While I've been meaning to read Noam Chomsky's: "Understanding Power" I ran across the documentary: "Requiem for the American Dream" over the weekend and this is clearly showcased within the first 5 minutes as he begins to describe "The 10 Principles of Concentration of Wealth & Power" and starts out with this infographic: <a href="http://imgur.com/QVcagot" rel="nofollow">http://imgur.com/QVcagot</a>.<p>Quoting Chomsky from this portion of the film: "Concentration of wealth yields concentration of power. Particularly so as the cost of elections skyrockets which forces the parties into the pockets of major corporations. And this political power directly translates into legislation that increases the concentration of wealth. So fiscal policy like tax policy, deregulation, rules of corporate governance, and a whole variety of measures - political measures designed to increase the concentration of wealth and power, which in turn yields more political power to do the same thing."<p>The documentary has spurred me to start reading the book, but falls in line with what's coming to light in the mainstream media today unfortunately.<p>Edit: Honest question - why the downvote? Directly falls in line with the original post.
I know that "1%" has a nice ring to it, but articles like this that mention "billionaires," "David Cameron," and the "Koch Brothers" aren't talking about 1-in-100, they're talking about <i>1-in-100,000</i> or more. The 1% are your small town local doctor and lawyer, and they're not tax dodging on their (nonexistent) huge hordes of cash by moving them out of the country.
I didn't see anything in this article where the author explain how offshore money corrupted democracy. He also throws out the Koch Brothers as some kind of left-wing talisman, even though I haven't seen them implicated in the Panama Papers.<p>It is certainly possible that offshore money could be corrupting democracy, but I don't see any evidence in this article.
Even more tax hypocrisy being spouted by the Guardian.<p><a href="http://order-order.com/2012/11/26/the-guardians-offshore-secrets-guardian-media-group-still-operates-caymans-company/" rel="nofollow">http://order-order.com/2012/11/26/the-guardians-offshore-sec...</a>
<a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2013/06/28/the-insufferable-hypocrisy-of-the-guardian-on-corporation-tax/#4ec0bd22b232" rel="nofollow">http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2013/06/28/the-insuf...</a>
<a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/guardian-media-firm-makes-186m-but-pays-only-200000-tax-8675818.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/guardian-med...</a>
When I see the Koch brothers mentioned, but not George Soros, who's donated far more money and influenced far more country's politics, it always strikes me as highly partisan. When it comes to influencers of US politics, the Koch brothers are relative pikers.
1) Avoiding tax is in legal bounds is completely moral and is practised by everyone who is able to do that. I know a _lot_ of programmers in US who establish private consulting companies to write off all their private expenses and get 15% effective tax rate. If you think avoiding tax is immoral, you should hate them just as much as you hate billionaires.<p>2) Most of the people believe in political causes that are likely to directly benefit them. College students and young professionals are upset about college loans, old people are concerned with pensions, etc.<p>3) It's completely legal and moral to put effort and money to support political causes you believe in.<p>So, everything the article describes is completely normal and moral for an ordinary man — but it seems that when billionaires exhibit the same behaviour, scaled with their personal wealth and it's influence, everyone thinks it's awful, immoral and illegal. How so?
Here's a non-snarky question.<p>What can we do about this? I've seen coverage about all of this, and the question I'm hearing across everyone I know is - what can we do?<p>Any thoughts?
It isn't remembered today, but in the 80's Reagan made a deal to get his tax cuts through by eliminating tax shelters (tax shelters are poorly performing investments made worthwhile only because of favored tax status).<p>This caused investment to flow out of poorly performing investments into better performing ones, which was good for the economy. I suspect that had a lot to do with economic growth in the 80's.<p>Moving investment money offshore to reduce tax liability is the same thing, and the solution is the same - reduce tax rates so that it is no longer worthwhile to invest elsewhere.
<i>Newspapers so often bandy about the million unit that readers can get inured to its true significance. But if at the stroke of midnight on New Year’s Day you were lucky enough to get one pound coin every single second, it would still take 114 days to amass £10m. You would even now be waiting till Sunday week to collect the whole amount.</i><p>I have a very hard time imagining that. Surely it would be better to describe what having £10m would allow you to do.
We're still linking to The Guardian? The government stenographers that are protecting the intelligence community by sitting on their part of the Snowden archive?<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJValv4YQcY" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJValv4YQcY</a><p>(warning: video contains strong language. Jacob Appelbaum isn't pulling his punches at The Guardian)
Hmmmm, strange how these supposedly all-powerful billionaires who own all the politicians through their nefarious offshore tentacles can't manage to get a bridge built:<p><a href="http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_18423887" rel="nofollow">http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_18423887</a><p><a href="http://www.mv-voice.com/news/2013/12/12/council-deadlocks-on-google-bridge-idea" rel="nofollow">http://www.mv-voice.com/news/2013/12/12/council-deadlocks-on...</a><p>(note that the second article is two and a half years after the first - two and a half years of fighting for a simple two-lane bridge)
While I appreciate the general thrust of the Occupy emphasis on "the 1%", as an old school socialist I believe the real issue with the distribution of wealth is on who controls the institutions of wealth generation and power, not who happens to be holding large amounts of units of currency. That some people are 1% and others are in the 99% is a product of unequal distribution of power.<p>By some calculations, I am briefly in "the 1%" in my country but I own know corporations, factories, large quantities of stock, and am in that tier only on account of a set of temporary circumstances, and I've paid over half of it out in income taxes. And I have no more power than any other average voter.<p>Whereas there are people who have far more influence, and it isn't necessarily due to how much wealth they have, but more to do with the kind of control they have over wealth generation itself.
Why is income from money, you know that which is earned because you have lots of capital, taxed at a much lower rate than incoming from labor? The < 1% are hiding their money in plain sight and not paying the same level of taxes as people who trade their labor for money.
Rich people corrupt democracy ? Does this mean if rich people leave politicians alone, politicians will be somehow honest?<p>I am used to Guardians amateurish articles but this puts the bar even lower. Just like there is no such thing as "natural balance" there is no such thing as "honest democracy".<p>All sort of special interest groups will always try to influence power in many ways. Rich people will always be at top. We have two choices. Either have entrepreneurs and free market driven ruthless rich people or more socialistic crony capitalists who steal our money using government. I prefer the former any day.
> Thirty years of runaway incomes for those at the top, and the full armoury of expensive financial sophistication, mean they no longer play by the same rules the rest of us have to follow<p>They wouldn't have played by the same rules even without offshore tax havens because they would be required by law to pay higher tax percentages than most people anways.<p>Is it a surprise to anyone that people try to avoid paying 45, 50, sometimes as high as 90% on their earnings in tax and perhaps just as much on illiquid, inheritable assets?
With the tax evaded, we could END hunger, we could END child poverty, we could have universal pre-school, we could pay for state college for everyone.<p>It is good to keep in mind that society must be balanced between to centers of power: state/political power, and economic power. If the state has complete consolidation of both political and economic power, then you have Russia, China, etc. and corruption at a state level.<p>If you have economic power control the politicians, you have something close to the US and some other countries where wealthy politicians pick and choose senators and greatly influence outcomes.<p>Both extremes are bad - a state controlled by the wealthy, and all wealth controlled by the state.<p>If the wealthy control the state, you have mass poverty, crime, a weak democracy, corruption, etc. If the state controls the wealth it has total power, so you have people disappear if they question it, you have mass starvation, no one to complain towards even if mines are unsafe, etc. In general, states killed 1000x more of their own people than corporations did.
To my mind this really throws the excesses of the financial industry into light.<p>The sum of money reportedly made David Cameron's father, as the director of a long-established stock brokerage, is less than some of my 25-year-old friends were earning as relatively junior employees at London investment banks in 2008 (£200k+ pa).
Why does this line of investigation happen with British leaders but not in the US? Australia has also recently had a lot of media coverage of misuse of government benefits by political leaders. I feel that US media is awash with coverage on the presidential race, immigration, wars etc, but the integrity of politicians in congress isn't explored as deeply.
"1%" is a joke. if you apply that to the entire world, and not just selectively to western countries (as is the habit):<p>According to the Global Rich List, a website that brings awareness to worldwide income disparities, an income of $32,400 USD a year will allow you to make the 1% cut.<p>Using current exchange rates, that amounts to roughly:<p><pre><code> 29,185 euros
2.2 million Indian rupees, or
211,126 Chinese yuan
</code></pre>
<a href="http://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-finance/050615/are-you-top-one-percent-world.asp" rel="nofollow">http://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-finance/050615...</a>