Wealth doesn't trickle down – it just floods offshore, research reveals

originally posted by: burdman30ott6

originally posted by: AlaskanDad


When those don't work, this would leave only one avenue to the poor...

...Crime!!!

Nice!

...can't that be said about pretty much everything in life, though? How far down the rabbit hole do we chase this? At what point does:
Take a Second Job!!!
Live More Frugally!!!
Learn a Trade!!!
or
Look Elsewhere for Work!!!
enter the picture? Personal responsibility, my friend, personal responsibility. I realize modern America has made this a forbidden concept, because it is the anathema of the welfare state and of political control over a kept class of voters, but if we'd have lacked it at the founding of this country, Europeans never would have made it past the first winter at Plymouth Rock.

There is an attitude of entitlement that festers in Europe and the US at the moment. The cycle of poverty is self-perpetuating to some degree, and can made worse by the State benefits system.

originally posted by: AlaskanDad
Your version of libertarianism sounds like ultra conservative fantasy land.

This planet belongs to all human beings, not a few that have tittle. Its resources should not be plundered by a few to bring them great wealth. Rather the great cornucopia that is earth should supply the needs of all.

...and your version of socialism sounds an untenable hell to anyone who recognizes that Gene Roddenbury wasn't an economist. Again you have jumped straight to extremism in your effective argument. We're not discussing resource "plundering", there are already laws intended to mitigate that. We're talking very simply of the have nots wanting what the haves posses and, failing to achieve this goal themselves, looking for what they want to be mandated away from the haves. Sorry, some of us a bit more pride and self respect to support that fiscal buggery.

Fortune 500 Has Thousands Of Tax Shelters Holding $2 Trillion Offshore

Apple, Nike, Citigroup and a few hundred other Fortune 500 companies have created a whopping 7,827 offshore shell companies to stash nearly $2 trillion in places like Bermuda and the Cayman Islands in order to avoid paying U.S. taxes, according to a new report from the U.S. Public Interest Research Group and Citizens for Tax Justice, advocacy groups pushing for tax reform. The amount of cash offshore has doubled since 2008.

All this sheltering costs the U.S. Treasury an estimated $90 billion in lost revenue per year, according to Kimberly Clausing of Reed College, cited in the report.

source

originally posted by: AlaskanDad
Fortune 500 Has Thousands Of Tax Shelters Holding $2 Trillion Offshore

Apple, Nike, Citigroup and a few hundred other Fortune 500 companies have created a whopping 7,827 offshore shell companies to stash nearly $2 trillion in places like Bermuda and the Cayman Islands in order to avoid paying U.S. taxes, according to a new report from the U.S. Public Interest Research Group and Citizens for Tax Justice, advocacy groups pushing for tax reform. The amount of cash offshore has doubled since 2008.

All this sheltering costs the U.S. Treasury an estimated $90 billion in lost revenue per year, according to Kimberly Clausing of Reed College, cited in the report.

source

Then lower the taxes to be more competitive?

Oh gawd I wish I knew earlier all it takes is a little personal responsibility, with a dash of pride and self-respect, to game an insanely broken system!

Pride is the original sin.

Not surprising it is viewed as a virtue these days.

The delusion and willingness to lay back and say everything is fine, it's just your own fault that the lower rungs on the ladder are consistently being removed.

a reply to: 321Go

Then lower the taxes to be more competitive?

Take away laws to make life a little more fun and competitive!

a reply to: corvuscorrax

There's really no point arguing anything fiduciary in nature with someone who equates a personal work ethic that leads to not having to rely on others to care for your needs with "gaming the system.". Bending your damn back, working, bettering yourself and your skills to be attractive to the modern economy, moving out of your comfort zone... These things aren't "gaming the system," they're growing up and taking responsibility for yourself and your own future.

So yeah, delusions and laying back... Who is the group planted on their ass saying the world owes them money somebody else earned and possesses, again?

:roll eyes:

originally posted by: AlaskanDad
a reply to: 321Go

Then lower the taxes to be more competitive?

Take away laws to make life a little more fun and competitive!

Not a bad idea. It's been proven with historic data that the more a government intervenes, the worse it makes the problem it's trying to solve.

originally posted by: 321Go
After talking with a few of them – most I regard as friends – they would be very willing to bring their money back, make more investments, employ more people and contribute more in taxes if the rates were lower, or closer to what they could attain from offshore.

This is impossible. There's nations with 0% corporate tax rates. There's also nations with negative tax rates. As in the corporation pays 0% and the nation pays the corporation to set up there on top of the lack of taxes. It is impossible to compete in a race to the bottom. How low should we go? Should we match the 0% tax rates? If we do, then no money is made and it doesn't matter if the money is here or there. Should we match the negative rates? Lets say we match a -1% rate and another nation goes to -2%, can we go to -3%? Is it even worth doing?

a reply to: johnwick

or made the wrong choices.

Exactly. And that wrong choice was Ronald Reagan.

a reply to: Edumakated
I'm one of those far left wing socialist cooperative people, but I agree with your rules for a competitive environment. There is no natural social state for the sideshows of capitalism. It needs that kind of tough love to produce consumerism and brands.

originally posted by: burdman30ott6
AH! A consumption tax. Now there's an idea I sure as hell would embrace over an income tax. Go ahead federal government, leave me with my earnings and levy taxes on what I spend. Now watch just how frugal I can be.

A consumption tax encourages people to be frugal, which means people don't go out and buy new things. When people are frugal revenue drops, and the tax is increased to make up the difference which then encourages even less buying of well... everything, and you get in a downward spiral. It doesn't work.

This problem has been noted years ago.
The question is, what can we do about it?

What's unfortunate is that most in the top 1% do not create anything to gain their wealth fairly. They commit no labor (the only honest form of wealth in a fair society). Instead they siphon off wealth through loopholes, deception, blackmail or buying politicians, rigging stock markets and using insider info to profit from the loss of others, derivatives (aka economic WMD), sending us "minions" to war for them, etc... And bankers are in a whole other league beyond that.

We are literally being enslaved and consumed by parasites who are growing larger than their ailing host.

We are the labor force. They need us and our value. We do not need them. They contribute nothing yet every day that passes they get richer while we must labor harder and harder...for less and less. It is even now to the point where many cannot perform labor because of how badly they drained our system. And come the next stock market correction, when the USD implodes, they will profit from it through their hard assets while we, who can barely live paycheck to paycheck and can't afford to invest to protect ourselves, will become 3rd world citizens. Or just die off.

a reply to: TheLegend
We could put restrictions on companies and corporations outright. If a corporation was forced to break up once it reached a certain income threshold or occupied a certain % of the GDP, I bet a lot more corporations could be formed quickly, and the only way to get ludicrously rich is to manage over 9000 corporations.
To start...

We should also as a country (USA here) be injecting stimulus work programs to manufacture goods like batteries, solar panels, etc. and a stimulus to repair/upgrade our infrastructure. Instead of employing the army to control oil and poppy seeds, we could be using those hands and brains to build bridges, farm foods and fuels and recycle the waste in our landfills....but nahhhhhh, we need to keep spending money on building supertankers contracted out to our billionaire buds and manufacturing killing tools and idiots to wield them...too much dominatin' to do to waste time on a better future for the loser civilians...

originally posted by: DeepSpaceDrawn
We should also as a country (USA here) be injecting stimulus work programs to manufacture goods like batteries, solar panels, etc. and a stimulus to repair/upgrade our infrastructure. Instead of employing the army to control oil and poppy seeds, we could be using those hands and brains to build bridges, farm foods and fuels and recycle the waste in our landfills....but nahhhhhh, we need to keep spending money on building supertankers contracted out to our billionaire buds and manufacturing killing tools and idiots to wield them...too much dominatin' to do to waste time on a better future for the loser civilians...

We tried this. The states demanded the right to spend the money as they saw fit, and they got that right. They used the money to shore up budget deficits rather than spend it on infrastructure. Given the fluid nature of state budgets such an outcome will happen every time we give them money. Remember the stimulus package? Only 1% of that got directly spent on infrastructure.

There's a very real balancing problem in giving the feds the ability to inject money like this, and keeping the feds from having stifling control. Look at what they already do with highway funding, is that something we really want to make even worse?

a reply to: AlaskanDad

Well it certainly trickled down enough to provide you and many others with a job where you make enough to be able to be posting here on ATS online?

I mean you're obviously not starving, or you would not be able to afford a PC, or afford internet service? You're not struggling.

Let's face it, we only need to look at Greece as another example that the great Socialist experiment is an absolute failure, flushed down the turd pipe. ~$heopleNation

originally posted by: SheopleNation
a reply to: AlaskanDad

Well it certainly trickled down enough to provide you and many others with a job where you make enough to be able to be posting here on ATS online?

I mean you're obviously not starving, or you would not be able to afford a PC, or afford internet service? You're not struggling.

Let's face it, we only need to look at Greece as another example that the great Socialist experiment is an absolute failure, flushed down the turd pipe. ~$heopleNation

Ok dude are you confused ?....what the hell has greece got to do with major companies hiding their money off shore to avoid taxes ?...and did you just try and use an internet connection as a basis of wealth ?....

All this money being stashed away makes me sad when there are so many with nothing. And no matter what you think about personal responsibilty (won't go into that) there are always going to be people who are simply not in a position/capable of increasing their earnings.

There are things that can be done to tighten loopholes etc... but I really don't know how we can avoid corporations simply relocating, perhaps the whole tax system needs an overhaul now we are living in a global economy and tax needs to be calculated and collected on different terms.

The ideal solution of course would be to tackle the greed culture of always wanting more to discourage folk from looking for ways to avoid paying what they owe, but of course that will never happen while they are running the show.

On a personal level I do believe there are small things we can do to avoid the cash in our pocket ending up in one of these stashes such as buying from small independent businesses who are going to pay tax and spend their profits back into their businesses and the economy rather than stash them.

a reply to: AlaskanDad

Paul Craig Roberts wrote a very good article on the offshoring of US jobs.

originally posted by: johnwick
a reply to: AlaskanDad

Ironic isn't it.

Especially seeing how so many still trumpet the line "if you are poor it because you are lazy or stupid or made the wrong choicesand the tax system that takes most of wage or salaly earners income. "