Muchos "libertarios" en mi TL diciendo idioteces sobre impuestos y sobre Irlanda. Vamos a aclarar algunas cosas básicas
1. Los impuestos no son un robo. La riqueza que tienen los "libertarios" depende de la existencia de un sistema que reconoce y defiende la propiedad y la libertad: policía, jueces, ejército. Sin ellos, somos bandas de monos robando y siendo robados
2. El valor de tu casa no lo debe a tu increíble trabajo y a tu inteligencia. Lo debe al ayuntamiento que ha construido una calle para llegar y la mantiene limpia y segura, a que otros ciudadanos han decidido vivir allí porque el país prospera.
3. Nada es gratis. Las cosas que necesitan nuestros países para prosperar, las calles seguras, el aire limpio, no se pueden generar por el mercado. Sin bienes públicos en sentido estricto, ni se puede excluir a nadie de su uso, ni se agotan cuando otros los usan.
4. Luego los impuestos son necesarios. El nivel, por supuesto, es debatible. Es notorio que a mí me parece que hay mucho desperdicio en las administraciones y que, en particular, sobra un nivel (diputaciones). Pero hacen falta. Y las leyes al respecto deben cumplirse
5. Si estamos de acuerdo en que son necesarios, debemos estar de acuerdo en que no podemos permitir que haya países que se dedican a desviar la recaudación fiscal de otros países hacia ellos para permitir que haya personas o empresas que evadan sus obligaciones
6. Por ejemplo: en Irlanda se paga si se tiene a los administradores de una empresa. En EEUU de paga si hay residencia fiscal. Moraleja: basemos la empresa en Irlanda,dejemos a los ejecutivos en EEUU, y no pagamos en ningún sitio
7. Escribo sobre este tipo de comportamientos en "El dilema de España", con ejemplos concretos y referencias. Ayer puse nuevos datos del economista que mejor conoce el tema que apuntan en la misma dirección
8. Los eslóganes chorras y mal informados, con apoyo de economistas que deberían saber de lo que hablan contribuyen poco al debate. No, Irlanda no tiene un enorme GDP. Irlanda usa el GNI porque su GDP es un sinsentido precisamente por esta razón en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modified_…
9. Y no, no es "de Podemos" el pedir que personas y empresas cumplan sus obligaciones sin que haya países que les ayuden a evitarlo. Lo liberal es en el imperio de la ley "no taxation without representation", no "no taxation". Menores impuestos, pero no qué la gente haga trampas
Explicación de @EnriqueFeas del double Irish y demás ingeniería financiera. No, No consiste en tipos bajos. Consiste en múltiples falsedades contables permitidas por esos paraísos para evadir la imposición. Vía @frdelatorreamp.vozpopuli.com/opinion/parais…
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Europe had an effective tool for climate action: the Emissions Trading System (ETS). Instead of expanding this market-based solution, we've built a byzantine regulatory framework that goes far beyond emissions reduction.
THREAD on my post today on the "Compliance Doom Loop"
1/10
Costs are staggering: Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) requires 42,000 companies report 1,052 data points (783 mandatory). Cost: €150K-1M per company annually.
CSRD compliance costs of 12.5% of investment of mid sized firms (EIB).
Danish firms face 63% more regulations in 2023 vs 2001. Chemical industry SME compliance costs nearly doubled: €332.5K (2014) to €577K (2023). Add GDPR: €500K-10M more. 3/
Wake-up Europe! Enough of the de-growth agenda!
There is no strategic autonomy while we spend our every waking hour erecting barriers to growth!
THREAD on the post today in Silicon Continent by @pietergaricano.
1/8
Today's Trump victory makes Europe's strategic autonomy urgent. But Europe has lived beyond its means through "luxury rules" - virtuous but growth-hurting policies that were only possible due to US protection and innovation. 2/ siliconcontinent.com/p/the-end-of-l…
Luxury rules are laws that make our privileged societies feel good but harm competitiveness. Like Germany closing nuclear plants in 2011, increasing reliance on imported gas, or the EU's GDPR hurting tech innovation.
3/
The EU AI Act seems designed to allow AI only for routine tasks while hindering its use in high-level problem-solving.
This will endanger European AI startups and significantly damage EU productivity.
THREAD on our post today in Silicon Continent. 1/9
An AI bank teller in the EU would need two humans to oversee it. A startup building an AI tutor faces countless hurdles before launching. The is the reality under the EU AI Act—a well-meaning but flawed attempt to regulate AI. 2/ siliconcontinent.com/p/the-strange-…
The Act classifies AI systems by risk: unacceptable, high, limited, and minimal. Unacceptable systems, like social scoring or workplace emotion recognition, are banned.
Fines can reach €15 million or 3% of global revenue.
3/
We keep hearing how solving Europe’s innovation stagnation requires more public spending. But the numbers show otherwise: the EU falls behind in private R&D investment, not public.
A thread based on this week’s blog.
1/10 siliconcontinent.com/p/the-problem-…
As a share of GDP, Europe spends 0.74% on public sector R&D, compared to the U.S. 0.69%.
The actual R&D gap is in private sector spending, where Europe spends 1.3% of GDP compared to the United States' 2.4%!
That gap is worth 341 billion in R&D spending in 2021. /2
Take the story of DeepMind. It is a contemporary of EU's AI flagship, the Human Brain Project, launched in 2013 with €600M in public funding, aimed to simulate a human brain in 10 years. It's now widely regarded as a failure, while DeepMind leads in AI. /3
New data shows that the EU Commission has blown the chance the NextGen gave it to get the EU on a growth path. Two key elements. 1. Pensions in Spain. 2. Reforms in italy.
The new data is from the ageing report of the EU Commission on the budgetary impact of the pension "reforms"- more below
( h/t @rdomenechv @fernandosols with official data from the Spanish government.)
The EU NextGen plans gave an unprecedented and powerful stick to the EU Commission to demand reforms and investments in exchange of money. Never has the Commission had the chance to get states to get some reforms going.
In Spain, the EU Commission has been complicit (in spite of numerous warnings) in setting Spain on an unsustainable Fiscal path
(2/7)
Under cover (!!!) of the "reforms" required by the European NextGen plan, the Spanish government abrogated the 2012 reforms of pensions (the single reform done by the Rajoy government), based on an automatic adjustment mechanism, without putting anything else meaningful in place.
The cost is 3.3 points of GDP higher than before the reform.
Some reactions to the (wonderful) Levitt interview. 1) On the @uchicago PhD program and the atmosphere in the department in the 90s (toxic?). 2) On Price Theory and its future at @uchicago and beyond. 3) On the "technification" of economics and the blurring of the "theory-empirics" boundaries.
(link to interview: )
(Thread)
1/npodcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ste…
1) On the Econ PhD Program. I went in 1992, graduated in 1998. I did not feel the ambiance was toxic. It was tough work, almost brutal, not toxic. I was given a chance I would not have gotten elsewhere. There was nothing personal about the standards. We were getting trained by the best and that was intellectually invaluable -we got the chance of a lifetime. Here are some profs of my first two years (note 5 nobels):
Macro: Sargent, Lucas, Cochrane, Woodford, Stokey, Townsend.
Micro: Becker, Rosen, Murphy, Scheinkman
Metrics: Hansen, Heckman, Zellner.
It was extremely hard, by far the hardest thing I have ever done. But it should be hard. They were trying to put a bunch of kids at the frontier of knowledge.
It was not for everyone, but we knew what we were getting into. My admired supervisor, Sherwin Rosen, then department chair, gave us a "superstar" (he wrote THE paper after all) talk on the first day. He told us half of us would fail in the first year Core (and exit with an MA, is that so bad?), half of the rest would not make the prelims. Of the 50 we were there, maybe 10 would finish the PhD, most of those would never get any citation.
And yet we persisted. We wanted to learn, and were grateful for the hance.
2/n
2) On Price Theory. What is the Chicago Price Theory style? Best thing I can recommend is to experience it yourself by listening to the playlist of Kevin Murphy's classes. . He is an amazing teacher, and makes economics come alive.
Is it true as Levitt says, quoting Mulligan to Friedman, that this style of Micro lost in the market place of ideas?
3/nyoutube.com/@chicagopricet…