Author: Edouard Chazal

Everything That’s Wrong with the US/French Tax System in One Chart

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Think about it. It is not surprising that the corporate citizens of France view their country’s tax system as burdensome. After all, France has to feed a huge government sector that swallows up revenue equal to 53 percent of GDP, and still runs a budget deficit of more than 3 percent. Yet the US tax system manages to be nearly as uncompetitive as that of France while raising 40 percent less revenue.

Or compare the United States to Denmark, whose government collects the most revenue of any of its OECD peers—57.4 percent of GDP. You would think such a massive tax take would render Denmark radically uncompetitive, but instead, its Tax Institute score is 43 percent higher than that of the United States, close to the OECD average.

→ EconoMonitor

Oracle: The Worst-Governed, Best-Run Company Around

So, basically, Oracle is a horribly governed company, but it seems to be pretty well run. Which inevitably raises some questions about the true value of the standards and practices that go under the label of good governance.

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But it’s hard to get around the reality that, so far, the company’s frequent disdain of good-governance practices has gone hand in hand with spectacular, sustained success. It could be that Larry Ellison knows a few things that the governance watchdogs don’t.

→ Harvard Business Review

Making Innovation

It’s not a new idea that manufacturing and innovation are linked. Seventy percent of industrial research and development spending in the U.S. comes from the manufacturing sector. Some have been skeptical, however, that innovation requires manufacturing know-how.

→ MIT