Hey, babe, I know I used to beat you, but trust me. I've changed.

Since corporate taxes don't affect corporate profits, we should clearly raise them to 99%. You know it makes sense, because, unlike gas taxes or alcohol taxes or cigarette taxes, corporate taxes apparently don't have any effect on human behaviour.

When an acquaintance ran a small, private business he intentionally made as little profit as possible, to keep taxes as low as possible. Why pay lots of money to the government if he could buy a new Jaguar instead? Bezos seems to have adopted the same idea with Amazon, re-investing as much money as possible so the company makes as little profit as possible. I'm sure he's happy to see companies forced to pay tax in the UK for UK sales, because he doesn't have to make a profit, while most of his competitors do. This will harm them far more than it harms him.

The British government, of course, will just take the money and buy bombs to drop on random brown people, or give it to rich landowners for 'wind subsidies'.

If they can't raise prices, they'll either see lower profits--which will result in your pension fund making less money--or cut costs. The latter means they'll offer lower wages and less benefits to employees, automate them away, or demand price cuts from suppliers.

Then all the 'EVIL CORPORATIONS SHOULD PAY MORE TAX!' whiners will be complaining that 'EVIL CORPORATIONS ARE CUTTING WAGES AND AUTOMATING JOBS AWAY! WAH! WAH!' because they're completely clueless about the real world.

Because they're based on international agreements on where taxes should be paid. If a US company sells products to customers in Britain, why should they have to pay tax in Britain? Do you really want to have to pay tax on sales in Fukbutistan because you sold a few things to someone there over the Internet?

There's nothing immoral about tax avoidance. Tax evasion, maybe.

The law has simply changed such that past avoidance schemes are no longer legal.

Many Western nations have fat, centralized, industrial-era governments facing a networked, post-industrial world. Obviously they're going to fight as long and hard as possible to limit technologies that will make them obsolete.

This is why the future is increasingly being made outside Luddite states like America and the EU; places that don't have an entrenched industrial-era political class who can stop it.

Yes, you can.... everywhere except in the real world. Garbage collection is one of the reasons iOS is much faster than Android on the same hardware.

Probably just less money spent on the roads. When I drive to my girlfriend's parents house, I can see the difference in the roads the instant I cross the border, even though the traffic is pretty much the same on both sides. And we have big ruts in the roads where the big trucks drive, even though few people use studded tires in the winter.

Because encouraging people to drive on bald tires until they explode would just be such a good idea...

And who could possibly have predicted that?

Because puppies and unicorns. It's just NOT FAIR that my $100,000 Tesla should have to pay tax to fund the roads it drives on!

Hint: those ruts aren't caused by studded tires, they're primarily caused by poor road design and big freaking trucks.

Besides which, modern studded tires are increasingly designed to reduce noise and road damage. New Nokians, for example, have studs that retract into the tire when driven on dry asphalt, and they're testing a future design with studs that can be electrically retracted and extended.

Governments only care about money and power. Taxing low MPG vehicles more was just a way to justify increasing taxes because SUVs kill kittens, and nothing to do with 'the environment'.

That's fine, if you want to live in a third-world nation where you can't rely on having power. You know, the kind of place where you can't run a modern, high-tech economy that depends on reliable supplies of electricity.

But then it's pointless, because we do what other third worlders do, and buy a diesel generator.

Maybe, if it stopped, Walmart would have to pay their employees enough to eat.

Just a thought.