European companies pay VAT in Europe.
American companies pay VAT in Europe.
European companies do not pay VAT in US.
American companies do not pay VAT in US.
> "American companies pay VAT in Europe. European companies do not pay VAT in US."
VAT is a significant income stream for the EU. They take that money and re-invest it into their economy in an uncompetitive manner, whilst constantly propping up more anti-competitive regulation (which harms American businesses).
Have you looked at EU countries budgets? We "invest" in social security and public health systems. Our defense budgets go in large part to buy arms from the US, and Musk complains if we decide to prop up Arianespace for some defense satellites while threatening to cutoff Starlink for Ukraine paid by Poland. Have you looked at how much money your DoD sends abroad (and how much of it is pork)? You're literally telling us to be more protectionist, and then expect something different.
I don't really care what you invest the money into, the point is that the VAT is a mechanism which messes with the concept of a free global market and it leads to unfair competition and an unleveled playing field. If you combine it with other factors (such as the fact that the US is the sole guarantor of Europe's defense) - the US is in the right for challenging the European economy.
US sales tax is *significantly* lower than VAT, varies by state (allowing for all kinds of loopholes), and applies to fewer categories of products and services sold. No point arguing this, VAT is a protectionist and anti-competitive tax and the US has a right to challenge it.
Why are you arguing this point? It’s de-facto cheaper and easier for European companies to compete in the American markets, than the other way around.
How is it protectionist if the European companies also pay it?
You are arguing about rules that apply to all companies competing in Europe and then extrapolating that to say that “American companies competing in Europe” are mistreated.
If I read you correctly you're saying that a tax imposed on the consumers in a country benefits the country as a whole and thus aslo the companies operating in that country, which make it unfair to foreign companies? Is that really what you're arguing?
We started this conversation with you seemingly not understanding how VAT messes with free trade, and it sounds to me like you're in a different place now. Feel free to keep arguing over semantics all day long, I'll leave it at that.
My place hasn’t changed at all. Everything I’ve said is internally consistent. You are welcome to view any form of taxation as an impediment to “free trade” but that’s not how competition works. Feel free to continue believing that taxation is inherently protectionist, I’ll leave it at that.
There's "taxation", and then there is "taxation". VAT is an incredibly aggressive and overreaching version of "taxation", and it has severe implications on free trade with Europe. I'm not sure why you won't acknowledge this.
And by the way - plenty of economists view taxation as impediment to free trade.
I’m not sure why you won’t acknowledge that a tax that affects domestic and foreign companies equally is not protectionist. But here we are.
I’m not saying that taxes don’t have an impact on the economy, or the business environment, or growth, or profits…of course they do! Maybe the tax will lower demand which makes investment less appealing, and so less investment from Americans happens as a result. But there's also less investment from the Europeans in that case! And most of all, it has nothing to do with the competitiveness of American products in the European market, because the European products face the same tax. VAT does not distort the relative price between European and foreign products.
If you want to say that tax revenue is used for subsidies that are anticompetitive — well money is fungible, you can’t blame that specifically on VAT revenue, and you should be making an argument against subsidies, not the VAT. But then you will need to address the many ways in which the US subsidizes its own industries.
You made me remember how I was ridiculed by my teacher by asking if there was a possibility that life could be based on other thing than carbon. Granted, as I grew older and learnt a little bit more about the chemistry of carbon I realized that it had almost magic properties for life, but I wondered for long time why he reacted that way.
Ridiculing genuine curiosity is a terrible behavior from teachers... why stifle inquisitive minds? Anyway, you may already be familiar with these proposed biochemistries, but there has been a lot of speculation on this exact question over the years:
You probably triggered some memory. Perhaps, a student who insisted they knew more than the teacher and pushed some ignorant argument too far... so when you suggested the idea, and perhaps tried to push a bit more consideration, the teacher found himself re-living that bad experience and treated you like you were the other student, even if you yourself didn't push the matter beyond an acceptable level.
Boron and Nitrogen may have a chance. They form long weird molecules that are stable. Is it possible? I don't know. Can they compeat with Carbon base life? Perhaps no. In a weird planet where almost all the Carbon is sequestred by some weird chemical composition of thee rocks, can Boron or Nitrogen life have a chance. I don't know!
(My guess is that we still need a few thousand years to answer these questions. We still don't understand too may details about Carbon based life. I'm not very optimistic.)
Boron is scarce; it's one of the x-process elements, and those inherently have low abundance (although the boron-to-carbon ratio in the Earth's crust is enhanced over the solar system ratio, I believe.)
Boron nitride is weirdly analogous (indeed, isoelectronic) to carbon in that there's a graphite-like form (hexagonal BN) and a diamond-like form (cubic BN).
One thing that would hold back BN life is that by themselves B and N form more stable compounds than carbon does. Nitrogen in particular forms molecular nitrogen, which is annoyingly tightly bound.
I wonder to what extent they'd need to compete at all, they'd probably have a different diet. Maybe there are carbon life forms out there living mutualistically with boron-nitrogen life forms.
I don't expect a mix of Boron and Nitrogen. Only Boron in some planets and only Nitrogen in another planets.
We [1] can eat things with Nitrogen, so I expect a competing form to be completely eaten if they are less effecient.
I don't know enough about Boron chemistry, but if there were enough of them we will eat them too, unles they eat us first.
The first stages of living things are probably very ineficient. If you need a year to make a viable copy, a previus life form will probably eat you before that. I think that two independent origins of life in tha same planet are impossible.
[1] If you include bacteria and archea in "we". And even we (humans) can eat some compound with nitrogen, in particular proteins that mix carbon and nitrogen.
Silicon has almost the exact same properties as carbon. At high temperatures, carbon chains can’t form, but silicon chains can. In a high-temperature or high-pressure range, silicon might for a basis for life, analogous to carbon for us. So, not only was that question not stupid, it was profound.
Look at silicon on the periodic table. All of the things that make carbon great, basically silicon has almost exactly, except it needs a high temperature for most of those properties to be expressible.
That teacher didn’t know what he was talking about. Ridiculing a student for questions is such detestable behavior. The silliest questions can end up being the most insightful. I really despise teachers like that.
Here is a paper all about how your question was actually wonderful.
Silicon has only superficial similarities to carbon. Even at high temperatures, water and oxygen prevent silicon from substituting for carbon in any of what we are familiar with as organic molecules.
Your linked paper points out that the only viable solvent that supports a large variety of silicon chemistry is sulphuric acid, and even then it would need to be very poor in oxygen since silicon-oxygen bonds are so strong it ends up being much more strongly preferred over si-si bonds.
It makes for an interesting conversation, but I can't imagine spending an entire class going over what amounts to a massive distraction from the lesson plan.
All that's left is going to amount to an effectively dismissive answer, I suppose (though I agree that teachers who are intentionally dismissive are doing it wrong).
Wouldn’t an environment that has a significant sulfuric acid content naturally also a relatively limited free oxygen?
I’m thinking of Venus. That sort of environment would satisfy all criteria and would also start to get into the temperature ranges that would make Si-Si bonds possible.
That would at-least bracket the types of planets and their history to a useful extent.
Sulphuric acid actually has a lot of oxygen and hydrogen in it, and the presence of any metal or even high enough temperature will cause it to break up.
In a lab, it makes for a good solvent, but any place that has sulphuric acid will have both water and oxygen.
Venus, notably, has little to none of both. What free oxygen that does exist is from CO2 and CO breaking down in the atmosphere from the intense and extended venusian day. Most of the sulphur on Venus is sulphur dioxide (a tiny percentage of the atmosphere), and water vapor is a measly 20ppm.
Even if all of that water was sulphuric acid (which it may well be), there's simply not enough of it staying still long enough to form the repeating patterns of chemistry that might reasonably be called life.
Plenty of extremely popular western media are constantly funneling money about the terrors of immigrants. It’s so popular that they have buzzwords: great replacement, caravan, sharia law, etc.
If you elect a fear mongering racist to the presidency people might be forgiven thinking its official policy, and when they are able to effect policy directly, its the state.
"Without looking at the various polling data," Trump said in a statement, "it is obvious to anybody the hatred is beyond comprehension. Where this hatred comes from and why we will have to determine. Until we are able to determine and understand this problem and the dangerous threat it poses, our country cannot be the victims of horrendous attacks by people that believe only in Jihad, and have no sense of reason or respect for human life."
This was in reference to a woman who was the wife of an accomplice from Pakistan.
No, they don't have "siestas". In Spain usually all retail closes from 2pm to 5pm. I wouldn't expect to go to a UK venue and have a normal dining timetables (for me as Spaniard), because I understand things work different there.
mr nacho trying to justify a Spanish tradition. fair enough. but I'm still bold enough to complain about it. it's super annoying when restaurants close from 2 to 5. also I doubt anybody from the foot soldiers actually takes a siesta. it's most likely just basically a variation on unpaid work or being on call unpaid. so, nobody benefits of it except the owners who just optimize the schedule for their purposes.
Also someone once severed his finger and mailed it to Abe, because because he didn’t visit Yasukuni shrine (where several war criminals are enshrined) one year. The Japanese far-right are … peculiar.
