So would you be in favour of international economic harmonisation, with the pooling of sovereignty needed to achieve that?

For taxation you need international agreement or the current loopholes will still exist i.e. Apple being based in Ireland, Amazon in Luxembourg etc. whilst ever you have countries with very low rates of CT large companies will migrate their - altruism is not high up on their priority list.

What a pity they can't put their collective genius to building a better world.

As I mentioned before the human condition is not naturally altruistic - its no surprise that we think about others once we are in comfortable position.

If its feed your family or they go hungry so others can eat then I doubt you would be quite so considerate of others?

Your right about the complexities within tax law and the biggest problem is that the larger comglomerates have brighter people helping them avoid paying tax than HMRC have "collecting" it.

The villians are always one (or two) steps ahead.

If the whole thing was simplified, then the exchequer would benefit.
Unfortunately, the fundamental flw here is that those making our laws (MP's) would be hit in their own pocket so, we have the ultimate contradiction of MP saying that "everyone should pay their share", whilst at the same time, avoiding paying tax in any way possible.
How many MP's have offshore accounts for their personal or private affairs ??

There is plenty of evidence to the contrary, especially amongst children. Selfishness is taught or learned.


I am quite content in my family's demonstrations of altruism. Irrespective, we are talking about very rich people making very rich people even richer. Or selfish, greedy people richer.

It’d be worth it to see the faces of Rees-Mogg and Farage, if nowt else.

A global approach will likely see requests/demands for measures to reduce global inequality.



To me, that is a definition of extreme poverty.

Sweden has a relatively low Gini co-efficient, and certainly not the second highest in the world! The UK’s, while higher than Sweden, is lower than most.

What is you definition of poverty?

If you believe Maslow - survival + security are basic needs in built in humans - thinking about others is well up the scale once you have achieved stages 1 & 2.

You may well be altruistic now because you will not be in poverty whatever your description of that is. Bill Gates is currently in the process of divesting a large chunk of his fortune - unfortunately he is acquiring it quicker than he gives it away. I think you would be very surprised at how much the very wealthy give away to causes they believe in.

Quote: Sal Paradise "What is you definition of poverty?'" In terms of relative of poverty, I think there’s a case for using mean rather than median values, and including wealth as well as income. I don’t have the expertise to come up with a technical definition though. In terms of what life is like, in the UK something like this seems about right to me, on a quick read: www.poverty.ac.uk/pse-research/w ... nk-we-need www.poverty.ac.uk/pse-research/g ... -1983-2012

Quote: Sal Paradise "What is you definition of poverty?'" In terms of relative of poverty, I think there’s a case for using mean rather than median values, and including wealth as well as income. I don’t have the expertise to come up with a technical definition though. In terms of what life is like, in the UK something like this seems about right to me, on a quick read: www.poverty.ac.uk/pse-research/w ... nk-we-need www.poverty.ac.uk/pse-research/g ... -1983-2012

Happy Fat Cat Friday, everyone. Keep grafting. https://news.sky.com/story/fat-cat-frid ... y-11598353

Happy Fat Cat Friday, everyone. Keep grafting. https://news.sky.com/story/fat-cat-frid ... y-11598353

The issue about a living wage is an interesting one - its then a balance between staff pay and profits. Shareholders - predominantly pension funds - want share price growth and dividends if the minimum wage is increased at say Sainsburys/Asda either profits fall and everyone's pension suffers, unlikely or prices increase so are the lower paid going to be any better off?

What price do you place on risk and innovation - if through their hard work, risk taking and skill levels they build a business that is very profitable and employs hundreds of people what should they earn? These are people making the critical decisions/managing the risk/raising the finance in that business - are you suggesting a cap on earnings?

Absolutely no-one is saying there shouldn't be a reward for risk (as long as the counter to that is that the risk taker pays the price of failure, not the public). Plenty of successful & 'happier' countries - Sweden, Germany, Norway, Finland, Denmark, Austria - manage to have a much lower gap between low/high earnings.