Logical reasons to vote NO

zielarz

A yes vote basically means that you agree with the way the UE works today. I can't agree with many things in the UE and the treaty is not going to fix any of these issues. Here are my 3 main reasons to vote no.

1. UE opposition to free market economy. Today UE will charge you VAT and customs duty on goods bought outside of EU. This is not fair and it's affecting anybody who wants to buy cheap products.

2. High taxes. The guarantees Ireland got won't change anything because EU already has enough power to increase taxes. VAT and excise are only two examples of taxes controlled by the UE today. Most people are probably not aware that about 60% of the price of the petrol is excise. Imagine that you could buy petrol 60% cheaper. Every product which is transported today to a shop would be cheaper if they at least reduced the excise. Unfortunately, they don't say anything about reducing taxes in the treaty...

3. UE is XXI century Soviet Union. UE might not be as bad as SU but they have a lot in common. If the treaty is ratified UE will get a legal entity and countries like Ireland will become counties within the UE. Counties by their nature are not sovereign. UE is implementing a planned economy the same way as Soviet Unions was.

cavedave

Sorry I am not up on my acronyms. Who are the UE?

PopeBuckfastXVI

They might be logical, if the premises were real.

PopeBuckfastXVI

cavedave wrote: »

Sorry I am not up on my acronyms. Who are the UE?

It's the mainland way of saying EU.

Euro_Kraut

PopeBuckfastXVI wrote: »

It's the mainland way of saying EU.

By mainland do you mean the French? Germans call it EU as do the Austrains.

oscarBravo

zielarz wrote: »

A yes vote basically means that you agree with the way the UE works today.

On the contrary, a No vote basically means that you agree with how it works today. If Lisbon is rejected, Nice stays in effect (for now).

1. UE opposition to free market economy. Today UE will charge you VAT and customs duty on goods bought outside of EU. This is not fair and it's affecting anybody who wants to buy cheap products.

So you object to the EU because the whole world isn't in it?

2. High taxes. The guarantees Ireland got won't change anything because EU already has enough power to increase taxes. VAT and excise are only two examples of taxes controlled by the UE today. Most people are probably not aware that about 60% of the price of the petrol is excise. Imagine that you could buy petrol 60% cheaper. Every product which is transported today to a shop would be cheaper if they at least reduced the excise. Unfortunately, they don't say anything about reducing taxes in the treaty...

The EU don't "control" VAT, they set minimum levels. Our VAT rates are way higher than the EU minima, as are our excise rates.

3. UE is XXI century Soviet Union. UE might not be as bad as SU but they have a lot in common. If the treaty is ratified UE will get a legal entity and countries like Ireland will become counties within the UE. Counties by their nature are not sovereign. UE is implementing a planned economy the same way as Soviet Unions was.

Eh, no. Just no.

PopeBuckfastXVI

Euro_Kraut wrote: »

By mainland do you mean the French? Germans call it EU as do the Austrains.

I believe the French and Spanish, at least, call it the UE.

prinz

zielarz wrote: »

A yes vote basically means that you agree with the way the UE works today. I can't agree with many things in the UE and the treaty is not going to fix any of these issues. Here are my 3 main reasons to vote no..

The complete opposite is true

zielarz wrote: »

1. UE opposition to free market economy. Today UE will charge you VAT and customs duty on goods bought outside of EU. This is not fair and it's affecting anybody who wants to buy cheap products...

The EU doesn't charge anybody VAT..

zielarz wrote: »

2. High taxes. The guarantees Ireland got won't change anything because EU already has enough power to increase taxes. VAT and excise are only two examples of taxes controlled by the UE today.....

VAT and Excise controlled by the EU? Mind boggling. How do you explain the differences in VAT so...

zielarz wrote: »

3. UE is XXI century Soviet Union. UE might not be as bad as SU but they have a lot in common. If the treaty is ratified UE will get a legal entity and countries like Ireland will become counties within the UE. Counties by their nature are not sovereign. UE is implementing a planned economy the same way as Soviet Unions was.

Somebody has been reading Alive magazine...

I thought there was something in the thread title about logical reasons?

Euro_Kraut

PopeBuckfastXVI wrote: »

I believe the French and Spanish, at least, call it the UE.

The feckers! Thats it I am voting NO to Lisbon!

r0nanf

zielarz wrote: »

...VAT and excise are only two examples of taxes controlled by the UE today.

That's just patently untrue. :mad: Excise on still wine in Ireland is €3.28 per litre and it is zero in Greece, Cyprus, Hungary, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, Malta, Portugal, Slovakia, Sweden, Spain and Austria.

Look at pages 10 and 11.

Scofflaw

zielarz wrote: »

A yes vote basically means that you agree with the way the UE works today. I can't agree with many things in the UE and the treaty is not going to fix any of these issues. Here are my 3 main reasons to vote no.

1. UE opposition to free market economy. Today UE will charge you VAT and customs duty on goods bought outside of EU. This is not fair and it's affecting anybody who wants to buy cheap products.

This may be one of the most ridiculous reasons I've seen put forward. We've always had customs and excise on imports, operated by governments (who derive a lot of their revenue that way). The EU is a customs union, which means that customs duties on products within the EU have been abolished, with customs only applicable on importation into the EU. The EU is therefore a free trade area comprising 27 countries and 500 million people, the largest internal free-trade area on the planet. 31.4% of all the world's trade took place inside the EU in 2006.

Your complaint is that we have to pay customs duties on imports into the EU, while ignoring that in the absence of the EU, you would be paying customs duties on everything that entered Ireland full stop. Since about half our imports come from within the EU, that would be a rather major change.

zielarz wrote: »

2. High taxes. The guarantees Ireland got won't change anything because EU already has enough power to increase taxes. VAT and excise are only two examples of taxes controlled by the UE today. Most people are probably not aware that about 60% of the price of the petrol is excise. Imagine that you could buy petrol 60% cheaper. Every product which is transported today to a shop would be cheaper if they at least reduced the excise. Unfortunately, they don't say anything about reducing taxes in the treaty...

No, they don't, because the high tax levels are set by Ireland. The EU member states agreed minimum levels for indirect taxes like VAT and excise, and anything above that is set by our own government. The EU is funded partly out of a small levy on VAT, but excise duties go entirely to the Irish government.

Again, your concerns are orthogonal to reality.

zielarz wrote: »

3. UE is XXI century Soviet Union. UE might not be as bad as SU but they have a lot in common. If the treaty is ratified UE will get a legal entity and countries like Ireland will become counties within the UE. Counties by their nature are not sovereign. UE is implementing a planned economy the same way as Soviet Unions was.

The EU hasn't implemented anything remotely like a planned economy. Do you actually know what a planned economy is?

regards,
Scofflaw

Kama

UE opposition to free market economy

Wait, isn't the prioritzation of market-competitive principles why good Lefties voted No?

PopeBuckfastXVI

Kama wrote: »

Wait, isn't the prioritzation of market-competitive principles why good Lefties voted No?

Lefties vote 'no' because of the existence of the free market, Righties vote 'no' because it's regulated.

To paraphrase (I think) Scofflaw's post from some months back.

efb

Are Coir for 0% VAT on condoms?

zielarz

zielarz wrote: »

1. UE opposition to free market economy. Today UE will charge you VAT and customs duty on goods bought outside of EU. This is not fair and it's affecting anybody who wants to buy cheap products.

did you just start a thread called "logical reasons to vote no" and have that tripe as your first point?!

hurting my brain here reading this stuff.

ChocolateSauce

I heard a logical reason: I've a friend who's a libertarian, and he wants the EU to get smaller.

Although, the way I see it a more efficient EU is similar to smaller government.

BlitzKrieg

ChocolateSauce wrote: »

I heard a logical reason: I've a friend who's a libertarian, and he wants the EU to get smaller.

Just daydreaming on this...the main institutions of the EU it would be difficult to outright make them smaller seeing as the European council is 1 per member state, Council of ministers is the same 1 per member state for each area of interest, european parliament is population weighed. The only one in theory that could be made smaller, was but that was voted against in the last referendum. The only way to make things smaller is to start booting out member states

ei.sdraob

BlitzKrieg wrote: »

The only one in theory that could be made smaller, was but that was voted against in the last referendum.

sigh yes the EU Commission

we blew our chance to reduce its size, thanks to a campaign of disinformation that played on peoples lack of knowledge of how the EU works

and now every time I hear a NO sider complain about bureaucracy and "unelected elites" one can not help to laugh and then cry

Scofflaw

ChocolateSauce wrote: »

I heard a logical reason: I've a friend who's a libertarian, and he wants the EU to get smaller.

Although, the way I see it a more efficient EU is similar to smaller government.

What does he mean by 'smaller', though? The EU does what it does with a staff smaller than the HSE, and a budget very slightly larger than Ireland's.

cordially,
Scofflaw

ei.sdraob

Scofflaw wrote: »

What does he mean by 'smaller', though? The EU does what it does with a staff smaller than the HSE, and a budget very slightly larger than Ireland's.

cordially,
Scofflaw

and majority of that budget is spend on farmers

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budget_of_the_European_Union

the 2006 budget, the largest single expenditure item was agriculture (direct aid, export refunds, storage, rural development and other) with around 46.7% of the total budget. Next came structural actions (Objective 1, Objective 2, Objective 3, other structural measures, community initiatives, innovatory measures and technical assistance, other specific structural operations and the cohesion fund) with approximately 30.4% of the total. Internal policies (training, youth, culture, audiovisual, media, information, energy, Euratom nuclear safeguards and environment, consumer protection, internal market, industry and Trans-European networks, research and technological development, other internal policies) took up around 8.5%. Administration accounted for around 6.3%. External actions, the pre-accession strategy, compensations and reserves brought up the rear with approximately 4.9%, 2.1%, 1% and 0.1% respectively.

BlitzKrieg

Scofflaw wrote: »

What does he mean by 'smaller', though? The EU does what it does with a staff smaller than the HSE, and a budget very slightly larger than Ireland's.

cordially,
Scofflaw

do you have a source for the staff size, cause I would like to back it up if I say such a point in the future.

Tarobot

I've also heard the stat that more people work for Dublin City Council than the EU. Heh..

Scofflaw

BlitzKrieg wrote: »

do you have a source for the staff size, cause I would like to back it up if I say such a point in the future.

Staff size is here:

The term “European Commission” refers in the first instance to the 27 Commissioners appointed by the EU Member States after approval by the European Parliament. However, the “Commission” also refers to the institution and its approximately 38,000 staff.

More accurately here - showing 37,994 permanent and 5,570 temporary staff.

For comparison:

The Health Service Executive employs 100,000 people making it Ireland's biggest employer. The HSE employs more than 65,000 staff in direct employment and a further 35,000 are employed by voluntary hospitals and bodies funded by the HSE. The budget of almost €12 billion is the largest of any public sector organisation. The majority of employees are frontline staff providing patient care.

If you go the Open Europe route of counting absolutely anybody who has anything to do with the EU, including anyone who is even consulted by the EU, or hired by the EU for any purpose whatsoever, however briefly, you can, by counting a lot of people twice (ie if committee A has a roster of 22 and committee B has a roster of 28, you call that 50, without worrying about the fact that 16 of the people you count are on both), and with a bit of handwaving (as in "I'm sure there's a few more in there somewhere") you can just about make it 170,000, which is 54% bigger than the HSE's full-time employment. Those figures are available here.

I'm not sure exactly what happens if you do the OE equivalent for Ireland. If you did the full thing the way they did, including, as they did, anyone who has a government contract to do anything, and counting people by head without worrying about whether they're the same people, then your final figure for "Irish government employment" is probably somewhat larger than our whole population.

The EU's budget breakdown is here - the budget for 2007 was €120.7bn compared to Ireland's €68.8bn, so I should more accurately have said a budget 60% bigger than Ireland's.

cordially,
Scofflaw

Red Sleeping Beauty

zielarz wrote: »

A yes vote basically means that you agree with the way the UE works today. I can't agree with many things in the UE and the treaty is not going to fix any of these issues. Here are my 3 main reasons to vote no.

1. UE opposition to free market economy. Today UE will charge you VAT and customs duty on goods bought outside of EU. This is not fair and it's affecting anybody who wants to buy cheap products.

2. High taxes. The guarantees Ireland got won't change anything because EU already has enough power to increase taxes. VAT and excise are only two examples of taxes controlled by the UE today. Most people are probably not aware that about 60% of the price of the petrol is excise. Imagine that you could buy petrol 60% cheaper. Every product which is transported today to a shop would be cheaper if they at least reduced the excise. Unfortunately, they don't say anything about reducing taxes in the treaty...

3. UE is XXI century Soviet Union. UE might not be as bad as SU but they have a lot in common. If the treaty is ratified UE will get a legal entity and countries like Ireland will become counties within the UE. Counties by their nature are not sovereign. UE is implementing a planned economy the same way as Soviet Unions was.

1. The EU is all about a free market. Get out of the way and let the markets "correct" themselves or some such. Why is the EU starting to charge me today VAT on goods bought outside the EU ? How the hell can they even do that ?

2.Good! I want high taxes on the wealthiest in the country . Don't think the EU will do anything to help that cause though. Ireland also charges a hell of a lot of tax on booze where it's dirt cheap in other EU countries. Not seeing the point here.

3. Pass.

Scofflaw

Alan Rouge wrote: »

1. The EU is all about a free market. Get out of the way and let the markets "correct" themselves or some such. Why is the EU starting to charge me today VAT on goods bought outside the EU ? How the hell can they even do that ?

The EU doesn't charge you VAT on goods bought outside the EU. As to why "the EU" charges customs duties - because the EU is a customs union, which means that customs duties are collected only at the borders of the union area. The EU gets the customs duties (although the member states keep 25% because they do the collection), because that is how the member states unanimously agreed they would fund the EU. Those duties would be there whether the EU existed or not - except that if it didn't, then you'd be charged customs duties by the Irish government on everything that entered Ireland.

regards,
Scofflaw

zielarz

For those who are saying i'm wrong about VAT, quotation from wikipedia:

The European Union Value Added Tax ("EU VAT") is a value added tax encompassing member states in the European Union Value Added Tax Area. Joining in this is compulsory for member states of the European Union. As a consumption tax, the EU VAT taxes the consumption of goods and services in the EU VAT area. The EU VAT's key issue asks where the supply and consumption occurs thereby determining which member state will collect the VAT and what VAT rate will be charged.

So stop saying that EU doesn't charge VAT. As long as we're in the EU we have to charge this tax. Most of the products food, houses, cars etc. would be cheaper if there was no VAT.

Scofflaw wrote:

This may be one of the most ridiculous reasons I've seen put forward. We've always had customs and excise on imports, operated by governments (who derive a lot of their revenue that way). The EU is a customs union, which means that customs duties on products within the EU have been abolished, with customs only applicable on importation into the EU. The EU is therefore a free trade area comprising 27 countries and 500 million people, the largest internal free-trade area on the planet. 31.4% of all the world's trade took place inside the EU in 2006.

Your complaint is that we have to pay customs duties on imports into the EU, while ignoring that in the absence of the EU, you would be paying customs duties on everything that entered Ireland full stop. Since about half our imports come from within the EU, that would be a rather major change.

I'm sorry but you're wrong. Is excise and customs compulsory for EU contries? It is. EU sets the minimum amount of petrol excise which has to be charged by each country. Tell me how do you feel knowing that 60% of your money is robbed every time you refuel? I'm only trying to say that today the decision about whether to charge excise, duty, VAT etc. is made in Brussels, not in Dublin. Voting yes means that more of this type of decisions will be made by the euro parliament.

I know that EU is free trade area but this could have been achieved without making things like VAT, excise and customs compulsory. Do you agree?

prinz

zielarz wrote: »

For those who are saying i'm wrong about VAT, quotation from wikipedia,....So stop saying that EU doesn't charge VAT. As long as we're in the EU we have to charge this tax. Most of the products food, houses, cars etc. would be cheaper if there was no VAT.

Each Member State's national VAT legislation must comply with the provisions of EU VAT law as set out in Directive 2006/112/EC. This Directive sets out the basic framework for EU VAT, but does allows Member States some degree of flexibility in implementation of VAT legislation. For example different rates of VAT are allowed in different EU member states. However Directive 2006/112 requires Member states to have a minimum standard rate of VAT of 15% and one or two reduced rates not to be below 5%. Some Member States have a 0% VAT rate on certain supplies- these Member States would have agreed this as part of their EU Accession Treaty (for example, newspapers and certain magazines in Belgium). The current maximum rate in operation in the EU is 25%, though member states are free to set higher rates.

The EU legislates for VAT. Each country sets their own VAT rates and collects. The EU isn't charging us anything, the country we're in is. Nothing to do with Lisbon

Permabear

This post has been deleted.

prinz

donegalfella wrote: »

This post has been deleted.

Yes. I think you'll find that included in my last post. However it still does not reconcile with "the EU charges us VAT". And the 15 - 25% parameters are for standard VAT rates. Other rates can, and are lower, such as 13.5% and 0% in this country.

Permabear

This post has been deleted.

marco_polo

zielarz wrote: »

For those who are saying i'm wrong about VAT, quotation from wikipedia:



So stop saying that EU doesn't charge VAT. As long as we're in the EU we have to charge this tax. Most of the products food, houses, cars etc. would be cheaper if there was no VAT.


I'm sorry but you're wrong. Is excise and customs compulsory for EU contries? It is. EU sets the minimum amount of petrol excise which has to be charged by each country. Tell me how do you feel knowing that 60% of your money is robbed every time you refuel? I'm only trying to say that today the decision about whether to charge excise, duty, VAT etc. is made in Brussels, not in Dublin. Voting yes means that more of this type of decisions will be made by the euro parliament.

I know that EU is free trade area but this could have been achieved without making things like VAT, excise and customs compulsory. Do you agree?

The purpose of the entire EU VAT system is to ensure that there is a transparent and neutral tax system within the single market. It is one of the fundamental concepts of the entire European project so I could not disagree more strongly.