A dark cloud has descended, cloaking everything in gray.

It isn’t just me.

One of my colleagues, Tony Alvarado (@TexasKidneyDoc), is one of the most upbeat and outgoing people I know.

Now he’s quiet.

His trademark smile is faint, and the light has faded in his eyes. 1/

Thread: Why Kenya and other countries are introducing Digital Taxes? Why now?

Now,the current tax laws & international tax framework (which dates back to the 1920s) was designed at a time when businesses were largely brick-and-mortar (physical stores).Then, it was unimagineable for a biz to operate in another country without some form of physical presence

Thus, in most countries, for a business to be pay corporate tax it has to have some form of nexus there (e.g. Kenya). Either it's registered here, or it's managed from here or it has what we call a permanent establishment (also implies some form of physical presence)

Fast forward to today, there are numerous companies that are able to operate in multiple countries without having any physical presence in those countries. Consider social media platforms or streaming services, with a device, connection & subscription you can access their service

...and they don't have to have any physical office or employees etc in Kenya for them to deliver the service to you. I mentioned above that to be subject to corporate tax here, a company would have to have some form of nexus here in Kenya, these companies, don't.

I’m beginning to think that the left has been too obsessed with GDP as a broken economic metric governing the global shitshow, when inflation is more insidious. Deflation may be a more radical demand than degrowth. Burst bubbles. Deflate the price of fossil fuel infrastructure.

It’s amazing just how much political economy is still determined by the threat of stagflation. This has created a weird metonymy in which as long as you’re fight inflation (preserving the interests of (older) savers) you’re also fighting stagnation (supporting (younger) earners).

To some extent the residual fear of deflationary spirals lies behind this, waiting in the wings for any suggestion that stagnation must be fought with deflation. This is entirely understandable, as uncontrolled deflation hits the poorest hardest.

The assumption that conjoins these fears into an engine of unbridled economic stagnation is that there’s a unitary market effectively mediating between the markets in different sectors, be this unity micro-economic or macro-economic in flavour. But this just isn’t how it works.

There is so much more logistic friction in the price system than the popular story of just in time production suggests, not least in the concrete details of differentiated trade between economic actors from local businesses to nation states.

"if you demand more pay, we will replace you with robots" is not a reason to pay people less than it costs them to work for you, it is a reason to have your corporation taken over by the state, or dismantle an unwilling state and rebuild one that does.

corporations and governments are out here accelerating your deaths so they can monetize your remains while some of you assholes go "well $15 is too much"

$15 was insufficient 20 years ago, and it's insufficient now. pay people enough to feed their babies or they will kill you.

if people have nothing left to lose they will act like people with nothing left to lose

i cannot make it clearer than this

capitalism only "works" if you have enough police per so many thousand desperately poor individuals.

capitalism only "works" if you employ enough human beings to be the face of your blatant exploitation.

go ahead and automate and watch how fast people sabotage your shit.

if your government does not keep you fed, healthy, and safe, it has no reason to exist.

government - leadership of any kind, tbh - only exists to centralise the management of common needs, so we don't all have to individually scrabble to survive every day, on our own.