[gwright]

Irrespective of the the benefits and/or feasibility of competition to bring prices down, the larger problem with this ad-hoc windfall profit tax is that it is ad-hoc. This is changing the rules after the game has started.

The article reports the effort as a "surprise tax".

[ilyt]

Companies made ad-hoc profits on pretending it's the inflation and raising the prices while having rising profits. I have zero problems with ad-hoc tax on that.

Frankly I think taxing some part of revenue instead of just income on big companies would be beneficial, no more "investing" in making market harder to newcomers (or outright buying them out) and getting tax cut on that.

[Silhouette]

This is changing the rules after the game has started.

The point is that a windfall is also - by definition - a favourable change in the rules after the game has started.

The moral question here should be a simple one. Did the investors in the banks know (or at least reasonably expect) that they would make these profits when they decided to make their investment? If they didn't and they invested anyway then there's a reasonable argument for a windfall tax as long as it only claws back gains they had no reasonable expectation of making and did nothing useful to earn.

[xmonkee]

its not a “game”. Its the people of Italy legislating whats best for the people of Italy. This is what government is. You are pre-supposing a capitalist framework where private enterprise should compete with the people. You could alternatively think of private enterprises being allowed to exist at the pleasure of the people. And that is the way it should be. People are real, companies are fiction.

[gwright]

Just because it was accomplished via a "legislative process" doesn't automatically make it a good idea. Surprise laws are a bad idea in any economic system IMHO. It isn't even a "capitalist" issue.

[gwright]

And of course it isn't a "game". That is a figure of speech to make a point about fairness.