[gojomo]

Makes your furniture cheaper... and your taxes higher.

Helps big companies and the politically-connected... hurts upstarts and people who focus on business not politicking.

Makes people angry at tax distortions, not taxes themselves.

So this sort of gaming doesn't advance your hopes at all.

You'll have better luck with fair, broadly-based taxes, and structural protections against constant tinkering with both the progressivity and exceptions. Then we could have a rational discussion about the overall level of taxation, or possible replacements for taxation, without the distracting class-warfare and favor-trading sideshows that dominate tax policy in conventional shallow politics.

[va_coder]

"Helps big companies and the politically-connected"

exactly

Q: Why can't I set up my family's income as a charity? I'll give away 1% of earnings.

A: Because I can't afford lawyers, politicians and accountants to protect me when the government threatens to put me in jail.

[ebaysucks]

Please consider public choice theory.

Government won't lower taxes on the middle class if they find a way to tax the rich. They'd just increase taxes on the rich and keep on taxing the middle class as before.

Tax levels are just a product of a) how much there is to take and b) how tax inelastic the subject is.

[stinkytaco]

Public choice theory assumes that Ikea will act in a way that benefits it as an organization (and its shareholders) and fuck the rest of you. Public choice theory essentially states that everyone is a self interested actor, the difference is that I have some control over those actors if they are elected officials, and none if they are a private company. Can I vote with my wallet? Sure, but be honest with me here, how much power does that actually give you? If a chemical company is dumping waste how do I stop doing business with everyone who does business with that company?

We can't, we don't have the information or the power. Instead we elect officials that do have the information and give them the power. This applies to all situations in which I simply don't have the perspective to make the decision, including taxes. Do I think the tax system is screwed up? Sure. Do I think that eliminating it will fix the problem? Nope, but hopefully I can elect people who will fix the problem.

I don't get how people want to put more power in the hands of private organizations instead of one they at least ostensibly control.

[ebaysucks]

Government is an industry with extremely high barriers to entry (want to start a country? Win a war first) and customer lock in (don't like this country? have to leave your entire life behind).

In other words, your argument is that a monopoly in a certain service, given the power to force customers into what it wants at the price it wants, will care more about you than a private entrepreneur just because they have to keep elections once every 4 years...

The reality is that elections are just forward actions of future loot, where politicians buy votes by promising goodies to certain people at the expense of others. Laws that benefit a special interest in a huge way but cost every tax payer a dollar or 2 always pass. Democracy is divide and conquer on steroids.

You also give an example of a negative externality. That's what courts are for. All the law principles that help solve externalities efficiently (habeus corpus, compensating the victim instead of the state) were the result of free competition in common law merchant courts. Again, if the government cares so much about you, why is the murderer of your family member now doing cheap labor in prison for the state rather than for you to compensate the loss?

You know, I wish life were as easy as just coming alltogether, wishing for a better life and giving a TED talk about it. It just isn't. You need to stop looking at intentions and start looking at incentives.

[stinkytaco]

There's so much wrong with this argument I can't even think where to start. Democracy is not perfect because it's made up of people, but a system that gives people control is the best system. The democratic government in the US gives, among other things, critical access to information and regulation of self interested actors. It's the checks and balances that are important. Elected and non-elected officials, civil servants and private actors. Even if I bought your argument that the government is just some self interested autonomous agent (which I do not), we still have control, and most important information about it. That information gives us power.

A private entity does not answer to the public, not truly if there is no information. If they act in way that is unethical or undesirable, they simply hide it from the public. With no reliable information flow (forget for a moment the Internet would not exist in your governmentless world), there is no way of controlling these entities. It sounds peculiarly like feudalism.

No. The system is not perfect, but it is a system we control. It's a system that enables information exchange, money, regulation and the equitable standard of living that has ever existed in the history of the world. Not too bad.

[anamax]

> Nope, but hopefully I can elect people who will fix the problem.

How is that working out for you? Or rather, when has it worked?

[stinkytaco]

Considering the state of the US versus most of the world, my standard of living and my freedom to make these comments, pretty fucking good.

[cturner]

    Makes your furniture cheaper... and your taxes higher.

You can't produce evidence to support that. An entirely reasonable idea: the increased economic activity generated by Ikea success and happy, employed staff and nice affordable furniture more than offsets the tax revenue that would have been collected.

The flexibility that success stories have to move around and chase better taxation rates makes taxation lower for the rest of us. The barbarians in the capital know that if they make conditions too unnice, the successful people will up and leave. The rest of us are free-loaders on the desire of countries to attract those groups.

If Sweden or Europe changed things to crack down on Ikea, they could move plenty of their operation to Singapore.

    You'll have better luck with fair, broadly-based taxes

By fair, do you mean something like the same rule for everyone? Anything broader than that will move into the sort of cajoling you dislike.

[gaius]

An entirely reasonable idea: the increased economic activity generated by Ikea success

But it doesn't work like that. We, as a society, don't let individuals or organizations decide what's best. We vote in a government who (in theory) decide the rules that apply to everyone, then they tax and spend accordingly.

I know it doesn't work like that, which is why you get situations like this (or like Bono campaigning for higher government spending, while squirreling his own money away where it can't be taxed). Hell, I reckon that a better use of my taxes would be supporting the luxury goods industry which is suffering during the recession, but I don't get to cancel my income tax and spend it on champagne and caviar instead...