Recently, as countries have sought to shrink deficits, the question of tax avoidance has come up, and how to put a stop to it. In Britain, Google, Amazon, and Starbucks are being questioned by parliament as to why they pay such small amounts of tax on their UK incomes. Much of the public is in uproar over the fact that Google, Amazon, and Starbucks paid effective tax rates of 0.4%, 2.5%, and 0% on their respective 2011 earnings. All of this begs one very important question, one that no one seems to be attempting to answer seriously–what do we do about this? How do we stop it?
Author: Benjamin Studebaker
Fox News, War on Men, and Benghazi
It has been a rough news cycle for the Fox network, with two recent stories, neither of which would quite, on its own, merit a response on my part but which, taken together, are sufficient to constitute a piece. The first, a recent piece written by Fox’s Suzanne Venker, entitled “The War on Men“, made the accusation that the feminist movement has made marriage less desirable for men by changing the nature of women in our society. The second, an interview conducted with Thomas Ricks, an award-winning military journalist, was cut short when Ricks gave an answer the network was displeased with. Rather than engage in prototypical left-wing Fox bashing, which you can find all over the internet and do not need this blog for, I will attempt to rationally dissect the two pieces in question to find where Fox’s problem lies, if indeed it lies anywhere. Continue reading “Fox News, War on Men, and Benghazi”
When is Civil Disobedience Ethical?
When civil disobedience comes up, we often think of Gandhi, King, Mandela, men who are heroes to many and who fought great injustices. However, it must be recognised that civil disobedience is a tool and not an end in itself–it can be used for bad as well as good. So how does one determine when it is ethically permissible to use civil disobedience? It is a question the answers to which I frequently find unsatisfactory, so today I will attempt to unpack it myself.
Misconceptions: “America is Like Greece”
The other day I found myself in conversation with one of my fellow students about whether or not the British government had too large of budget cuts too soon in the economic recovery. I argued that it was fairly self-evident that it had done so, considering the superior economic performance of most nations that had refrained from issuing cuts or embarked on a policy of stimulus. The response he gave me was an interesting one–he argued that the advantages being enjoyed by the stimulus countries were short term, and advised me to look at France, a country that had refrained from austerity and has recently had its credit rating reduced by Moody’s, is seeing stagnant growth rates, and has a host of other problems. I responded that Eurozone countries were in a different kind of economic crisis from countries like Britain and America, and that different rules applied–this was met with scepticism, as if I were trying to weasel my way out of the point. So today I would like to make the broad argument that the economic problems being experienced in non-Euro countries like America, Britain, Japan, and Canada are of a fundamentally different nature from the kind being experienced in France, Spain, Portugal, and Greece. So different, in fact, that comparing the former to the latter is intellectually useless.
Groupthink: How Democracy Maintains Evil and Injustice
This morning an entirely new line of attack on democracy occurred to me, and I feel an intense pressure to share it with all my readers. In the past, I have argued that democracy has a tendency to result in the political preferences of the median voter being realised. There is, however, a related implication that did not occur to me at the time of writing and which has such spectacular implications so as to deserve a post unto itself for explication.
Continue reading “Groupthink: How Democracy Maintains Evil and Injustice”
Benjamin Studebaker 