If Cyprus and Ireland were forced to their knees by bail-outs and Iceland was destroyed by other means, the Netherlands is dismantling its 'neoliberal' business model voluntarily.
Parliament voted just this week to put an end to constructions in which multinational companies negotiate tax rebates, the so-called taxation paradise. The following is a quote from the MP Jesse Klaver (Green Left, former commies) who tabled the motion. It's the Soviet Union Redux!
It is a victory for the people who are in a deep crisis while multinational corporations are dodging their tax duties in all kinds of crafty ways. The Netherlands is assisting the world's big, powerful corporations to evade taxes. I am glad that after years of pushing and shoving at last we can put an end to these unfair privileges for multinational corporations.
Geert Wilders' Freedom *sneer* party shed the last few liberal feathers it had. They tabled a motion that talked of "the international fight against undesidered tax evasion".
In conclusion: international companies make contracts with the state, take their business here, only to be treated as common criminals! This MO has been typical for the left since Karl Marx: creating a hostile atmosphere through class envy and smearing of strawman.
What we see in fact is the systematic, global deconstruction of 'neoliberalism', the economic policies from the Thatcher/Reagan era that put a stop to the vicious downward spiral set in motion through syndicalism, corporatism and state socialism. The great heist of private property has begun so as to pay for the unsustainable well-fare state.
It is ironic that just this week Margaret Thatcher should pass away. She is spared the spectacle of Operation Neo Socialism by the backdoor. Regrettably that doesn't apply to the rest of us.
In the future we shall have to watch and stand idly by as International Democratic Socialism is once more killing the goose that laid the golden egg. Give it a decade or so, and we'll all be back on pre industrial level: all equally poor, but hey, equality is social justice!
More reading on Cato at Liberty: The Moral Case for Tax Havens
Update
RTE News on this weekends EcoFin meeting in Dublin:
Update
RTE News on this weekends EcoFin meeting in Dublin:
"Tomorrow ministers will look at more information sharing between tax authorities. The sharing of information is to combat tax evasion. But Austria has vowed today to stick to its bank secrecy laws. It is defying pressure from Germany to follow Luxembourg in agreeing to automatically exchange information on EU depositors with other EU countries to help clamp down on tax evasion..."