A note for Zack, Gazza, Dickie and the tax the rich crowd

When the environment around them changes then humans change their behaviour. You know, sorry and all that but it’s true:

Sir Jim Ratcliffe’s energy empire has stopped investing in Britain because the country has become “one of the most unstable fiscal regimes in the world”.

The boss of Ineos’s energy operations said the group would focus on its business in the United States after closing down its Grangemouth oil refinery in Scotland.

Brian Gilvary, executive chairman of Ineos Energy, told The Telegraph that the company would divert £3 billion of investment to the US.

He said: “We have stopped investing in Britain. Our future investment will not be [in] the UK. There’s no question of that.

If the economy - society, country, - is static then yes, it is possible to take the money off those who currently have it and give it to those who do not.

The economy - society, world - is not static. There is a constant turmoil of old investments, and thus wealth and stocks of capital, wearing out, falling over, going bust and being replaced by new investments just starting that game of finding out whether they'll be profitable or not.

If one part of the world - one society, economy - changes the taxation of having invested then the amount of investment in that place will change. For humans change their behaviour when the environment around them changes. Going global doesn’t change this either. It’ll just mean less delaying of consumption to invest and more consumption instead of investment globally.

Take all the money off the people who got rich by investing and fewer people will invest less in the hope of getting rich. We have a name for a place where people don’t invest: poor.

Tim Worstall