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Ritchie’s gonna be pissed here

The Tax Justice Network now agrees with the standard view of tax incidence, agrees that workers in the taxing jurisdiction bear some of said incidence.

20 thoughts on “Ritchie’s gonna be pissed here”

  1. Dunno. Other than his disaster of a paper on Zambia and copper I’ve not dealt with him before. Christensen definitely has, on this very blog in fact. And do note that Alex does try to deny it at first: only investors and execs he says: only later do the workers come into it after a bit of pushing.

  2. Tim – I assume you mean pissed off? or are you expecting him to hit the vodka and orange as a consequence??

  3. Heard Pollock on Today this morning. Her voice was shaking with anger at the idea that any should be allowed by The State to put their children at any risk. At all.

    Hateful stuff.

  4. The 70 doctors who authored this Rugby report rapidly need to be ex-Doctors.

    Because 70 doctors who authored a report called “Socialism as a means of mass death” or “Most White men are not rapists–The false accusations epidemic in the UK” or- best of all- “Jimmy Saville is innocent” would rapidly be looking at the end of their careers.

  5. Tim – very good video by the way, but I hadn’t realised how stong a resemblence you bear to Joe Cocker (when he was alive of course).

  6. On the 70 doctors: they say “studies show” without citing any studies. Perhaps because the last big push onto the BBC by Prof Pollock on this subject led to a comprehemsive rebuttal of the evidence: http://blogs.bmj.com/bjsm/2010/09/07/crying-wolf-when-media-reports-distort-research-evidence/(h/t Brian Moore on Twitter).

    Incidentally, I note the first signatory is described as “Professor of Sport and Masculinities”. While you might expect a Professor of Sport to be a sports scientist, with a knowledge of physiology and suchlike, what to make of “Masculinities”? Enter google. According to Wikipedia “Eric Anderson (born January 18, 1968) is an American sociologist and sexologist specializing in adolescent men’s gender and sexualities”. While his university page claims he is an expert in “The Social Problem of Collision Trauma in Contact Sports” I don’t see much to make me think I should take his view seriously. Which made me wonder about the other “70 doctors”. They include “Dr Jenny Driscoll: Programme Director, Child Studies; Lecturer in Child Studies, Barrister at Law”, “Pat Griffin, (Ed.D.) [who] is internationally known for her ground-breaking work on lesbians and sport” and so on. There are some actual medical doctors in there, but an awful lot of sociologists and suchlike, not that the article on the Beeb would tell you that.

    Incidentally, anyone involved in running youth rugby and worried about concussion management may care to check out Return 2 Play; I can’t say for certain it’s brilliant, but I do know the people running it have been involved in running a rugby club for years and the doctor involved with it is a medical one with experience of putting damaged rugby players back together.

  7. The 70 doctors who authored this Rugby report rapidly need to be ex-Doctors.

    I suspect most if them are not doctors. The Prof of ‘Sports and Masculinities’ at Winchester has an interesting job. Probs all po-mo, sub-Foucaultian BS.

    Take a good look at the academic institutions they’re at:
    1. Largely small, undistinguished colleges
    2. Many in the USA, in which case if they want to prod their noses in to UK public policy they can fuck right off.

  8. One crucial question may arise from this programme (which I have not yet watched, but will). If it does, expect to see it in another place:

    “This programme was about tax avoidance. I was not asked to appear or contribute. Do the programme makers know who has contributed more to the debate on tax avoidance than any other person in the world. And if not, candidly, why not?”

    R Murphy (Professor)

  9. Take a good look at the academic institutions they’re at:

    Well, I can’t speak for the UK institutions, but the US and Canadian ones include some pretty well known and well-regarded Universities, including (say USC, SUNY, U of Minn, U of Colo, or Acadia). I quite agree on the participation of US, Canadian, Australian, or New Zealand institutions in a manifesto directed to sports authorities in the UK. Of course, for that lot, this is just part of the campaign to eliminate US football, hockey, or Aussie rules football, as well as rugby outside the UK.

  10. Quite a good debate. Better than mainstream tv provides. I’d like to know what is Alex’s headline paper from the recent economic literature that the majority incidence of the corporation tax falls on shareholders.
    Also liked the way Alex shunted position from saying CT allows funding for schools and hospitals, to saying we actually need a reformed CT to provide funds for governments in low income countries. I wonder how Tim would have replied – something about low income countries benefit from investment, free trade and free movement perhaps, not lots of CT to their officials.

  11. Pretty much….I’d set the scene by saying that we know what influences the incidence, large economy, small, mobility of capital. In a developing economy of course capital is 100% mobile, at least foreign is, small economy. Thus very heavy incidence upon workers. And Stiglitz and Atkinson told us in 1980 that incidence can be more than 100%.

    My arguments for abolition work best in developing economies.

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