A plan for a fairer Europe

s7ryf3925pivug

Group led by Thomas Piketty presents plan for ‘a fairer Europe’

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/dec/09/eu-brexit-piketty-tax-google-facebook-apple-manifesto?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Copy_to_clipboard

Only skimmed over this. I thought two things as I did so. First, that some movement in this direction is needed. Second, these particular plans would really fnck Ireland.

1. Corporation tax - my reading is that this goes to the EU, not the host country. Obviously Ireland has positioned itself as the corporation tax haven of the EU.
2. Emissions tax - We signed up to reduction targets which we cheerfully ignored and celebrated getting permission to increase how many cows we have, which in itself is going to cost us a lot in the long term in penalties for the emissions attributed to them.
3. Wealth tax. Our cost of living and house prices are stupid. Being a millionaire in Ireland does not necessarily equate to being extravagantly wealthy the way it would in less expensive countries.
4. Income tax on top income - again this would disproportionately hit Irish people because of our cost of living and existing punitive income tax.

So maybe a fairer Europe is a bit of a misnomer. That said, I agree that extraordinary measures need to be taken to address the profound issues of climate change and the rise of alt right fnckwittery (and therefore immigration to which it is clearly coupled).

The problem really is that the bailout were enormously unfair, where the Irish state took over huge foreign private debts. Any talk of fairness needs to be put in the context of that.

bnt

For starters, it would require a new EU treaty to replace the European Fiscal Compact, which sets monetary policy (the single currency) but leaves fiscal policy (taxation, spending) largely up to the member states.

By proposing a single EU-wide fiscal policy, the people behind this idea are basically proposing a single EU federal government, roughly along the lines of the US Federal government. If a country controls neither its monetary policy nor its fiscal policy, it doesn't control its own economy, and therefore doesn't have control over the levers that control the country.

PS:

Guntram Wolff, director of the Bruegel thinktank, who did not sign the letter, questioned the need for a continent-wide project. “If the cross-border transfer element is only 0.1%, why do the whole thing at EU level?” he asked.

“Anything we would do at the euro-area level would mean doing something less at the national level and that is politically why it doesn’t happen,” he said, pointing to failed attempts to create pan-European national insurance schemes.

You can't separate politics from money: how to tax and spend are decisions about spending policies, which means they are political. The direction in which money flows is less important than the requirement to control that flow.