Doing Well.

       During this pandemic we continually hear that we are all in this together, a wonderful illusion to get a submissive population. Let's not rock the boat, let's all pull together and get back to "normal". However during this pandemic one group has done very well indeed, our parasite class of millionaires and billionaires. The extract below is on American parasite billionaires, but I doubt that research in other developed countries would come up with a different result, different amounts but the same process. It's the system buddie.

The following from Mint Press News:

 Are they clapping frontline workers, are after looking at the bank balance.

       A new report from the Institute for Policy Studies found that, while tens of millions of Americans have lost their jobs during the coronavirus pandemic, America’s ultra-wealthy elite have seen their net worth surge by $282 billion in just 23 days. This is despite the fact that the economy is expected to contract by 40 percent this quarter. The report also noted that between 1980 and 2020 the tax obligations of America’s billionaires, measured as a percentage of their wealth, decreased by 79 percent. In the last 30 years, U.S. billionaire wealth soared by over 1100 percent while median household wealth increased by barely five percent. In 1990, the total wealth held by America’s billionaire class was $240 billion; today that number stands at $2.95 trillion. Thus, America’s billionaires accrued more wealth in just the past three weeks than they made in total prior to 1980. As a result, just three people ­– Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and Berkshire Hathaway’s Warren Buffet – own as much wealth as the bottom half of all U.S. households combined.
     The Institute for Policy Studies’ report paints a picture of a modern day oligarchy, where the super-rich have captured legislative and executive power, controlling what laws are passed. The report discusses what it labels a new “wealth defense industry” – where “billionaires are paying millions to dodge billions in taxes,” with teams of accountants, lawyers, lobbyists and asset managers helping them conceal their vast fortunes in tax havens and so-called charitable trusts. The result has been crippled social programs and a decrease in living standards and even a sustained drop in life expectancy – something rarely seen in history outside of major wars or famines. Few Americans believe their children will be better off than they were. Statistics suggest they are right.

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THE ILLUSION THAT CAPITALISM IS FAIR.

       Most of the debate on the present capitalist system and its current problems, that we get on that babbling brook of bullshit, the mainstream media, is about how to modify the anomalies and glitches in the system. What is never on there radar is the fact that the system is inherently corrupt and beyond correction. All their debate and arguments seem to flow from the illusionary point of view that there was a time when capitalism was a fair and just system, and all we have to do is get back to those good old days and everything will be just fine. It never was a fair and just system, it never can be, it is based on someone useing others to get richer than them. It has nothing to do with providing a service, that may be, but not necessarily so, a bye product, but it is not the aim.

This from A World to Win:

The biggest loophole is capitalism itself

      As austerity deepens, with spending cuts stretching into the far horizon, there is a renewed focus on the tax that corporations pay, or rather don’t pay. Some argue that if they paid their “fair share”, cuts in services like health and care would not be so severe.
    Others like Richard Murphy of Tax Research UK, go further, claiming that "if only more had been done to tackle rampant tax evasion, Europe would not be facing a crisis today." It’s an attractive – but ultimately misleading – theory that would seem to solve the problem of public finances and the economic crisis at a stroke.
     Tax avoidance by the major corporations is an obvious target, so much so that MPs last week called names like Starbucks and Amazon to explain themselves before the Commons public accounts committee.
Chancellor George Osborne has even dedicated some funding to allow Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs to chase the worst abusers and close loopholes. He even described tax evasion as “morally repugnant”. But it’s making no impact.
       While individuals and small firms are hounded by HMRC with some success, the major transnational corporations continue to run rings around the government, as the PAC found out.

Read the full article HERE:

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