Here's an article about global tax avoidance through tax havens:
The scale of the theft is staggering. Somewhere between $21 and $32 trillion is hidden behind the vast walls of tax haven secrecy. That’s the equivalent of one third of all global annual income. Somewhere between 60 and 70% of all international trade flows through them so that profits can be siphoned off untaxed.
The scale alone means tax havens have a material impact on levels of global inequality and poverty. But more insidious is what they actively facilitate. Tax havens are in the background of practically every instance of large-scale corruption and economic crime of the last thirty years. Every corrupt leader, every major arms dealer and drug cartel, as well as most multinational corporations rely on their ‘discretion’ to do business. It’s a morality-blind service industry for the ultra-rich. Forget the 1% - this industry exists largely for the pleasure and benefit of the 0.02%; the 10 million people who ‘own’ the bulk of the $21trillion hidden.
Imperialist wars. International inequality. Global warming. Dying planet. We keep wasting our time pleading with our scum-bag leaders to do the right thing. They'll never do the right thing. The system has to change. Revolution is the only solution. How to do it though? Who is thinking about this?
10 comments:
I am, but I don't know what to do.
karen,
Think about power. Think about sources of power. Think about how to change the present arrangement of power.
Don't tell yourself it's hopeless before you even get started thinking about it. (Not that I'm accusing you of that. Just that some optimism at the start is necessary.)
It is monsters such as Harper, giving billions of our tax dollars to, corrupt greedy banks, mines, big corporations, and Harper's favorite charity, big oil. Flaherty is constantly bleating on, big wealthy businesses sitting on all the money. Well duh Flaherty, stop giving our damned money to them. Harper steals from us, to give to the wealthiest corporations in the world.
The best thing for provinces to do is. Leave Harper, Ottawa and Alberta as their own country. The rest of the provinces can unite, as our own country. If we don't, Harper will sell us out to Communist China. We should be keeping our resources and resource jobs for ourselves. Why should we permit Red China to take our resource jobs? Why funnel our tax dollars to Harper, to piss away and steal? Harper and his henchmens expense accounts, are obscene. This country isn't Canada anymore anyway. There is nothing in this country for Canadians. Harper is giving all to China. What China doesn't get, the U.S. is.
In BC. They have to speak Mandarin, to work in their own gaddamned mines.
Are the people in this country crazy, or what? Harper is giving, China the right to sue any Canadians, blocking China's intrusion into Canada.
Get the hell out of Harper's Canada. Canadians no longer own Canada. However, good luck getting that, through anyone's heads.
Good luck to Canadians, trying to live on Chinese wages. Canada has the highest cost of living, in all of the America's. Even that doesn't sink in. Chinese resource workers, earn $17.00 per hour less, than Canadian resource workers do. The Chinese send all of their money home. That money, isn't even spent in Canada.
Story after story about CEO's "creating efficiencies" by destroying the careers of others and their salaries, bonuses and tax cheating havens grow exponentially. Latest is Hunter Harrison slashing close to 5000 jobs at CP rail, how's that "Canada's Action Plan" working for ya harper? Not sure of the answer, but nothing will change until we (society and corporate business) stop rewarding those who have created and continue to worsen this mess.
Occupy and Strike Debt are working in the background too. I think if the government doesn't crush them any further, then they may not have to progress to the French resistance level of opposition before they start having an impact this decade. The problem is it's all 20 years too late as far as putting sane people in charge of our environment.
Saskboy,
I hope to work with Occupy on some things.
And you're right about it being too late ecologically speaking. All the more reason to remove these scum-bag before the chaos starts.
bc waterboy,
It's capitalist greed. I advocate making people the rulers. Not the capitalists. One way to break the power of the capitalists is to enshrine the human rights of workers within their workplaces.
Meadowlark,
That mining story is pretty outrageous.
But harper, and his predecessors (especially Mulroney) already sold us out to the US Americans.
They were all cut from the same filthy cloth.
Actually Chris Hedges wrote a chilling, cautionary piece about this a couple of weeks back on TruthDig. He argued that revolution is the default outcome of the current governmental dysfunction and democratic collapse but history has shown that revolutionary movements are rarely benevolent or what those who initially supported them ever foresaw.
This is well laid out in Crane Brinton's 1934 classic, "The Anatomy of Revolution." Yet all of the revolutions Brinton dissects occurred in a world more or less in environmental peace with itself.
Today's revolutionary movements, likely as not to be hijacked by extremists and zealots, could be greatly worsened by environmental and other destabilizing forces.
We have to find means of resolution short of revolt. The chances of actually succeeding grow dimmer with each passing year.
MoS,
I've always meant for it to be a peaceful revolution. But a revolution all the same.
http://thwapschoolyard.blogspot.ca/2012/12/respect-traditions-of-parliament.html
http://thwapschoolyard.blogspot.ca/2012/11/its-personal-with-me.html
I understand how revolutions can spiral out of control. We have to isolate the elites and democratically disempower them and that will mean standing up fearlessly against the arguments of stupid people (the bulk of right-wing voters).
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