[toyg]

Jeebus Chrysler, VAT is the most regressive tax ever invented, please do not even mention it as a solution to anything. It's a flat (!) tax on non-avoidable consumption that is fundamentally unrelated to real wealth; it doesn't touch capital activity or in-activity, which means that rich people (whose wealth is sheltered as business capital on paper) simply don't pay it. It was a terrible gimmick invented by European governments to raise taxes on low-income individuals without telling them.

I hate to say this, but the only solution I can see to rise of worldwide corporations is... worldwide government, exactly like the answer to the rise of "national companies" in the XIX century was the creation of national governments of similar size. We can discuss about implementation details (the current arrangements -- going through WTO, WMF, UN etc -- are ineffective, opaque and/or fundamentally corrupt), but I don't see how else we could ever get out of this mess.