Category Archives: Britain

Google Goes Galt

Britain, Business, Economy, libertarianism, Natural Law, Private Property, Taxation

Hurray. Google Goes Galt, as a sickly Starbucks (what do you expect from people who burn their coffee beans) prepares to “‘voluntarily’ hand more money over to the UK Government.”

With their unbounded enthusiasm for state power, British protesters prefer that their omnivorous state own what belongs to Amazon, Starbucks and Google. But Google Big Guy has other ideas. Libertarian ones.

“Google boss: ‘I’m very proud of our tax avoidance scheme'”:

The head of the internet giant Google has defiantly defended his company’s tax avoidance strategy claiming he was “proud” of the steps it had taken to cut its tax bill which were just “capitalism”.
In an interview in New York Eric Schmidt, Google’s Chairman, confirmed the company had no intention of paying more to the UK exchequer. … “It’s called capitalism. We are proudly capitalistic. I’m not confused about this.”
He also ruled out following Starbucks in voluntarily handing more money over to the UK Government.
“There are lots of benefits to [being in Britain],” he said.
“It’s very good for us, but to go back to shareholders and say, ‘We looked at 200 countries but felt sorry for those British people so we want to [pay them more]’, there is probably some law against doing that.”

For a background on the British assault on tax havens, please read “Could Her Subjects Be Making Kate Middleton Sick?”

Could Her Subjects Be Making Kate Middleton Sick?

Britain, Business, Natural Law, Private Property, Taxation

Great American enterprises like Amazon, Starbucks and Google have braved Britain’s (UK, England, whatever is the politically correct term for that nation of shopkeepers) punitive labor laws and onerous regulations; invested capital in that place—only to have British ingrates complain bitterly.

What is the “tax shaming” public protesting, NOW?

These businesses have found creative ways of keeping more of what is rightfully theirs: their private property, their profits. It is just and good that property remain privately owned. Efficiency is secondary to the issue of natural justice. Still, more private property in the hands of its owners means greater prosperity for all.

When Brit Mike Buckhurst wails that he feels “very passionate about this because at one point in my life I was a top rate tax payer and I paid my tax in full,” he is expressing envy, nothing else—envy that The Other Guy is keeping more of what belongs to him, when he is not.

A good person would be glad about any private property that remains with those who rightfully own it.

(Btw, in loserville—where the US is headed—you are in the “higher” tax bracket when you earn £34,371!)

Yes, British protesters, with their unbounded enthusiasm for state power, prefer that their omnivorous state own what belongs to Amazon, Starbucks and Google.

Tax havens are just that: havens. Laws regulating how people use their rightful capital are unjust laws. The official line always omits, moreover, that wealth in the hands of its rightful owners enriches all sectors of the population more than funds in the sticky paws of officials. Keeping more of one’s income is not “harmful” to the rightful owners of capital, or to the beneficiaries of its investment, which include any and all bar the taxman.

The junta of high-tax governments is always leaning on jurisdictions like the Cayman Islands, Bermuda, and the Isle of Man. If the junta has its way, not only will there be no place left to run to, but by eliminating what tax havens offer, these governments will have eliminated tax competition, and with it the imperative to downsize their fiefdoms.

MORE @ “The War on Tax Havens.”

Could her British subjects be making the Duchess of Cambridge (Kate Middleton) sick? They sure make me sick.

Bottoms Up,* Kate Middleton

Aesthetics, Britain, Celebrity, Ethics, Etiquette, Free Speech, Private Property

She’s a gorgeous girl. She’s also stabler than her late mother-in-law (which, I guess, is not saying much, considering that the dodo Diana was a manipulative neurotic, given to histrionics).

In any event, Kate Middleton, aka The Duchess of Cambridge, will get over the fact that images of her bare breasts and bum are already in circulation, snapped in order to feed the voyeuristic fetish of the average consumer.

Certainly demand-driven, unethical, ugly and maybe even immoral: Hounding this girl wherever she goes is all of the above. But surely only trespassing on private property renders the action of the offending photographer illicit in natural law?!

The topless images of Kate were snapped from “the side of the road between trees, around half a mile away from a chateau,” in the south of France.

Was the photographer trespassing on private property? No report seems to specify. “Invasion of privacy” laws seem to belong to a broadly defined area of law, one that has little to do with the always unmentionable rights of private property.

(Bottoms up* means “here’s to you.”)

Interest: Buffet’s Golden-Calf Investment Idol Shattered

Britain, Business, Capitalism, Conspiracy, Debt, Economy, Federal Reserve Bank, Feminism, Journalism, Media

American cable commentariat is dominated by horrible bimbos, sporting big hair, overbites, and grating voices that sound as though they’ve been squeezed from the other end of the woman’s anatomy (to use a Greg-Gutfeld analogy I’ve refined). That’s the ubiquitous TV tart’s better angle. Even when these females are kind-of on the right side of the issues, they are boring, second-handers, who spout mind-numbing banalities with great confidence. (I don’t know how a husband or boyfriend puts up with That “Creaky Voice.”)

Unlike the practically unknown Dominic Frisby, the teletart’s assets are not between her ears.

Introduced to American audiences by RT’s Max Keiser, Frisby is “resident gold bug at Moneyweek,” and author of the essay, “Why Gold Is The Currency Of The Free.”

Why can’t cable hosts be more like Max Keiser? Notwithstanding his program’s many idiosyncrasies—lefty nooks and crannies and conspiracy theories—RT’s Keiser Report always introduces its viewers to highly intelligent, often original, individuals who have a great deal to impart and add.

Twenty five minutes (and 49 seconds) into the latest broadcast, Frisby dealt an analytical blow to Warren Buffet’s claim that “gold is worthless as it pays no interest.” Since RT provides no transcript, I quote here from Frisby’s online column, “Gold pays no interest, has no use and no fundamental value – really?”:

“…gold pays no interest. True. But then, nor does cash – unless you lend it to people. The world needs to realise that by putting cash in the bank you are lending it. Gold can pay interest – if you lend it out. And lots of people do (though for what purpose I cannot say). But in this environment of negative real rates (when the central bank rate of interest is below the rate of inflation), who gives a hoot about interest anyway? 1 or 2% interest. Whoopee-do.”

[SNIP]

Exactly. You lose money by keeping cash. Anyone with some savings knows that you might as well not have them, if you are after the yield on your savings.

…Next, there’s this idea that “gold has no use”. Really?
Gold has very little industrial application, yes. It’s too expensive. But no use? Gold, unlike bubbles and government bonds, lasts forever. This makes it a highly effective form of money, as I’m about to explain.
But how can gold be money, runs the next argument, when you can’t go into a shop and buy stuff with it? Absolutely. You can’t.
Err … actually, you can. The gold sovereign is still legal tender. But it only has a face value of one pound, when it’s worth over £250. You’d be a plum if demanded that some poor shopkeeper accept it as payment. (And he’d be a plum if he refused it). But I’m splitting hairs.
As a day-to-day medium of exchange, gold has never found much use. A piece of gold the size of a penny (about £125 or $200 in today’s money) contains too much value for anything other than expensive transactions. Copper, nickel, silver, paper and now digital money have all found far more prolific use.
But to assert that you can’t buy stuff with it therefore it isn’t money, is a facile and ignorant argument. Money is more than just a medium of exchange. Indeed, this is just one of the three essential functions of money: it also has to act as a store of wealth and as a unit of account.
It is gold’s very inert, intrinsic, eternal uselessness – and we have Mother Nature to thank for that – that makes it such an effective form of money. It has no other function other than to be a store of wealth. Even its use in jewellery is an extension of that function – to store (and display) wealth.
Governments can’t print gold, they can’t ‘quantitatively ease’ it, they can’t loan it into existence. They can’t debase it the way they do their own currencies. It just stays there, unconsumed, forever. Which all means that gold is constant – and therefore an excellent unit of account, far better than government money.

Max Keiser stepped in to correct the record about Buffoon Buffest’s stock, which has been down 90% versus gold over the past 10 year.