On the subject of the “Bernie will tax the corporations and buy each of us a pony” fairy tale:
An article on the front page of the NYTIMES is titled, “Pfizer Would Shed Its American Identity to Lower Tax Bill.”
Good luck with that pony.
Bye-bye, Pony!
Clarissa's Blog 
Not the best example to pick. Pfizer has paid billions in fines for criminal price fixing. http://www.theguardian.com/business/2009/sep/02/pfizer-drugs-us-criminal-fine Big Pharma at its worst, truly.
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I hate all pharmaceutical companies equally, believe me.
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I once had a discussion with a close friend who was working for a large insurance company / conglomerate at the time. She hated her big-salaried job. I asked whether she could think of any industry outside (outside of the military-industrial complex) more despicable than hers. She said “the pharmaceutical industry,” with which as part of her job she was closely acquainted, “by a mile.” (She quit her gig not long thereafter, and now works as a health advocate for the elderly.)
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They’re legal drug pushers and they charge people in the US far more for the same medication than in other countries. Medicare Part D forbade the government from negotiating drug prices. How stupidly anti-capitalistic is this? US patients subsidize the legal drug market for everyone else. And I’m supposed to think that if they got even more concessions, they’d stay?
I just find it funny that the CEO of Pfizer claims this move will somehow benefit the US, when the purpose of this deal is to enrich shareholders:
The Scottish-born chief executive of Pfizer, Ian C. Read, told them that a merger with Allergan, the maker of Botox that is based in Dublin, would significantly cut Pfizer’s tax bill and give it more cash that it could invest in the United States and ultimately add jobs, according to people briefed on the calls. He made the calls in recent days as the two companies were hammering out a $152 billion deal.
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Nobody will stay anywhere permanently. Liquid capital flies away to better conditions. All that national governments can hope to do is keep it around temporarily. Obviously, raising taxes is not a way to do that.
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I know but the tone definitely hasn’t caught up to this reality. Expecting that concessions will cause the corporate job fairy to sprinkle good jobs long enough to make the tradeoff worthwhile is ludicrous. Nobody examines this assumption.
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10% of a lot is more than 40% of nothing. What would you have national governments do? Declare 80% taxation on corporations and watch them all remove themselves to greener pastures immediately? We have all seen what happens to a region when capital leaves. The Rust Belt is a good example.
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While I’m here…. ponies are miserable little creatures.
They’re essentially shrunken horses (from harsh environments where full sized horses cannot survive) and and tend to have all the usual horse personality faults (stubbornness, meanness, contrariness) with little or none of the virtues (curiosity, affection for humans).
Nasty little buggers, anyone who wants one deserves what they get.
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I always found them pretty disturbing, too.
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Nightmare fuel:
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(from this: http://theoatmeal.com/story/eat_horses …)
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You realise that Burger King is now a Canadian company?
The company entered into a “reverse merger” with Tim Horton’s, so its corporate headquarters is now in Canada.
US Federal corporate tax rates can be as high as 39%:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_tax_in_the_United_States
Forming a limited company in the United Kingdom is relatively speaking a bargain at a 20% corporate tax rate.
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It will be fun to watch Burger King try to translate its name to French. 🙂
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They didn’t bother with that, BTW: http://www.burgerking.fr/
They also didn’t bother with that in Sweden — I distinctly remember the greasy fogged-up windows of Burger King at Sergels Torg in downtown Stockholm, mostly because I’d think that life wasn’t too awful despite the bitter cold because I could afford to avoid eating there entirely. 🙂
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