[rayiner]

That creates a really significant free-rider problem. In your hypothetical, companies have a strong incentive to start in countries that have strong infrastructure and services (safety nets to reduce risk for founders and early employees, higher-education to ensure a supply of educated workers, etc), then move to a low-tax jurisdiction once they are successful.

Imagine if investors in startups couldn't take equity, but were limited to taking a percentage of current profits. That would create a huge disincentive to be an early-stage investor, and a huge incentive to be an investor that could come in with the cheapest rates at the last round of investment for a company that already had established growth and revenues.

In the alternate, consider the hypothetical of tax rate auctions at the time of birth. I.e. what tax rate would people bid in order to be born and try to become successful in the U.S. instead of somewhere else?

[yummyfajitas]

It doesn't create much of a free rider problem at all, actually. Most tax money is spent on wealth transfers to old people (and non-workers to a lesser extent) and the DoD. These are not particularly useful for startups.

If a company headquartered in Singapore makes use of US labor (and implicitly our effective, but extremely overpriced schools), it pays a fair rate of taxation on it. It simply doesn't have to pay taxes to the US on profits from selling goods manufactured in the Philippines to citizens of Japan.

That's ultimately the reason for moving corporate registration overseas, and that's the reason my next corporation will probably be headquartered in Singapore. Global taxation is insane; it's taxing US corporations for services that other governments have already provided and taxed them for.

[rayiner]

If you had to roll the cosmic dice again, would you rather be born in Singapore or the United States?

[yummyfajitas]

The US is obviously a better place to grow up, since I avoided 2 years of slavery and the risk of execution for selling drugs. I also don't like malls very much and I'm vegetarian, so obviously Singapore won't be my favorite place to live.

What do these (non-economic benefits) have to do with efficient corporate tax rates or your claims about freeloading?

[rayiner]

The value of growing up in the U.S. (or starting a business here) isn't measured by the economic value of services you receive directly. Most of the value is in the social order cultivated by the country's people and institutions. Even things like liberal social attitudes create value--you likely couldn't have started Facebook in a country that expects half the population to veil their faces. Forget about Tindr.

Indeed, even those wealth transfers to old people create economic value. Those wealth transfers still exist in countries without Social Security--they just happen "off the books" through familial relationships. And that has a lot of downside. The burden of caring for elderly parents disincentivizes young people from taking career risks and limits geographic mobility. Not to mention: try creating Tindr in a society where everyone lives with their elderly parents.

Being born in the U.S. (or Germany or a handful of other countries), has an enormous impact on your lifetime income, keeping everything else constant. That has intrinsic value.

Creating social order costs money. Benefiting from that social order up through the point you're successful, then taking that success--which society has invested in--to the lowest bidder tax jurisdiction is freeloading. That's why I presented the hypothetical about people bidding on tax rates at birth. Choice is fine and competition between countries is fine, but letting people and capital move freely after they've found out how everything turns out does not incentivize countries to create the conditions that maximize prosperity and opportunity. It incentivizes countries to poach successful people (and companies) from other places, after another country has put in the initial investment and taken the initial risk.

[yummyfajitas]

There is so much wrong with this comment that I don't even know where to start.

First, most of the benefits you describe (e.g., ample vegetarian food in NYC, very little in Singapore) are not paid for with taxes or provided by the government. The fact that the US govt happens to be the strongest bandit in a region where hookups are easy is not a justification for giving them profits earned by manufacturing goods in Bangladesh and selling them in Malaysia.

Second, if growing up/being born under the US/German social order were actually important, then there is a very easy way to measure it. Take people born outside this order but give them permission to work in global markets and compare their income to natives. Indian and Chinese immigrants tend to outperform Americans, which pretty much solidly refutes this claim.

Third, you seem to be conflating the purchase of services with equity investments. All your critiques of freeloading should apply equally if I build V1 of my software on AWS but switch to Softlayer for V2.

[rayiner]

> The fact that the US govt happens to be the strongest bandit in a region where hookups are easy

The U.S. government, and the American public on behalf of who it spends tax money, did not just come along and take over an existing liberal productive society. It created that society. That society wouldn't exist without it.

> Second, if growing up/being born under the US/German social order were actually important, then there is a very easy way to measure it. Take people born outside this order but give them permission to work in global markets and compare their income to natives. Indian and Chinese immigrants tend to outperform Americans, which pretty much solidly refutes this claim.

The U.S. immigration system, by design, is very selective about which Indians and Chinese it allows to emigrate. Their performance says nothing about the value of growing up in the U.S. Besides that, your argument proves the opposite of your intended point. If there is no value to the U.S. besides the economic value of the government services people receive, why would the best and brightest from India and China struggle to come here to start their careers? Is it because of our fantastic public transit?

> Third, you seem to be conflating the purchase of services with equity investments. All your critiques of freeloading should apply equally if I build V1 of my software on AWS but switch to Softlayer for V2.

Amazon will charge you $X for AWS whether or not your product ever generates any revenue. The U.S. government's investment into education, infrastructure, and the social safety net will be there for you whether or not you succeed. It's much more like an equity investment than a simple exchange of services for money.

[meanduck]

(Not OP)

> In your hypothetical, companies have a strong incentive to start in countries that have strong infrastructure and services (safety nets to reduce risk for founders and early employees, higher-education to ensure a supply of educated workers, etc), then move to a low-tax jurisdiction once they are successful.

In this hypothetical, governement will know that a company will migrate away once it find a better one. This will be reflected in how gov't will charge. It will probably mean the end to "% of income" based taxes instead fixed taxes.

Think of government as a corporation providing some services because that what it will be once movement and /citizenship/ becomes easy. The people who stay (i.e. actual citizens) will play the role of shareholders and (hopefully) will be more critical of their goverment.

[austerity]

While that's true, holding everyone by force is the most primitive and inefficient (in terms of common good) solution I can think of. For example, the safety net is in fact an early stage investment so it would be logical if the government providing the safety net would take equity in exchange. In fact that's one of the reasons why safety nets aren't such a good idea. The government essentially becomes an angel fund that funds every single idea no matter how dumb. Can't imagine this bringing about an optimal outcome.