No Representation Without Taxation

[barryqwalsh]

No Representation Without Taxation
Should be the new twist on that famous slogan.

The super-wealthy have access to political leaders, there are more lobbyists that politicians in Washington. These lobbyists work for multi-billion dollar corporations, which pay little in taxation; a lot less in percentage terms than Jane or John Average. If the US is a plutocracy, then the beneficiaries should at least pay their fair share in taxation.

 

[occupied]

No Representation Without Taxation
Should be the new twist on that famous slogan.

The super-wealthy have access to political leaders, there are more lobbyists that politicians in Washington. These lobbyists work for multi-billion dollar corporations, which pay little in taxation; a lot less in percentage terms than Jane or John Average. If the US is a plutocracy, then the beneficiaries should at least pay their fair share in taxation.

The whole point of a plutocracy is to continually shift the tax burden downward while undermining the ability of the rabble to successfully fight off undue taxation and shrinking political clout. Many corporations have successfully cut the American worker out of their business model, it's only natural that their pet politicians work to cut the voter out their political model.

 

[barryqwalsh]

Masters of the Universe


So Americans have no idea how much the Masters of the Universe are paid, a finding very much in line with evidence that Americans vastly underestimate the concentration of wealth at the top.

Is this just a reflection of the innumeracy of hoi polloi? No – the supposedly well informed often seem comparably out of touch. Until the Occupy movement turned the “1 per cent” into a catchphrase, it was all too common to hear prominent pundits and politicians speak about inequality as if it were mainly about college graduates versus the less educated, or the top fifth of the population versus the bottom 80 per cent.

And even the 1 per cent is too broad a category; the really big gains have gone to an even tinier elite. For example, recent estimates indicate not only that the wealth of the top per cent has surged relative to everyone else – rising from 25 percent of total wealth in 1973 to 40 per cent now – but that the great bulk of that rise has taken place among the top 0.1 per cent, the richest thousandth of Americans.

Invisible wealthy keep inequality shrouded

 

[barryqwalsh]

In a paper on subsidising multinationals globally, Kenneth Thomas, an American scholar specialising in the study of multinationals and their relations with governments, cited the case of another US west coast mega-corporation.

Boeing, whose airplanes we have all flown in, was founded a century ago in Washington state, which has an economy not hugely bigger than Ireland's. The airline maker, as one of the largest companies in the world, accounts for much of the pacific state's wealth creation and employs more than 80,000 people. Washington needs Boeing, and it would suffer severely if the aircraft-maker departed or built fewer planes there.

The company has not been behind the door in exploiting this dependency. It recently used its leverage over the state government, threatening to build its latest airliner elsewhere. That threat triggered 20 other US states into tempting Boeing with incentive packages. The upshot, among other things, was that the state government in Olympia felt forced to give Boeing a package of tax incentives worth $8.7bn to ensure that it built its latest liner in the state.

- See more at: EU rules can help stop us caving into the demands of multinationals - Independent.ie