doing just that.
Except not really because what that is is them saying they’re owned or headquartered internationally.
It’s not reflective of capital flight at the scale of hyper wealthy individuals, just of how fucked corporate tax law is in comparison to income tax law.
Similar exit tax laws for reheadquartering out of country or selling out to a foreign owner would probably help cut way down on the practice.
I think you are wrong but I’d like to see this tried, if not too catastrophic.
Well the highest marginal rate ever was about 90% in the 50s and there wasn’t significant capital flight at that time
There wasn’t significant movable capital either at that time.
in the 50s‽ Yeah sure whatever ya say.
Yes, you might have noticed that Microsoft, Google, Apple etc are the kind of companies which didn’t exist back then.
Yeah, instead there was a bunch of fruit companies, IBM, and GM.
The most bloated corporate valuation in history was the South Sea Company, and that fiasco went down in the 1700s.