Y’know, if everyone just paid their taxes without trying to do all of this fancy stuff, THEN we could have an honest discussion about what the rates should be.
Until that point, it really doesn’t matter, because the rich will continue to sock away their billions, while whining incessantly about their tax burden (while understating the actual burden by as much as they’ve avoided through clever tax moves).
Even if the rates were slightly above zero there would be people saying they are too high and trying to offshore their money to avoid the taxman. Just the way some people are.
Saw “The Big Short” over the weekend. Virtually nothing has changed since 2009.
Corruption is a way of life in China and Russia, as well as most of Latin America.
I’ve done business in Latin America, one of the most common responses to 'Como Estas?" (How are you in Spanish) in Colombia was “Todo Legal!” (All Legal!)
The Economist had an article about 4 years ago that detailed that a huge amount of Chinese political leaders have relatives with citizenship and business interests in other countries.
The more important and powerful have relatives with Citizenship and Business Interests in the US, Canada and Western Europe, the less important and less powerful have Citizenship and interests in South America and Africa,
It basically stated that the system in China is so opaque, it is very difficult to understand how sustainable and stable their economic and political system is.
So the takeaway of the article was that the people in China who have a front row seat, and get to look at the real growth and GDP numbers seem ready to make a run for it at a moments notice.
The information released so far doesn’t contain any US corporations or important figures, but that is because they are releasing the information in waves. They said as much that don’t worry, the US will get its turn soon enough.
It is quite revealing that the NY Times had a minor mention of this, and if the Washington Post has only a minor article on it. This should be a screaming front page headline.
Agreed with emphasis on the word “eventually.”
Who in this country (let alone planet) doesn’t realize this already even on an intuiative level? And so what? This has been extremely evident since at least 2008 and nothing has happened. Occupy Wall Street was supposed to be the beginning of people taking to the streets. Didn’t happen. We have the evidence; what we don’t have is the drive to turn this around.
Has any country suffered more throughout its history from the mismanagement and corruption of its leaders than Russia.
This is exactly the point! The problems in the U.S. are not what is illegal, but what is legal!
Bernie Sanders goes off on Wall Street leaders that were never charged criminally. He contends that they could be prosecuted, and the Obama administration disagreed and said what they did was wrong and they were culpable, but it wasn’t illegal. But this is the big point. Just assume, arguendo, that Bernie is wrong. Even if that were the case, it is still the most unreal indictment of our political and economic structure that what the top 1% get away with is actually legal!
Except that Obama and the Democrats traded an enormous opportunity for increased profits by the insurance industry for a promise to be a lot more fair about insuring almost everybody.
This is a win since the insurance industry would have sought higher profits anyway, but maybe not the best deal possible because they got those increased profits while leaving a some people out. Don’t know what’s left to bribe them to cover the rest.
That’s because some people prefer pragmatic, incremental change and lose their nerve when faced with the possibility of dramatic change.
That had nothing to do with big finance and what began happening in 2007. AIG, for example, doesn’t sell health insurance. Their CEO should have been charged for fiduciary negligence. Same with the ratings agencies. None of this had changed.