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Comment by refurb | Hacker News Reader

Without this it's simply going to be a race to the bottom for countries and tax rates.

I don't understand this concern about a "race to the bottom". This "race to the bottom" is why you can buy a computer for $200 that would have cost $10,000 fives years ago. Manufacturers were in a race to provide the most value for the least money.

There should be pressure on gov'ts to keep tax rates low. I consider each country as it's own business where the price is what you pay in taxes and the product are the gov't services you recieve.

Do you really wants gov'ts banding together to collude and keep tax rates high? What do you think that will look like in the end? I assume massively inefficient gov'ts and crushingly high tax rates.

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The fundamental problem with your argument is the assumption that government services are offered in exchange for tax in the same way that you pay for other goods or services. They're not. The very nature of western society is that it doesn't offer value for money to the richest. This is by design. We've built progressive taxation systems as a way of redistributing wealth downwards, providing benefit to the whole of society rather than just the few with the most.

How many countries have you lived in? Why did you choose the place you live now? Presumably you have a spreadsheet somewhere with the tax to service ratio for all the countries you considered?

Well, maybe you do. Most people don't. Most people live in the country they were born in, or perhaps emigrate once to a country they perceive to have more opportunities (or family, or a more stable government). The only people who are shopping around for the cheapest tax regime are already exceptionally wealthy and looking to keep more of that wealth for themselves. They're not looking for any governmental services, just a way to stop paying for those that help other people.

Maybe that's OK for you if you're heartless sociopath. It's very easy to forget just how reliant we are on the hard work of other people, even those who earn far less than us.

Most wealthy people who acquire their wealth (i.e. not inherit) have contributed by paying a ton of tax during the acquisition of that wealth.

If it takes me five or ten years to build out a successful company, I will have paid: - Some corporate tax - Income tax (your director salary, your employees salaries) - Dividend taxes - Capital gains tax (when I sell the company) - Various other smaller levies

And you will have created some jobs. When you sell the company, those jobs also usually won't seize to exist. In a way, you will have paid off your debt to society.

If at that point, should you decide to move to some low tax country and live off of investment gains, what's wrong with that? Given (for example) a massive amount of US taxpayers dollars is spent on military and defence spending, I find it hypocritical to call people who actually want to keep their earned wealth "heartless sociopaths".

One mans consumer is anothers employee.

Races to bottom only benefit the independently wealth in the long run.

A more efficient government catering to the needs of the citizens is a good thing for everybody. Only competition can ensure that.

No, increasing competition for labor is good for everybody in the long run.

It depends on whether you think competition is _always, indisputably_ good, and cooperation _always, indisputably_ inferior and/or suspicious.

Forced cooperation is always, indisputably, inferior.

'Forced' is a loaded term, I think. Strongly 'incentivized' cooperation can have lots of merits in certain cases, eg. situations derived from prisoner's dilemma.

If a 'player' wants to break out of the cooperation, he can (so this is not 'forced' stricto sensus), but there would presumably be costs from the defection--the other cooperating players might refrain from doing business with the former.

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