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Comment by vegancap | Hacker News Reader

I'd rather see profits in the workers pockets than the UK government's coffers. If we keep ramping up taxes on large corporations, they're just going to move abroad.

Take Starbucks for example, they're not even turning over a profit in the UK... yet they created thousands and thousands of jobs.

We'll keep ramping up taxes, they'll close down stores, move abroad and then wonder why youth unemployment keeps rising.

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Genuine question: Is there any evidence that Starbucks 'created' more jobs than it 'destroyed' through competition? I.e. It's not as if there weren't thousands of people working for coffee/tea shops before Starbucks came along.

I'd argue they brought coffee culture more to the British high-street. Coffee shops were few and far between and the demand was fairly low say 10 years ago.

This also coincides with a lot of pub closures due to certain government regulations and increased taxes on alcohol.

I get the impression there were simply a lot fewer coffee/tea shops (a greater proportion of high street space was taken up by now-bankrupt retail, Woolworths and HMV and Borders). And the quality of the coffee was certainly worse.

I find it rather amusing that you think the profits will end up in the worker's pockets: http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/11/08/with-41-of-g...

There is no reason for a company like Starbucks to move its retail locations to avoid taxes. They might move other facilities such as corporate offices or manufacturing, but the stores themselves are either profitable or not and it can only serve the local area anyway. They can't sell cappuccinos to London commuters from a store in the Netherlands. They only leave if they can't make money at all. Although taxes may dissuade them from expanding, if the capital can have better return elsewhere.

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