Comments on: $21 trillion has been stashed in tax havens by 0.001% of the world's population

By: BethanyAnne

BethanyAnne — Wed, 25 Jul 2012 01:59:00 +0000

Yeah, I need to read more of his blog; this really reframed lots of things for me.

By: Paul Renault

Paul Renault — Tue, 24 Jul 2012 21:51:00 +0000

Suppose an unemployed person was paid a living wage while looking for work (y’know, like in other, civilized countries).

They’d show up in the unemployment stats. As it is, the unemployed are keel-hauled into prison – check the unemployment stats vis-à-vis the prison stats for black people (at a cost much higher than just paying them unemployment). As prisoners, their numbers aren’t included in the unemployment stats.

It’s obvious.

By: Barbara Terry

Barbara Terry — Tue, 24 Jul 2012 17:40:00 +0000

So how do we retrieve our real wealth from the holders of all that imaginary money? This may be a promising start.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/from-an-unlikely-source-a-serious-challenge-to-wall-street-20120720

By: Barbara Terry

Barbara Terry — Tue, 24 Jul 2012 17:34:00 +0000

yeah
probably carcinogenic
plus old meat is stringy and tasteless

yep – I’m testing this approach for the zombie apocalypse
to explain why geezers like me make a bad meal

By: Barbara Terry

Barbara Terry — Tue, 24 Jul 2012 17:29:00 +0000

You’re not the first one to think that way -

http://leftleaningbrain.blogspot.com/2012/01/now-thats-class-warfare.html

By: Barbara Terry

Barbara Terry — Tue, 24 Jul 2012 17:25:00 +0000

Welsh just cuts right through the babble, doesn’t he!

By: Barbara Terry

Barbara Terry — Tue, 24 Jul 2012 16:59:00 +0000

From what I’ve seen at this website – http://www.overseas-exile.com/ – it looks like (surprise, surprise), that with all the public noise about going after wealthy tax-dodging people, the government is actually going after mom-and-pop sorts who retire overseas to stretch modest retirement nest eggs.

By: Barbara Terry

Barbara Terry — Tue, 24 Jul 2012 16:49:00 +0000

I keep wondering why no one uses a sports analogy to talk about regulation. Remove the umpires and referees from sports, and football becomes Thunderdome. What are the chances of ever seeing star players in that system? Long before a promising player can settle into a run of amazing performances, someone on an opposing team has broken his legs because, well, you know – there are no regulations.

By: Barbara Terry

Barbara Terry — Tue, 24 Jul 2012 16:40:00 +0000

Well, besides not being socialist, the U.S. is also a long, long way from being capitalist either.

By: Dallas McCoy

Dallas McCoy — Tue, 24 Jul 2012 15:01:00 +0000

You speak of a world war. I predicted long ago that we would not have any more world wars, unless by accident. The big boys that start wars wouldn’t have their hidey holes as in the past. Nuclear weapons decided that. I said then that we would have what I call brush fire wars. Wars are indeed important for the big boys to stay in power.

By: Finnagain

Finnagain — Mon, 23 Jul 2012 18:24:00 +0000

Basterds!

By: The Life Of Bryan

The Life Of Bryan — Mon, 23 Jul 2012 18:17:00 +0000

Okay, just the inglorious ones, then?

By: JProffitt71

JProffitt71 — Mon, 23 Jul 2012 18:07:00 +0000

I’d like to note that the attitude I am seeing among my generation is that the “American Dream” is bullshit. While it might have been possible for authorities to wave that away before, things like the internet have made it all but impossible to keep facts from constantly inundating large swaths of people.

By: JProffitt71

JProffitt71 — Mon, 23 Jul 2012 18:02:00 +0000

I had a dream about a promising third party candidate. That was an awesome dream.

By: Jellodyne

Jellodyne — Mon, 23 Jul 2012 17:12:00 +0000

Remember guys, socialism = raising taxes on the wealthiest and tax dodgingest Americans to any level above the lowest level they have ever been in history (well, since the 50s anyway). When I think about the marginal tax rates in the 1950s — well, maybe McCarthy was right. They were all communists!

By: Mordicai

Mordicai — Mon, 23 Jul 2012 17:02:00 +0000

I mean, WHAT, do you want to end up with equal access to health care like some kind of ANIMAL? Those socialists, they are out to get you, what with their crazy schemes of not charging usurious sums of money for medical care. Practically Nazis, actually, come to think of it. Yeah no, I don’t get the political discourse in America anymore.

By: UncaScrooge

UncaScrooge — Mon, 23 Jul 2012 16:47:00 +0000

Got Your Tax Haven Right Here

By: Nathan Hornby

Nathan Hornby — Mon, 23 Jul 2012 16:20:00 +0000

I dunno, I’m no economist, but I think money meant a whole lot more when it actually represented something (i.e. a convenient way to trade goods without carrying around goods). The whole principle of countries being in debt with each other over imaginary numbers on a screen, and the people of those countries suffering as a result, is more than a little mind boggling for me. It sounds simple enough at the basic end, when you talk about inflation – but it all gets very fuzzy near the edges.

By: Charles-A Rovira

Charles-A Rovira — Mon, 23 Jul 2012 16:19:00 +0000

very beneficial to take back some of that imaginary money and pay off some national debts Because those national debts are also imaginary. Just like stretches of the via appia are still in use, the some of the money was spent for things with longer life-spans than the so called debt.

By: Charles-A Rovira

Charles-A Rovira — Mon, 23 Jul 2012 16:14:00 +0000

It would fit on it and not require a whole lot more processing power.

But its probably kept in redundant systems all over the world.

By: Charles-A Rovira

Charles-A Rovira — Mon, 23 Jul 2012 16:08:00 +0000

Just look at the tax rolls of the IRS, Revenue Canada, Inland Revenue, Tax France etc.

They are all listed there, by name, address telephone number…

Don’t be so lazy… Its a relatively short list: 12,400 people in the United States, about 1,200 people in Canada, 2,500 people in Great Britain, 2,500 people in France and so on.

By: Navin_Johnson

Navin_Johnson — Mon, 23 Jul 2012 16:03:00 +0000

Ah, glad you mentioned Google’s tax dodging. It’s not all done by just by Romney’s and African strongmen.

By: millie fink

millie fink — Mon, 23 Jul 2012 16:02:00 +0000

Righto, here here!

I was just lamenting how far away the U.S. is from considering even socialism, which has been branded as the new evil opposite of our beloved, hazily conceived capitalism, now that communism has been declared dead.

By: Navin_Johnson

Navin_Johnson — Mon, 23 Jul 2012 16:01:00 +0000

But they have their tax scams too, Google (do no evil) is particularly adept at it.

By: jandrese

jandrese — Mon, 23 Jul 2012 16:01:00 +0000

That “the American Dream” stuff is bullshit the pundits likes to trot out to make their opposition seem “Unamerican”. Nobody in the real world cares about that crap, they just want their pensions and retirement accounts not to vanish overnight for one reason or another.

By: Navin_Johnson

Navin_Johnson — Mon, 23 Jul 2012 15:56:00 +0000

Seriously, can we leave the Arabs and Africans alone for a bit and start threatening these creeps?

By: Navin_Johnson

Navin_Johnson — Mon, 23 Jul 2012 15:55:00 +0000

Like all those poverty scourged Scandinavian hell holes?

By: Mordicai

Mordicai — Mon, 23 Jul 2012 15:55:00 +0000

No way, I think currency is great, but like any tool it is subject to ridiculous abuses.

By: Navin_Johnson

Navin_Johnson — Mon, 23 Jul 2012 15:52:00 +0000

Thank you. Romney, (our topic du jour lately) is a perfect example of how a one percenter is born wealthy and works to keep that wealth funneling up and out of the hands of the people below.

By: Charles-A Rovira

Charles-A Rovira — Mon, 23 Jul 2012 15:51:00 +0000

Comparisons are in order so, adjusting for population differences [US numbers are given in square brackets,] Russia, which became for a while the Soviet Union, and France which for a while became La République, required the cold blooded murder of a small number of oligarchs ([12,400, as per the IRS,] compared to the much larger 1% [3,060,000] number of bosses/barons/robber barons and the remaining 99% [302,000,000] of us). While we aren't there ... yet ... the current political and economic situation in the south of Europe, (viz: Greece, Italy, Spain and Portugal, Malta etc.,) would argue for more caution by the financial industry and the oligarchy. Letting the banks fail is how the used to get rid of debt in the old days; from the time of the 12 Caesars to the creation of the Marshall Plan history is filled with bankruptcies by banks themselves. (The equivalent of backing the wrong horse.) The current coddling the banks and appointing of an unelected banking elite to the governments of the countries which shouldn't have been lent money in the first place and letting the populace assume the burden for the banksters' over estimation of the situation represents a break from how things have been done up 'til now. Let the oligarchy reflect upon this... Being a bit poorer, going from billionaires to millionaires, is temporary, having your property forcibly confiscated, and losing your lives in the process, is forever.