So all these “fines” are actually theatre to make us look away and avoid the ugliness of a trial (in which the filthy facts could become a matter of public record) or any admission of guilt?
Damn it feels good to be a bankster!
4 Likes
“If I go down, you’re all going with me!”
2 Likes
A post in The Risks (Hmm. Unreachable at the moment.) summed it up best a few years ago, while talking about surveillance:
We in the U.S. have just completed one of the largest case studies of what happens when every individual in an industry has all of its e-mail and financial records available to regulators. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) already requires every person in the financial industry to make every e-mail, cellphone text and financial record available to the SEC in order to enforce insider trading and other financial rules.
The result: NADA! NOTHING! With thousands of bankers involved in fraud on the U.S. taxpayer running into the trillions of dollars, not one has been prosecuted; not one has gone to jail. If this level of surveillance of the financial community has produced zero convictions in the largest ripoff of tax dollars in history, there is no reason to expect that any increased level of surveillance of non-financial citizens will produce any better results.
6 Likes
Well said. I feel your weariness.
1 Like
There is no obvious link between the revelations in the Panama Papers, the rise of Islamic State and the wars tearing apart at least nine countries in the Middle East and North Africa. But these three developments are intimately connected as ruling elites, who syphon off wealth into tax havens and foreign property, lose political credibility. No ordinary Afghans, Iraqis and Syrians will fight and die for rulers they detest as swindlers. Crucial to the rise of Isis, al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan is not their own strength and popularity, but the weakness and unpopularity of the governments to which they are opposed.
4 Likes
Fat people are harder to carry but easier to chase. Also less able to utilise any priest hole style arrangements. So I have have doubts about the kidnapping theory.
1 Like
I’ve always thought of it as a mental illness. Since its effects are so detrimental to the larger society, its most profound sufferers should be involuntarily committed and given therapy to help them regain a sane perspective.
5 Likes
on average the inhabitants are thinner than on the deprived side of town
Why so literal?
I think that suggests a higher level of insight on your part than most of us exhibit on this problem. Especially in the U.S. where I am, land of millions of temporarily embarrassed millionaires.
2 Likes
Considering this recent bb post: https://bbs.boingboing.net/t/nixon-started-the-war-on-drugs-because-he-couldnt-declare-war-on-black-people-and-hippies/75390and also this recent bb post from @frauenfelder himself: http://boingboing.net/2016/03/03/why-the-war-on-drugs-is-unwinn.html, “very interesting” is mild.
Yes, how indeed to we stop human nature? If very rich people cannot restrain themselves from taking advantage of tax loopholes that allow them to shelter huge sums in offshore accounts, then I guess we’ll just have to vote for someone who wants to close those loopholes and tax the rich.
Continuing to expose all the rich people, especially those in this country, who have been taking advantage of Mossack Fonseca and other similar companies, seizing their assets unless and until they pay up, and maybe some additional reporting on which Mossack Fonseca clients are backing which policies and politicians might be nice.
And we could radically rethink an economic system that consistently undervalues the most important things needed for a civil society and overvalues things that go BOOM very expensively and destructively. Zero sum games are only one expression of human nature.
5 Likes
In one of the Clive Cussler novels, he mentions that the drive to get more and more wealth should be classified as a mental illness. If you can take care of yourself and your family for the next 10 generations, why in the hell do you need more?
5 Likes
Agreed
1 Like
What makes you think that there is or every has been a “legitimate economy”? To repeat the misquote from Balzac, “Behind every great fortune there is a great crime.”
You can call me cynical if you wish but I consider myself realistic. My observation of history and life has led me to believe that the greatest crimes of all are perfectly legal.
3 Likes
Not really, no. Can’t even keep my own shit together these days.
2 Likes
I’ve often thought that we could largely solve “I want to keep what I earn” mentality by having companies pay taxes on behalf of employees similarly to what we do with half of the payroll taxes. A person’s quoted salary would be their take home pay. Income tax collection for the vast majority of people, except for the self-employed, would be entirely hidden from them.
There are logistical problems with it though that would seem to make it impossible with our progressive taxation system.
1 Like
Maybe, but I think the bigger probelm with tax avoidance is those forms committed by those who are not employees.
1 Like
I’m going disagree with you. I’m certain that at some point one feels wealthy (I’ve heard it’s having about 10 million in the bank or earning about 1 million a year), but until that point those people earning $200K are probably feeling much the same way that those (like me) earning a fraction of that feel.
Just a little introspection is likely to lead one to the same outcome. If you’ve managed to be lucky enough to make it to the middle class, you’re probably a lot wealthier than you were at 20. And again doing better than you were at 30.
Do you feel wealthier? No, of course not. We have hedonic adaption. Instead of sharing a room, I went to sharing an apartment. Then to actually having an apartment for oneself. Then to owning (okay, the bank owning, but they let me stay in it if I pay them monthly) a small house.
If I earned $200K, I’d probably have a slightly bigger house, slightly better schools for my kids, maybe take 2 weeks instead of a week of vacations, and most important of all, save something for retirement. But in the end, I’d likely feel just as stressed.
I mean, let’s be realistic. By any real standard, I was wealthy when I was 20. Did I feel wealthy? Of course not.
As humans are wont to do, we studiously ignore the vast majority that are doing worse than us, and look at what we don’t have compared to that fellow on TV. Maybe this magically changes at $200K. But looking at both myself and those around me, I’m going to bet no.
So, I suspect the vast, vast majority of us are far closer to ‘pathological hoarders’ than we’re comfortable acknowledging. And much of the rest of the world would be happy to point that out. After all, I actually own a house and a car, and yet I’m still not leaping at the chance to pay 80 or 90% tax rate to help fulfill global responsibilities of being part of the 1%.
7 Likes
I’m not going to argue with you about the likely dominant attitude, but I do want to note that it isn’t universal.
I’m 41 years old. The highest salary I have ever earned was just under $40K (Australian, so reduce to $30K for US dollars). The most materially comfortable I’ve ever been was when I was living on $25K (again, Aus) of tax-free scholarships plus about $10K of teaching pay. My first full-time job out of school paid $13K.
I’ve never felt that I was truly poor; I’ve never been homeless or hungry (I would be at the moment if I wasn’t living on the charity of an upper-middle class parent; that’s a recent health-related development, though).
I’m not interested in money; I find it tedious to think about. So, my personal definition of “enough money” has always been “enough that I don’t have to think about it all the time”.
If the rent is paid, there’s fuel in the bike and I have enough in my pocket for a beer or a movie, then it’s all cool.
OTOH, I’m sure that my lack of dependant family makes that attitude much more practical to maintain. And the emergency backup of a middle-class family makes it much more survivable in disaster.
1 Like
How does this translate to tax rates for you, for people with different levels of income? Are you arguing for a flat tax?
As for your claim that the vast majority of us (if you mean US Americans) being close to pathological hoarders, and the implication that most Americans should just accept their lot in life because people elsewhere have it worse – no, I don’t accept that, when a LOT of people in the US have to work two or three jobs with no health insurance, just to get by (assuming they can even find jobs). And despite steady increases in US worker productivity, the standard of living for most has steadily declined. So where’s more and more of all that money going?
4 Likes
@anon15383236 @anon50609448 sometimes money and or power are just side effects of doing something you love. Sometimes it’s just the luck of doing the right thing at the right time.
Sure, sometimes, but who doesn’t know that? (Though I’d quibble about “power.”)
Also: that doesn’t have anything to do with the topic at hand, “the criminal economy.”
3 Likes
