This Friday, there is a an important OECD meeting to debate the global minimum corporate tax rate.
These are the stakes for Ireland:
Countries like the US want *at least* 15% global corporate tax.
A few months back, 130 countries reached an early agreement. A handful of others didn't join. At their head was Ireland. Why?
The richest (GDP per capita) country in Europe is *Ireland*. Richer than Germany, richer than Luxembourg, richer than Switzerland.
At 117% of US GDP per capita, Ireland is a whopping 31 percentage points richer than the next big European country, Netherlands, at 86% of US GDPpc
The only countries that are richer than the US per capita are Luxembourg and Switzerland. Not precisely known for their amazing design and manufacturing. They win because of taxes.
So what would happen if Ireland loses its edge?
It's not like Ireland was historically the most productive land in the world...
Attracting so many tech firms over the last 20 years surely improved its tech sector but... Do they really think they've become so productive that, without the tax rate advantage, they will retain this GDP per capita?
Or might it go down to the level of tech-savvy Sweden?
That would be a loss of 30% of Irish GDP...
Ireland doesn't only rely on their corporate tax rate of 12.5%. And raising the global minimum to 15% will not completely end Ireland's edge, so it won't lose 30% of its GDP. But it will surely go down.
The question is: how much GDP would Ireland lose with this corporate tax reduction?
Does their government know?
Is that analysis public?
Do the Irish people know?
Is it worth caving to the international pressure to avoid that GDP / capita reduction?
To be clear, I'm not advocating anything. I'm not saying Ireland or the rest of the world should do one thing or the other. I'm just highlighting the game theory of the stakes. The US needs Ireland because Ireland has veto power of an EU ratification.
Will they cave in?
Maybe Ireland doesn't care as much because most of that wealth has remained in the pockets of those who were attracted to Ireland because of taxes in the 1st place?
Either way, we will know more this Friday
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The end of nation-states is coming.
Internet and Blockchain will bankrupt them, by distributing its power to individuals, corporations, supra-national entities, and distributed organizations.
Just at the moment when they need more $ than ever
Thread 🧵
Picture this:
Why? 1. Individuals have + power.
They can access all the info in the world, and reach everybody in the world. The only thing they need is good, catchy ideas.
A single person, Satoshi Nakamoto changed the world with a pseudonym with their Bitcoin paper.
The geography of Egypt is bonkers 🇪🇬🌍
Look at that image of the Middle-East by night. See that "flower" in the middle? That is the Nile.
Egypt has 105 MILLION ppl!
99% of them live in that light area!
That's 3% of its territory!
What else is crazy about Egypt's geography?
🧵
The Nile's banks are between 0.5km and 20km wide (~0.3 to 12 miles). 105M ppl live in that area plus the delta. Crazy. They do that because it's fertile AF
What's outside though? Nothing.
In the west, there's nothing for thousands of miles. There's so much nothing that in 5000 years of history, Egypt has NEVER been successfully invaded from here.
“The future is already here. It’s just not evenly distributed.”—William Gibson @GreatDismal
The future is already in the brain of the 200 million cryptocurrency holders. They can be better understood as a country, as an alternative community to nation-states.
A nation-state citizen doesn’t question the sovereignty of the gov
Doesn’t question the validity of its currency
Doesn’t fathom a world without the TVs and radio stations and notary-publics and certification organisms that make the nation-state what it is.
They wrap their heads around 20th-century country flags.
They can’t fathom the end of the nation-state, just as 1500s-era Europeans couldn’t fathom the end of the omnipotent Catholic Church.
The emergence of cryptocurrencies reminds me of the emergence of writing and currencies. These are obvious to us now, but they were weird to their contemporaries.
Let's have a look 🧵
The parallel with fiat currencies is better known, so let's start with it.
Early on, ppl bartered. Inconvenient.
So they started using some currency.
First, it was something scarce, easy to value and to divide into smaller pieces (=fungible), and with some intrinsic value. Eg, salt (thus "salary")
If you catch COVID, the risk of developing COVID Chronic Fatigue Syndrome are 3,000x higher than those of suffering a bad vaccine side-effect. That illness can leave you out of work and energy for the rest of your life.
The most long-lasting part of Long COVID is likely Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, which so far has no cure and can last decades.
Your likelihood of catching it from COVID is ~2-3%, and it's worse for young ppl than old ppl
Long COVID is confusing until we realize its most alarming outcome is *Chronic Fatigue Syndrome* (CFS).
What does CFS look like?
Is it like Long COVID? 🧵
This is a person with CFS. At 24, she had spent nearly a decade without putting her feet on the ground.
This is @jenbrea suffering from post-exertional malaise, from her documentary Unrest, which you can watch on Netflix (the 3 clips come from the documentary)
This is Whitney, who hasn't talked for years. His father:
“Whitney’s state is comparable to an AIDS patient about a week before his death. And that has been the case for the last six years.”