International Affairs: March 2008 Archives
America's capital markets are losing ground to foreign competition due to excessive expense and regulation.
The United States received only 6.9 percent of the funds raised in global initial public offerings in 2007 and did not participate in any of the top 20 global IPOs, Harvard Law School Professor Hal Scott said at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's second annual capital markets conference."We found U.S. public markets had increasingly become uncompetitive," said Scott, director of the private-sector Committee on Capital Markets Regulation.
In comparison, in 2000, about half of the value of global IPOs was raised in the United States, according to Scott's committee.
Scott also noted that many foreign companies in 2007 took advantage of a U.S. regulatory change that let them delist from U.S. exchanges. About 15 percent of U.S.-listed foreign companies left the U.S. markets in 2007, about three times the historical rate, he said.
We need to ease regulations and cut taxes, or businesses will go elsewhere. That's capitalism. If we keep moving towards greater regulation and government meddling, we're going to end up on the losing end of economic history.
(HT: John Rutledge.)
Although Iraq's past collaborations with terrorist groups like al Qaeda are difficult to completely discern, it looks like Saddam Hussein's connections to leftist United States congressmen are easier to track.
Saddam Hussein's intelligence agency secretly financed a trip to Iraq for three U.S. lawmakers during the run-up to the U.S.-led invasion, federal prosecutors said Wednesday.The three anti-war Democrats made the trip in October 2002, while the Bush administration was trying to persuade Congress to authorize military action against Iraq. While traveling, they called for a diplomatic solution.
Prosecutors say that trip was arranged by Muthanna Al-Hanooti, a Michigan charity official, who was charged Wednesday with setting up the junket at the behest of Saddam's regime. Iraqi intelligence officials allegedly paid for the trip through an intermediary and rewarded Al-Hanooti with 2 million barrels of Iraqi oil.
The lawmakers are not named in the indictment but the dates correspond to a trip by Democratic Reps. Jim McDermott of Washington, David Bonior of Michigan and Mike Thompson of California. None was charged and Justice Department spokesman Dean Boyd said investigators "have no information whatsoever" any of them knew the trip was underwritten by Saddam.
"Obviously, we didn't know it at the time," McDermott spokesman Michael DeCesare said Wednesday. "The trip was to see the plight of the Iraqi children. That's the only reason we went."
Obviously! We're supposed to believe that these congresscritters were smart enough get elected to national office but were completely unaware of who paid for their trip to Iraq in the run-up to our invasion. What's more, we're supposed to believe that these vermin didn't knowingly use their public offices to lend legitimacy to the murderous tyrant Saddam Hussein. It's just a coincidence! It's all so obvious!
First off, let me say that I think it's silly for corporations to pay taxes at all. Why not just tax income when the shareholders of a corporation take out their profit as dividends? Taxing corporate profit and then taxing dividends again for individuals isn't fair, because you're taxing the same money twice on the same people. Anyway, it would be a lot simpler to just combine all the taxes together.
That said, the Tax Foundation has released a new report showing that corporate tax rates in America are among the highest in the world, and there's no doubt that our high rates are pushing jobs and businesses out of the country.
A new study from the Tax Foundation, a nonpartisan tax research group in Washington, shows that most American states tax job providers at a higher rate than any other country in the developed world."This is startling news for America's businesses and workers," said Tax Foundation president Scott Hodge, the study's author. "Tax competition for jobs and investment is fierce, and the U.S. continues to fall further and further behind. Our states should be the world's leaders in many things, but high taxation should not be one of them. The high federal corporate tax rate is literally crushing states' competitive abilities. That means fewer jobs for American workers."
Counting the federal rate alone, the U.S. has the world's highest corporate tax rate, but including average sub-national rates (federal plus state in the U.S.), Japan edges out the U.S. for the highest-tax location (see table).
This new study breaks the tax down state-by-state, adding each state's corporate tax rate to the federal corporate tax rate. The results show that 24 states impose, when combined with the federal rate, a higher business tax rate than in any other nation. In fact:
* 24 states have a combined corporate tax rate higher than top-ranked Japan.
* 32 states have a combined corporate tax rate higher than third-ranked Germany.
* 46 states have a combined corporate tax rate higher than fourth-ranked Canada.
* All 50 states have a combined corporate tax rate higher than fifth-ranked France.
As I said though, to be properly considered you need to combine corporate tax rates with individual tax rates. My intuition tells me that if you add corporate tax rates to our individual tax rates, the sum would be lower than the similar sum for the various other countries mentioned. (I have no numbers on hand to back this up.)
Fellow St. Louisan Gateway Pundit has a fun chart comparing military deaths in the Iraq War to military deaths during the first five years of Bill Clinton's presidency.
As has been repeatedly noted, the Iraq War has had very light casualties by historical standards.
