All you free marketeers on here...do you think there is any level of profit-taking from the economy that is 'too much'? If so, is £32.2bn too much? If so, what should be done about it?
FWIW, I recognise the risks of stepping in to regulate this further. But I also see the risks and distortion effects of profits this size, particularly in the way it funnels money from the economy as a whole into the pockets of a smaller group of richer individuals, who are then able to distort markets such as the housing market in London, because of their excess wealth.
Yes, I know institutional investors, pension funds etc are a thing and profits like this can be good for them, and I'm not dismissing that angle, I just don't think it's the whole story.
Is it from "The Economy" that is subject to tax in the UK? Or is it a worldwide number?
I note that the Guardian does not tell us, nor do they explain how much tax is paid already.
I'd say they are trying to maintain the outrage, complete with rantaquotes from Ed Davey and Greenpeace.
Sorry, but I'd say that is the permatrolling type of commentary, as when for example Professor Murphy was frothing away years ago about how banks were avoiding tax, when the profit had been absorbed by losses from previous years.
Thanks for the reply. Are you saying, then, that any amount of profit is acceptable if appropriate taxes are paid? That's my question really, not a question about the quality of the Guardian's reporting.
In my view there is a (pretty high) limit to levels of acceptable profit, not least because profits of that size suggest a market that is captured in an unhealthy way. I think this might be an example of that limit being breached, regardless of where the profit has been garnered globally.
OK, so let's agree that the quality of Guardian news reporting is atrocious .
I think the identification of profits to which taxes can be applied is perhaps a missing element of any debate, as this is an outrage bus.
I think part of the context wrt Shell is that UK profits are already taxed at a high rate. The last number I saw was quite a bit higher than normal Corp. Tax due to an increased tax for oil companies, and then a windfall tax on top of that.
I can see the argument for a tax on windfall gains unrelated to the basic business operation - by analogy we give support to eg Renewables to prime the pump. But it needs to be very careful indeed - if we want to limit profit margins then what do we do with eg perfume companies, or software companies?
On your first paragraph, there are other media companies that I'd want to pick off first
I see the validity of your overall argument.
Okay, a thought experiment (I know there will be problems with this, I am interested in what they are): Rather than having a percentage tax rate on corporate profits, imagine a world in which any single company could make a maximum of, say, £1bn in profit each year.
Ignoring the impossibility of implementing such a scheme, would it fundamentally break the capitalist system, or would it simply reduce big companies' desires to take productive risks?
So take for example IPhones, say on a 1000£ phone they make 10£ profit . They have to stop selling IPhones onces sales reach 1 million and say sorry we aren't allowed to make more than a billion profit this year, maybe you will get to be one of the lucky million customers next year?
Can't see that working somehow
Do you not think that we might get more useful innovation (rather than having sixteen different camera lenses and a 1/2 mm thinner device) if the smartphone market was less captured by Apple?
Not particularly dissing iphones - they have their strengths - but I suspect the iphone would be even better if it had more competitors, which it would do if Apple only made a million of them a year.
Apple have plenty of competitors as it is, it is not like we are short of companies that make phones. The only effect your cap on profits would have is to make any company in a market have to stop selling their product in the event it became to popular.
Personally if buying a product I want to buy one that suits my needs. If the ones that suits my needs aren't available because they have had to stop selling for the year then how does that help me?
Another example then...last company I worked at made software used in hospitals. If we came up with a new whizzo feature that made a hospital 5% more efficient on deployment that none of our competitors had thought of should we in your mind have said to hospitals clamouring to buy "sorry you will have to wait a year we reached our profit cap"
COVID vaccine - "Sorry, we've made a million doses. No more this year."
Since Mike gave me the tip I have never looked back from Xiaomi.
£170 for the three-below-flagship model which is perfect for me.
The Chinese government thank you for your data....
At a communal workshop I was invoked with, a cheap Chinese laser cutter was bought.
It a turned out to have code in the control software that sent the DXF design files given to it, to an IP address in China. Disabling this, by blocking it, locked up the machine.
It is still merrily working away - a few code changes later. It is sending a movie someone downloaded from the internet, each frame turned into a DXF design, frame by frame.
All you free marketeers on here...do you think there is any level of profit-taking from the economy that is 'too much'? If so, is £32.2bn too much? If so, what should be done about it?
FWIW, I recognise the risks of stepping in to regulate this further. But I also see the risks and distortion effects of profits this size, particularly in the way it funnels money from the economy as a whole into the pockets of a smaller group of richer individuals, who are then able to distort markets such as the housing market in London, because of their excess wealth.
Yes, I know institutional investors, pension funds etc are a thing and profits like this can be good for them, and I'm not dismissing that angle, I just don't think it's the whole story.
Is it from "The Economy" that is subject to tax in the UK? Or is it a worldwide number?
I note that the Guardian does not tell us, nor do they explain how much tax is paid already.
I'd say they are trying to maintain the outrage, complete with rantaquotes from Ed Davey and Greenpeace.
Sorry, but I'd say that is the permatrolling type of commentary, as when for example Professor Murphy was frothing away years ago about how banks were avoiding tax, when the profit had been absorbed by losses from previous years.
Thanks for the reply. Are you saying, then, that any amount of profit is acceptable if appropriate taxes are paid? That's my question really, not a question about the quality of the Guardian's reporting.
In my view there is a (pretty high) limit to levels of acceptable profit, not least because profits of that size suggest a market that is captured in an unhealthy way. I think this might be an example of that limit being breached, regardless of where the profit has been garnered globally.
OK, so let's agree that the quality of Guardian news reporting is atrocious .
I think the identification of profits to which taxes can be applied is perhaps a missing element of any debate, as this is an outrage bus.
I think part of the context wrt Shell is that UK profits are already taxed at a high rate. The last number I saw was quite a bit higher than normal Corp. Tax due to an increased tax for oil companies, and then a windfall tax on top of that.
I can see the argument for a tax on windfall gains unrelated to the basic business operation - by analogy we give support to eg Renewables to prime the pump. But it needs to be very careful indeed - if we want to limit profit margins then what do we do with eg perfume companies, or software companies?
On your first paragraph, there are other media companies that I'd want to pick off first
I see the validity of your overall argument.
Okay, a thought experiment (I know there will be problems with this, I am interested in what they are): Rather than having a percentage tax rate on corporate profits, imagine a world in which any single company could make a maximum of, say, £1bn in profit each year.
Ignoring the impossibility of implementing such a scheme, would it fundamentally break the capitalist system, or would it simply reduce big companies' desires to take productive risks?
So take for example IPhones, say on a 1000£ phone they make 10£ profit . They have to stop selling IPhones onces sales reach 1 million and say sorry we aren't allowed to make more than a billion profit this year, maybe you will get to be one of the lucky million customers next year?
Can't see that working somehow
Do you not think that we might get more useful innovation (rather than having sixteen different camera lenses and a 1/2 mm thinner device) if the smartphone market was less captured by Apple?
Not particularly dissing iphones - they have their strengths - but I suspect the iphone would be even better if it had more competitors, which it would do if Apple only made a million of them a year.
Apple have plenty of competitors as it is, it is not like we are short of companies that make phones. The only effect your cap on profits would have is to make any company in a market have to stop selling their product in the event it became to popular.
Personally if buying a product I want to buy one that suits my needs. If the ones that suits my needs aren't available because they have had to stop selling for the year then how does that help me?
Another example then...last company I worked at made software used in hospitals. If we came up with a new whizzo feature that made a hospital 5% more efficient on deployment that none of our competitors had thought of should we in your mind have said to hospitals clamouring to buy "sorry you will have to wait a year we reached our profit cap"
Fair point in the first paragraph. But I think that and your second para rely on an underlying assumption I'd dispute, that the most important aspect of the transaction is that the consumer receives the very best product available at that moment. I think it's worth compromising that in place of other considerations (the health of the market, lowering entry costs for competitors, recognising and combating some of the market failures such as artificially short life-cycles).
To give just one example - I reckon quite a few people would choose to buy fairphones over apple devices, if apple weren't so dominant in the branding and advertising departments. Personally, I'd still buy an iphone, I don't want to pay a big premium for a product that offers replaceable parts when I quite like taking apart and replacing parts on iphones. But I bet lots of people would go for the 'environmentally friendly' branding. And that in turn might stimulate Apple's innovations in a more useful direction.
As an aside your figures aren't quite right in your original post, though I don't think it affects the point very much.
On your second example I think it does, though. If a software company offering a niche product can achieve a £1bn profit per year, then I would definitely acknowledge that the £1bn limit is too low. I suspect they wouldn't.
"I think they are stuck with (Sunak) until Starmer gets his post election call from the Palace."
I don't. If Sunak had his feet planted solidly in his position as party leader he'd have appointed a new party chairman by now. Unprecedented, how long it's taking. (That's unless there was a case before 1944.)
Even if the only consideration were what I'm hearing about Zahawi, it'd be hard to picture an apparently weak leader such as Sunak staying in office for long.
Oops, I see LuckyGuy has fallen for giving a Russian troll a like. Says it all really.
I like posts I feel have made a good point; who the point has been made by doesn’t figure in my decision - that would make me a weak-minded drip.
That's true.
It's the fact that you think like a Russia troll, that is concerning.
But we live in a free society so you, Dura, McClusky, Corbyn and the rest of your fellow travellers are free to think as you do. It's part of what makes us better than the Russians.
I think that's a little unfair to Dura_Ace, who I would never accuse of being a Russian troll. If anything, he has a better view into the Russian mindset than any of us. I may disagree with him on some things, but he appears genuine.
I wouldn't accuse him of being a Russian troll, I would instead suggest he is what in the Cold War would have been called a "useful idiot". He seems to truly swallow, believe and regurgitate the bullshit that the Russian trolls spout.
Though for Dura it could just be a contrarian desire to be different.
It is pragmatism and perspective. Something that the PB warriors on here mostly lack.
No just smart arse contrarianism. It is a bit sad. It is similarly stupid to his claim on the one hand to be a green while boasting about his love of high performance cars and fondness for exceeding the speed limit. At one stage he was an interesting, if somewhat bombastic poster, but now he is just ludicrous and implausible.
Nige calm the farm. You sound like someone who wears a sheepskin coat and driving gloves and I'm sure you don't do that.
It is an amusing image of sartorial ineptitude, but I am not sure I understand your point. I like performance cars, and have owned a few, but I would not simultaneously claim to be a "Green", unless I had eaten one of @Leon 's poached oysters
Could one not just claim to be a 'hypocritical green'? (Asking for a friend).
Seriously though, you might love performance cars, feel that you giving them up would be of vanishing insignificance in the grand scheme of things, and yet still be in favour of a government diktat banning performance cars such that you didn't have to rely on your own paltry willpower but instead could rely on your desire not to be naughty and break the law?
Seems logically consistent to me (partly because its embarrasingly close to my own position, replacing performance cars with jumping out of a plane).
cf all the hugely rich socialists (on PB).
Fundamental misunderstanding there Topping.
Being rich and left-wing is not hypocritical, any more than being poor and right-wing is.
It sort of is. A rich left-winger could give all their money to the poor. Or make voluntary contributions to HMRC. Or...
I disagree. Politics is where you create the system under which individuals operate. Within the system people can strive to do as well for themselves as they can. So for instance I want the system to help the poor at the expense of the rich, while within that system I want to do as well as I can to provide for myself and my family. I don't see a contradiction, especially as it is only by changing things at a systemic level that you can make a material difference for a meaningful number of people.
Yes that is perfectly understandable. But it is also hypocritical. Because you are benefiting from a system which you think is wrong. Not to be hypocritical is not to accept any advantages from the "bad" system.
All you free marketeers on here...do you think there is any level of profit-taking from the economy that is 'too much'? If so, is £32.2bn too much? If so, what should be done about it?
FWIW, I recognise the risks of stepping in to regulate this further. But I also see the risks and distortion effects of profits this size, particularly in the way it funnels money from the economy as a whole into the pockets of a smaller group of richer individuals, who are then able to distort markets such as the housing market in London, because of their excess wealth.
Yes, I know institutional investors, pension funds etc are a thing and profits like this can be good for them, and I'm not dismissing that angle, I just don't think it's the whole story.
Is it from "The Economy" that is subject to tax in the UK? Or is it a worldwide number?
I note that the Guardian does not tell us, nor do they explain how much tax is paid already.
I'd say they are trying to maintain the outrage, complete with rantaquotes from Ed Davey and Greenpeace.
Sorry, but I'd say that is the permatrolling type of commentary, as when for example Professor Murphy was frothing away years ago about how banks were avoiding tax, when the profit had been absorbed by losses from previous years.
Thanks for the reply. Are you saying, then, that any amount of profit is acceptable if appropriate taxes are paid? That's my question really, not a question about the quality of the Guardian's reporting.
In my view there is a (pretty high) limit to levels of acceptable profit, not least because profits of that size suggest a market that is captured in an unhealthy way. I think this might be an example of that limit being breached, regardless of where the profit has been garnered globally.
OK, so let's agree that the quality of Guardian news reporting is atrocious .
I think the identification of profits to which taxes can be applied is perhaps a missing element of any debate, as this is an outrage bus.
I think part of the context wrt Shell is that UK profits are already taxed at a high rate. The last number I saw was quite a bit higher than normal Corp. Tax due to an increased tax for oil companies, and then a windfall tax on top of that.
I can see the argument for a tax on windfall gains unrelated to the basic business operation - by analogy we give support to eg Renewables to prime the pump. But it needs to be very careful indeed - if we want to limit profit margins then what do we do with eg perfume companies, or software companies?
On your first paragraph, there are other media companies that I'd want to pick off first
I see the validity of your overall argument.
Okay, a thought experiment (I know there will be problems with this, I am interested in what they are): Rather than having a percentage tax rate on corporate profits, imagine a world in which any single company could make a maximum of, say, £1bn in profit each year.
Ignoring the impossibility of implementing such a scheme, would it fundamentally break the capitalist system, or would it simply reduce big companies' desires to take productive risks?
So take for example IPhones, say on a 1000£ phone they make 10£ profit . They have to stop selling IPhones onces sales reach 1 million and say sorry we aren't allowed to make more than a billion profit this year, maybe you will get to be one of the lucky million customers next year?
Can't see that working somehow
Do you not think that we might get more useful innovation (rather than having sixteen different camera lenses and a 1/2 mm thinner device) if the smartphone market was less captured by Apple?
Not particularly dissing iphones - they have their strengths - but I suspect the iphone would be even better if it had more competitors, which it would do if Apple only made a million of them a year.
Apple have plenty of competitors as it is, it is not like we are short of companies that make phones. The only effect your cap on profits would have is to make any company in a market have to stop selling their product in the event it became to popular.
Personally if buying a product I want to buy one that suits my needs. If the ones that suits my needs aren't available because they have had to stop selling for the year then how does that help me?
Another example then...last company I worked at made software used in hospitals. If we came up with a new whizzo feature that made a hospital 5% more efficient on deployment that none of our competitors had thought of should we in your mind have said to hospitals clamouring to buy "sorry you will have to wait a year we reached our profit cap"
I’m in a super posh new Bangkok restaurant having a FREE zillion course tasting nu-nordic menu with paired wines helmed by a 3 star chef
And my dining partner has just puked up the first course - a poached oyster with scarlet caviar and has fled the building
Wtf do I do? It’s all free. I can’t eat 98 courses and drink 428 wines. But I can’t offend them
True story. Is this the most first world of first world problems??
Anyone who has an oyster poached deserves to go home early. Poaching an oyster is like putting ice in one's scotch.
No need to put ice in your scotch if the Coke was in the fridge beforehand.
Crazy talk. You need to save the coke for your expensive French red wine.
Actually, if it is very warm, an ice cube of spring water in a cask strength scotch is far from a stupid idea.
I take my whisky (whisper it) neat with two ice cubes which I like as they gently melt. My whisky of choice is Glengoyne btw and I have a bottle of cask strength something or other given to me as a gift which I have never opened.
Good taste Topping , Glengoyne is very nice. I also like Glenrothes.
Since I lost most of my sense of smell/taste to Covid, the Islay malts have become relatively more attractive. Talisker, which I used to regard as a bit of a practical joke on the whisky drinker, now seems rather good.
I can even now forgive its being Heath's favoured tipple.
Manchester United footballer Mason Greenwood has had all charges against him dropped.
Personally, I think the FA should step in and ban the little **** for life.
On what grounds?
Good afternoon
The CPS have said there is no longer a chance of a successful prosecution
I assume there must have been a material change in the evidence
N0, my question was 'on what grounds tlg86 thinks 'the FA should step in and ban the little **** for life'.
Sorry I misread your post
If the CPS have dropped all charges then in law he is innocent and banning him would seem bizarre
Because there is evidence in the public domain. John Terry was found not guilty in a court of law, but that didn't stop the FA deciding that they thought he was guilty.
The big pressure is on Man Utd. Do they really want him in the club?
Suspect Man U wrote him off long ago,
This must actually be devastating to the young lady and her family. ☹️
Well, apparently, they're back together which is why the case has been dropped. Feel for the CPS on this one.
All you free marketeers on here...do you think there is any level of profit-taking from the economy that is 'too much'? If so, is £32.2bn too much? If so, what should be done about it?
FWIW, I recognise the risks of stepping in to regulate this further. But I also see the risks and distortion effects of profits this size, particularly in the way it funnels money from the economy as a whole into the pockets of a smaller group of richer individuals, who are then able to distort markets such as the housing market in London, because of their excess wealth.
Yes, I know institutional investors, pension funds etc are a thing and profits like this can be good for them, and I'm not dismissing that angle, I just don't think it's the whole story.
Is it from "The Economy" that is subject to tax in the UK? Or is it a worldwide number?
I note that the Guardian does not tell us, nor do they explain how much tax is paid already.
I'd say they are trying to maintain the outrage, complete with rantaquotes from Ed Davey and Greenpeace.
Sorry, but I'd say that is the permatrolling type of commentary, as when for example Professor Murphy was frothing away years ago about how banks were avoiding tax, when the profit had been absorbed by losses from previous years.
Thanks for the reply. Are you saying, then, that any amount of profit is acceptable if appropriate taxes are paid? That's my question really, not a question about the quality of the Guardian's reporting.
In my view there is a (pretty high) limit to levels of acceptable profit, not least because profits of that size suggest a market that is captured in an unhealthy way. I think this might be an example of that limit being breached, regardless of where the profit has been garnered globally.
OK, so let's agree that the quality of Guardian news reporting is atrocious .
I think the identification of profits to which taxes can be applied is perhaps a missing element of any debate, as this is an outrage bus.
I think part of the context wrt Shell is that UK profits are already taxed at a high rate. The last number I saw was quite a bit higher than normal Corp. Tax due to an increased tax for oil companies, and then a windfall tax on top of that.
I can see the argument for a tax on windfall gains unrelated to the basic business operation - by analogy we give support to eg Renewables to prime the pump. But it needs to be very careful indeed - if we want to limit profit margins then what do we do with eg perfume companies, or software companies?
On your first paragraph, there are other media companies that I'd want to pick off first
I see the validity of your overall argument.
Okay, a thought experiment (I know there will be problems with this, I am interested in what they are): Rather than having a percentage tax rate on corporate profits, imagine a world in which any single company could make a maximum of, say, £1bn in profit each year.
Ignoring the impossibility of implementing such a scheme, would it fundamentally break the capitalist system, or would it simply reduce big companies' desires to take productive risks?
So take for example IPhones, say on a 1000£ phone they make 10£ profit . They have to stop selling IPhones onces sales reach 1 million and say sorry we aren't allowed to make more than a billion profit this year, maybe you will get to be one of the lucky million customers next year?
Can't see that working somehow
Do you not think that we might get more useful innovation (rather than having sixteen different camera lenses and a 1/2 mm thinner device) if the smartphone market was less captured by Apple?
Not particularly dissing iphones - they have their strengths - but I suspect the iphone would be even better if it had more competitors, which it would do if Apple only made a million of them a year.
Apple have plenty of competitors as it is, it is not like we are short of companies that make phones. The only effect your cap on profits would have is to make any company in a market have to stop selling their product in the event it became to popular.
Personally if buying a product I want to buy one that suits my needs. If the ones that suits my needs aren't available because they have had to stop selling for the year then how does that help me?
Another example then...last company I worked at made software used in hospitals. If we came up with a new whizzo feature that made a hospital 5% more efficient on deployment that none of our competitors had thought of should we in your mind have said to hospitals clamouring to buy "sorry you will have to wait a year we reached our profit cap"
Manchester United footballer Mason Greenwood has had all charges against him dropped.
Personally, I think the FA should step in and ban the little **** for life.
What would have led to that? The complainant withdrawing her statement? Mishandling of evidence by the police? New evidence coming to light?
Seems very odd indeed to drop the charges after this length of time without saying why. So I'm guessing (2) is a serious possibility.
I'm not sure it really should matter - he's officially not guilty and the FA shouldn't interfere with that, should it?
Edit: just saw your edit. There's ample precedent in US sports leagues for players being banned on the strength of accusations, sometimes even when there's not even a charge. I'm not sure it would be helpful to import this particular trend.
Manchester United footballer Mason Greenwood has had all charges against him dropped.
Personally, I think the FA should step in and ban the little **** for life.
On what grounds?
Good afternoon
The CPS have said there is no longer a chance of a successful prosecution
I assume there must have been a material change in the evidence
N0, my question was 'on what grounds tlg86 thinks 'the FA should step in and ban the little **** for life'.
Sorry I misread your post
If the CPS have dropped all charges then in law he is innocent and banning him would seem bizarre
Because there is evidence in the public domain. John Terry was found not guilty in a court of law, but that didn't stop the FA deciding that they thought he was guilty.
The big pressure is on Man Utd. Do they really want him in the club?
Suspect Man U wrote him off long ago,
This must actually be devastating to the young lady and her family. ☹️
All you free marketeers on here...do you think there is any level of profit-taking from the economy that is 'too much'? If so, is £32.2bn too much? If so, what should be done about it?
FWIW, I recognise the risks of stepping in to regulate this further. But I also see the risks and distortion effects of profits this size, particularly in the way it funnels money from the economy as a whole into the pockets of a smaller group of richer individuals, who are then able to distort markets such as the housing market in London, because of their excess wealth.
Yes, I know institutional investors, pension funds etc are a thing and profits like this can be good for them, and I'm not dismissing that angle, I just don't think it's the whole story.
Is it from "The Economy" that is subject to tax in the UK? Or is it a worldwide number?
I note that the Guardian does not tell us, nor do they explain how much tax is paid already.
I'd say they are trying to maintain the outrage, complete with rantaquotes from Ed Davey and Greenpeace.
Sorry, but I'd say that is the permatrolling type of commentary, as when for example Professor Murphy was frothing away years ago about how banks were avoiding tax, when the profit had been absorbed by losses from previous years.
Thanks for the reply. Are you saying, then, that any amount of profit is acceptable if appropriate taxes are paid? That's my question really, not a question about the quality of the Guardian's reporting.
In my view there is a (pretty high) limit to levels of acceptable profit, not least because profits of that size suggest a market that is captured in an unhealthy way. I think this might be an example of that limit being breached, regardless of where the profit has been garnered globally.
OK, so let's agree that the quality of Guardian news reporting is atrocious .
I think the identification of profits to which taxes can be applied is perhaps a missing element of any debate, as this is an outrage bus.
I think part of the context wrt Shell is that UK profits are already taxed at a high rate. The last number I saw was quite a bit higher than normal Corp. Tax due to an increased tax for oil companies, and then a windfall tax on top of that.
I can see the argument for a tax on windfall gains unrelated to the basic business operation - by analogy we give support to eg Renewables to prime the pump. But it needs to be very careful indeed - if we want to limit profit margins then what do we do with eg perfume companies, or software companies?
On your first paragraph, there are other media companies that I'd want to pick off first
I see the validity of your overall argument.
Okay, a thought experiment (I know there will be problems with this, I am interested in what they are): Rather than having a percentage tax rate on corporate profits, imagine a world in which any single company could make a maximum of, say, £1bn in profit each year.
Ignoring the impossibility of implementing such a scheme, would it fundamentally break the capitalist system, or would it simply reduce big companies' desires to take productive risks?
So take for example IPhones, say on a 1000£ phone they make 10£ profit . They have to stop selling IPhones onces sales reach 1 million and say sorry we aren't allowed to make more than a billion profit this year, maybe you will get to be one of the lucky million customers next year?
Can't see that working somehow
Do you not think that we might get more useful innovation (rather than having sixteen different camera lenses and a 1/2 mm thinner device) if the smartphone market was less captured by Apple?
Not particularly dissing iphones - they have their strengths - but I suspect the iphone would be even better if it had more competitors, which it would do if Apple only made a million of them a year.
Apple have plenty of competitors as it is, it is not like we are short of companies that make phones. The only effect your cap on profits would have is to make any company in a market have to stop selling their product in the event it became to popular.
Personally if buying a product I want to buy one that suits my needs. If the ones that suits my needs aren't available because they have had to stop selling for the year then how does that help me?
Another example then...last company I worked at made software used in hospitals. If we came up with a new whizzo feature that made a hospital 5% more efficient on deployment that none of our competitors had thought of should we in your mind have said to hospitals clamouring to buy "sorry you will have to wait a year we reached our profit cap"
COVID vaccine - "Sorry, we've made a million doses. No more this year."
Since Mike gave me the tip I have never looked back from Xiaomi.
£170 for the three-below-flagship model which is perfect for me.
Me too. Redmi Note 11. A friend has a 5G POCO which is much the same phone as mine, and an interesting upgrade.
I know Xi has direct access to my bank account, but there is FA in there, so he's welcome. I suppose he could unlock my car through the MyBMW app if he was so minded, for a laugh. I suspect Xi has access to a Chinese made Galaxy Flip 4 or an iphone 14 too. I'd rather pay £150 to be ripped off by the Red Army than £1000.
His girlfriend stood by him when he was accused / convicted / acquitted on appeal of rape of a woman he met on a night out, where the case centred over if the lady consented. He didn't deny having had sex with the lady behind his girlfriend (now wifes) back and his father in-law even funded all his legal actions.
Manchester United footballer Mason Greenwood has had all charges against him dropped.
Personally, I think the FA should step in and ban the little **** for life.
What would have led to that? The complainant withdrawing her statement? Mishandling of evidence by the police? New evidence coming to light?
Seems very odd indeed to drop the charges after this length of time without saying why. So I'm guessing (2) is a serious possibility.
I'm not sure it really should matter - he's officially not guilty and the FA shouldn't interfere with that, should it?
Edit: just saw your edit. There's ample precedent in US sports leagues for players being banned on the strength of accusations, sometimes even when there's not even a charge. I'm not sure it would be helpful to import this particular trend.
Chelsea captain John Terry has been banned for four matches and fined £220,000 for racially abusing QPR defender Anton Ferdinand.
The Football Association found Terry guilty following a four-day hearing.
A spokesman for Terry said the player was "disappointed" the FA had reached a "different conclusion" to the "not guilty verdict of a court of law".
Yes, I remember that. A worrying precedent.
There are many things that are not illegal (or at least cannot be shown to sufficient standard of evidence) but could nonetheless result in sanctions from an employer or professional body.
I, for example, could lose my job for an accidental breach of data security not reaching any criminal standard (and my employer could also face sanctions).
All you free marketeers on here...do you think there is any level of profit-taking from the economy that is 'too much'? If so, is £32.2bn too much? If so, what should be done about it?
FWIW, I recognise the risks of stepping in to regulate this further. But I also see the risks and distortion effects of profits this size, particularly in the way it funnels money from the economy as a whole into the pockets of a smaller group of richer individuals, who are then able to distort markets such as the housing market in London, because of their excess wealth.
Yes, I know institutional investors, pension funds etc are a thing and profits like this can be good for them, and I'm not dismissing that angle, I just don't think it's the whole story.
Is it from "The Economy" that is subject to tax in the UK? Or is it a worldwide number?
I note that the Guardian does not tell us, nor do they explain how much tax is paid already.
I'd say they are trying to maintain the outrage, complete with rantaquotes from Ed Davey and Greenpeace.
Sorry, but I'd say that is the permatrolling type of commentary, as when for example Professor Murphy was frothing away years ago about how banks were avoiding tax, when the profit had been absorbed by losses from previous years.
Thanks for the reply. Are you saying, then, that any amount of profit is acceptable if appropriate taxes are paid? That's my question really, not a question about the quality of the Guardian's reporting.
In my view there is a (pretty high) limit to levels of acceptable profit, not least because profits of that size suggest a market that is captured in an unhealthy way. I think this might be an example of that limit being breached, regardless of where the profit has been garnered globally.
OK, so let's agree that the quality of Guardian news reporting is atrocious .
I think the identification of profits to which taxes can be applied is perhaps a missing element of any debate, as this is an outrage bus.
I think part of the context wrt Shell is that UK profits are already taxed at a high rate. The last number I saw was quite a bit higher than normal Corp. Tax due to an increased tax for oil companies, and then a windfall tax on top of that.
I can see the argument for a tax on windfall gains unrelated to the basic business operation - by analogy we give support to eg Renewables to prime the pump. But it needs to be very careful indeed - if we want to limit profit margins then what do we do with eg perfume companies, or software companies?
On your first paragraph, there are other media companies that I'd want to pick off first
I see the validity of your overall argument.
Okay, a thought experiment (I know there will be problems with this, I am interested in what they are): Rather than having a percentage tax rate on corporate profits, imagine a world in which any single company could make a maximum of, say, £1bn in profit each year.
Ignoring the impossibility of implementing such a scheme, would it fundamentally break the capitalist system, or would it simply reduce big companies' desires to take productive risks?
So take for example IPhones, say on a 1000£ phone they make 10£ profit . They have to stop selling IPhones onces sales reach 1 million and say sorry we aren't allowed to make more than a billion profit this year, maybe you will get to be one of the lucky million customers next year?
Can't see that working somehow
Do you not think that we might get more useful innovation (rather than having sixteen different camera lenses and a 1/2 mm thinner device) if the smartphone market was less captured by Apple?
Not particularly dissing iphones - they have their strengths - but I suspect the iphone would be even better if it had more competitors, which it would do if Apple only made a million of them a year.
Apple have plenty of competitors as it is, it is not like we are short of companies that make phones. The only effect your cap on profits would have is to make any company in a market have to stop selling their product in the event it became to popular.
Personally if buying a product I want to buy one that suits my needs. If the ones that suits my needs aren't available because they have had to stop selling for the year then how does that help me?
Another example then...last company I worked at made software used in hospitals. If we came up with a new whizzo feature that made a hospital 5% more efficient on deployment that none of our competitors had thought of should we in your mind have said to hospitals clamouring to buy "sorry you will have to wait a year we reached our profit cap"
COVID vaccine - "Sorry, we've made a million doses. No more this year."
I suspect as Apple probably make significantly more profit off an IPhone than 10£ they would just shoot up in price and become a status symbol for the very rich under maxh's cap we offer a brand new IPhone only 50k but we only sell 2000 a year sort of thing
Yes I can imagine that happening!
Though I think you're thinking too statically. I don't think Apple have a unique insight into the wonderful world of smartphones. I suspect that, where supply of their devices was further restricted, an almost-but-perhaps-not-quite-as-good competitor would fill the gap. And I think there might well be more innovation.
They'd probably still be status symbols. But if someeone wants to pay 50k for a smartphone I'd respond that the more quickly we can remove money from their hands and put it in the hands of someone less idiotic the better!
Manchester United footballer Mason Greenwood has had all charges against him dropped.
Personally, I think the FA should step in and ban the little **** for life.
What would have led to that? The complainant withdrawing her statement? Mishandling of evidence by the police? New evidence coming to light?
Seems very odd indeed to drop the charges after this length of time without saying why. So I'm guessing (2) is a serious possibility.
I'm not sure it really should matter - he's officially not guilty and the FA shouldn't interfere with that, should it?
Edit: just saw your edit. There's ample precedent in US sports leagues for players being banned on the strength of accusations, sometimes even when there's not even a charge. I'm not sure it would be helpful to import this particular trend.
Chelsea captain John Terry has been banned for four matches and fined £220,000 for racially abusing QPR defender Anton Ferdinand.
The Football Association found Terry guilty following a four-day hearing.
A spokesman for Terry said the player was "disappointed" the FA had reached a "different conclusion" to the "not guilty verdict of a court of law".
Yes, I remember that. A worrying precedent.
There are many things that are not illegal (or at least cannot be shown to sufficient standard of evidence) but could nonetheless result in sanctions from an employer or professional body.
I, for example, could lose my job for an accidental breach of data security not reaching any criminal standard (and my employer could also face sanctions).
There's a difference between something which isn't illegal but is banned by a professional body and somethign which is illegal but hasn't been proved.
The FA banning Terry was effectively them saying "the court was wrong".
All you free marketeers on here...do you think there is any level of profit-taking from the economy that is 'too much'? If so, is £32.2bn too much? If so, what should be done about it?
FWIW, I recognise the risks of stepping in to regulate this further. But I also see the risks and distortion effects of profits this size, particularly in the way it funnels money from the economy as a whole into the pockets of a smaller group of richer individuals, who are then able to distort markets such as the housing market in London, because of their excess wealth.
Yes, I know institutional investors, pension funds etc are a thing and profits like this can be good for them, and I'm not dismissing that angle, I just don't think it's the whole story.
Is it from "The Economy" that is subject to tax in the UK? Or is it a worldwide number?
I note that the Guardian does not tell us, nor do they explain how much tax is paid already.
I'd say they are trying to maintain the outrage, complete with rantaquotes from Ed Davey and Greenpeace.
Sorry, but I'd say that is the permatrolling type of commentary, as when for example Professor Murphy was frothing away years ago about how banks were avoiding tax, when the profit had been absorbed by losses from previous years.
Thanks for the reply. Are you saying, then, that any amount of profit is acceptable if appropriate taxes are paid? That's my question really, not a question about the quality of the Guardian's reporting.
In my view there is a (pretty high) limit to levels of acceptable profit, not least because profits of that size suggest a market that is captured in an unhealthy way. I think this might be an example of that limit being breached, regardless of where the profit has been garnered globally.
OK, so let's agree that the quality of Guardian news reporting is atrocious .
I think the identification of profits to which taxes can be applied is perhaps a missing element of any debate, as this is an outrage bus.
I think part of the context wrt Shell is that UK profits are already taxed at a high rate. The last number I saw was quite a bit higher than normal Corp. Tax due to an increased tax for oil companies, and then a windfall tax on top of that.
I can see the argument for a tax on windfall gains unrelated to the basic business operation - by analogy we give support to eg Renewables to prime the pump. But it needs to be very careful indeed - if we want to limit profit margins then what do we do with eg perfume companies, or software companies?
On your first paragraph, there are other media companies that I'd want to pick off first
I see the validity of your overall argument.
Okay, a thought experiment (I know there will be problems with this, I am interested in what they are): Rather than having a percentage tax rate on corporate profits, imagine a world in which any single company could make a maximum of, say, £1bn in profit each year.
Ignoring the impossibility of implementing such a scheme, would it fundamentally break the capitalist system, or would it simply reduce big companies' desires to take productive risks?
So take for example IPhones, say on a 1000£ phone they make 10£ profit . They have to stop selling IPhones onces sales reach 1 million and say sorry we aren't allowed to make more than a billion profit this year, maybe you will get to be one of the lucky million customers next year?
Can't see that working somehow
Do you not think that we might get more useful innovation (rather than having sixteen different camera lenses and a 1/2 mm thinner device) if the smartphone market was less captured by Apple?
Not particularly dissing iphones - they have their strengths - but I suspect the iphone would be even better if it had more competitors, which it would do if Apple only made a million of them a year.
Apple have plenty of competitors as it is, it is not like we are short of companies that make phones. The only effect your cap on profits would have is to make any company in a market have to stop selling their product in the event it became to popular.
Personally if buying a product I want to buy one that suits my needs. If the ones that suits my needs aren't available because they have had to stop selling for the year then how does that help me?
Another example then...last company I worked at made software used in hospitals. If we came up with a new whizzo feature that made a hospital 5% more efficient on deployment that none of our competitors had thought of should we in your mind have said to hospitals clamouring to buy "sorry you will have to wait a year we reached our profit cap"
COVID vaccine - "Sorry, we've made a million doses. No more this year."
I suspect as Apple probably make significantly more profit off an IPhone than 10£ they would just shoot up in price and become a status symbol for the very rich under maxh's cap we offer a brand new IPhone only 50k but we only sell 2000 a year sort of thing
Large corporations would just do what Amazon did for a large part of its existence, and make much larger capital and R&D investments to reduce reported profits. Still immensely profitable for shareholders, but via capital gain rather than income.
In Shell's case it might mean they got really serious about developing alternative energy assets.
But the likelihood of getting international agreement on any such measure is zero, anyway.
Being rich and left-wing is not hypocritical, any more than being poor and right-wing is.
It sort of is. A rich left-winger could give all their money to the poor. Or make voluntary contributions to HMRC. Or...
I give away a fair chunk (40%) of my post-tax income, but that's just trying to be vaguely consistent with my Corbynite philosophy, and I don't usually mention it. However, I don't see any inconsistency between not giving away anything but favouring higher tax on wealth or income for themselves and *everyone* who is similarly well-off. In the same way, people can favour new controls on pollution without knocking themselves out being the only person in their village without a car.
What would be inconsistent is favouring higher tax and then avoiding it!
Manchester United footballer Mason Greenwood has had all charges against him dropped.
Personally, I think the FA should step in and ban the little **** for life.
What would have led to that? The complainant withdrawing her statement? Mishandling of evidence by the police? New evidence coming to light?
Seems very odd indeed to drop the charges after this length of time without saying why. So I'm guessing (2) is a serious possibility.
I'm not sure it really should matter - he's officially not guilty and the FA shouldn't interfere with that, should it?
Edit: just saw your edit. There's ample precedent in US sports leagues for players being banned on the strength of accusations, sometimes even when there's not even a charge. I'm not sure it would be helpful to import this particular trend.
Chelsea captain John Terry has been banned for four matches and fined £220,000 for racially abusing QPR defender Anton Ferdinand.
The Football Association found Terry guilty following a four-day hearing.
A spokesman for Terry said the player was "disappointed" the FA had reached a "different conclusion" to the "not guilty verdict of a court of law".
Yes, I remember that. A worrying precedent.
Not really. A court of law rightly operates quite rightly at a different level to civil proceedings, requiring a case to be proven beyond all reasonable doubt.
There can be enough evidence to trigger civil sanctions, even if not a criminal conviction.
All you free marketeers on here...do you think there is any level of profit-taking from the economy that is 'too much'? If so, is £32.2bn too much? If so, what should be done about it?
FWIW, I recognise the risks of stepping in to regulate this further. But I also see the risks and distortion effects of profits this size, particularly in the way it funnels money from the economy as a whole into the pockets of a smaller group of richer individuals, who are then able to distort markets such as the housing market in London, because of their excess wealth.
Yes, I know institutional investors, pension funds etc are a thing and profits like this can be good for them, and I'm not dismissing that angle, I just don't think it's the whole story.
Is it from "The Economy" that is subject to tax in the UK? Or is it a worldwide number?
I note that the Guardian does not tell us, nor do they explain how much tax is paid already.
I'd say they are trying to maintain the outrage, complete with rantaquotes from Ed Davey and Greenpeace.
Sorry, but I'd say that is the permatrolling type of commentary, as when for example Professor Murphy was frothing away years ago about how banks were avoiding tax, when the profit had been absorbed by losses from previous years.
Thanks for the reply. Are you saying, then, that any amount of profit is acceptable if appropriate taxes are paid? That's my question really, not a question about the quality of the Guardian's reporting.
In my view there is a (pretty high) limit to levels of acceptable profit, not least because profits of that size suggest a market that is captured in an unhealthy way. I think this might be an example of that limit being breached, regardless of where the profit has been garnered globally.
OK, so let's agree that the quality of Guardian news reporting is atrocious .
I think the identification of profits to which taxes can be applied is perhaps a missing element of any debate, as this is an outrage bus.
I think part of the context wrt Shell is that UK profits are already taxed at a high rate. The last number I saw was quite a bit higher than normal Corp. Tax due to an increased tax for oil companies, and then a windfall tax on top of that.
I can see the argument for a tax on windfall gains unrelated to the basic business operation - by analogy we give support to eg Renewables to prime the pump. But it needs to be very careful indeed - if we want to limit profit margins then what do we do with eg perfume companies, or software companies?
On your first paragraph, there are other media companies that I'd want to pick off first
I see the validity of your overall argument.
Okay, a thought experiment (I know there will be problems with this, I am interested in what they are): Rather than having a percentage tax rate on corporate profits, imagine a world in which any single company could make a maximum of, say, £1bn in profit each year.
Ignoring the impossibility of implementing such a scheme, would it fundamentally break the capitalist system, or would it simply reduce big companies' desires to take productive risks?
So take for example IPhones, say on a 1000£ phone they make 10£ profit . They have to stop selling IPhones onces sales reach 1 million and say sorry we aren't allowed to make more than a billion profit this year, maybe you will get to be one of the lucky million customers next year?
Can't see that working somehow
Do you not think that we might get more useful innovation (rather than having sixteen different camera lenses and a 1/2 mm thinner device) if the smartphone market was less captured by Apple?
Not particularly dissing iphones - they have their strengths - but I suspect the iphone would be even better if it had more competitors, which it would do if Apple only made a million of them a year.
Apple have plenty of competitors as it is, it is not like we are short of companies that make phones. The only effect your cap on profits would have is to make any company in a market have to stop selling their product in the event it became to popular.
Personally if buying a product I want to buy one that suits my needs. If the ones that suits my needs aren't available because they have had to stop selling for the year then how does that help me?
Another example then...last company I worked at made software used in hospitals. If we came up with a new whizzo feature that made a hospital 5% more efficient on deployment that none of our competitors had thought of should we in your mind have said to hospitals clamouring to buy "sorry you will have to wait a year we reached our profit cap"
COVID vaccine - "Sorry, we've made a million doses. No more this year."
I suspect as Apple probably make significantly more profit off an IPhone than 10£ they would just shoot up in price and become a status symbol for the very rich under maxh's cap we offer a brand new IPhone only 50k but we only sell 2000 a year sort of thing
Yes I can imagine that happening!
Though I think you're thinking too statically. I don't think Apple have a unique insight into the wonderful world of smartphones. I suspect that, where supply of their devices was further restricted, an almost-but-perhaps-not-quite-as-good competitor would fill the gap. And I think there might well be more innovation.
They'd probably still be status symbols. But if someeone wants to pay 50k for a smartphone I'd respond that the more quickly we can remove money from their hands and put it in the hands of someone less idiotic the better!
All you free marketeers on here...do you think there is any level of profit-taking from the economy that is 'too much'? If so, is £32.2bn too much? If so, what should be done about it?
FWIW, I recognise the risks of stepping in to regulate this further. But I also see the risks and distortion effects of profits this size, particularly in the way it funnels money from the economy as a whole into the pockets of a smaller group of richer individuals, who are then able to distort markets such as the housing market in London, because of their excess wealth.
Yes, I know institutional investors, pension funds etc are a thing and profits like this can be good for them, and I'm not dismissing that angle, I just don't think it's the whole story.
Is it from "The Economy" that is subject to tax in the UK? Or is it a worldwide number?
I note that the Guardian does not tell us, nor do they explain how much tax is paid already.
I'd say they are trying to maintain the outrage, complete with rantaquotes from Ed Davey and Greenpeace.
Sorry, but I'd say that is the permatrolling type of commentary, as when for example Professor Murphy was frothing away years ago about how banks were avoiding tax, when the profit had been absorbed by losses from previous years.
Thanks for the reply. Are you saying, then, that any amount of profit is acceptable if appropriate taxes are paid? That's my question really, not a question about the quality of the Guardian's reporting.
In my view there is a (pretty high) limit to levels of acceptable profit, not least because profits of that size suggest a market that is captured in an unhealthy way. I think this might be an example of that limit being breached, regardless of where the profit has been garnered globally.
OK, so let's agree that the quality of Guardian news reporting is atrocious .
I think the identification of profits to which taxes can be applied is perhaps a missing element of any debate, as this is an outrage bus.
I think part of the context wrt Shell is that UK profits are already taxed at a high rate. The last number I saw was quite a bit higher than normal Corp. Tax due to an increased tax for oil companies, and then a windfall tax on top of that.
I can see the argument for a tax on windfall gains unrelated to the basic business operation - by analogy we give support to eg Renewables to prime the pump. But it needs to be very careful indeed - if we want to limit profit margins then what do we do with eg perfume companies, or software companies?
On your first paragraph, there are other media companies that I'd want to pick off first
I see the validity of your overall argument.
Okay, a thought experiment (I know there will be problems with this, I am interested in what they are): Rather than having a percentage tax rate on corporate profits, imagine a world in which any single company could make a maximum of, say, £1bn in profit each year.
Ignoring the impossibility of implementing such a scheme, would it fundamentally break the capitalist system, or would it simply reduce big companies' desires to take productive risks?
So take for example IPhones, say on a 1000£ phone they make 10£ profit . They have to stop selling IPhones onces sales reach 1 million and say sorry we aren't allowed to make more than a billion profit this year, maybe you will get to be one of the lucky million customers next year?
Can't see that working somehow
Do you not think that we might get more useful innovation (rather than having sixteen different camera lenses and a 1/2 mm thinner device) if the smartphone market was less captured by Apple?
Not particularly dissing iphones - they have their strengths - but I suspect the iphone would be even better if it had more competitors, which it would do if Apple only made a million of them a year.
Apple have plenty of competitors as it is, it is not like we are short of companies that make phones. The only effect your cap on profits would have is to make any company in a market have to stop selling their product in the event it became to popular.
Personally if buying a product I want to buy one that suits my needs. If the ones that suits my needs aren't available because they have had to stop selling for the year then how does that help me?
Another example then...last company I worked at made software used in hospitals. If we came up with a new whizzo feature that made a hospital 5% more efficient on deployment that none of our competitors had thought of should we in your mind have said to hospitals clamouring to buy "sorry you will have to wait a year we reached our profit cap"
COVID vaccine - "Sorry, we've made a million doses. No more this year."
I suspect as Apple probably make significantly more profit off an IPhone than 10£ they would just shoot up in price and become a status symbol for the very rich under maxh's cap we offer a brand new IPhone only 50k but we only sell 2000 a year sort of thing
Large corporations would just do what Amazon did for a large part of its existence, and make much larger capital and R&D investments to reduce reported profits. Still immensely profitable for shareholders, but via capital gain rather than income.
In Shell's case it might mean they got really serious about developing alternative energy assets.
But the likelihood of getting international agreement on any such measure is zero, anyway.
But potentially also more beneficial for the global economy? Not sure in Amazon's case, almost certainly in Shell's case.
And yes, to reiterate, I agree with what you've been saying throughout that none of these schemes are practicable in any way.
Manchester United footballer Mason Greenwood has had all charges against him dropped.
Personally, I think the FA should step in and ban the little **** for life.
What would have led to that? The complainant withdrawing her statement? Mishandling of evidence by the police? New evidence coming to light?
Seems very odd indeed to drop the charges after this length of time without saying why. So I'm guessing (2) is a serious possibility.
I'm not sure it really should matter - he's officially not guilty and the FA shouldn't interfere with that, should it?
Edit: just saw your edit. There's ample precedent in US sports leagues for players being banned on the strength of accusations, sometimes even when there's not even a charge. I'm not sure it would be helpful to import this particular trend.
Chelsea captain John Terry has been banned for four matches and fined £220,000 for racially abusing QPR defender Anton Ferdinand.
The Football Association found Terry guilty following a four-day hearing.
A spokesman for Terry said the player was "disappointed" the FA had reached a "different conclusion" to the "not guilty verdict of a court of law".
Yes, I remember that. A worrying precedent.
There are many things that are not illegal (or at least cannot be shown to sufficient standard of evidence) but could nonetheless result in sanctions from an employer or professional body.
I, for example, could lose my job for an accidental breach of data security not reaching any criminal standard (and my employer could also face sanctions).
There's a difference between something which isn't illegal but is banned by a professional body and somethign which is illegal but hasn't been proved.
The FA banning Terry was effectively them saying "the court was wrong".
Something can be illegal but not proven to a criminal level, while still being illegal and yet proven to a civil level.
That doesn't make the court wrong, it makes the court different. Different isn't wrong.
Being rich and left-wing is not hypocritical, any more than being poor and right-wing is.
It sort of is. A rich left-winger could give all their money to the poor. Or make voluntary contributions to HMRC. Or...
I give away a fair chunk (40%) of my post-tax income, but that's just trying to be vaguely consistent with my Corbynite philosophy, and I don't usually mention it. However, I don't see any inconsistency between not giving away anything but favouring higher tax on wealth or income for themselves and *everyone* who is similarly well-off. In the same way, people can favour new controls on pollution without knocking themselves out being the only person in their village without a car.
What would be inconsistent is favouring higher tax and then avoiding it!
My favourite was a titled Marxist of my acquaintance who lived on rents from property she owned.
Nicola Sturgeon can't refuse to get into the details of whether a convicted rapist should be classed as a woman. She proposed law that would allow them to do so by self declaration and her party voted down all amendments seeking to add safeguards to prevent Self ID for rapists……
"That rapist should be considered a rapist" is worse than Brexit means Brexit. The question is not whether they're a rapist, its whether a rapist should be allowed to gain the legal status of woman by self declaration. Her party unequivocally said yes to that.
Manchester United footballer Mason Greenwood has had all charges against him dropped.
Personally, I think the FA should step in and ban the little **** for life.
What would have led to that? The complainant withdrawing her statement? Mishandling of evidence by the police? New evidence coming to light?
Seems very odd indeed to drop the charges after this length of time without saying why. So I'm guessing (2) is a serious possibility.
I'm not sure it really should matter - he's officially not guilty and the FA shouldn't interfere with that, should it?
Edit: just saw your edit. There's ample precedent in US sports leagues for players being banned on the strength of accusations, sometimes even when there's not even a charge. I'm not sure it would be helpful to import this particular trend.
Chelsea captain John Terry has been banned for four matches and fined £220,000 for racially abusing QPR defender Anton Ferdinand.
The Football Association found Terry guilty following a four-day hearing.
A spokesman for Terry said the player was "disappointed" the FA had reached a "different conclusion" to the "not guilty verdict of a court of law".
Yes, I remember that. A worrying precedent.
There are many things that are not illegal (or at least cannot be shown to sufficient standard of evidence) but could nonetheless result in sanctions from an employer or professional body.
I, for example, could lose my job for an accidental breach of data security not reaching any criminal standard (and my employer could also face sanctions).
There's a difference between something which isn't illegal but is banned by a professional body and somethign which is illegal but hasn't been proved.
The FA banning Terry was effectively them saying "the court was wrong".
True and good point.
I'm still fairly relaxed about an employer/professional body being able to impose sanctions based on their own assessment of evidence, with potentially a lower evidence threshold than criminal cases. That as long as there is some redress - presumably Terry could have sued the FA here? If Man U terminate this player's contract, he could also sue?
Manchester United footballer Mason Greenwood has had all charges against him dropped.
Personally, I think the FA should step in and ban the little **** for life.
What would have led to that? The complainant withdrawing her statement? Mishandling of evidence by the police? New evidence coming to light?
Seems very odd indeed to drop the charges after this length of time without saying why. So I'm guessing (2) is a serious possibility.
I'm not sure it really should matter - he's officially not guilty and the FA shouldn't interfere with that, should it?
Edit: just saw your edit. There's ample precedent in US sports leagues for players being banned on the strength of accusations, sometimes even when there's not even a charge. I'm not sure it would be helpful to import this particular trend.
Being rich and left-wing is not hypocritical, any more than being poor and right-wing is.
It sort of is. A rich left-winger could give all their money to the poor. Or make voluntary contributions to HMRC. Or...
I give away a fair chunk (40%) of my post-tax income, but that's just trying to be vaguely consistent with my Corbynite philosophy, and I don't usually mention it. However, I don't see any inconsistency between not giving away anything but favouring higher tax on wealth or income for themselves and *everyone* who is similarly well-off. In the same way, people can favour new controls on pollution without knocking themselves out being the only person in their village without a car.
What would be inconsistent is favouring higher tax and then avoiding it!
My favourite was a titled Marxist of my acquaintance who lived on rents from property she owned.
Well that is how Mr Momentum earns the bulk of his income, and also we know he privatised the data that was collected.
If I remember correctly, the Communist Party of the UK sustains itself by rent collected on private property they own.
All you free marketeers on here...do you think there is any level of profit-taking from the economy that is 'too much'? If so, is £32.2bn too much? If so, what should be done about it?
FWIW, I recognise the risks of stepping in to regulate this further. But I also see the risks and distortion effects of profits this size, particularly in the way it funnels money from the economy as a whole into the pockets of a smaller group of richer individuals, who are then able to distort markets such as the housing market in London, because of their excess wealth.
Yes, I know institutional investors, pension funds etc are a thing and profits like this can be good for them, and I'm not dismissing that angle, I just don't think it's the whole story.
Is it from "The Economy" that is subject to tax in the UK? Or is it a worldwide number?
I note that the Guardian does not tell us, nor do they explain how much tax is paid already.
I'd say they are trying to maintain the outrage, complete with rantaquotes from Ed Davey and Greenpeace.
Sorry, but I'd say that is the permatrolling type of commentary, as when for example Professor Murphy was frothing away years ago about how banks were avoiding tax, when the profit had been absorbed by losses from previous years.
Thanks for the reply. Are you saying, then, that any amount of profit is acceptable if appropriate taxes are paid? That's my question really, not a question about the quality of the Guardian's reporting.
In my view there is a (pretty high) limit to levels of acceptable profit, not least because profits of that size suggest a market that is captured in an unhealthy way. I think this might be an example of that limit being breached, regardless of where the profit has been garnered globally.
OK, so let's agree that the quality of Guardian news reporting is atrocious .
I think the identification of profits to which taxes can be applied is perhaps a missing element of any debate, as this is an outrage bus.
I think part of the context wrt Shell is that UK profits are already taxed at a high rate. The last number I saw was quite a bit higher than normal Corp. Tax due to an increased tax for oil companies, and then a windfall tax on top of that.
I can see the argument for a tax on windfall gains unrelated to the basic business operation - by analogy we give support to eg Renewables to prime the pump. But it needs to be very careful indeed - if we want to limit profit margins then what do we do with eg perfume companies, or software companies?
On your first paragraph, there are other media companies that I'd want to pick off first
I see the validity of your overall argument.
Okay, a thought experiment (I know there will be problems with this, I am interested in what they are): Rather than having a percentage tax rate on corporate profits, imagine a world in which any single company could make a maximum of, say, £1bn in profit each year.
Ignoring the impossibility of implementing such a scheme, would it fundamentally break the capitalist system, or would it simply reduce big companies' desires to take productive risks?
So take for example IPhones, say on a 1000£ phone they make 10£ profit . They have to stop selling IPhones onces sales reach 1 million and say sorry we aren't allowed to make more than a billion profit this year, maybe you will get to be one of the lucky million customers next year?
Can't see that working somehow
Do you not think that we might get more useful innovation (rather than having sixteen different camera lenses and a 1/2 mm thinner device) if the smartphone market was less captured by Apple?
Not particularly dissing iphones - they have their strengths - but I suspect the iphone would be even better if it had more competitors, which it would do if Apple only made a million of them a year.
Apple have plenty of competitors as it is, it is not like we are short of companies that make phones. The only effect your cap on profits would have is to make any company in a market have to stop selling their product in the event it became to popular.
Personally if buying a product I want to buy one that suits my needs. If the ones that suits my needs aren't available because they have had to stop selling for the year then how does that help me?
Another example then...last company I worked at made software used in hospitals. If we came up with a new whizzo feature that made a hospital 5% more efficient on deployment that none of our competitors had thought of should we in your mind have said to hospitals clamouring to buy "sorry you will have to wait a year we reached our profit cap"
COVID vaccine - "Sorry, we've made a million doses. No more this year."
I suspect as Apple probably make significantly more profit off an IPhone than 10£ they would just shoot up in price and become a status symbol for the very rich under maxh's cap we offer a brand new IPhone only 50k but we only sell 2000 a year sort of thing
Large corporations would just do what Amazon did for a large part of its existence, and make much larger capital and R&D investments to reduce reported profits. Still immensely profitable for shareholders, but via capital gain rather than income.
In Shell's case it might mean they got really serious about developing alternative energy assets.
But the likelihood of getting international agreement on any such measure is zero, anyway.
If you are only limiting profit, then yes.
Indeed there was some comment on the left in the US, that if the rich evil corporations carried on the trend of minimising profits and not paying dividends, then something else would have to be taxed.
"I think they are stuck with (Sunak) until Starmer gets his post election call from the Palace."
I don't. If Sunak had his feet planted solidly in his position as party leader he'd have appointed a new party chairman by now. Unprecedented, how long it's taking. (That's unless there was a case before 1944.)
Even if the only consideration were what I'm hearing about Zahawi, it'd be hard to picture an apparently weak leader such as Sunak staying in office for long.
Oops, I see LuckyGuy has fallen for giving a Russian troll a like. Says it all really.
I like posts I feel have made a good point; who the point has been made by doesn’t figure in my decision - that would make me a weak-minded drip.
That's true.
It's the fact that you think like a Russia troll, that is concerning.
But we live in a free society so you, Dura, McClusky, Corbyn and the rest of your fellow travellers are free to think as you do. It's part of what makes us better than the Russians.
I think that's a little unfair to Dura_Ace, who I would never accuse of being a Russian troll. If anything, he has a better view into the Russian mindset than any of us. I may disagree with him on some things, but he appears genuine.
I wouldn't accuse him of being a Russian troll, I would instead suggest he is what in the Cold War would have been called a "useful idiot". He seems to truly swallow, believe and regurgitate the bullshit that the Russian trolls spout.
Though for Dura it could just be a contrarian desire to be different.
It is pragmatism and perspective. Something that the PB warriors on here mostly lack.
No just smart arse contrarianism. It is a bit sad. It is similarly stupid to his claim on the one hand to be a green while boasting about his love of high performance cars and fondness for exceeding the speed limit. At one stage he was an interesting, if somewhat bombastic poster, but now he is just ludicrous and implausible.
Nige calm the farm. You sound like someone who wears a sheepskin coat and driving gloves and I'm sure you don't do that.
It is an amusing image of sartorial ineptitude, but I am not sure I understand your point. I like performance cars, and have owned a few, but I would not simultaneously claim to be a "Green", unless I had eaten one of @Leon 's poached oysters
Could one not just claim to be a 'hypocritical green'? (Asking for a friend).
Seriously though, you might love performance cars, feel that you giving them up would be of vanishing insignificance in the grand scheme of things, and yet still be in favour of a government diktat banning performance cars such that you didn't have to rely on your own paltry willpower but instead could rely on your desire not to be naughty and break the law?
Seems logically consistent to me (partly because its embarrasingly close to my own position, replacing performance cars with jumping out of a plane).
cf all the hugely rich socialists (on PB).
Fundamental misunderstanding there Topping.
Being rich and left-wing is not hypocritical, any more than being poor and right-wing is.
It sort of is. A rich left-winger could give all their money to the poor. Or make voluntary contributions to HMRC. Or...
I disagree. Politics is where you create the system under which individuals operate. Within the system people can strive to do as well for themselves as they can. So for instance I want the system to help the poor at the expense of the rich, while within that system I want to do as well as I can to provide for myself and my family. I don't see a contradiction, especially as it is only by changing things at a systemic level that you can make a material difference for a meaningful number of people.
Yes that is perfectly understandable. But it is also hypocritical. Because you are benefiting from a system which you think is wrong. Not to be hypocritical is not to accept any advantages from the "bad" system.
I don't think that's right. The political realm is where you try to change the system, the personal and professional is where you live your life as best you can within the system (as long as the system is not so morallt bankrupt that you can't do that in good conscience). It's not my fault that the system has been set up in such a way that I can benefit from it so massively, indeed I have gone out of my way to make it otherwise but found myself stymied at every turn.
I wonder how many SaaS we are all end up paying for that include a fee to OpenAI's LLM? I believe Teams has a new fee for extra functionality provided by ChatGPT as well.
Manchester United footballer Mason Greenwood has had all charges against him dropped.
Personally, I think the FA should step in and ban the little **** for life.
What would have led to that? The complainant withdrawing her statement? Mishandling of evidence by the police? New evidence coming to light?
Seems very odd indeed to drop the charges after this length of time without saying why. So I'm guessing (2) is a serious possibility.
I'm not sure it really should matter - he's officially not guilty and the FA shouldn't interfere with that, should it?
Edit: just saw your edit. There's ample precedent in US sports leagues for players being banned on the strength of accusations, sometimes even when there's not even a charge. I'm not sure it would be helpful to import this particular trend.
All you free marketeers on here...do you think there is any level of profit-taking from the economy that is 'too much'? If so, is £32.2bn too much? If so, what should be done about it?
FWIW, I recognise the risks of stepping in to regulate this further. But I also see the risks and distortion effects of profits this size, particularly in the way it funnels money from the economy as a whole into the pockets of a smaller group of richer individuals, who are then able to distort markets such as the housing market in London, because of their excess wealth.
Yes, I know institutional investors, pension funds etc are a thing and profits like this can be good for them, and I'm not dismissing that angle, I just don't think it's the whole story.
Is it from "The Economy" that is subject to tax in the UK? Or is it a worldwide number?
I note that the Guardian does not tell us, nor do they explain how much tax is paid already.
I'd say they are trying to maintain the outrage, complete with rantaquotes from Ed Davey and Greenpeace.
Sorry, but I'd say that is the permatrolling type of commentary, as when for example Professor Murphy was frothing away years ago about how banks were avoiding tax, when the profit had been absorbed by losses from previous years.
Thanks for the reply. Are you saying, then, that any amount of profit is acceptable if appropriate taxes are paid? That's my question really, not a question about the quality of the Guardian's reporting.
In my view there is a (pretty high) limit to levels of acceptable profit, not least because profits of that size suggest a market that is captured in an unhealthy way. I think this might be an example of that limit being breached, regardless of where the profit has been garnered globally.
OK, so let's agree that the quality of Guardian news reporting is atrocious .
I think the identification of profits to which taxes can be applied is perhaps a missing element of any debate, as this is an outrage bus.
I think part of the context wrt Shell is that UK profits are already taxed at a high rate. The last number I saw was quite a bit higher than normal Corp. Tax due to an increased tax for oil companies, and then a windfall tax on top of that.
I can see the argument for a tax on windfall gains unrelated to the basic business operation - by analogy we give support to eg Renewables to prime the pump. But it needs to be very careful indeed - if we want to limit profit margins then what do we do with eg perfume companies, or software companies?
On your first paragraph, there are other media companies that I'd want to pick off first
I see the validity of your overall argument.
Okay, a thought experiment (I know there will be problems with this, I am interested in what they are): Rather than having a percentage tax rate on corporate profits, imagine a world in which any single company could make a maximum of, say, £1bn in profit each year.
Ignoring the impossibility of implementing such a scheme, would it fundamentally break the capitalist system, or would it simply reduce big companies' desires to take productive risks?
So take for example IPhones, say on a 1000£ phone they make 10£ profit . They have to stop selling IPhones onces sales reach 1 million and say sorry we aren't allowed to make more than a billion profit this year, maybe you will get to be one of the lucky million customers next year?
Can't see that working somehow
Do you not think that we might get more useful innovation (rather than having sixteen different camera lenses and a 1/2 mm thinner device) if the smartphone market was less captured by Apple?
Not particularly dissing iphones - they have their strengths - but I suspect the iphone would be even better if it had more competitors, which it would do if Apple only made a million of them a year.
Apple have plenty of competitors as it is, it is not like we are short of companies that make phones. The only effect your cap on profits would have is to make any company in a market have to stop selling their product in the event it became to popular.
Personally if buying a product I want to buy one that suits my needs. If the ones that suits my needs aren't available because they have had to stop selling for the year then how does that help me?
Another example then...last company I worked at made software used in hospitals. If we came up with a new whizzo feature that made a hospital 5% more efficient on deployment that none of our competitors had thought of should we in your mind have said to hospitals clamouring to buy "sorry you will have to wait a year we reached our profit cap"
COVID vaccine - "Sorry, we've made a million doses. No more this year."
Since Mike gave me the tip I have never looked back from Xiaomi.
£170 for the three-below-flagship model which is perfect for me.
Me too. Redmi Note 11. A friend has a 5G POCO which is much the same phone as mine, and an interesting upgrade.
I know Xi has direct access to my bank account, but there is FA in there, so he's welcome. I suppose he could unlock my car through the MyBMW app if he was so minded, for a laugh. I suspect Xi has access to a Chinese made Galaxy Flip 4 or an iphone 14 too. I'd rather pay £150 to be ripped off by the Red Army than £1000.
Mrs DA's old i4 refuses to disappear from her MyBMW app despite the fact that it is now owned by some bloke in Sheffield. He seems to spend most of his nights either dogging or looking at bats judging from the tracker activity.
There is clearly an orchestrated campaign to undermine Sunak, much as there was to undermine Starmer and reinstall Corbyn during the first year of his leadership tenure.
I can't think who might be behind this, who would benefit, and who might replace Sunak. It's a mystery.
Being rich and left-wing is not hypocritical, any more than being poor and right-wing is.
It sort of is. A rich left-winger could give all their money to the poor. Or make voluntary contributions to HMRC. Or...
I give away a fair chunk (40%) of my post-tax income, but that's just trying to be vaguely consistent with my Corbynite philosophy, and I don't usually mention it. However, I don't see any inconsistency between not giving away anything but favouring higher tax on wealth or income for themselves and *everyone* who is similarly well-off. In the same way, people can favour new controls on pollution without knocking themselves out being the only person in their village without a car.
What would be inconsistent is favouring higher tax and then avoiding it!
My favourite was a titled Marxist of my acquaintance who lived on rents from property she owned.
Well that is how Mr Momentum earns the bulk of his income, and also we know he privatised the data that was collected.
If I remember correctly, the Communist Party of the UK sustains itself by rent collected on private property they own.
Manchester United footballer Mason Greenwood has had all charges against him dropped.
Personally, I think the FA should step in and ban the little **** for life.
What would have led to that? The complainant withdrawing her statement? Mishandling of evidence by the police? New evidence coming to light?
Seems very odd indeed to drop the charges after this length of time without saying why. So I'm guessing (2) is a serious possibility.
I'm not sure it really should matter - he's officially not guilty and the FA shouldn't interfere with that, should it?
Edit: just saw your edit. There's ample precedent in US sports leagues for players being banned on the strength of accusations, sometimes even when there's not even a charge. I'm not sure it would be helpful to import this particular trend.
It should be said that I have a great issue with the laws of rape as they currently are: in the fact a man can rape a woman or a man, but a woman cannot rape anyone. A man forcing a woman to have sex without consent is rape, whereas a woman doing it is 'just' sexual assault.
This matters, as the maximum sentence for rape is life, whilst the maximum sentence for sexual assault is ten years.
There is clearly an orchestrated campaign to undermine Sunak, much as there was to undermine Starmer and reinstall Corbyn during the first year of his leadership tenure.
I can't think who might be behind this, who would benefit, and who might replace Sunak. It's a mystery.
Yes, it's dashed unsporting, especially as it's nary a few months since Sunak's own orchestrated campaign got rid of Truss and installed him.
"I think they are stuck with (Sunak) until Starmer gets his post election call from the Palace."
I don't. If Sunak had his feet planted solidly in his position as party leader he'd have appointed a new party chairman by now. Unprecedented, how long it's taking. (That's unless there was a case before 1944.)
Even if the only consideration were what I'm hearing about Zahawi, it'd be hard to picture an apparently weak leader such as Sunak staying in office for long.
Oops, I see LuckyGuy has fallen for giving a Russian troll a like. Says it all really.
I like posts I feel have made a good point; who the point has been made by doesn’t figure in my decision - that would make me a weak-minded drip.
That's true.
It's the fact that you think like a Russia troll, that is concerning.
But we live in a free society so you, Dura, McClusky, Corbyn and the rest of your fellow travellers are free to think as you do. It's part of what makes us better than the Russians.
I think that's a little unfair to Dura_Ace, who I would never accuse of being a Russian troll. If anything, he has a better view into the Russian mindset than any of us. I may disagree with him on some things, but he appears genuine.
I wouldn't accuse him of being a Russian troll, I would instead suggest he is what in the Cold War would have been called a "useful idiot". He seems to truly swallow, believe and regurgitate the bullshit that the Russian trolls spout.
Though for Dura it could just be a contrarian desire to be different.
It is pragmatism and perspective. Something that the PB warriors on here mostly lack.
No just smart arse contrarianism. It is a bit sad. It is similarly stupid to his claim on the one hand to be a green while boasting about his love of high performance cars and fondness for exceeding the speed limit. At one stage he was an interesting, if somewhat bombastic poster, but now he is just ludicrous and implausible.
Nige calm the farm. You sound like someone who wears a sheepskin coat and driving gloves and I'm sure you don't do that.
It is an amusing image of sartorial ineptitude, but I am not sure I understand your point. I like performance cars, and have owned a few, but I would not simultaneously claim to be a "Green", unless I had eaten one of @Leon 's poached oysters
Could one not just claim to be a 'hypocritical green'? (Asking for a friend).
Seriously though, you might love performance cars, feel that you giving them up would be of vanishing insignificance in the grand scheme of things, and yet still be in favour of a government diktat banning performance cars such that you didn't have to rely on your own paltry willpower but instead could rely on your desire not to be naughty and break the law?
Seems logically consistent to me (partly because its embarrasingly close to my own position, replacing performance cars with jumping out of a plane).
cf all the hugely rich socialists (on PB).
Fundamental misunderstanding there Topping.
Being rich and left-wing is not hypocritical, any more than being poor and right-wing is.
It sort of is. A rich left-winger could give all their money to the poor. Or make voluntary contributions to HMRC. Or...
I disagree. Politics is where you create the system under which individuals operate. Within the system people can strive to do as well for themselves as they can. So for instance I want the system to help the poor at the expense of the rich, while within that system I want to do as well as I can to provide for myself and my family. I don't see a contradiction, especially as it is only by changing things at a systemic level that you can make a material difference for a meaningful number of people.
Yes that is perfectly understandable. But it is also hypocritical. Because you are benefiting from a system which you think is wrong. Not to be hypocritical is not to accept any advantages from the "bad" system.
I don't think that's right. The political realm is where you try to change the system, the personal and professional is where you live your life as best you can within the system (as long as the system is not so morallt bankrupt that you can't do that in good conscience). It's not my fault that the system has been set up in such a way that I can benefit from it so massively, indeed I have gone out of my way to make it otherwise but found myself stymied at every turn.
"It's not my fault..."
Ah so much can be excused by those simple words...
Manchester United footballer Mason Greenwood has had all charges against him dropped.
Personally, I think the FA should step in and ban the little **** for life.
What would have led to that? The complainant withdrawing her statement? Mishandling of evidence by the police? New evidence coming to light?
Seems very odd indeed to drop the charges after this length of time without saying why. So I'm guessing (2) is a serious possibility.
I'm not sure it really should matter - he's officially not guilty and the FA shouldn't interfere with that, should it?
Edit: just saw your edit. There's ample precedent in US sports leagues for players being banned on the strength of accusations, sometimes even when there's not even a charge. I'm not sure it would be helpful to import this particular trend.
Manchester United footballer Mason Greenwood has had all charges against him dropped.
Personally, I think the FA should step in and ban the little **** for life.
What would have led to that? The complainant withdrawing her statement? Mishandling of evidence by the police? New evidence coming to light?
Seems very odd indeed to drop the charges after this length of time without saying why. So I'm guessing (2) is a serious possibility.
I'm not sure it really should matter - he's officially not guilty and the FA shouldn't interfere with that, should it?
Edit: just saw your edit. There's ample precedent in US sports leagues for players being banned on the strength of accusations, sometimes even when there's not even a charge. I'm not sure it would be helpful to import this particular trend.
There is clearly an orchestrated campaign to undermine Sunak, much as there was to undermine Starmer and reinstall Corbyn during the first year of his leadership tenure.
I can't think who might be behind this, who would benefit, and who might replace Sunak. It's a mystery.
Yes, it's dashed unsporting, especially as it's nary a few months since Sunak's own orchestrated campaign got rid of Truss and installed him.
Orchestrated campaign? It was writ large on the package in which Truss and Kwarteng arrived "handle with care, this Prime Minister and Chancellor will self-destruct within 44 days" and it was true to it's word.
“I have been amazed and horrified at how many people are frightened of a guy called Tucker Carlson… What is it with this guy? All of these wonderful Republicans seem somehow intimidated by his perspective,” said @BorisJohnson speaking about Ukraine @AtlanticCouncil
There is clearly an orchestrated campaign to undermine Sunak, much as there was to undermine Starmer and reinstall Corbyn during the first year of his leadership tenure.
I can't think who might be behind this, who would benefit, and who might replace Sunak. It's a mystery.
I can help you. It might be Boris boosterism bluster is best option faction (none of it makes sense but by heck don’t those thicko working class voters lap it up).
Then again it might Trussnomics Growth is true Toryism faction. How do Tory’s go into election after years of no growth and Putin getting more growth than us?
Or the Leaky Sue is right, Brexit means pull up a drawbridge and turn the moat into a DMZ, so why the hell havn’t we done this yet, faction.
Unless of course it’s the, I voted remain am I really in love with Brexit or want Hunt to salami tactics the brexit deal into nothing left of it faction.
Or it might be how effective Starmer and his front bench team are.
"I think they are stuck with (Sunak) until Starmer gets his post election call from the Palace."
I don't. If Sunak had his feet planted solidly in his position as party leader he'd have appointed a new party chairman by now. Unprecedented, how long it's taking. (That's unless there was a case before 1944.)
Even if the only consideration were what I'm hearing about Zahawi, it'd be hard to picture an apparently weak leader such as Sunak staying in office for long.
Oops, I see LuckyGuy has fallen for giving a Russian troll a like. Says it all really.
I like posts I feel have made a good point; who the point has been made by doesn’t figure in my decision - that would make me a weak-minded drip.
That's true.
It's the fact that you think like a Russia troll, that is concerning.
But we live in a free society so you, Dura, McClusky, Corbyn and the rest of your fellow travellers are free to think as you do. It's part of what makes us better than the Russians.
I think that's a little unfair to Dura_Ace, who I would never accuse of being a Russian troll. If anything, he has a better view into the Russian mindset than any of us. I may disagree with him on some things, but he appears genuine.
I wouldn't accuse him of being a Russian troll, I would instead suggest he is what in the Cold War would have been called a "useful idiot". He seems to truly swallow, believe and regurgitate the bullshit that the Russian trolls spout.
Though for Dura it could just be a contrarian desire to be different.
It is pragmatism and perspective. Something that the PB warriors on here mostly lack.
No just smart arse contrarianism. It is a bit sad. It is similarly stupid to his claim on the one hand to be a green while boasting about his love of high performance cars and fondness for exceeding the speed limit. At one stage he was an interesting, if somewhat bombastic poster, but now he is just ludicrous and implausible.
Nige calm the farm. You sound like someone who wears a sheepskin coat and driving gloves and I'm sure you don't do that.
It is an amusing image of sartorial ineptitude, but I am not sure I understand your point. I like performance cars, and have owned a few, but I would not simultaneously claim to be a "Green", unless I had eaten one of @Leon 's poached oysters
Could one not just claim to be a 'hypocritical green'? (Asking for a friend).
Seriously though, you might love performance cars, feel that you giving them up would be of vanishing insignificance in the grand scheme of things, and yet still be in favour of a government diktat banning performance cars such that you didn't have to rely on your own paltry willpower but instead could rely on your desire not to be naughty and break the law?
Seems logically consistent to me (partly because its embarrasingly close to my own position, replacing performance cars with jumping out of a plane).
cf all the hugely rich socialists (on PB).
Fundamental misunderstanding there Topping.
Being rich and left-wing is not hypocritical, any more than being poor and right-wing is.
It sort of is. A rich left-winger could give all their money to the poor. Or make voluntary contributions to HMRC. Or...
I disagree. Politics is where you create the system under which individuals operate. Within the system people can strive to do as well for themselves as they can. So for instance I want the system to help the poor at the expense of the rich, while within that system I want to do as well as I can to provide for myself and my family. I don't see a contradiction, especially as it is only by changing things at a systemic level that you can make a material difference for a meaningful number of people.
Yes that is perfectly understandable. But it is also hypocritical. Because you are benefiting from a system which you think is wrong. Not to be hypocritical is not to accept any advantages from the "bad" system.
I don't think that's right. The political realm is where you try to change the system, the personal and professional is where you live your life as best you can within the system (as long as the system is not so morallt bankrupt that you can't do that in good conscience). It's not my fault that the system has been set up in such a way that I can benefit from it so massively, indeed I have gone out of my way to make it otherwise but found myself stymied at every turn.
"It's not my fault..."
Ah so much can be excused by those simple words...
But it genuinely isn't! I keep voting to make myself worse off and keep getting outvoted. It's very frustrating.
There is clearly an orchestrated campaign to undermine Sunak, much as there was to undermine Starmer and reinstall Corbyn during the first year of his leadership tenure.
I can't think who might be behind this, who would benefit, and who might replace Sunak. It's a mystery.
Yes, it's dashed unsporting, especially as it's nary a few months since Sunak's own orchestrated campaign got rid of Truss and installed him.
Orchestrated campaign? It was writ large on the package in which Truss and Kwarteng arrived "handle with care, this Prime Minister and Chancellor will self-destruct within 44 days" and it was true to it's word.
It certainly didn't take 44 days for the anonymous briefings from 'senior MPs' to start. They started almost immediately and grew steadily in frequency and vitriol until the end. At least most of Sunak's critics seem to have the balls to stand behind their criticisms. You tend to lose things how you got them.
All you free marketeers on here...do you think there is any level of profit-taking from the economy that is 'too much'? If so, is £32.2bn too much? If so, what should be done about it?
FWIW, I recognise the risks of stepping in to regulate this further. But I also see the risks and distortion effects of profits this size, particularly in the way it funnels money from the economy as a whole into the pockets of a smaller group of richer individuals, who are then able to distort markets such as the housing market in London, because of their excess wealth.
Yes, I know institutional investors, pension funds etc are a thing and profits like this can be good for them, and I'm not dismissing that angle, I just don't think it's the whole story.
Is it from "The Economy" that is subject to tax in the UK? Or is it a worldwide number?
I note that the Guardian does not tell us, nor do they explain how much tax is paid already.
I'd say they are trying to maintain the outrage, complete with rantaquotes from Ed Davey and Greenpeace.
Sorry, but I'd say that is the permatrolling type of commentary, as when for example Professor Murphy was frothing away years ago about how banks were avoiding tax, when the profit had been absorbed by losses from previous years.
Thanks for the reply. Are you saying, then, that any amount of profit is acceptable if appropriate taxes are paid? That's my question really, not a question about the quality of the Guardian's reporting.
In my view there is a (pretty high) limit to levels of acceptable profit, not least because profits of that size suggest a market that is captured in an unhealthy way. I think this might be an example of that limit being breached, regardless of where the profit has been garnered globally.
OK, so let's agree that the quality of Guardian news reporting is atrocious .
I think the identification of profits to which taxes can be applied is perhaps a missing element of any debate, as this is an outrage bus.
I think part of the context wrt Shell is that UK profits are already taxed at a high rate. The last number I saw was quite a bit higher than normal Corp. Tax due to an increased tax for oil companies, and then a windfall tax on top of that.
I can see the argument for a tax on windfall gains unrelated to the basic business operation - by analogy we give support to eg Renewables to prime the pump. But it needs to be very careful indeed - if we want to limit profit margins then what do we do with eg perfume companies, or software companies?
On your first paragraph, there are other media companies that I'd want to pick off first
I see the validity of your overall argument.
Okay, a thought experiment (I know there will be problems with this, I am interested in what they are): Rather than having a percentage tax rate on corporate profits, imagine a world in which any single company could make a maximum of, say, £1bn in profit each year.
Ignoring the impossibility of implementing such a scheme, would it fundamentally break the capitalist system, or would it simply reduce big companies' desires to take productive risks?
So take for example IPhones, say on a 1000£ phone they make 10£ profit . They have to stop selling IPhones onces sales reach 1 million and say sorry we aren't allowed to make more than a billion profit this year, maybe you will get to be one of the lucky million customers next year?
Can't see that working somehow
Do you not think that we might get more useful innovation (rather than having sixteen different camera lenses and a 1/2 mm thinner device) if the smartphone market was less captured by Apple?
Not particularly dissing iphones - they have their strengths - but I suspect the iphone would be even better if it had more competitors, which it would do if Apple only made a million of them a year.
Apple have plenty of competitors as it is, it is not like we are short of companies that make phones. The only effect your cap on profits would have is to make any company in a market have to stop selling their product in the event it became to popular.
Personally if buying a product I want to buy one that suits my needs. If the ones that suits my needs aren't available because they have had to stop selling for the year then how does that help me?
Another example then...last company I worked at made software used in hospitals. If we came up with a new whizzo feature that made a hospital 5% more efficient on deployment that none of our competitors had thought of should we in your mind have said to hospitals clamouring to buy "sorry you will have to wait a year we reached our profit cap"
COVID vaccine - "Sorry, we've made a million doses. No more this year."
Since Mike gave me the tip I have never looked back from Xiaomi.
£170 for the three-below-flagship model which is perfect for me.
Me too. Redmi Note 11. A friend has a 5G POCO which is much the same phone as mine, and an interesting upgrade.
I know Xi has direct access to my bank account, but there is FA in there, so he's welcome. I suppose he could unlock my car through the MyBMW app if he was so minded, for a laugh. I suspect Xi has access to a Chinese made Galaxy Flip 4 or an iphone 14 too. I'd rather pay £150 to be ripped off by the Red Army than £1000.
Mrs DA's old i4 refuses to disappear from her MyBMW app despite the fact that it is now owned by some bloke in Sheffield. He seems to spend most of his nights either dogging or looking at bats judging from the tracker activity.
"Badger watching" is the preferreds expression I believe for the former. And listening to bats' AI sonar is more likely in the dark.
Though moth hunting is another euphemism, I suppose. It even has the merit of sometimes being true.
All you free marketeers on here...do you think there is any level of profit-taking from the economy that is 'too much'? If so, is £32.2bn too much? If so, what should be done about it?
FWIW, I recognise the risks of stepping in to regulate this further. But I also see the risks and distortion effects of profits this size, particularly in the way it funnels money from the economy as a whole into the pockets of a smaller group of richer individuals, who are then able to distort markets such as the housing market in London, because of their excess wealth.
Yes, I know institutional investors, pension funds etc are a thing and profits like this can be good for them, and I'm not dismissing that angle, I just don't think it's the whole story.
Is it from "The Economy" that is subject to tax in the UK? Or is it a worldwide number?
I note that the Guardian does not tell us, nor do they explain how much tax is paid already.
I'd say they are trying to maintain the outrage, complete with rantaquotes from Ed Davey and Greenpeace.
Sorry, but I'd say that is the permatrolling type of commentary, as when for example Professor Murphy was frothing away years ago about how banks were avoiding tax, when the profit had been absorbed by losses from previous years.
Thanks for the reply. Are you saying, then, that any amount of profit is acceptable if appropriate taxes are paid? That's my question really, not a question about the quality of the Guardian's reporting.
In my view there is a (pretty high) limit to levels of acceptable profit, not least because profits of that size suggest a market that is captured in an unhealthy way. I think this might be an example of that limit being breached, regardless of where the profit has been garnered globally.
OK, so let's agree that the quality of Guardian news reporting is atrocious .
I think the identification of profits to which taxes can be applied is perhaps a missing element of any debate, as this is an outrage bus.
I think part of the context wrt Shell is that UK profits are already taxed at a high rate. The last number I saw was quite a bit higher than normal Corp. Tax due to an increased tax for oil companies, and then a windfall tax on top of that.
I can see the argument for a tax on windfall gains unrelated to the basic business operation - by analogy we give support to eg Renewables to prime the pump. But it needs to be very careful indeed - if we want to limit profit margins then what do we do with eg perfume companies, or software companies?
On your first paragraph, there are other media companies that I'd want to pick off first
I see the validity of your overall argument.
Okay, a thought experiment (I know there will be problems with this, I am interested in what they are): Rather than having a percentage tax rate on corporate profits, imagine a world in which any single company could make a maximum of, say, £1bn in profit each year.
Ignoring the impossibility of implementing such a scheme, would it fundamentally break the capitalist system, or would it simply reduce big companies' desires to take productive risks?
So take for example IPhones, say on a 1000£ phone they make 10£ profit . They have to stop selling IPhones onces sales reach 1 million and say sorry we aren't allowed to make more than a billion profit this year, maybe you will get to be one of the lucky million customers next year?
Can't see that working somehow
Do you not think that we might get more useful innovation (rather than having sixteen different camera lenses and a 1/2 mm thinner device) if the smartphone market was less captured by Apple?
Not particularly dissing iphones - they have their strengths - but I suspect the iphone would be even better if it had more competitors, which it would do if Apple only made a million of them a year.
Apple have plenty of competitors as it is, it is not like we are short of companies that make phones. The only effect your cap on profits would have is to make any company in a market have to stop selling their product in the event it became to popular.
Personally if buying a product I want to buy one that suits my needs. If the ones that suits my needs aren't available because they have had to stop selling for the year then how does that help me?
Another example then...last company I worked at made software used in hospitals. If we came up with a new whizzo feature that made a hospital 5% more efficient on deployment that none of our competitors had thought of should we in your mind have said to hospitals clamouring to buy "sorry you will have to wait a year we reached our profit cap"
COVID vaccine - "Sorry, we've made a million doses. No more this year."
Since Mike gave me the tip I have never looked back from Xiaomi.
£170 for the three-below-flagship model which is perfect for me.
Me too. Redmi Note 11. A friend has a 5G POCO which is much the same phone as mine, and an interesting upgrade.
I know Xi has direct access to my bank account, but there is FA in there, so he's welcome. I suppose he could unlock my car through the MyBMW app if he was so minded, for a laugh. I suspect Xi has access to a Chinese made Galaxy Flip 4 or an iphone 14 too. I'd rather pay £150 to be ripped off by the Red Army than £1000.
Mrs DA's old i4 refuses to disappear from her MyBMW app despite the fact that it is now owned by some bloke in Sheffield. He seems to spend most of his nights either dogging or looking at bats judging from the tracker activity.
All you free marketeers on here...do you think there is any level of profit-taking from the economy that is 'too much'? If so, is £32.2bn too much? If so, what should be done about it?
FWIW, I recognise the risks of stepping in to regulate this further. But I also see the risks and distortion effects of profits this size, particularly in the way it funnels money from the economy as a whole into the pockets of a smaller group of richer individuals, who are then able to distort markets such as the housing market in London, because of their excess wealth.
Yes, I know institutional investors, pension funds etc are a thing and profits like this can be good for them, and I'm not dismissing that angle, I just don't think it's the whole story.
Is it from "The Economy" that is subject to tax in the UK? Or is it a worldwide number?
I note that the Guardian does not tell us, nor do they explain how much tax is paid already.
I'd say they are trying to maintain the outrage, complete with rantaquotes from Ed Davey and Greenpeace.
Sorry, but I'd say that is the permatrolling type of commentary, as when for example Professor Murphy was frothing away years ago about how banks were avoiding tax, when the profit had been absorbed by losses from previous years.
Thanks for the reply. Are you saying, then, that any amount of profit is acceptable if appropriate taxes are paid? That's my question really, not a question about the quality of the Guardian's reporting.
In my view there is a (pretty high) limit to levels of acceptable profit, not least because profits of that size suggest a market that is captured in an unhealthy way. I think this might be an example of that limit being breached, regardless of where the profit has been garnered globally.
OK, so let's agree that the quality of Guardian news reporting is atrocious .
I think the identification of profits to which taxes can be applied is perhaps a missing element of any debate, as this is an outrage bus.
I think part of the context wrt Shell is that UK profits are already taxed at a high rate. The last number I saw was quite a bit higher than normal Corp. Tax due to an increased tax for oil companies, and then a windfall tax on top of that.
I can see the argument for a tax on windfall gains unrelated to the basic business operation - by analogy we give support to eg Renewables to prime the pump. But it needs to be very careful indeed - if we want to limit profit margins then what do we do with eg perfume companies, or software companies?
On your first paragraph, there are other media companies that I'd want to pick off first
I see the validity of your overall argument.
Okay, a thought experiment (I know there will be problems with this, I am interested in what they are): Rather than having a percentage tax rate on corporate profits, imagine a world in which any single company could make a maximum of, say, £1bn in profit each year.
Ignoring the impossibility of implementing such a scheme, would it fundamentally break the capitalist system, or would it simply reduce big companies' desires to take productive risks?
So take for example IPhones, say on a 1000£ phone they make 10£ profit . They have to stop selling IPhones onces sales reach 1 million and say sorry we aren't allowed to make more than a billion profit this year, maybe you will get to be one of the lucky million customers next year?
Can't see that working somehow
Do you not think that we might get more useful innovation (rather than having sixteen different camera lenses and a 1/2 mm thinner device) if the smartphone market was less captured by Apple?
Not particularly dissing iphones - they have their strengths - but I suspect the iphone would be even better if it had more competitors, which it would do if Apple only made a million of them a year.
Apple have plenty of competitors as it is, it is not like we are short of companies that make phones. The only effect your cap on profits would have is to make any company in a market have to stop selling their product in the event it became to popular.
Personally if buying a product I want to buy one that suits my needs. If the ones that suits my needs aren't available because they have had to stop selling for the year then how does that help me?
Another example then...last company I worked at made software used in hospitals. If we came up with a new whizzo feature that made a hospital 5% more efficient on deployment that none of our competitors had thought of should we in your mind have said to hospitals clamouring to buy "sorry you will have to wait a year we reached our profit cap"
COVID vaccine - "Sorry, we've made a million doses. No more this year."
Since Mike gave me the tip I have never looked back from Xiaomi.
£170 for the three-below-flagship model which is perfect for me.
Me too. Redmi Note 11. A friend has a 5G POCO which is much the same phone as mine, and an interesting upgrade.
I know Xi has direct access to my bank account, but there is FA in there, so he's welcome. I suppose he could unlock my car through the MyBMW app if he was so minded, for a laugh. I suspect Xi has access to a Chinese made Galaxy Flip 4 or an iphone 14 too. I'd rather pay £150 to be ripped off by the Red Army than £1000.
Mrs DA's old i4 refuses to disappear from her MyBMW app despite the fact that it is now owned by some bloke in Sheffield. He seems to spend most of his nights either dogging or looking at bats judging from the tracker activity.
Have you not been tempted to confuse the new owner by de-icing his car on colder days?
“I have been amazed and horrified at how many people are frightened of a guy called Tucker Carlson… What is it with this guy? All of these wonderful Republicans seem somehow intimidated by his perspective,” said @BorisJohnson speaking about Ukraine @AtlanticCouncil
His girlfriend stood by him when he was accused / convicted / acquitted on appeal of rape of a woman he met on a night out, where the case centred over if the lady consented. He didn't deny having had sex with the lady behind his girlfriend (now wifes) back and his father in-law even funded all his legal actions.
All you free marketeers on here...do you think there is any level of profit-taking from the economy that is 'too much'? If so, is £32.2bn too much? If so, what should be done about it?
FWIW, I recognise the risks of stepping in to regulate this further. But I also see the risks and distortion effects of profits this size, particularly in the way it funnels money from the economy as a whole into the pockets of a smaller group of richer individuals, who are then able to distort markets such as the housing market in London, because of their excess wealth.
Yes, I know institutional investors, pension funds etc are a thing and profits like this can be good for them, and I'm not dismissing that angle, I just don't think it's the whole story.
Is it from "The Economy" that is subject to tax in the UK? Or is it a worldwide number?
I note that the Guardian does not tell us, nor do they explain how much tax is paid already.
I'd say they are trying to maintain the outrage, complete with rantaquotes from Ed Davey and Greenpeace.
Sorry, but I'd say that is the permatrolling type of commentary, as when for example Professor Murphy was frothing away years ago about how banks were avoiding tax, when the profit had been absorbed by losses from previous years.
Thanks for the reply. Are you saying, then, that any amount of profit is acceptable if appropriate taxes are paid? That's my question really, not a question about the quality of the Guardian's reporting.
In my view there is a (pretty high) limit to levels of acceptable profit, not least because profits of that size suggest a market that is captured in an unhealthy way. I think this might be an example of that limit being breached, regardless of where the profit has been garnered globally.
OK, so let's agree that the quality of Guardian news reporting is atrocious .
I think the identification of profits to which taxes can be applied is perhaps a missing element of any debate, as this is an outrage bus.
I think part of the context wrt Shell is that UK profits are already taxed at a high rate. The last number I saw was quite a bit higher than normal Corp. Tax due to an increased tax for oil companies, and then a windfall tax on top of that.
I can see the argument for a tax on windfall gains unrelated to the basic business operation - by analogy we give support to eg Renewables to prime the pump. But it needs to be very careful indeed - if we want to limit profit margins then what do we do with eg perfume companies, or software companies?
On your first paragraph, there are other media companies that I'd want to pick off first
I see the validity of your overall argument.
Okay, a thought experiment (I know there will be problems with this, I am interested in what they are): Rather than having a percentage tax rate on corporate profits, imagine a world in which any single company could make a maximum of, say, £1bn in profit each year.
Ignoring the impossibility of implementing such a scheme, would it fundamentally break the capitalist system, or would it simply reduce big companies' desires to take productive risks?
So take for example IPhones, say on a 1000£ phone they make 10£ profit . They have to stop selling IPhones onces sales reach 1 million and say sorry we aren't allowed to make more than a billion profit this year, maybe you will get to be one of the lucky million customers next year?
Can't see that working somehow
Do you not think that we might get more useful innovation (rather than having sixteen different camera lenses and a 1/2 mm thinner device) if the smartphone market was less captured by Apple?
Not particularly dissing iphones - they have their strengths - but I suspect the iphone would be even better if it had more competitors, which it would do if Apple only made a million of them a year.
Apple have plenty of competitors as it is, it is not like we are short of companies that make phones. The only effect your cap on profits would have is to make any company in a market have to stop selling their product in the event it became to popular.
Personally if buying a product I want to buy one that suits my needs. If the ones that suits my needs aren't available because they have had to stop selling for the year then how does that help me?
Another example then...last company I worked at made software used in hospitals. If we came up with a new whizzo feature that made a hospital 5% more efficient on deployment that none of our competitors had thought of should we in your mind have said to hospitals clamouring to buy "sorry you will have to wait a year we reached our profit cap"
COVID vaccine - "Sorry, we've made a million doses. No more this year."
I suspect as Apple probably make significantly more profit off an IPhone than 10£ they would just shoot up in price and become a status symbol for the very rich under maxh's cap we offer a brand new IPhone only 50k but we only sell 2000 a year sort of thing
Yes I can imagine that happening!
Though I think you're thinking too statically. I don't think Apple have a unique insight into the wonderful world of smartphones. I suspect that, where supply of their devices was further restricted, an almost-but-perhaps-not-quite-as-good competitor would fill the gap. And I think there might well be more innovation.
They'd probably still be status symbols. But if someeone wants to pay 50k for a smartphone I'd respond that the more quickly we can remove money from their hands and put it in the hands of someone less idiotic the better!
There are many phones out their with specs better than the IPhone you would get absolutely zero more innovation
There is clearly an orchestrated campaign to undermine Sunak, much as there was to undermine Starmer and reinstall Corbyn during the first year of his leadership tenure.
I can't think who might be behind this, who would benefit, and who might replace Sunak. It's a mystery.
I can help you. It might be Boris boosterism bluster is best option faction (none of it makes sense but by heck don’t those thicko working class voters lap it up).
Then again it might Trussnomics Growth is true Toryism faction. How do Tory’s go into election after years of no growth and Putin getting more growth than us?
Or the Leaky Sue is right, Brexit means pull up a drawbridge and turn the moat into a DMZ, so why the hell havn’t we done this yet, faction.
Unless of course it’s the, I voted remain am I really in love with Brexit or want Hunt to salami tactics the brexit deal into nothing left of it faction.
Or it might be how effective Starmer and his front bench team are.
Don’t know if this helps you at all, Mex.
I'll try Babelfish to translate later, and I'll come back to you if your post helps. Thanks in anticipation.
All you free marketeers on here...do you think there is any level of profit-taking from the economy that is 'too much'? If so, is £32.2bn too much? If so, what should be done about it?
FWIW, I recognise the risks of stepping in to regulate this further. But I also see the risks and distortion effects of profits this size, particularly in the way it funnels money from the economy as a whole into the pockets of a smaller group of richer individuals, who are then able to distort markets such as the housing market in London, because of their excess wealth.
Yes, I know institutional investors, pension funds etc are a thing and profits like this can be good for them, and I'm not dismissing that angle, I just don't think it's the whole story.
Is it from "The Economy" that is subject to tax in the UK? Or is it a worldwide number?
I note that the Guardian does not tell us, nor do they explain how much tax is paid already.
I'd say they are trying to maintain the outrage, complete with rantaquotes from Ed Davey and Greenpeace.
Sorry, but I'd say that is the permatrolling type of commentary, as when for example Professor Murphy was frothing away years ago about how banks were avoiding tax, when the profit had been absorbed by losses from previous years.
Thanks for the reply. Are you saying, then, that any amount of profit is acceptable if appropriate taxes are paid? That's my question really, not a question about the quality of the Guardian's reporting.
In my view there is a (pretty high) limit to levels of acceptable profit, not least because profits of that size suggest a market that is captured in an unhealthy way. I think this might be an example of that limit being breached, regardless of where the profit has been garnered globally.
OK, so let's agree that the quality of Guardian news reporting is atrocious .
I think the identification of profits to which taxes can be applied is perhaps a missing element of any debate, as this is an outrage bus.
I think part of the context wrt Shell is that UK profits are already taxed at a high rate. The last number I saw was quite a bit higher than normal Corp. Tax due to an increased tax for oil companies, and then a windfall tax on top of that.
I can see the argument for a tax on windfall gains unrelated to the basic business operation - by analogy we give support to eg Renewables to prime the pump. But it needs to be very careful indeed - if we want to limit profit margins then what do we do with eg perfume companies, or software companies?
On your first paragraph, there are other media companies that I'd want to pick off first
I see the validity of your overall argument.
Okay, a thought experiment (I know there will be problems with this, I am interested in what they are): Rather than having a percentage tax rate on corporate profits, imagine a world in which any single company could make a maximum of, say, £1bn in profit each year.
Ignoring the impossibility of implementing such a scheme, would it fundamentally break the capitalist system, or would it simply reduce big companies' desires to take productive risks?
So take for example IPhones, say on a 1000£ phone they make 10£ profit . They have to stop selling IPhones onces sales reach 1 million and say sorry we aren't allowed to make more than a billion profit this year, maybe you will get to be one of the lucky million customers next year?
Can't see that working somehow
Do you not think that we might get more useful innovation (rather than having sixteen different camera lenses and a 1/2 mm thinner device) if the smartphone market was less captured by Apple?
Not particularly dissing iphones - they have their strengths - but I suspect the iphone would be even better if it had more competitors, which it would do if Apple only made a million of them a year.
Apple have plenty of competitors as it is, it is not like we are short of companies that make phones. The only effect your cap on profits would have is to make any company in a market have to stop selling their product in the event it became to popular.
Personally if buying a product I want to buy one that suits my needs. If the ones that suits my needs aren't available because they have had to stop selling for the year then how does that help me?
Another example then...last company I worked at made software used in hospitals. If we came up with a new whizzo feature that made a hospital 5% more efficient on deployment that none of our competitors had thought of should we in your mind have said to hospitals clamouring to buy "sorry you will have to wait a year we reached our profit cap"
COVID vaccine - "Sorry, we've made a million doses. No more this year."
Since Mike gave me the tip I have never looked back from Xiaomi.
£170 for the three-below-flagship model which is perfect for me.
Me too. Redmi Note 11. A friend has a 5G POCO which is much the same phone as mine, and an interesting upgrade.
I know Xi has direct access to my bank account, but there is FA in there, so he's welcome. I suppose he could unlock my car through the MyBMW app if he was so minded, for a laugh. I suspect Xi has access to a Chinese made Galaxy Flip 4 or an iphone 14 too. I'd rather pay £150 to be ripped off by the Red Army than £1000.
Mrs DA's old i4 refuses to disappear from her MyBMW app despite the fact that it is now owned by some bloke in Sheffield. He seems to spend most of his nights either dogging or looking at bats judging from the tracker activity.
You sold it to David Attenborough?
He's a bit old for that these days. And less interested in bats.
His girlfriend stood by him when he was accused / convicted / acquitted on appeal of rape of a woman he met on a night out, where the case centred over if the lady consented. He didn't deny having had sex with the lady behind his girlfriend (now wifes) back and his father in-law even funded all his legal actions.
That was a very different case. One person's word against the other. And I still don't quite understand what is and what isn't admissible re previous encounters with other men.
All you free marketeers on here...do you think there is any level of profit-taking from the economy that is 'too much'? If so, is £32.2bn too much? If so, what should be done about it?
FWIW, I recognise the risks of stepping in to regulate this further. But I also see the risks and distortion effects of profits this size, particularly in the way it funnels money from the economy as a whole into the pockets of a smaller group of richer individuals, who are then able to distort markets such as the housing market in London, because of their excess wealth.
Yes, I know institutional investors, pension funds etc are a thing and profits like this can be good for them, and I'm not dismissing that angle, I just don't think it's the whole story.
Is it from "The Economy" that is subject to tax in the UK? Or is it a worldwide number?
I note that the Guardian does not tell us, nor do they explain how much tax is paid already.
I'd say they are trying to maintain the outrage, complete with rantaquotes from Ed Davey and Greenpeace.
Sorry, but I'd say that is the permatrolling type of commentary, as when for example Professor Murphy was frothing away years ago about how banks were avoiding tax, when the profit had been absorbed by losses from previous years.
Thanks for the reply. Are you saying, then, that any amount of profit is acceptable if appropriate taxes are paid? That's my question really, not a question about the quality of the Guardian's reporting.
In my view there is a (pretty high) limit to levels of acceptable profit, not least because profits of that size suggest a market that is captured in an unhealthy way. I think this might be an example of that limit being breached, regardless of where the profit has been garnered globally.
OK, so let's agree that the quality of Guardian news reporting is atrocious .
I think the identification of profits to which taxes can be applied is perhaps a missing element of any debate, as this is an outrage bus.
I think part of the context wrt Shell is that UK profits are already taxed at a high rate. The last number I saw was quite a bit higher than normal Corp. Tax due to an increased tax for oil companies, and then a windfall tax on top of that.
I can see the argument for a tax on windfall gains unrelated to the basic business operation - by analogy we give support to eg Renewables to prime the pump. But it needs to be very careful indeed - if we want to limit profit margins then what do we do with eg perfume companies, or software companies?
On your first paragraph, there are other media companies that I'd want to pick off first
I see the validity of your overall argument.
Okay, a thought experiment (I know there will be problems with this, I am interested in what they are): Rather than having a percentage tax rate on corporate profits, imagine a world in which any single company could make a maximum of, say, £1bn in profit each year.
Ignoring the impossibility of implementing such a scheme, would it fundamentally break the capitalist system, or would it simply reduce big companies' desires to take productive risks?
So take for example IPhones, say on a 1000£ phone they make 10£ profit . They have to stop selling IPhones onces sales reach 1 million and say sorry we aren't allowed to make more than a billion profit this year, maybe you will get to be one of the lucky million customers next year?
Can't see that working somehow
Do you not think that we might get more useful innovation (rather than having sixteen different camera lenses and a 1/2 mm thinner device) if the smartphone market was less captured by Apple?
Not particularly dissing iphones - they have their strengths - but I suspect the iphone would be even better if it had more competitors, which it would do if Apple only made a million of them a year.
Apple have plenty of competitors as it is, it is not like we are short of companies that make phones. The only effect your cap on profits would have is to make any company in a market have to stop selling their product in the event it became to popular.
Personally if buying a product I want to buy one that suits my needs. If the ones that suits my needs aren't available because they have had to stop selling for the year then how does that help me?
Another example then...last company I worked at made software used in hospitals. If we came up with a new whizzo feature that made a hospital 5% more efficient on deployment that none of our competitors had thought of should we in your mind have said to hospitals clamouring to buy "sorry you will have to wait a year we reached our profit cap"
COVID vaccine - "Sorry, we've made a million doses. No more this year."
Since Mike gave me the tip I have never looked back from Xiaomi.
£170 for the three-below-flagship model which is perfect for me.
Me too. Redmi Note 11. A friend has a 5G POCO which is much the same phone as mine, and an interesting upgrade.
I know Xi has direct access to my bank account, but there is FA in there, so he's welcome. I suppose he could unlock my car through the MyBMW app if he was so minded, for a laugh. I suspect Xi has access to a Chinese made Galaxy Flip 4 or an iphone 14 too. I'd rather pay £150 to be ripped off by the Red Army than £1000.
Mrs DA's old i4 refuses to disappear from her MyBMW app despite the fact that it is now owned by some bloke in Sheffield. He seems to spend most of his nights either dogging or looking at bats judging from the tracker activity.
I've just sold my car to a dealer in Sheffield. Should I be worried?
(Incidentally, I sold it via Motorway. Wasn't quite sure what to expect but actually it went pretty smoothly and I've got around £900 more than the infamous WBAC.com would have given me. Would recommend on the basis of my experience.)
Manchester United footballer Mason Greenwood has had all charges against him dropped.
Personally, I think the FA should step in and ban the little **** for life.
On what grounds?
Good afternoon
The CPS have said there is no longer a chance of a successful prosecution
I assume there must have been a material change in the evidence
N0, my question was 'on what grounds tlg86 thinks 'the FA should step in and ban the little **** for life'.
Sorry I misread your post
If the CPS have dropped all charges then in law he is innocent and banning him would seem bizarre
Because there is evidence in the public domain. John Terry was found not guilty in a court of law, but that didn't stop the FA deciding that they thought he was guilty.
The big pressure is on Man Utd. Do they really want him in the club?
Suspect Man U wrote him off long ago,
This must actually be devastating to the young lady and her family. ☹️
She is actually still with him
Really?
But even despite that, not tonight I’ve got a head ache should still mean not tonight I’ve got a head ache.
This is a footballer Gary Neville told us was going to be far better than Rashford.
Something that may shift the dial is Sunak taking on the ERG and delivering a NI Protocol deal. It would involve concessions on the CJEU, but that would not bother most voters. Defining himself against the loons and putting his country before his party would kill off the weakness attack line and would probably reap electoral benefits in areas where the Tories won Remain votes in 2019 but are struggling to hold on to them now. It does look like a deal is there to be done.
His girlfriend stood by him when he was accused / convicted / acquitted on appeal of rape of a woman he met on a night out, where the case centred over if the lady consented. He didn't deny having had sex with the lady behind his girlfriend (now wifes) back and his father in-law even funded all his legal actions.
His girlfriend stood by him when he was accused / convicted / acquitted on appeal of rape of a woman he met on a night out, where the case centred over if the lady consented. He didn't deny having had sex with the lady behind his girlfriend (now wifes) back and his father in-law even funded all his legal actions.
His girlfriend stood by him when he was accused / convicted / acquitted on appeal of rape of a woman he met on a night out, where the case centred over if the lady consented. He didn't deny having had sex with the lady behind his girlfriend (now wifes) back and his father in-law even funded all his legal actions.
That was a very different case. One person's word against the other. And I still don't quite understand what is and what isn't admissible re previous encounters with other men.
Ched Evans. Didn’t meet the lady on the night out, his mate did, who she went via taxi to a room and into bed with. When she woke up next morning it was a different man in the bed.
There is clearly an orchestrated campaign to undermine Sunak, much as there was to undermine Starmer and reinstall Corbyn during the first year of his leadership tenure.
I can't think who might be behind this, who would benefit, and who might replace Sunak. It's a mystery.
I can help you. It might be Boris boosterism bluster is best option faction (none of it makes sense but by heck don’t those thicko working class voters lap it up).
Then again it might Trussnomics Growth is true Toryism faction. How do Tory’s go into election after years of no growth and Putin getting more growth than us?
Or the Leaky Sue is right, Brexit means pull up a drawbridge and turn the moat into a DMZ, so why the hell havn’t we done this yet, faction.
Unless of course it’s the, I voted remain am I really in love with Brexit or want Hunt to salami tactics the brexit deal into nothing left of it faction.
Or it might be how effective Starmer and his front bench team are.
Don’t know if this helps you at all, Mex.
I'll try Babelfish to translate later, and I'll come back to you if your post helps. Thanks in anticipation.
His girlfriend stood by him when he was accused / convicted / acquitted on appeal of rape of a woman he met on a night out, where the case centred over if the lady consented. He didn't deny having had sex with the lady behind his girlfriend (now wifes) back and his father in-law even funded all his legal actions.
His girlfriend stood by him when he was accused / convicted / acquitted on appeal of rape of a woman he met on a night out, where the case centred over if the lady consented. He didn't deny having had sex with the lady behind his girlfriend (now wifes) back and his father in-law even funded all his legal actions.
That was a very different case. One person's word against the other. And I still don't quite understand what is and what isn't admissible re previous encounters with other men.
Ched Evans. Didn’t meet the lady on the night out, his mate did, who she went via taxi to a room and into bed with. When she woke up next morning it was a different man in the bed.
Yes, and what led to the conviction being quashed was a man coming forward to give an account of a night he'd had with the woman that matched what Evans had described implying that there was consent. But really, that evidence should never have been heard, because her identity shouldn't have got out and the guy that came forward should not have been in a position to do so. It's all very odd.
His girlfriend stood by him when he was accused / convicted / acquitted on appeal of rape of a woman he met on a night out, where the case centred over if the lady consented. He didn't deny having had sex with the lady behind his girlfriend (now wifes) back and his father in-law even funded all his legal actions.
That was a very different case. One person's word against the other. And I still don't quite understand what is and what isn't admissible re previous encounters with other men.
Ched Evans. Didn’t meet the lady on the night out, his mate did, who she went via taxi to a room and into bed with. When she woke up next morning it was a different man in the bed.
Yes, and what led to the conviction being quashed was a man coming forward to give an account of a night he'd had with the woman that matched what Evans had described implying that there was consent. But really, that evidence should never have been heard, because her identity shouldn't have got out and the guy that came forward should not have been in a position to do so. It's all very odd.
Young lady in question was, I believe, quite well known in Rhyl.
His girlfriend stood by him when he was accused / convicted / acquitted on appeal of rape of a woman he met on a night out, where the case centred over if the lady consented. He didn't deny having had sex with the lady behind his girlfriend (now wifes) back and his father in-law even funded all his legal actions.
That was a very different case. One person's word against the other. And I still don't quite understand what is and what isn't admissible re previous encounters with other men.
Ched Evans. Didn’t meet the lady on the night out, his mate did, who she went via taxi to a room and into bed with. When she woke up next morning it was a different man in the bed.
Yes, and what led to the conviction being quashed was a man coming forward to give an account of a night he'd had with the woman that matched what Evans had described implying that there was consent. But really, that evidence should never have been heard, because her identity shouldn't have got out and the guy that came forward should not have been in a position to do so. It's all very odd.
Young lady in question was, I believe, quite well known in Rhyl.
“I have been amazed and horrified at how many people are frightened of a guy called Tucker Carlson… What is it with this guy? All of these wonderful Republicans seem somehow intimidated by his perspective,” said @BorisJohnson speaking about Ukraine @AtlanticCouncil
His girlfriend stood by him when he was accused / convicted / acquitted on appeal of rape of a woman he met on a night out, where the case centred over if the lady consented. He didn't deny having had sex with the lady behind his girlfriend (now wifes) back and his father in-law even funded all his legal actions.
That was a very different case. One person's word against the other. And I still don't quite understand what is and what isn't admissible re previous encounters with other men.
Ched Evans. Didn’t meet the lady on the night out, his mate did, who she went via taxi to a room and into bed with. When she woke up next morning it was a different man in the bed.
Yes, and what led to the conviction being quashed was a man coming forward to give an account of a night he'd had with the woman that matched what Evans had described implying that there was consent. But really, that evidence should never have been heard, because her identity shouldn't have got out and the guy that came forward should not have been in a position to do so. It's all very odd.
Young lady in question was, I believe, quite well known in Rhyl.
I can hardly believe the start of the end of the 747 era is on us. It first flew four years before I was born, and I'm soon going to be *old*. Boeing took a massive risk developing it, but boy, did it pay off.
His girlfriend stood by him when he was accused / convicted / acquitted on appeal of rape of a woman he met on a night out, where the case centred over if the lady consented. He didn't deny having had sex with the lady behind his girlfriend (now wifes) back and his father in-law even funded all his legal actions.
That was a very different case. One person's word against the other. And I still don't quite understand what is and what isn't admissible re previous encounters with other men.
Ched Evans. Didn’t meet the lady on the night out, his mate did, who she went via taxi to a room and into bed with. When she woke up next morning it was a different man in the bed.
Yes, and what led to the conviction being quashed was a man coming forward to give an account of a night he'd had with the woman that matched what Evans had described implying that there was consent. But really, that evidence should never have been heard, because her identity shouldn't have got out and the guy that came forward should not have been in a position to do so. It's all very odd.
You could stay in and read a book, which is ultra safe but unadventurous, covid lockdowns hurt because it showed how social animals we are, and if you are young and single not going out and being social means not much sex that you crave. But if you go out late after work like the young lady did, adventure comes with more risk than non adventure, especially as she was tipsy enough to have left some things behind in the kebab shop, and left something in the taxi, and this group of lads were in the same situation, night out looking for adventure and thrills, and I think the footballer she got into taxi with was black, so imagine young black footballer being very buff if anyone into that thing. But he was texting his mates and they were following on, and were at the window of the room, and she woke up with a different one she went to sleep with. Of course Evans and his wife would mount a defence, it’s a wreck of their life and his income and career, but in my opinion this girl had every right to go to the police, as taken advantage of, so when Steve Bruce spoke publicly against her he was just humiliating himself in many eyes like mine.
Comments
It a turned out to have code in the control software that sent the DXF design files given to it, to an IP address in China. Disabling this, by blocking it, locked up the machine.
It is still merrily working away - a few code changes later. It is sending a movie someone downloaded from the internet, each frame turned into a DXF design, frame by frame.
To give just one example - I reckon quite a few people would choose to buy fairphones over apple devices, if apple weren't so dominant in the branding and advertising departments. Personally, I'd still buy an iphone, I don't want to pay a big premium for a product that offers replaceable parts when I quite like taking apart and replacing parts on iphones. But I bet lots of people would go for the 'environmentally friendly' branding. And that in turn might stimulate Apple's innovations in a more useful direction.
As an aside your figures aren't quite right in your original post, though I don't think it affects the point very much.
On your second example I think it does, though. If a software company offering a niche product can achieve a £1bn profit per year, then I would definitely acknowledge that the £1bn limit is too low. I suspect they wouldn't.
I can even now forgive its being Heath's favoured tipple.
I know Xi has direct access to my bank account, but there is FA in there, so he's welcome. I suppose he could unlock my car through the MyBMW app if he was so minded, for a laugh. I suspect Xi has access to a Chinese made Galaxy Flip 4 or an iphone 14 too. I'd rather pay £150 to be ripped off by the Red Army than £1000.
His girlfriend stood by him when he was accused / convicted / acquitted on appeal of rape of a woman he met on a night out, where the case centred over if the lady consented. He didn't deny having had sex with the lady behind his girlfriend (now wifes) back and his father in-law even funded all his legal actions.
I, for example, could lose my job for an accidental breach of data security not reaching any criminal standard (and my employer could also face sanctions).
Though I think you're thinking too statically. I don't think Apple have a unique insight into the wonderful world of smartphones. I suspect that, where supply of their devices was further restricted, an almost-but-perhaps-not-quite-as-good competitor would fill the gap. And I think there might well be more innovation.
They'd probably still be status symbols. But if someeone wants to pay 50k for a smartphone I'd respond that the more quickly we can remove money from their hands and put it in the hands of someone less idiotic the better!
High on the list of names that when spotted by a teacher on a class list fills them with dread.
The FA banning Terry was effectively them saying "the court was wrong".
Still immensely profitable for shareholders, but via capital gain rather than income.
In Shell's case it might mean they got really serious about developing alternative energy assets.
But the likelihood of getting international agreement on any such measure is zero, anyway.
What would be inconsistent is favouring higher tax and then avoiding it!
There can be enough evidence to trigger civil sanctions, even if not a criminal conviction.
My partner is a secondary teacher and tells me the naughty names. Ryan is still a top one, as are Kyle and Reece (but not Rhys).
There are always exceptions, obviously.
And yes, to reiterate, I agree with what you've been saying throughout that none of these schemes are practicable in any way.
That doesn't make the court wrong, it makes the court different. Different isn't wrong.
"That rapist should be considered a rapist" is worse than Brexit means Brexit. The question is not whether they're a rapist, its whether a rapist should be allowed to gain the legal status of woman by self declaration. Her party unequivocally said yes to that.
https://twitter.com/michaelpforan/status/1621130204658782208
I'm still fairly relaxed about an employer/professional body being able to impose sanctions based on their own assessment of evidence, with potentially a lower evidence threshold than criminal cases. That as long as there is some redress - presumably Terry could have sued the FA here? If Man U terminate this player's contract, he could also sue?
There are plenty of things I could get in trouble for at work which might not stand up to the scrutiny of a criminal court.
If I remember correctly, the Communist Party of the UK sustains itself by rent collected on private property they own.
Indeed there was some comment on the left in the US, that if the rich evil corporations carried on the trend of minimising profits and not paying dividends, then something else would have to be taxed.
We're piloting ChatGPT Plus, a $20/mo subscription for faster response times and reliability during peak hours
https://twitter.com/gdb/status/1620848473871638528
Please post the tweet in full!
It is super interesting to see these tweets but spam if we have to click through or do something.
https://www.reuters.com/technology/microsoft-rolls-out-chatgpt-powered-teams-premium-2023-02-02/
- A stern word from the boss
- A written disciplinary note in your HR file
- Dismissal
- Civil proescution
- Criminal prosecution
I can't think who might be behind this, who would benefit, and who might replace Sunak. It's a mystery.
This matters, as the maximum sentence for rape is life, whilst the maximum sentence for sexual assault is ten years.
Can anyone explain why this is just?
For the go-to alternative perspective you are welcome to rely on Carlotta or William Glenn.
Ah so much can be excused by those simple words...
https://twitter.com/TwitterDev/status/1621026986784337922
"Starting February 9, we will no longer support free access to the Twitter API, both v2 and v1.1. A paid basic tier will be available instead 🧵"
https://twitter.com/JRCookson/status/1620861501111414784
Then again it might Trussnomics Growth is true Toryism faction. How do Tory’s go into election after years of no growth and Putin getting more growth than us?
Or the Leaky Sue is right, Brexit means pull up a drawbridge and turn the moat into a DMZ, so why the hell havn’t we done this yet, faction.
Unless of course it’s the, I voted remain am I really in love with Brexit or want Hunt to salami tactics the brexit deal into nothing left of it faction.
Or it might be how effective Starmer and his front bench team are.
Don’t know if this helps you at all, Mex.
Ends with a digestif of chilled swedish high liquor ice-cider
Though moth hunting is another euphemism, I suppose. It even has the merit of sometimes being true.
Football: having perused the markets with my expert (ahem) eye, found just one bet from five leagues: https://enormo-haddock.blogspot.com/2023/02/epl-bundesliga-ligue-1-la-liga-and.html
Laid Bayern Munich, away, versus Wolfsburg at 1.65. Of 18 matches, they've drawn seven times and lost once, and Wolfsburg are pretty strong at home.
Word of warning: my Bundesliga bets have, historically, been abysmal.
And less interested in bats.
(Incidentally, I sold it via Motorway. Wasn't quite sure what to expect but actually it went pretty smoothly and I've got around £900 more than the infamous WBAC.com would have given me. Would recommend on the basis of my experience.)
But even despite that, not tonight I’ve got a head ache should still mean not tonight I’ve got a head ache.
This is a footballer Gary Neville told us was going to be far better than Rashford.
https://twitter.com/Joe_Mayes/status/1621157725442027521
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tOaVgIj8VU
Maybe posted Tweets are about to expire