I’m fairly certain Wise and Thompson already arrange their finances to avoid taxation. He’s a hypocrite. That said, this is a good lesson for those who claim to love the Big State. Government is always, at all times and instances, by definition, the ally of the strong and the connected. Empowering government in everyone’s lives in order to empower it to settle the hash of the powerful, is only empowering it to get involved in everyone’s lives for the benefit of the powerful.
And what is Wise’s end-game here? Not to pay taxes until the government prosecutes and convicts HSBC whether or not they did anything actually contrary to the law?
I have said before that capitalism and big government go hand in hand. It still doesn’t change that if we ignore issues like this then the people will get shat on again and again.
My point is: not suing someone who is openly and publicly admitting to doing something illegal (evading tax in this case) is a blatant undermining of the rule of law.
Not suing someone who is spending a lot of resources to cover up something potentially illegal is a cop out.
However if you sue those openly publicly breaking the law for a political statement, it becomes considerably harder not to sue others whose illegal tax dodging activities also become public, maybe not by their own volition but by the dirt digging activities of a few journalist still worthy of that name.
The precedent is not about the legality of paying tax, the precedent is about the states willingness to pursue difficult, contested cases. If various fraud investigations the Serious Fraud Office has conducted is anything to go by there is potential for improvement.
May I refer you to Private Eye for further details.
As I said, “NOT ignoring the issue” by empowering the government only legitimizes the shatting.
“Oh no! Government is in the pocket of the Powerful and Connected! What will we do? Let’s empower government!”
You mean you want make a the tool in the pocket of the Powerful and Connected even more potent?
“Yes! It is our only choice!”
Secondly, “Captalsm” as some define it goes hand in hand with Big Government in the same way Socialism and Big Business goes hand in hand. Two years after Hugo Chavez “nationalized” the oil industry in Venezuela, the Chavez family were all millionaires. So did Chavez engaged in “capitalism” to Venezuela?
The term “capitalism” is the Marxist term for The Right to Accumulate the Returns for Your Labor and Intellectual Effort and Do with It As You Please". It’s the term for what is generally called Free Markets and Property Rights. But for some people it means accumulating wealth by force (government or arms), which would qualify Atilla the Hun as a “captialist”. The reason capitalism doesn’t seem logical to some people is because they don’t like to think deeply about economics or alternative methods of doing things. That includes a lot of editors at Boing Boing.
You say “The Right to Accumulate the Returns for Your Labor and Intellectual Effort and Do with It As You Please”, I say “the right to accrue capital by exploiting workers through socially harmful policies that consider only GDP as important with blatant disregard for the wellbeing of the majority.”
As I said, the reason capitalism doesn’t seem logical to some people is because they don’t like to think deeply about economics or alternative methods of doing things. It’s disheartening to read something like this only 25 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall and during overt contemporary failures of socialist experiments in Europe and South America.
Those who do not learn from history blah blah blah.
I think the issue here is you’re making a similar leap; socialism is not the same thing as communism. It is entirely possible to have a functioning democratic government that discourages hoarding of capital through taxation and provides welfare provisions for its population without being Stalinist.
Where “socialist experiments” (is the NHS really still an experiment after 70 years?) fail, it tends to be because of the corrupting influence of croney capitalism, rather than inherent flaws with socialism itself. Unfettered liberal capitalism is (no matter what trickle-down theorists say) an inherently flawed and unfair system that enables a few to thrive while the rest suffer. Rising global income inequality is not only an inevitable consequence of the move to neo-liberalism in the west, it will also ultimately destroy the markets that support it. If 99% of the population are priced out of markets because 1% of the population has hoarded all the capital, who can consume the goods and services that are produced?
A belief that states have a responsibility to protect the disadvantaged within their populations does not make me uninformed about history or economics nor does it make me an apologist for Uncle Joe. I assume by the way that you don’t see a difference between socialism and communism that you’re an American; how’s that capitalist healthcare system working out for you?
The reason I think that the people have not been taken to court is simply because they have done nothing illegal within the laws of the UK. That does not mean what they did was right, but you can’t jail people simply because they do something you do not like.
Emma Thompson if she holds her tax back will be braking the law, these guys haven’t as far as I know.
What they might have done is called tax avoidance not tax evasion. The different with avoidance is when you use the laws and tax rules to pay less tax by using those laws and rules, sure some of the ways they twist the rules have nothing to do with how they where thought out but that irreverent, as long as they don’t brake the rules its legal.
Tax evasion is when you pay less tax though false declaration, lies or by simply refusing to pay. This is illegal unlike avoidance. This is what Emma Thompson says she will be doing, braking the law so she hope she can get those who have not broken the law be punished because she does not like what they did.
She should be using her public notice to influence the government to change the rules on tax avoidance if she wanted to really make a statement, its an election year its only 3 months away an open letter from her and anyone else famous she can get to sign it and send it to all parties, have it printed in the papers and demand the parties respond publicly or it will be brought up during the election that they did not respond so they are in favor of these people avoiding tax.
To me this is simply a publicity stunt rather than real action, it wont acomplish anything other than put Emma Thompson back in the public view.
You seem to have mistaken me for a statist. The fact that I hate capitalistic power structures doesn’t mean I am happy to replace them with statist power instead. I am happy for them to fight against each other for a while though, giving everyone else some breathing space.
I think this (along with most nationalisation) comes under what Marx refered to as Conservative or Bourgeois Socialism. Things that are done for the good of the people because people in power say that they are for the good of the people. No giving the means of production to the people though, so Marx was rather negative about it.
That is true is no-one has anyone working for them. howerver, in the real world, people work for unfair wages and have to spend it all on rents, bills and food. Because of the last five years we have a lot of people failing to do even that. I live in Oxford and, despite it having a reputation for being rich, it has a disturbing amount of people relying on food banks despite having a job.
Isn’t capitalism its own force? Do alienated work for possibly poor wages or you dont have the money to pay for rent and food. If that isn’t coercion then what is?
I have thought about this deeply, looking into if/how capitalism could be a force for good and what the alternatives were. After doing that I became a libertarian-socialist. Capitalism will always tend towards centralisation of wealth without external powers interfering, and now that isn’t working because of regulatory capture.
It’s past time that workers went up to their bosses, told them that they are taking control of their workplaces and that they can either join them as an equal or get out. That should then be followed by a visit to the union reps and giving them the same offer.
If you think I want anywhere to become a marxist-leninist (or similar state communist) state then you are mistaken.
Good words. It’s a shame that many capitalists do not live by them.
