Posts by ardj 24 publicly visible posts • joined 8 Sep 2017
@David 164: Ah yes, the Russians are coming. Well, maybe you didn't quite mean that. But, leaving aside Saudi Arabia chairing the UN Human Rights Council, surely those who are with us are for the most part not against us, or something ?
@bombastic bob
Two things:
1. When people start shouting at me – capitals, asterisks &c, I generally go away until they stop. You may want to consider bombasting a bit more subtly.
2. a) You do not explain why a tax increase on gasoline /increased car reg fees was bad, so little sympathy for you railing against an unidentified scarecrow called “the left” (to which so many of your readers will belong).
b) Quite what is wrong with people not using plastic bags is unclear – seems to me that was the point of the legislation: or do you feel the carts are getting a raw deal ?
c) Why do you want to put orcas on display ?
d) You ask that we stop feeling and start thinking: physician, heal thyself ?
That’s all for now – have, what I believe you Americans call, a good one.
@DropBear: "websites with a (more or less) genuine business behind them look perfectly legitimate right up until you attempt to find ANY kind of contact information "
er, yes. Like my bank, or trying to find who to call at Dell, especially in France (I don't even have a Dell, was for a client)
@Walter Bishop - re @msknight's comment: As a fervent remain voter, I have upvoted you, because you are perfectly correct: E~U arrogance (esp, German and Juncker) and the immigrant issues had a lot to do with why people voted leave. I just think that they should not have been the overriding issues.
@Anonymous Coward
' "For the record, I was a remain voter until I heard Junker start talking " - i have yet to believe this statement
Why ?'
- because everyone knows that Junker is an incompetent lying weasel, like so many poly-ticks gents, and he is just one of the crosses we have to bear in this imperfect world, where the EU itself is thoroughly unsatisfactory, and yet about a million times better than any other grouping around.
@Peter2
I agree Hamas is disreputable to the point of being wicked. I also think that the present rulers of Israel are similar. This is not a venue for political argument, despite the difficulty of keeping politics out of anything, the more so given the topic of the present article. But you present such a one-sided view of the situation of the Palestinians, confined to just your view of Hamas, that one is inclined to think you are closed to any alternative views on anything.
@SheILuser
a) your rather discursive, not to say meandering, objections do not really stand up here, as the people criticizing Battistelli have also offered various suggestions on how the organization could work better.
b) "many involved secretly lung for" ?
@Big John: Your request is a reasonable one. I will spare you the thousands of US accountants and investment analysts who have commented on this, and the economists (who do not just include Stiglitz and Krugman): her is a reference: https://www.marketwatch.com/story/these-companies-may-enjoy-a-windfall-under-trumps-tax-plan-2017-09-29
@cirby: Part of your explanation is a bit confused - e.g. "A majority of those companies don't pay taxes because they're basically placeholders", where you seem to be including a lot of zombie companies s if they were real; and you do not seem to have a clear view of the PME structure in the US.
But I cannot understand people voting you down just on that account: are there a lot of idiots here opposed to spelling out that companies shield taxes from profits ? Because they do it themselves, perhaps ?
@JLV
It is odd to see someone decrying tax evasion and supporting the ridiculous Micron’s reforms which encourage it and reward those who practise it. Your lazy analysis of the industrial and social problems in both France and Germany is thoroughly ill-informed, but just to give two points: German wages have stagnated since the Hartz “reforms” (which did actually tackle some weaknesses in labour markets and the benefits system), and inequality has not improved, but the changes were not the reason for the economic recovery, though helping slightly to bring down unemployment and prevent excess early retirement. What brought about the change were: the change in German business style, adapting to globalization, outsourcing and building extensive supply chains, continued wage restraint cooperation between unions and management, the end of the building slump – and massive worldwide economic growth.
In France, just to give one instance: this year, INSEE showed that wage costs were not the main obstacle to employment, but lack of skilled workers. Regulations –of all kinds, not just HR ones – and economic uncertainty were the others cited, though an equal number said there were no barriers or that the question was meaningless. (Note de conjuncture, April 2017
I am not in the tech industry, so maybe you know something I don't. But the main reason I have seen for companies to move outside France is not that they are all fainéants, workshy scroungers, but the state administration morass, so that it is very hard to get a decision. And on the other hand there are quite a few successful start-ups - look at the Montpellies nexus for instance.
Agree, except that "modernize" happens to be the UK English spelling as well (it's the French who write "moderniser"). Cf. OED and Fowler(sub -ize): 'the suffix itself, whatever the element to which it is added, is in origin the Greek "-izein", Latin "izare; &, as the pronunciation is also with z, there is no reason why in English the special French spelling should be followed, in opposition to that which is at once etymological and phonetic.' (He goes on to instance some exceptions e.g. surprise, and remarks that the difficulty of remembering these is probably why there is confusion.)
As I understand it, the reason there is such support for independence now in Catalunya is that the People's Party in 2011 stopped an earlier enlargement of home rule, by petitioning the Constitutional Court to block the statue already endorsed by parliaments in Madrid and Barcelona. In other words, this who;e thing was caused by Sr Rajoy, and he has only himself to blame if he has provoked the Catalan people: it is certainly not a question of Constitutional principle, but a straightforward political argument.
I@codejunky:
Any snide reference to the Laffer curve suggests that one does not understand what it is: do read the Wikipedia article on it (which is quite good - and you will be delighted to learn that among those who have studied it, there is fairly broad agreement that a revenue maximizing tax rate might be around 70%, so some way to go yet).
As for your proposition that governments will continue to take ever more tax, you seem to be living in the fantasy world of barter that you attribute to the former USSR (yes there was some barter; no it was not universal).
Do you seriously believe that shareholders are punished by having to pay tax ?
@anonymous coward:This is an extremely muddled comment (leaving aside the grammar and spelling). There are a good many EU start-ups, the problem is not the EU but the oligopolistic behaviour of the your beloved AWS et al, who suppress competition - as you indicate with Skype.
And why are you against taxing foreign companies ?
This is not up to your usual standarrd
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