The featured articles below begin with articles on more economic troubles, including the pension problem, infrastructure needs like water pipes, controversial pesticides, the need for apprenticeships & high prison population. From there we see links to extremely important revelations contained within the Paradise Papers. The very first Guardian article, Paradise Papers Micah White, offers these 2 basic insightful points:
The fundamental lesson of the Panama and Paradise Papers is twofold. First, the people everywhere, regardless of whether they live in Russia or America, are being oppressed by the same minuscule social circle of wealthy elites who unduly control our governments, corporations, universities and culture. We now know without a doubt – thanks to the incontrovertible evidence provided by the Panama and Paradise Papers – that there is a global plutocracy who employ the same handful of companies to hide their money and share more in common with each other than with the citizens of their countries. This sets the stage for a global social movement.Second, and most importantly, these leaks indicate that our earth has bifurcated into two separate and unequal worlds: one inhabited by 200,000 ultra high-net-worth individuals and the other by the 7 billion left behind. While street protest is losing its effectiveness, there is a force that could terrify these elites: the spectre of a ruthless and globally inescapable class justice.
In the very next article explaining we’re now in the second Gilded Age with huge disparities in wealth & incomes, here in their concluding paragraph touching on how Trump had vowed to upend the system:
Like FDR, Donald Trump has appealed to those in America who think the system is rigged against them. Unlike FDR, he has so far shown not the slightest inclination to do anything to make the system less rigged. To do that, Trump would have to make the tax system more progressive, reduce the power of corporate lobbying, resist pressure for stronger intellectual property rights and stop the wealthy from salting their money away in tax havens. None of this is on his agenda, which explains why America is a country where competition is thwarted, excess profits are rife and the tech entrepreneurs of Silicon Valley are the new robber barons.
The Salon article entitled, WTF is wrong with rich people, concludes with these 3 paragraphs:
Meanwhile, back here on planet Earth, you and I and all of the other middle-class schmucks are stuck with paying taxes that finance — or are supposed to finance — our schools, and roads, and bridges, and airports, and municipal buildings, not to mention paying for all of the troops we’ve got overseas fighting terrorism or whatever else they’re doing over there, or paying for medical research into cancer and heart disease and diabetes and fighting the scourge of opioid addiction that’s ravaging the countryside, and helping rebuild Puerto Rico and all of the cities slammed by the worst hurricane season in ages.
It isn’t enough that rich people are different from you and me. They want us to pay for the roads they drive their Ferraris down, for the schools that educate the people they hire to work in their companies, for the armies that protect their investments here and abroad; and they want your kids to join the Army and fight their wars, so their kids don’t have to, and they want you to pay your taxes, so they don’t have to.
It would be easy to blame the advantages enjoyed by the rich on the capitalist system, but it’s their capitalist system. Rich people built it. It operates by their rules. All of these offshore accounts and limited trusts and pass-through corporate taxes and hedge-funder-carried interest dodges are completely legal because rich people bought and paid for the congress that wrote the laws that created the ways to avoid taxes.
The next Salon article, Paradise Papers reveal the rise of a new class the global oligarchy, includes an excerpt offering perceptive insights:
Sixty years after Mills wrote these words, the world has become increasingly globalized and so has the “power elite.” Plutocrats of this century are no longer as bound to their own country as they once were, and nowhere in our globalized world is there as great a class consciousness as among the billionaire class. The richest 1 percent of the world’s population now owns more than half of global wealth, and the eight richest men on the planet have more wealth combined than the poorest 3.6 billion people. As the Paradise Papers show, these “ultra-high-net-worth individuals” have no intention of spreading the wealth and will do whatever it takes — whether it’s hiding their money offshore or buying political influence — to further their interests.
All of this indicates that we are well on our way to becoming what Sanders calls an “international oligarchy,” where democracy is either nonexistent or treated as a facade, and elites have complete control over the economy. But this is not inevitable, and it is still possible to reverse this trend. To do this, however, working people will have to come together to fight for their own interests and challenge the status quo.
With billions stashed away in offshore accounts & not circulating/contributing to our economy, might I suggest where we should begin to unrig the system. The working middle class will not benefit so much from cutting taxes for the rich, or repealing & replacing Obamacare, or totally pulling out of trade agreements, or tossing DACA Dreamers out of the country, or building the wall! All that is mere window dressing! Let’s start by changing the system itself, gaining international cooperation to prohibit or penalize these numerous legal offshore enclaves or investments that are essentially a tax dodge, including setting up shell companies making huge sums of money untraceable. The ultra-wealthy use/abuse such exclusive shelters to their advantage & has helped usher in the second Gilded Age. If there’s one area where Loose-cannon Bannon’s arguments do have some merit, it’s in this area where the wealthy elite use their leverage to take advantage of the rest of us. The problem politically is our DC leaders have not displayed the courage to buck the system, otherwise their donations would dry up needed to run for reelection. Great wealth literally controls our political system, which we’d better make corrective choices soon before there’s no going back, & a permanent crony-capitalist oligarchy will become ingrained within the system.
Lindsey Graham & Bernie Sanders both say in different articles below the concerns directly related to that basic theme of the super-rich controlling the rigged system including the compromising of political leadership. Both Senators admit to the dominating control large donors have over crafting/pushing legislation slanted towards their interests. If we are ever to successfully drain the swamp, it should begin with rejecting the current system of big/dark money having overwhelming influence over the governing process, putting the power back in the hands of the people. So whether we’re talking about the inequities in the Paradise Papers or the control donors have over policies, fixing that would have a far greater impact in improving our economy than the relatively small-ball policies DC is currently bickering over.
So reviewing the related articles, there are several good articles about the Paradise Papers & how the rich work the system rather inappropriately to their benefit. I suppose we can’t blame them for maximizing their personal interests, so what needs done is to find a way to correct a flawed system. The whole thing needs a big overhaul so economic growth can be shared more among the working class, who as a whole haven’t seen a pay raise in decades, instead of all the income growth only going to the very top. The longer we allow the current system to operate without needed adjustments, the more the disparities will grow. And the wealthy might want to consider they should help in creating a more inclusive economy before the voters get so fed up they opt for socialism. So those articles should be given high priority, since I don’t think the revelations found in those Paradise Papers have garnered the attention they deserve.
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