Because people/companies with bargaining power can get things more easily.

USA wants chips manufactured in the USA for jobs and probably more importantly for national security. Too many chips made in/near China + Intel going down the toilet.

When US universities sold out to china $ the national security argument went out the window as labs were willingly giving the r&d away.

I don't know much about semi plants but what sort of jobs are these? Why aren't these plants all automated?

It is super difficult to actually do that when tax laws are national but corporations are global.

When a corporation is large enough to be able to move around in the world they can start shopping around for the most advantageous place to set up shop.

50% of a big number can be bigger than 100% of a smaller number.

I'm not sure many people are particularly happy with it, but it's a fundamental problem. If you give different levels of government the ability to tax people, then private corporations are going to have the ability to shop around tax jurisdictions to get the best deal, and atleast some of those jurisdictions are going to include places that are deeply republican and believe it's good to have low tax revenue, and even better to attract businesses.

So what do you do? Create federal laws to control state aid and watch as libertarians/states rights people spontaneously combust.

Yeah I'm not sure what a policy-solution would be here. I'm definitely for allowing states to do whatever they want. It's the great A/B test.

Just seems like the smallest businesses and the largest businesses get the most deals and those in the middle get hosed. Maybe that's working as intended.

The reasoning, as I understand it: if we taxed rich people too much, it would discourage other people from wanting to be rich, which is bad for the economy.

Economics is never about absolutes.

It's always about the right response to the right situation. Taxes should be raised in an inflationary environment and lowered in a deflationary environment. The reasoning is quite intuitive. Inflation is a boom, deflation is a bust. It's easier to make money in a boom so the economy can support a greater tax burden. In a bust it's difficult to make money which means the economy can only support a lesser tax burden.

So the questions are "What is currently booming?" "What is currently undergoing a bust?". Well, obviously housing and stocks are booming. Wages are stagnating and thus are undergoing a (relative) bust. Just blindly reducing taxes on one side can be just as harmful as it can be good.

Economy is literally the measurement of the movement of money. aka Velocity of money.

People hoard money. Rich people manage to hoard a lot. All the hoarding is slowing the money down. Depressing the economy.

> Taxes should be raised in an inflationary environment...

Did you mean spending? Because then you'd be touching on the philosophical difference between Keynesians and Modern Monetary Theorists (MMT). Whereas as most classical Liberal economists emphasized deficits, MMT emphasizes inflation. (Or maybe you're nodding towards the Laffer Curve.)

Regardless. Taxes are how governments pull money thru the economy. If we want to keep the money moving, thereby grow the economy, we need to tax the hoards.

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In the case of more tax breaks, abatements for Samsung, things are a little different.

Samsung's just exfiltrating money. From Austin, from Texas, from the USA.

Since our polis can no longer have a rationale discussion about taxes, "omgherd taxes are theft", I propose a novel solution:

Austin should become a Samsung shareholder. Holdings equal to the value of the tax breaks. Like for like. Mutual cross holding investments, just like a true keiretsu.

>Just blindly reducing taxes on one side can be just as harmful as it can be good.

Name any right-wing politician who has ever said something like this. Your explanation is nice in theory, but it's never been part of the national discussion about taxation.

No, that is not it. =)

If you are rich enough you can pick what country gets to tax you, if one country raises the tax too much, rich people will just move their taxable assets to another country.