Outside The Beltway | OTB | Online Journal of Politics and Forei PoliBlog: A Rough Draft of my Thoughts Hit & Run : Reason Magazine PwCWith tax season upon us, if you were a foreign business owner regarding all of this scurrying around to file forms and pay the United States government its take, would you consider the activity as relatively attractive compared to the alternatives? Or would you consider it a turnoff? To judge by rankings released last year by the consulting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers (you can call it PwC), businesses may venture into the Land of the Free for market opportunities, but that may well be despite a pretty uncompetitive tax regime. According to PwC, "Paying Taxes 2014 looks not only at corporate income tax, but at all of the taxes and mandatory contributions that a domestic medium-size case study company must pay. In considering the tax hassles faced by its hypothetical company, the report states the average total rate as 43.1 percent, the average hours spent on compliance each year as 268, and the average number of annual payments as 26.7. PwC Err... Well...
Eunomia Mira Rapp-Hooper criticizes the idea that Crimean annexation has damaging implications for U.S. security commitments elsewhere: According to this narrative, Washington’s failure to uphold the 1994 Budapest Memorandum portends U.S. complacency if Japan faces an attack in the East China Sea. It is tempting to attribute this to an acute case of “resolve anxiety,” but it is also important to parse why the failure of one international agreement does not imply the frailty of them all. If the United States is to remain powerful and engaged in the world at a time of great resource constraints, it will need to choose its battles wisely. This, in turn, requires that we acknowledge that not all international commitments are created equal [bold mine-DL]. In this case, Rapp-Hooper is comparing the Budapest Memorandum with the U.S. Rapp-Hooper continues with a discussion of credibility:
Comité pour la réforme des collectivités locales Le blog de Benoit PETIT / CAP 21 - MoDem Aix PaSiDupes Blog légèrement ludique et un tant soit peu putassier Partageons mon avis [Larmes Blanches]