Martin Meenagh blog

Forty Years of Budget Deficits and the rise of the Super rich

This graph, taken from the Global policy forum, shows US deficits (heavily influenced by tax avoidance) as a percentage of GDP. It is an honest measure of deficits, but not of course of government spending.

Israelis are worried about the influence of rich foreigners. Americans are worried about the influence of big corporations and individuals who shovel debt onto British subsidiaries and, by doing so, avoid tax for 60 years. Financial Times journalists are worried by the super-rich and their ambitions in Britain, yet all three major British political parties insist that they will not tax the source of their great wealth.

Americans opposed to Islamists and Shariah watch out for rich middle easterners buying up London and creating Islamic finance vehicles to do so. The European Union bends rules to accommodate super-rich lobbies, but when it tackles their bank accounts, it is condemned and well funded attacks appear upon it.

Meanwhile, famine stalks the world, wars rage, oil runs out, and inequality grows. That gold, also, is being mined by African children who are effectively in a condition of slavery.

None of this information is hidden, none esoteric or mad. But respectable politicians just don't mention it, or seek even further tax cuts for the super rich as their countries sink into an abyss of debt. This debt makes them supersensitive to bond markets and the prisoners of rates of exchange and, politically, of the jobs and money provided by the oil and defence lobbies.

Just who is this world being run for and for whom are our lives trickled out?

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