Between travelling, household things to do and taking care of the kids while my wife had some professional fairs to attend, I have been struggling a bit over the past weeks to find time to write, but as I still collected some topics from various news sources, I thought it would be best to simply give you a little compilation of my thoughts on them… here goes (split in three posts):
Over three million unemployed in France:
This hit the news end of September and basically every media would relay the present governments’s view that the real problem is…. yes, of course, you guessed it right: it is the previous government’s actions and incompetence that caused it all. Not one comment about the reality of economic trends and the likelihood that the future figures will get worse…
Interestingly, the political system of having one side in power and the other in the “opposition” triggers this systemic reaction. Facts do not count, whatever the ones in power do or say, the opposition criticizes, contradicts and blames…. A bit like Obama explaining that would he say “the sky is blue, they (the Republicans) say it isn’t”, etc….
I have always thought that the Swiss set-up of sharing the executive positions of power between the various parties was the best, or less bad (the repartition of seats is nick-named “The Magic Formula”). Of course, it is a bit slow, however forces the politicians and law-makers to sit down, agree on facts, solutions and come up with what is best for… the citizens they represent. Which is exactly why they were elected in the first place and what democracy is supposed to be.
François Hollande’s tax of 75% for incomes above EURO 1 million a year:
Was wondering what real impact this would have. Clearly, a very demagogic decision that will please many and piss-off only a few. Well, I googled it up and it appears that even the government does not know how many households this would apply to, but they did have an estimate of how much this will bring in as additional fiscal income and that is between 200 and 250 million EUROs. As the French average annual deficit over 2010-2011 is EURO 127 billion, this will help and plug the deficit for 0.73 days, or 17 hours.
Did I say demagogic? Plain silly might describe it better…..
Have a great weekend!
Simon Q.
Well why taxes have to be imposed? Rich people and big corporates will always pay as much taxes as they want. Whatever tax rules will be. Why we underestimate responsibility of corporates and rich people and do not allow state to negotiate tax contribution from their success? And make it public – at least for corporates. It will be part of corporate social responsibility.
Imposed taxes are punishment for success and the market as balancing place will clearly give reward to “good government” and punish “bad government”…and to make the country we govern good place to live is the ambition of each enlightened state…
Naive? – Maybe less that current tax systems…
Good one, never thought of that! The level of taxes you pay as a CSR tool? Excellent! I tend to just say that taxing corpoprations is in fact what encourages job creation and not the opposite, in spite of the latter being hammered into everyone’s mind by the…. corporations’ lobbyists!
In addition run a tax rate at 50% on all profits done in a given territory and you have solved a very large part if not all of the budgetary deficits… and I mean by determining the taxable profit on where it is made “physically” and not “fiscally”, as that is another game all are playing these days… cf. the Amazone vs Her Majesty’s Tax Revenue Service 😉 and idem for Google, eBay and many many others….
Have a nice day!
Simon Q.