More on economic conditions and tech firms leaving certain areas

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

------ Forwarded Message
From: Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>
Date: Wed, 02 Feb 2005 01:41:08 -0500
To: <politech () politechbot com>
Subject: [Politech] More on economic conditions and tech firms leaving
certain areas



-------- Original Message --------
Subject: RE: [Politech] Thomas Lipscomb on why NY,CA are anti-jobs and
losing tech firms
Date: Tue, 1 Feb 2005 10:34:18 -0000
From: adam beecher <lists () beecher net>
Organization: BEECHER.NET
To: 'Declan McCullagh' <declan () well com>,        'Thomas Lipscomb'
<tom () lipscomb net>

> maintain a "socially just civil society."
>
> We have now had almost a half century of examples that lower
> taxes yields higher returns
You might want to pop back up to the "socially just civil society" bit in
the previous paragraph there Thomas. Us "diseased" Europeans like to think
that there's more to life than "higher returns".

> lying local government. Real European businessmen are now
> investing in plants in the United States and Europe is
> atrophying as more and more of its capital and major
> corporations flee to more advantages sites that remain
You mean major corporations like Google, eBay/Paypal and Amazon? Funny that
they all just moved major operations to Ireland then. Ireland's still in
Europe, isn't it?

adam



-------- Original Message --------
Subject: RE: [Politech] Thomas Lipscomb on why NY,CA are anti-jobs and
losing tech firms
Date: Tue, 1 Feb 2005 10:11:05 -0500
From: Thomas Lipscomb <tom () lipscomb net>
To: adam beecher <lists () beecher net>

I think you missed the point....

Ireland, like Estonia and Finland, is barely in Europe... they all have
these embarrassingly high GDPs that the Eurocops seem to want to penalize. I
predict that in a decade things will be so bad in Europe that countries like
those and the UK will be joining NAFTA.

As for what "us 'diseased' Europeans like to think," who cares?

After wasting your primacy in the world in bloodbaths over the past century,
and whacko experiments with fascism and communism, all that is left of you
is a bunch of nattering white rabbits with pink eyes. Don't tell anyone, but
you are irrelevant

Americans are tired of pulling Europe out of the ditch. What Prince
Schwartzenberg said of Russia's assistance in putting down Austria's
sputtering 1848 revolution applies to Europe's attitudes toward the US
today: "We will astonish you with our ingratitude."  So enjoy Eurabia. After
all what is a welfare state for if freeloaders from all over the world can't
enjoy it while it lasts? What can be more in the Brussel's spirit than a
common language? Too bad it had to be Arabic.

Europe has its uses, of course, as a source of flight capital and outsourced
customer service centers, until Asian expertise rises sufficiently to offer
the same service at "higher returns" for "major corporations" in the United
States.

Get your green card and bring your Euro's..... while they are still worth
something.

You can always visit a lovely museum called "Europe" from here... like we
do.


Tom




-------- Original Message --------
Subject:  Re: [Politech] Thomas Lipscomb on why NY, CA are anti-jobs and
losing tech firms
Date:  Tue, 01 Feb 2005 11:48:16 -0400
From:  Stephen Downes <stephen () downes ca>
To:  Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>
References:  <41FF0A65.6020802 () well com>


Declan McCullagh wrote:

> From: Thomas Lipscomb <tom () lipscomb net>
> We have now had almost a half century of examples that lower taxes yields
> higher returns, and that investment money follows real incentives rather
> than scenic locations and lying local government...
Ecuador, of course, has very low taxes, and yet there isn't a rush
of investment or businesses looking to locate there. Argentina,
which has recently defied IMF demands that it cut spending and
social services, has enjoyed a resurgence.

Taxes are only one variable in a complex relation; investors will
trade a certain level of taxation for a certain level of infrastructure,
such as policing, transportation, utilities and more. This level
varies according to the type of business and the needs of employees.

There is in fact no such generalization showing that lower taxes
lead to greater returns, and it is misleading in the extreme to
suggest that any such simple causal relationship holds. Taxes form
one part of a balance of factors, some of which may be beyond the
control, of the local government.

Because Thomas Lipscomb can be presumed to know this, one may
only speculate about the interests served in his posting such misleading
information.

-- Stephen

-- 
__________________________________________________________________

Stephen Downes ~ Moncton, New Brunswick, Canada
http://www.downes.ca  ~  stephen () downes ca
__________________________________________________________________



[Thomas is of course capable of defending himself, but I'd say obviously
there are other factors beyond low taxes influencing investment: respect
for property rights, a stable legal system, climate, sophistication of
capital markets, and so on. A better example for Stephen to offer might
be Estonia. It introduced a flat tax, started taking property rights
seriously, reduced government intervention -- and saw its economy
skyrocket, growing twice as fast as that of the U.S. --Declan]
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