Those libertarians he references are strawmen.
This maps well to his addressing those "strawmen" libertarians. Most libertarian rhetoric builds on the fact that people have been made suspicious of government and are suggested to think of government as "the other". Likewise, you seem to try to force his argument on its head - Nobody argues whether government should exist and you suggesting it makes me wonder how closely you've read the post.
"The Government" is the subgroup of society who have been elected by the rest of society to invest part of societies resources to the advantage to everybody. The basic math being that society will be better off having spent the money in that way than had it kept the money. Whether or not you agree that that is happening, that is the basic plan.
Tims post simply says: If we want to be a society, that comes at a cost and somebody has to pick up the tab at the end of the night and the system to make that happen is called taxation.
Claiming that this in itself "fallacious argument" because you actually know what his argument is seems ambitious, but I simply have no idea where you take that from. Let's argue the reverse: Since you don't seem to disagree that a government in itself is a good concept, who do you think should pay the price for it?
Google 2.4% Rate Shows How $60 Billion Lost to Tax Loopholes
Google Inc. cut its taxes by $3.1 billion in the last three years using a technique that moves most of its foreign profits through Ireland and the Netherlands to Bermuda.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-10-21/google-2-4-rate-sho...
Your own summary simply repeats the fallacy. That someone must pick up the tab does not imply that the tab must be larger than it is today, or that the tab must be paid for by this particular chunk of money. It does not follow. It is not a logical argument.
It isn't even about libertarianism. It doesn't even rise to the level of an argument against libertarianism, because it isn't well-formed enough to even be called a proper argument. "We need a thing" and "We need more of a thing" are two completely different arguments, and you shouldn't allow one argument to be substituted for another without noticing.
You're doing your own argument a disservice by trying to modify the position of your opponent. That's not how discussions work.
The position that Tim (and I) argue is simple: There is X amount of money that it costs to run society. While, yes, we constantly have to figure out what that amount is, there is no question that it should be paid by everybody in that society. And that the stronger players (who both benefit most from a well funded society and who have the most to give) should be decent enough to step in appropriately.
Obviously I'm not a big corporation and obviously we're talking about tax loopholes here, not paying extra taxes on top of what you owe.
Concretely, how do you propose Apple calculate how much tax they owe if "the amount the law requires" is not the correct amount?
They are dodging tax laws using technical loopholes, not complying with the spirit of the tax laws. Stop being an apologist.
But ultimately the issue is you painting them as innocents in this, 'they're not mind-readers', when the main article suggests that they were actually aggressive pioneers in finding ways to dodge the spirit of tax laws.
I heard Germans and Belgians are "more decent" than Americans. ;)
Who's more "decent"?
The company that pays taxes, pays dividends to shareholders (pension/retirement funds, universities, charities,etc.), created 500,000 jobs in the US (which in turn pays income tax), spends billions in R&D, donates to charities, etc.
or
The big government with massive deficit that overspends on useless government programs, wars, etc..?
But I don't think getting into a pissing match about who is or isn't decent and extending this so far that the conversation breaks ("And squirrels! Are they decent!?") does any good.
If there is a corporation that has most of its business in your country but plays tricks to be taxed in another, that's a problem, plain and simple. Whether or not they have other good qualities adds nothing to the discussion.
Also - I thought the trickle-down "but they create jobs!" argument was thoroughly debunked by now?
That's $30,000 per adult, per year, in taxes (local+state+federal). The equation: government == society, is false. Some governments are effective and efficient, some are not; some work for the people, some work against the people, and in varying degrees.
We take as much money out of the economy through all forms of taxation as nations such as Germany, but we don't have the results to show for it that they do. They have better roads, better healthcare, better infrastructure overall, and better education.
What I don't like about these discussions, particularly when they are driven by US citizens, is the amount of proud apathy or downright confused resignation that is displayed. Surely a couple of corporations have spent a proper buck to make that happen - Confuse people so thoroughly that they start questioning whether this whole democracy and society-thing is worth it to begin with.
In 1978 Congress for once did the sensible thing and slashed capital gains taxes: This resulted in the supply of venture capital exploding. By the start of 1979 a massive commitment to venture capital funds had taken place, rising from a pathetic $39 million in 1977 to a staggering $570 million at the end of 1978. Tax collections on long-term capital gains, despite the dire predictions of Keynesian big-spending critics of tax cuts, leapt from $8.5 billion in 1978 to $10.6 billion in 1979, $16.5 billion in 1983, and $23.7 billion in 1985. By 1981 venture capital outlays had soared to $1.4 billion, and the total amount of venture capital had risen to $5.8 billion. In 1981 the maximum tax rate on long-term capital gains was cut to 20 percent. This resulted in the venture capital pool surging to $11.5 billion. Astonishingly enough—to conventional economists, that is—venture capital outlays rose to $1.8 billion in the midst of the 1982 depression. This was about 400 percent more than had been out-laid during the 1970s slump. In 1983 these outlays rose to nearly $3 billion....In 1982 the U.S. General Accounting Office sampled 72 companies that had been launched with venture capital since the 1978 capital-gains tax cut. The results were startling. Starting with $209 million dollars in funds, these companies had paid $350 million in federal taxes, generated $900 million in export income, and directly created 135,000 jobs.
Look, I'm not saying that the US is not wonderful - but there are a couple of areas where it just isn't wonderful at all.
I have no idea why you quote that text related to the Laffer Curve [2] (please learn to cite your sources). After all, it seems that Germany has adopted some of its principles [3] and numbers like that do not happen in a vaccuum as the text seems to suggest. But there is still nobody in this thread arguing for excessive or unreasonable taxation. It is still about companies being asked to pay their fair share.
That being said, I don't believe in money as much as I believe in human progress and quoting numbers like that isn't really helping - the social situation in the US and the impact that your "strong" corporate culture has on the world are areas that speak a much clearer language.
There are perfectly reasonable arguments why the US is the worst place to start a company in (Immigration Policy and Software Patents would be on the top of my list), but at 300m people compared to our 80m at a similar HDI, I just don't think that the two countries are that comparable. You won the war and it took us 40 years to reunite our own country, for crying out loud!
Everybody has their own set of challenges. It would be incredibly arrogant to respond to another person trying to suggest lessons that they have learned simply by parroting their challenges or solutions that simply don't follow the discussion. Then again, you start out by asking me how I like you being the center of the universe. Well - I like to understand myself as a citizen of the world and find little use in pissing matches.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nomin... [2] http://brookesnews.com/072409laffercurve.html [3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laffer_curve#Outside_the_United...
then our discussion is over.