Economic Growth Coffee and Taxes

Germany has announced that it expects its economic growth next year to be very small; it will probably be at the same level as that of the United Kingdom. These are difficult times and although economic growth is one measure of difficulty, it is not the only measure. Much depends on what the growth is and which sector is affected.

Some economic growth is merely the adoption of a new fashion or a new technology. When I first travelled to the United States it was impossible to get a decent cup of coffee anywhere. Coffee was served as merely a slightly flavoured and weakly coloured hot water. It was something that you had to accept and understand that this weak brew was how the Americans liked their coffee.

Later the concept of what Americans called “gourmet” coffee” (proper coffee to Europeans) caught on and the fashion grew.

Chains of aggressively marketed coffee shops grew up, led by Starbucks, out of Seattle. They carried out their business aggressively, swallowing competition by securing the best sites and using their wealth to market their products. They drove out of business many small family run coffee shops, so that the economic growth that arose as a result of the gourmet coffee shop chains was to a large extent illusory, because it came at the cost of economic recession caused by the small family run businesses being closed by the competition. Having grown a successful business Starbucks franchised coffee shops and ensured that they arranged their affair using devices such as transfer pricing and royalty payments to their own associated companies located in tax havens to avoid paying corporation tax in places like the United Kingdom.

That made the UK branch of Starbucks unprofitable, so that the profits were made in places that had very low rates of tax.

We were told that despite billions of turnover in the United Kingdom Starbucks did not pay any corporation tax, and the folk of the United Kingdom thought this unfair and improper. They started to boycott Starbucks and Starbucks as a result saw that they were losing business. Starbucks announced that they would voluntarily pay small amounts of corporation tax, even though they were not liable for it.

The Recession – what the reason now Mr Brown?

The United Kingdom is having the longest recession it has ever recorded. For the past year and a half there has been “negative growth as the size of the economy has shrunk month by month. All of the other major developed nations have done better. Most, if not all of them, are out of recession, although in some cases they went deeper into recession than the United Kingdom but bounced back higher.

Mr Obama’s most important challenge

People in almost every country are really being hurt by the recession, and although they understand that there are people in most other parts of the world who are also having to cope with the largest economic downturn in the lifetime of most of us, it is cold comfort. Hundreds of thousands of jobs are being lost, and this causes hardship. If you cannot earn a wage you cannot pay your bills, including your mortgage instalments, which means that your home is at risk and may be repossessed by those paragons of vice, the banks, which have already wasted your savings and your pensions. Most people feel mugged by a mugger licensed by the government to steal.