Politics & Stuff

[cosmicway 1,318]

On 03/09/2024 at 11:19, Vesper said:

Taxing the super-rich—more possible than ever

https://www.socialeurope.eu/taxing-the-super-rich-more-possible-than-ever

The concentration of wealth is a global issue and it is getting worse.

 

A mere 3,000 people have amassed $14.4 trillion in wealth, the equivalent of 13 per cent of the world’s gross domestic product. While the world’s billionaires controlled less than 3 per cent of global GDP in 1993, the growth of their wealth and political influence has since accelerated.

Regardless of nationality, the world’s ultra-rich share two striking similarities: the vast majority are men and they typically pay much less tax, as a share of their income, than their employees and middle-class workers in general. The concentration of wealth is thus a global issue, one so alarming that the G20 (the group comprising the world’s largest developed and emerging economies) formally addressed it last month.

As G20 finance ministers put it in the final declaration at their conference in Rio de Janeiro in late July,

It is important for all taxpayers, including ultra-high-net-worth individuals, to contribute their fair share in taxes. Aggressive tax avoidance or tax evasion of ultra-high-net-worth individuals can undermine the fairness of tax systems … Promoting effective, fair, and progressive tax policies remains a significant challenge that international tax cooperation and targeted domestic reforms could help address.

Fiscal equity underpins democracy. Without sufficient tax revenues, governments cannot guarantee adequate services such as education, healthcare and social protection, nor can they respond to much larger problems such as the climate crisis (which is already destabilising many countries around the world). Given the dire consequences of inaction in these areas, it is imperative that the wealthiest pay their fair share of taxes.

Important milestone

The Rio declaration is an important milestone. For the first time since the G20 was established in 1999, all members agreed that the way the super-rich were taxed must be fixed and they committed themselves to doing it. But this consensus did not come out of nowhere. Advocates of tax fairness covered much ground in the months leading up to the summit.

Brazil occupies the G20’s rotating presidency this year and in late February the country’s finance minister, Fernando Haddad, invited me to speak at a high-level meeting in São Paulo. I was commissioned to write a report on tax fairness and taxation of the super-rich (the focus of my work as founder and director of the EU Tax Observatory in Paris), which I submitted in late June, to inform the July summit discussion.

In the report, A Blueprint for a Coordinated Minimum Effective Taxation Standard for Ultra-High-Net-Worth Individuals, I advanced a proposal for a new effective taxation standard which included a co-ordinated minimum tax of 2 per cent of wealth for such individuals—the world’s 3,000 billionaires. This standard would not only generate significant revenue (around $200-250 billion per year). It would also correct the structural injustice of contemporary tax systems, whereby billionaires’ effective tax rates are lower than for middle-class individuals.

Overwhelming support

The global public overwhelmingly supports fair taxation of the ultra-rich. According to an Ipsos poll in G20 countries, released in June, 67 per cent agree that there is too much economic inequality and 70 per cent support the principle that wealthy people should pay higher income-tax rates.

The Rio declaration signals a significant shift: world leaders can no longer support a system in which the ultra-rich get away with paying less in taxes than the rest of us. Finance ministers have already agreed to important preliminary steps to improve tax transparency, enhance tax co-operation and review harmful tax practices.

True, there was no political consensus to include the 2 per cent minimum tax on billionaires in the final text. The declaration had to be approved unanimously and some countries still have reservations about some aspects of the proposal. For example, while the United States administratiion under Joe Biden supports a billionaire minimum tax domestically, it has been reluctant to advance the issue on the international stage.

No going back

But there is no going back. The minimum tax is now on the agenda and, looking at the history of international tax negotiations, there are concrete reasons to be optimistic about the proposal’s future. In 2013, the G20 acknowledged multinational companies’ rampant tax avoidance, giving political momentum to address the issue. Its initial action plan included improving tax transparency, enhancing tax co-operation and reviewing harmful tax practices—the same wording now used in Rio. Then, in October 2021, 136 countries and territories (now 140) adopted a 15 per cent minimum corporation tax.

Fortunately, we do not need all countries to adopt a 2 per cent minimum tax on billionaires (or on centi-millionaires, if that is what policy-makers decide). We simply need a critical mass of countries to agree on a set of rules to identify and value the wealth of the ultra-rich and to adopt instruments to impose effective taxation, regardless of the billionaires’ tax residency. This way, we can avoid a scenario where the ultra-rich flee to fiscal havens, thus ending the race to the bottom among countries competing to offer billionaires the lowest tax rate.

Over the last ten years or so, international co-operation on taxation has improved significantly. The introduction of automatic exchanges of bank information, for example, has greatly reduced the possibility of tax avoidance. We already have the tools needed to make the world’s billionaires pay their fair share of taxes. It’s now up to the governments to act quickly and effectively.

 

When you "tax the rich" there is always the danger of taxing the ... superpoor.
Why ? Because the tax is immediately passed on to the consumer as price increase. 
It's the law.

Also you cannot tax a business so as to make it close down.
The commies - commie fellow travelers like to do that and in many cases have succeded (but they have their reasons).
We the public lose the goods or whatever services are provided and the workers lose their jobs.

Suppose you are one of the cronies of a super rich billionaire, like Elon Musk.
You have opened some little shops called "heels express" in every tube stations.
They fix ladies shoes - that's what they do.
At the end of the year you go to the boss and say "boss, those heels express have done nothing the whole year - one thing is the mayor has fixed all the pavements and no one breaks a leg, the other is the new socialist taxes".
What will happen ?
The mother company has enough money to subsidize these little shops till kingdom come, but no - they will close down.

So that's why the socialists lose their marbles when they talk about tax increases.

Do you know what was my monthly allowance as a freshman back in the eighties ?
100 quid it was. In Greek money the nominal equivalent of today's 20 euros !
That was strictly enforced because there were capital controls in place.
When they increased it to 200 quid (40 today's euros) it felt great - quantum leap into the jet set !
Now 40 quid is barely enough for one month's supply of fags (if I follow the doctor's orders to become a light smoker).
Why money is losing it's value progressively  ?
My estimate is 70% due to socialist etc taxes, 30% due to other reasons (profiteering - raw materials).

[Fulham Broadway 16,825]

On 05/09/2024 at 10:48, Vesper said:

What’s behind the massive protests in Israel? | The Take

 

Israel keeps saying its a democracy -yet they cant oust Netanyahu who is desperate for the US to bomb Iran and start WW3 just to distract from him being prosecuted

They have dropped more bombs on Gaza than the West dropped on Dresden and Hamburg

No reporters allowed into Gaza

Al Jazeera banned from Israel...

Israel is the US attack dog that no matter whether its Trump or Harris it will continue slaughtering women and children funded by US taxpayers

Imagine if 41 860 US civilians, or if they were British, Swedish, or Israeli women and children that had been slaughtered - corporate media would be talking about it endlessly.

Its racism pure and simple.

Imagine if Russia was torturing children by sticking extendable batons up the anus and irreparably damaging internal organs to Ukraine prisoners with no trial, including children

 

[Vesper 28,763]

Trump = gaslighter and liar

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/09/05/us/harris-trump-election/6e63d15c-b88d-5213-ae12-2fb05b450bf3

Much of Donald Trump’s speech to the Republican Jewish Coalition, delivered virtually, covered familiar ground. He falsely said that the Biden administration had given Israel “no support” since the Hamas attack last October, then offered a dark vision in which he asserted Israel “would no longer exist” if Harris won in November. Harris has struck a balancing act on Israel similar to many Democrats, saying she backs the country’s right to defend itself while also lamenting the devastation and civilian deaths caused by Israel’s military offensive in Gaza.

[Vesper 28,763]

[cosmicway 1,318]

On 03/09/2024 at 11:14, Vesper said:

What should Labour aim for in Europe?

https://www.socialeurope.eu/what-should-labour-aim-for-in-europe

The new government’s goals are modest. But economic reality may force it to follow changing public opinion.

 

In its campaign for the general election in the United Kingdom in July, Labour generally kept a low profile on the UK’s departure in 2020 from the European Union. In government, the party said, it would not seek to rejoin the EU—not even the customs union or the single market—despite the outgoing Conservatives being on the defensive on this issue.

Public opinion now firmly holds that ‘Brexit’, stemming from the referendum to that effect in 2016, was a mistake. Only 31 per cent say it was the right decision—indeed, some polls suggest over 60 per cent would vote to rejoin the EU if that question were put to a referendum now.

Improving relationships

What Labour did say in its manifesto was that it would pursue ‘an improved and ambitious relationship with our European partners’. And, since the election, it has moved swiftly to re-establish cordial contacts.

Concretely, the new Labour government is likely to seek, first, to reduce some of the barriers to UK-EU trade. This would include a veterinary agreement, mutual recognition of professional qualifications, visa exemptions for touring performers (such as musicians and actors) and regulatory alignments in key sectors such as chemicals.

An opportunity to do this could arise through the scheduled ‘review’ of the post-Brexit trade and co-operation agreement, concluded when Boris Johnson was premier, due next year. But on that there are various views on mainland Europe about whether the fundamentals can be revised.

A second goal would be to negotiate a security agreement with the EU. This could turn out to be of great significance, given the situation in Ukraine, especially if Donald Trump were to be re-elected as president of the United States in November. It would include security in the widest sense—not just military co-operation but sanctions, cybersecurity, counterterrorism, fighting traffickers, combating climate change and more. The German ambassador to Britain recently advocated a UK-EU ‘security and co-operation agreement’, which would also include agriculture and visa rules.

A third avenue would be to rejoin some of the EU’s technical agencies (at least as an observer or associate member), such as Europol. Finally, the shared commitment to achieve ‘net zero’ greenhouse-gas emissions remains to be built on, with co-operation on climate and energy presumably embracing cross-border energy interconnectors and the EU’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism.

This is all well and good. And the new administration might also seek renewed participation in the Erasmus+ student-mobility scheme. The Johnson government pulled out despite the withdrawal arrangements specifically providing for continued involvement—a piece of gratuitous cultural vandalism.

Over-cautious

But the realities of government may force Labour to go further, more quickly. The biggest challenges it faces are the catastrophic state of the public finances and the lethargy of the economy.

After years of austerity, there are pressures for higher public spending on multiple fronts. Yet with both public debt and taxes as shares of gross domestic product heading towards levels not seen since the aftermath of the second world war, finding an extra £3 billion here or £4 billion there has become the subject of intense debates. These figures are however dwarfed by the £40 billion a year of lost tax revenue caused by Brexit.

Economic ‘growth’ was very much the maxim of Labour’s campaign. Yet growth cannot be rekindled while ignoring the annual 4 per cent loss to GDP attributed to Brexit by the Office of Budgetary Responsibility, the lost trade with the UK’s main export market (and main source of its supply chains) and the extra transaction costs on businesses imposed by Brexit.

Labour’s over-cautious red lines at the hustings—no to rejoining the customs union, no to full single-market membership—will severely limit the potential improvements it can bring in government. There will be costly border checks for as long as there is a customs border. Frictionless trade in goods (no extra conformity tests, value-added-tax forms, export permits, labelling requirements and so on), including with the wider European Economic Area, will remain a chimera unless the UK aligns with the single-market rules and standards it helped set and endorsed as a member. And there will be little scope to improve trade in services—even for touring performers and musicians—without some freedom of movement.

Biggest beneficiaries

What is holding the new government back? It seems to be a belief that full participation in the single market would require full restoration of the freedom of movement enjoyed by EU citizens. This is seen as an insurmountable obstacle, given the public concerns about record levels of immigration to Britain. Yet most migration to Britain is from outside the EU, which is (as it always was) a matter for national regulation. Within the limits of international law, it is for the UK itself to decide how open or restrictive it wants to be.

The lesser (now much less) migration from the EU was part and parcel of free movement, of which Britons were actually the biggest beneficiaries, with more of them living in other member states than was the case for any other nationality. This freedom was not however unconditional: those exercising it had to find work or be self-sufficient—conditions which Britain failed to enforce, but could if free movement (perhaps referred to as ‘conditional free movement’ to emphasise this point) were to be restored. Nor was it a cost to the UK exchequer: EU citizens in Britain paid far more in taxes than they received in benefits and services combined.

Far from enabling the UK to ‘take back control’ of its borders, Brexit has removed key tools for so doing. In the EU, Britain could use the internal agreement that asylum-seekers should be processed by the country in which they first arrived. One could waive that rule, as Germany did. But Britain used it to send thousands of asylum-seekers back to the member state of initial arrival—something it can no longer do.

The UK was also able to participate fully in the EU’s system of co-operation among police and intelligence forces. This meant it could, when needed, obtain information on individuals when they arrived at the border, from fingerprints to criminal records. It also meant co-operating to fight international gangs of people traffickers. Brexit was a shot in the foot as regards its supposed major benefit of controlling the border.

Maybe popular

If economic reality forces the Labour government to go further, and at least to rejoin the single market and the customs union—even if that includes ‘conditional’ free movement with EU members—it will find that this does not throw up as many problems as it fears. It may even be popular.

Many businesses, universities, artists and others want it. So do Labour Party members. Above all, if the tracker polls show that public opinion continues its gradual but relentless shift in favour of rejoining the EU, then surely these smaller steps, at least, should be easier.

 

Brexit is the biggest win of the extremer right wing forces since 1933.
If we count coup d' etats, the biggest win since Papadopoulos.
Labour shamefully plays ball.
Brexit support was at first pretty high, because we have to count the Cameronite Tory turncoats.
Now it's no longer the majority.
And what problem do the European citizens pose - reasonably that is ?
Those are German, French, Swiss ..., they 're not even economic immigrants, nomadic peoples in distress.

 

[Fulham Broadway 16,825]

Over 600 000 Russian conscripts killed taking small Ukrainian villages and towns. All conscripts of any country should tell their masters to shove their orders up their fucking arses and go and fight themselves imo. Did Putin really want these Pyrric victories ? (Pyrrus was a Greek who fought the Romans but with massive casualties decimating his army for small victories).

[Vesper 28,763]

oh, ffs!

Judge delays sentencing in Trump hush-money case until after US election

Conditions for sentencing over ex-president’s payments to adult film star ‘fraught with complexities’, judge says

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/sep/06/trump-hush-money-sentencing

Describing conditions as “fraught with complexities”, a New York judge on Friday delayed Donald Trump’s sentencing on charges stemming from hush money paid to an adult film star until 26 November.

Trump, the Republican nominee for president, had asked Justice Juan Merchan to push back his sentencing date until after the US election. Trump had previously been scheduled to be sentenced on 18 September, less than two months before election day.

Trump’s lawyers in August argued there would not be enough time before the sentencing for the defense to potentially appeal Merchan’s forthcoming ruling on Trump’s request to overturn the conviction due to the US supreme court’s landmark decision on presidential immunity.

While Merchan noted that Trump’s attorneys had “repeat[ed] a litany of perceived and unsubstantiated grievances from previous filings that do not merit this Court’s attention”, Merchan’s response acknowledged that the combination of an upcoming presidential election and the supreme court’s ruling had “render[ed] the requirements of a sentencing hearing, should one be necessary, difficult to execute”.

Merchan had been scheduled to rule on that motion on 16 September.

The supreme court’s 6-3 ruling, which related to a separate criminal case Trump faces, found that presidents cannot be criminally prosecuted for their official acts, and that evidence of presidents’ official actions cannot be used to help prove criminal cases involving unofficial actions.

Prosecutors with Bragg’s office argued their case involved Trump’s personal conduct, not official acts, so there was no reason to overturn the verdict.

But they took no position on Trump’s request to delay sentencing, saying in a 16 August filing they deferred to Merchan on the question. The prosecutors said an appellate court could delay the sentencing anyway to give itself time to consider Trump’s arguments, a move they said would be “disruptive”.

Merchan interpreted Bragg’s response to the request as a signal of support for a delay. “[A] careful reading of that response can fairly be construed as a joinder of the motion,” Merchan wrote. “The public’s confidence in the integrity of our judicial system demands a sentencing hearing that is entirely focused on the verdict of the jury and the weighing of aggravating and mitigating factors free from distraction or distortion.”

[Vesper 28,763]

SWITCH IT OFF!

https://washingtonspectator.org/switch-it-off/

 

A renowned chronicler of the evolution and growing pains of democracy, Anthony Barnett reports on the dire potential for abuse of the surveillance state in the wake of the SCOTUS ruling on presidential immunity.

West Oxford, UK — Speaking on 29 July at the LBJ library in Austin Texas, to mark the 60^th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act, President Biden denounced the Supreme Court decision, delivered at the beginning of the month, in the case of Trump v The United States. He said the Court majority had proclaimed “a fundamentally flawed principle” as the law of the land. Namely, that “The presidency is no longer constrained by the law, and the only limits on abuse of power will be self-imposed by the president alone.”

In response he called for a Constitutional amendment to be called “No One is Above the Law.”

Perhaps because it came during the initial excitement of the Harris-Walsh ticket and because he is seen as yesterday’s man, the President’s unusual shout-out for a new Constitutional amendment has been ignored. These are rare events and often of marginal importance. The last such proposal was in 1992 and prevented members of Congress from giving themselves a pay raise more than once in a legislative session.

But Biden’s demand for a new amendment is fundamental. It addresses a massive issue in simple language and might prove popular with voters across all parties as well as the undecided.

To see why, we have to put the Supreme Court ruling together with two other developments: the far-right Republican project to ensure white minority rule and the surveillance powers of the US intelligence services. This combination is so explosive that it genuinely does create the conditions for a new kind of irredeemably authoritarian outcome, one that is only possible in the age of cyberspace.

It is striking that even in a thorough overview of the dangers posed by the prospect of Trump’s return to power, such as Thomas Edsall’s recent guest essay in The New York Times, there is no mention of the potential for abusing the powers of the digital surveillance system already developed by US intelligence services.

The Far-Right Republican Project

Since the Heritage Foundation published Project 2025 eighteen months ago there has been a barrage of articles and podcasts about the danger it prefigures. These articles have alerted audiences around the country to the extreme hazards of a second Trump presidency and have called attention to an alarming ambition that is both open and unapologetic.

Conservative, predominantly white America knows it constitutes a minority. It does not “believe” that 81 million US citizens voted for Biden (or against Trump) in 2020. If that many did, the reasoning goes, then many of them should not have had the right to do so, or even to count themselves as Americans. Voter suppression is essential to ensure minority rule.

And immediately after the 2020 result, the Heritage Foundation circulated model bills for legislatures in Red States to ‘protect’ the ballot by making voting harder.

But establishing minority rule on a permanent basis demands more than gerrymandering in all its variations and preserving the bias built into the Electoral College. Such a fundamentally undemocratic project requires what can be called “deep rigging.”

This is where the seriousness of Project 2025 comes in, and it does not hide its ambition. For example, the personnel employed by the Federal and state governments must be replaced, in the words of the Project 2025 blueprint, so that “our political appointees” will “seize the gears of power.”

The aim is a root and branch reconstruction of the Federal State. The objectives of Project 2025 are sustained by a far-right Supreme Court at the top of the judiciary, and by governors in gerrymandered red states who manipulate the composition of their state Congressional delegations in order to control Congress. Combine these with a Trump presidency in control of the executive branch and you have a self-reinforcing minoritarian regime able to give itself the veneer of legality, in perpetuity.

Trump is only interested in Trump. But his corporate and ideological supporters want to ensure that after Trump, the Democrats never win again. If Trump feels that his ‘legacy’ also depends on this, he will be unrestrained in the deployment of executive power to achieve it.

The Supreme Court Ruling

“The Court thus concludes that the President is absolutely immune from criminal prosecution for conduct within his exclusive sphere of constitutional authority.” With these words, published on 1 July 2024, the Supreme Court placed the U.S. President above the law.

Or, as Justice Thomas put it in his supporting opinion: “there has been much discussion about ensuring that a President ‘is not above the law.’ But, as the Court explains, the President’s immunity from prosecution for his official acts is the law.” (His italics.)

To grasp the potential significance of this ruling, glance back to events of less than four years ago. When then Vice-President Pence was told to stop the electoral college count on January 6th, he instead followed the advice of legal counsel who argued he did not have the constitutional authority to do so. He felt he had no alternative but to defy his President. Now, in an “official act” the President could order his Vice-President to stop the count, and under this new ruling the very fact that this instruction is coming from the President would make it lawful and, presumably, the defiance of it unlawful.

The Surveillance State

In 2013, Edward Snowden revealed that since 9/11 the US intelligence agencies seek to record, hold and index as much electronic data as it can on all US citizens in a process of unwarranted surveillance.

He published classified slides that disclosed how the US and its allied agencies sought to gather and store electronic signals — the metadata of every email, phone call and social media message, domestic as well as international, the all-important record of who communicates with whom. The government was also seeking to index and record content and make bulk information usable.

You might think you have deleted your email record, but the NSA — the National Security Agency — has not. You might use end-to-end encrypted messaging. But the NSA stores who you are messaging with and how often; also, what you read, listen to or watch online, retaining the location track of your digital device as well.

I found these revelations hard to believe. Indeed, I still do. So when General Michael Hayden visited the UK in 2014 I took the opportunity to interview him to explore Snowden’s claims.

A retired four-star general, Hayden headed the NSA over a crucial period, from 1999 to 2005. In that role, after 9/11 and on the instructions of President Bush, he oversaw the development of “bulk surveillance” globally and within the US. He then headed the CIA until 2009. An account of our discussion was published in openDemocracy.

He later wrote Playing to the Edge, a 400-page account, limited by official secrecy, of his ten years at the head of NSA and the CIA.  It opens with how (again, on presidential orders) he initiated STELLARWIND — to collect and track intelligence domestically as well as globally. Towards the end, Hayden writes, “215 {a section of the Patriot Act} was all about Americans. NSA kept a repository of American calls — not content, but facts of calls like from whom, when, for how long. It was massive, but access was tightly controlled not just by limiting the number of people who could touch the data but also by limiting their purpose to only counterterrorism.” The Supreme Court ruling allows the president to reset such limits at will.

When I met him in Oxford, General Hayden was cheerful and straightforward and, at the time, the most right-wing person I had ever bought a coffee for. The opposite of apologetic, he was confident that he had done what had to be done and was proud of it. He explained that the United States needed to be able to exercise supremacy over its enemies in cyberspace just as it could on land, sea and air. Every concern I expressed was rebutted without any denial of what was taking place. He argued that without access to the whole “haystack” there was no way to get to “the needles” of information that could track down potential terrorists.

I suggested that if any state gathered and kept all information about me, who I met and what I communicated in private as well as in public, then I feared for my liberty. He replied that my anxiety was baseless because I was “uninteresting.”

I protested that if “my metadata is held and can be accessed by people unknown to me who have the power to influence my life and then my capacity to act as a free person, my liberty is invaded.” His reply: “I go back to the key point, how else am I going to do this? In a world in which I am now challenged by volume… I know hostile actors are sending emails around the world through paths that are unpredictable. Unless I have the metadata in a way that allows… selectors of legitimate foreign intelligence targets to see where their communications are.” He added, “I can’t do that without accessing bulk communications.”

What he meant by “selectors of legitimate foreign intelligence targets” were the staff of the NSA and its agents who used their access to the haystack domestically as well as globally to identify America’s enemies.

Later he conceded “there is potential for abuse, because the innocent or, in my terms, the uninteresting, are in there as well.” “And that would include yourself?” I asked. “Of course,” he replied.

I pressed the point: “You don’t feel that that monitoring in any way affects your liberty as a person?” He replied, “It does not. Because I know and have great confidence as to how and when the data is accessed, and it is under very narrow specifications.”

In an aside that at the time I took to be insignificant, he added, “As you can probably tell, I’m pretty comfortable with all this. Don’t get me wrong. Don’t think I do not fear an overreaching government or an overreaching executive, I do.” Even then, however, his concern was mainly with the potential for abuse of tax records.

Then Donald Trump ran for the White House and won. Hayden was appalled by the new president and the way he threatened the methodology and integrity of the US intelligence services, especially in relationship to Russia. He wrote The Assault on Intelligence, a vigorous critique of Trump’s onslaught on the basic methods of America’s professional military and security services.

Soon after it was published, General Hayden had a stroke which gave him aphasia, a speaking difficulty that does not impede clarity of thought and judgment. I met with him again on Zoom in 2022.

I asked him if he thought the possibility of a return to power of a second Trump administration, especially after the events of January 6, altered the view he took when we talked in 2014.

There is a limit as to what he could say as he is constrained by his oath of secrecy. But not many dots need to be connected. Hayden knows, as few do, the full extent of the actual surveillance the US is capable of. Under a president who expresses open contempt for “specifications” that govern its use domestically, he no longer has “great confidence as to how and when the data is accessed.”

What happened during the four years that Trump was president was in his view bad “but survivable.” Should the White House be re-occupied by a president who is experienced, resentful and has consciously shed the traditional norms and restraints of the Constitution, it “would not be good at all.”

What, then, I asked, would be his advice to his successors at the NSA and CIA about the surveillance system whose operation he initiated, should Trump regain the presidency? He answered without hesitation, “Switch it off.”

It Won’t Be Switched Off

The system isn’t going to be switched off. The perceived threats from China and Russia are enough to ensure this, not to speak of possible fundamentalist terrorism whether Evangelical, Hindu or Islamic or even lone shooters and would-be assassins.

And if it is not switched off before a potential dictator gains the White House, it certainly won’t be afterwards.

So we now have the following situation. Project 2025 sets out the case for the incoming president to appoint people to run all Federal agencies with women and men whose main qualification is that they will do the bidding of the White House. The Supreme Court has ruled that whatever the president decides is the law. Among the Federal agencies are the intelligence agencies who have collected sweeping surveillance of everyone’s metadata and can now search that information with far greater speed and accuracy with AI.

Two months ago if anyone had said that an incoming presidency could purge anyone from any government position who subscribed to The Washington Spectator or indeed read the New York Times online, I’d have thought they were a mad conspiracy theorist. Mad in the sense that while Trump might bang the desk and want this to happen, the USA is not China, Russia or Saudi Arabia and it could not happen.

Today, however, it is now legal for him to demand their names; they could be delivered in days by the intelligence agencies; and they will be, if these are headed by compliant recruits as set out in Project 2025.

Trump and his supporters succeeded in part because they consistently surprised the liberal and traditional political classes with their willingness to breach what were regarded as established norms. The greatest of all abuses of power still awaits: an executive that marginalises anyone it chooses. Processes originally designed to defend the republic can now be deployed to terminate the employment of any American citizen currently working in any Federal service; and the same powers can be lent to State administrations. In an official act, the President can demand all the personal metadata that profiles any US citizen and use it at will. All without the need for Gulags or concentration camps.

Appalled at the majority decision, Supreme Court Justice Sotomayer wrote for the minority, “Let the President violate the law, let him exploit the trappings of his office for personal gain, let him use his official power for evil ends… the damage has been done. The relationship between the President and the people he serves has shifted irrevocably. In every use of official power, the President is now a king above the law.”

In her eloquence she summons up a world still limited to analogue evil and old-fashioned crime. Digital penetration and control and the threats of the abuse of cyberspace do not figure in her list.

Yet she is right to see that a Trump victory in November can now bring to an end America’s standing as a land free of royal tyranny that goes back to 1789.

Slavery, the genocide of native tribes, the invasions and coups that toppled governments and flattened the economies of other countries, these realities always made the claim to moral and democratic superiority contestable. But what was also incontestable were America’s own domestic efforts to become a country ruled by law, the foundation of viable modern democracy.

The Supreme Court ruling torpedoes this. The apparatus of surveillance permits a uniquely penetrating form of control. Project 2025 sets out how the combination can be deployed to ensure minority rule.

President Biden’s proposed amendment, therefore, should not be seen as an attempt at legacy-setting by aged figure out of touch with present realities. On the contrary, it could hardly be more necessary as a baseline step to reverse the threat to the republic.

After all, why shouldn’t a Democratic president be tempted to deploy unfettered access to the surveillance databases provided by July’s Supreme Court ruling? Indeed, the average MAGA voter might well feel that the Democrats are the ones who really put themselves ‘above the law.’

America needs a new president with the voice and energy capable of reasserting the supremacy of the rule of law by securing this within an amended constitution — and persuading red as well as blue voters that she is doing it in their interest.

 

Anthony Barnett is the founding editor of the award-winning global website, openDemocracy and the author of Taking Control! Humanity and America after Trump and the Pandemic. His 20 minute film, US Progressives on a Knife Edge (2022), featuring interviews with Jamie Raskin, Pramila Jayapal, Ro Khanna, David Sirota, Larry Cohen and Tope Folarin can be seen here. 

[Vesper 28,763]

If you plan to be in LA next week, the hot ticket will be the author talk at the Diesel Bookstore in the Brentwood Mart on Thursday, September 12, featuring a conversation between Randy Fertel and Lolis Eric Elie about Randy's new book Winging It! Improv's Power and Peril in the Time of Trump ("a masterwork, voracious in scope"; "a tour de force exploration of improvisation" - Kirkus). Lolis is a much-admired LA-based screenwriter whose credits include "Bosch," "The Man in the High Castle," and the HBO series "Treme." Both writers are refugees from the vibrant New Orleans literary scene. I'll be attending this event and would enjoy seeing any Washington Spectator readers who can make it. The event is free and starts in the courtyard at 6:30 PM.

Winging It: Improv’s Power & Peril in the Time of Trump

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0882141589

In Winging It, literary scholar and cultural polymath Randy Fertel returns to the interrogation of improvisation he began with his earlier work A Taste for Chaos (2015). In this new volume, Fertel explores the wider landscapes of popular culture and public affairs, ranging deftly from the unmediated experience in hook-up culture, psychedelic trips, Fred Astaire’s tap dancing, Frans Hals’s brush strokes, social media, and Hamilton’s hip-hop to—last, though alas not least—the performative and demagogic posturing of Donald Trump. The gesture all improvisations share—I will create this on the fly, or as Trump has it, my gut knows more than many brains—defies rationality and elevates embodied emotions, instinct, and intuition, challenging our assumption that everything of value depends upon long study, tradition, and hard work. Claiming to be free of serious purpose, improvisation only pursues pleasure. Or so it says.

At the farmers market, I’m responding to color, and smell, and I’m following my intuition. In my kitchen when I’m imagining where things will lead, I’m improvising. In his artful and authoritative new book Winging It, Randy Fertel explores how improvisation shapes and enlivens our wider world. Yield to your impulses, act spontaneously, and get this book—it’s a revelation.
—Alice Waters, Founder of Chez Panisse and the Edible Schoolyard

In Winging It, Randy Fertel presents a wide ranging and masterful study of the art of improvisation that will delight scholars and lay readers alike. The work’s true fascination lies in its adept analysis of the political implications of the quicksilver art form. It is a work to be savored slowly and thoughtfully, especially in anticipation of the upcoming elections.
—Jessica B. Harris, author of High on the Hog: How African American Cuisine Transformed America

A masterwork—voracious in scope ... and about as hopeful as can be in these troubling times.
—Bruce Boyd Raeburn, Curator Emeritus, Hogan Archive of New Orleans Music and New Orleans Jazz, Tulane University

In the new century, we’re all winging it now. Randy Fertel gives us an impressive and artful view of cultural patterns that are roiling our world in so many ways. His knowledge is encyclopedic and his feeling for the complexities and double binds we face is deep and humane.
—Stephen Nachmanovitch, author of Free Play and The Art of Is

Winging It soars. Author Randy Fertel is a whipsmart, plate-spinning savant, an audacious flying circus wingman. Every performer faces unknown risks, but Fertel takes it to a whole new level, and it’s a very exciting ride.
—Michelle Shocked, singer/songwriter

Winging It dances with the reader atop a mountain of scholarship, original thinking, and profound applicability. Written in the spirit and style of improvisation, this book charms the reader into a fresh perspective on our discombobulated world, touching on social media, popular culture, literary classics, neuroscience, AI, and politics. It’s smart, fun, insightful, and relevant to life today and the incomprehensibles we live within. Don’t walk, improvise your way to the bookstore to grab this irresistible tour de force from Randy Fertel.
—Eric Booth, author of Making Change and The Everyday Work of Art

Randy Fertel is a master at unveiling theatrical illusion. In this brilliant book, he shines a piercing light into the shadows of the so-called improv style in politics. Winging It reveals the concealed instincts and the fierce emotional currents that keep a rapacious predator aloft.
—Murray Stein, author of Jung’s Map of the Soul

[Vesper 28,763]

On 06/09/2024 at 09:03, cosmicway said:

My estimate is 70% due to socialist etc taxes, 30% due to other reasons (profiteering - raw materials).

Billionaires pay less, due to the tax structure, of a percentage of their wealth and income than do their secretaries.

Multi-national corporations often pay NO income tax (and some get billions in refunds), again to to an utterly regressive tax structure.

It's a rigged game from the top down.

Systemic control and nearly unlimited wealth and power for them.

Austerity and (outside of the upper middle class and higher in the West) ofttimes horrendous poverty and hardship for billions of folk across the globe.

[cosmicway 1,318]

47 minutes ago, Vesper said:

Billionaires pay less, due to the tax structure, of a percentage of their wealth and income than do their secretaries.

Multi-national corporations often pay NO income tax (and some get billions in refunds), again to to an utterly regressive tax structure.

It's a rigged game from the top down.

Systemic control and nearly unlimited wealth and power for them.

Austerity and (outside of the upper middle class and higher in the West) ofttimes horrendous poverty and hardship for billions of folk across the globe.

Look.
If I want to see a minister of finance is it possible you think ?
Yes it is.
I go to the secretary and she fixes me a date. Done this in the past with government ministers about sports related matters.
But what can I take to him ?
Six cokes and six eggs from the nearby supermarket, Nikis and Xenofontos corner.
At the same time the big boys will go see him with two suitcases and it won't be eggs.
So all this you say is coals to Newcastle.
But the way socialists think overtaxing will cure everything is misplaced and archaic.
Furthermore the socialists tax the poor (but not trade unionists) mostly.

Edited September 7 by cosmicway

[Vesper 28,763]

1 minute ago, cosmicway said:

socialists think overtaxing

I am not a socialist

and it is not overtaxing

it is balancing out an incredibly unequal wealth distribution that is aided to a great degree (in the west especially in terms of total monies impacted) by an utterly regressive tax scheme

Sweden is in the process of destroying our wealth equality and our social welfare state due to massive systemic changes in our tax code over the past 20 odd years, changes where labour is smashed with taxes and specualtion-driven wealth and income are taxed at incredibly lower rates. Plus we have now once again manufactured a very likely to be permanent underclass with the massive 3rd world immigration over the past 25 or so years.

How Sweden became a paradise for billionaires

https://www.thelocal.se/20230128/listen-how-sweden-became-a-paradise-for-billionaires/

Direct links to both parts of the podcast:

Part 1

https://play.acast.com/s/77ca3392-3d6f-434f-8821-6472a6c25d8d/63d2aec7c539150011b7632f

Part 2

https://play.acast.com/s/77ca3392-3d6f-434f-8821-6472a6c25d8d/63d8dce99ba029001177c6d6


Ten terrifying stats about Sweden from the hit book Girig-Sverige

Economy reporter Andreas Cervenka won Sweden's most coveted journalist prize for 'Girig-Sverige' (Greedy Sweden), his polemic on wealth, debt, and inequality, which the judges said had "brought forward a new picture of the country". We picked out some of the most striking statistics.

https://www.thelocal.se/20230127/ten-terrifying-stats-about-sweden-from-the-hit-book-girig-sverige/?tpcc=podcast-article

 

a newer article:

The rise of Sweden's super rich

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-68927238

Sweden has a global reputation for championing high taxes and social equality, but it has become a European hotspot for the super rich.

On Lidingö island there are huge red and yellow wooden villas on rocky cliff tops, and white minimalist mansions with floor to ceiling windows.

Less than half an hour's drive from Stockholm city centre, this is one of Sweden's wealthiest neighbourhoods.

Serial entrepreneur Konrad Bergström flicks the light switch in his wine cellar, to reveal the 3,000 bottles he's got stored there. "French Bordeaux, that's what I love," he says, flashing a bright white smile.

Elsewhere, there's an outdoor pool, a gym upholstered in reindeer leather, and a workshop-cum-nightclub, complete with a large metal urinal.

"I have a lot of musical friends, so we play a lot of music," explains Bergström. He made his money co-founding businesses including a headphones and speaker company, and this home is one of four properties he owns in Sweden and Spain.

It's not a surprising lifestyle for a successful entrepreneur, but what might surprise global observers is how many people have become as wealthy as Mr Bergström - or even richer - in Sweden - a country with a global reputation for its leftist politics.

Although a right-wing coalition is currently in power, the nation has been run by Social Democrat-led governments for the majority of the last century, elected on promises to grow the economy in an equitable way, with taxes funding a strong welfare state.

But Sweden has experienced a boom in the super rich over the last three decades.

In 1996, there were just 28 people with a net worth of a billion kronor or more (around $91m or £73m at today's exchange rate), according to a rich list published by former Swedish business magazine Veckans Affärer. Most of them came from families that had been rich for generations.

• BBC World Service - The Documentary Podcast, Super-rich Swedes

By 2021, there were 542 "kronor billionaires", according to a similar analysis by daily newspaper Aftonbladet, and between them they owned a wealth equivalent to 70% of the nation's GDP, a measure of the total value of goods and services in the economy.

Sweden - with a population of just 10 million - also has one of the world's highest proportions of "dollar billionaires" per capita. Forbes listed 43 Swedes worth $1bn or more in its 2024 rich list.

That equates to around four per million people, compared to about two per million in the US (which has 813 billionaires - the most of any nation - but is home to more than 342 million people).

"This has come about in a sort of a stealthy way - that you haven't really noticed it until after it happened," says Andreas Cervenka, a journalist at Aftonbladet, and author of the book Greedy Sweden, in which he explores the steady rise of Sweden's super rich.

"But in Stockholm, you can see the wealth with your own eyes, and the contrast between super rich people in some areas of Stockholm and quite poor people in other parts."

One reason for the rise of the new super rich is Sweden's thriving tech scene. The country has a reputation as the Silicon Valley of Europe, having produced more than 40 so-called unicorn start-ups - companies worth more than $1bn - in the past two decades.

Skype and Spotify were founded here, as well as gaming firms King and Mojang. More recent global success stories include the financial tech start-up Tink, which Visa acquired for around $2bn during the pandemic, healthcare company Kry, and the e-scooter company Voi.

At Epicenter - a shared office and community space with a giant glass atrium - veteran entrepreneur Ola Ahlvarsson traces this success back to the 1990s. He says a tax rebate on home computers in Sweden "wired or connected all of us much faster than other countries".

A serial co-founder himself, he also points to a strong "culture of collaboration" in the start-up scene, with accomplished entrepreneurs often becoming role models for - and investors in - the next generation of tech companies.

Sweden's size makes it a popular test market, too. "If you want to see if it works on a larger market, you can - at limited cost and without too much risk for your brand or for your stock price - try things here," says Mr Ahlvarsson.

But Mr Cervenka argues there is another narrative that deserves more attention - monetary policies which he says have helped transform the country into a paradise for the super rich.

Sweden had very low interest rates from the early 2010s until a couple of years ago. This made it cheap to borrow money, so Swedes with cash to spare often chose to invest in property, or high risk investments like tech start-ups, many of which shot up in value as a result.

"One of the big factors that's driven this huge increase in billionaires is that we've had, for a number of years, quite a strong inflation in the value of assets," says Mr Cervenka.

Although top earners in Sweden are taxed more than 50% of their personal incomes - one of the highest rates in Europe - he argues that successive governments - on the right and left - have adjusted some taxes in a way that favours the rich.

The country scrapped wealth and inheritance taxes in the 2000s, and tax rates on money made from stocks and pay outs to company shareholders are much lower than taxes on salaries. The corporate tax rate has also dropped from around 30% in the 1990s to around 20% - slightly lower than the European average.

"You don't have to move out of Sweden if you're a billionaire today. And actually, some billionaires are moving here," says Mr Cervenka.

Back on Lidingö island, Konrad Bergström agrees that Sweden has "a very favourable tax system if you are building companies". However he says his wealth has a positive impact because his businesses - and homes - provide employment for others.

"We have a nanny and we have a gardener and cleaners… and that also gives more jobs. So we shouldn't forget about how we're building the society."

Mr Bergström points out that wealthy Swedish entrepreneurs and venture capitalists are also increasingly reinvesting their money in so-called "impact" start-ups, which have a focus on improving society or the environment.

In 2023, 74% of all venture capital funding to Swedish start-ups went to impact companies. This the highest percentage in the EU, and far above the European average of 35%, according to figures from Dealroom, which maps data on start-ups.

Perhaps the country's most high profile impact investor is Niklas Adalberth, who co-founded the unicorn payments platform Klarna. In 2017, he used $130m of his fortune to launch the Norrsken Foundation, an organisation that supports and invests in impact companies.

"I don't have the habits of a billionaire in terms of having a yacht or a private jet or anything like that," says Mr Adalberth. "This is my recipe for happiness."

But others argue that Sweden is missing a nuanced public debate about billionaire wealth, beyond a good-bad dichotomy of how entrepreneurs are spending their fortunes.

Recent research from Örebro University concluded that the media image of Swedish billionaires is predominantly positive, and suggested that their fortunes are rarely explained in the context of the nation's shifting economic policies.

"As long as the super-rich are seen to embody the ideals of the neoliberal era, such as hard work, taking risks, and an entrepreneurial attitude, the inequality behind this is not questioned," says media researcher Axel Vikström.

Mr Cervenka adds that debates about taxing the super rich are not as pronounced in Sweden as they are in many other western countries, such as the US.

"That's sort of a paradox. One would think that with our background - being perceived as a socialist country - this would be top of mind," says the author. "I think it has to do with [the fact] that we have become more of a mentality of 'winner takes it all'.

"That, if you just play your cards right, you can also become a billionaire… And that's quite a significant shift, I think, in Swedish mentality."

Sweden's rich list also reveals that the nation's wealth remains largely concentrated in the hands of white men, despite the country's large immigrant population and decades of policies championing gender equality.

"Yes, it's where people can create new money, create new wealth, but it's still very closed and the double standards are quite high in terms of who gets their ideas funded," says Lola Akinmade, a Nigerian-Swedish novelist and entrepreneur. "Sweden is an incredible country that's a leader in many ways, but there's still a lot of people excluded from the system."

 

[cosmicway 1,318]

37 minutes ago, Vesper said:

I am not a socialist

and it is not overtaxing

it is balancing out an incredibly unequal wealth distribution that is aided to a great degree (in the west especially in terms of total monies impacted) by an utterly regressive tax scheme

Sweden is in the process of destroying our wealth equality and our social welfare state due to massive systemic changes in our tax code over the past 20 odd years, changes where labour is smashed with taxes and specualtion-driven wealth and income are taxed at incredibly lower rates. Plus we have now once again manufactured a very likely to be permanent underclass with the massive 3rd world immigration over the past 25 or so years.

How Sweden became a paradise for billionaires

https://www.thelocal.se/20230128/listen-how-sweden-became-a-paradise-for-billionaires/

Direct links to both parts of the podcast:

Part 1

https://play.acast.com/s/77ca3392-3d6f-434f-8821-6472a6c25d8d/63d2aec7c539150011b7632f

Part 2

https://play.acast.com/s/77ca3392-3d6f-434f-8821-6472a6c25d8d/63d8dce99ba029001177c6d6


Ten terrifying stats about Sweden from the hit book Girig-Sverige

Economy reporter Andreas Cervenka won Sweden's most coveted journalist prize for 'Girig-Sverige' (Greedy Sweden), his polemic on wealth, debt, and inequality, which the judges said had "brought forward a new picture of the country". We picked out some of the most striking statistics.

https://www.thelocal.se/20230127/ten-terrifying-stats-about-sweden-from-the-hit-book-girig-sverige/?tpcc=podcast-article

 

a newer article:

The rise of Sweden's super rich

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-68927238

Sweden has a global reputation for championing high taxes and social equality, but it has become a European hotspot for the super rich.

On Lidingö island there are huge red and yellow wooden villas on rocky cliff tops, and white minimalist mansions with floor to ceiling windows.

Less than half an hour's drive from Stockholm city centre, this is one of Sweden's wealthiest neighbourhoods.

Serial entrepreneur Konrad Bergström flicks the light switch in his wine cellar, to reveal the 3,000 bottles he's got stored there. "French Bordeaux, that's what I love," he says, flashing a bright white smile.

Elsewhere, there's an outdoor pool, a gym upholstered in reindeer leather, and a workshop-cum-nightclub, complete with a large metal urinal.

"I have a lot of musical friends, so we play a lot of music," explains Bergström. He made his money co-founding businesses including a headphones and speaker company, and this home is one of four properties he owns in Sweden and Spain.

It's not a surprising lifestyle for a successful entrepreneur, but what might surprise global observers is how many people have become as wealthy as Mr Bergström - or even richer - in Sweden - a country with a global reputation for its leftist politics.

Although a right-wing coalition is currently in power, the nation has been run by Social Democrat-led governments for the majority of the last century, elected on promises to grow the economy in an equitable way, with taxes funding a strong welfare state.

But Sweden has experienced a boom in the super rich over the last three decades.

In 1996, there were just 28 people with a net worth of a billion kronor or more (around $91m or £73m at today's exchange rate), according to a rich list published by former Swedish business magazine Veckans Affärer. Most of them came from families that had been rich for generations.

• BBC World Service - The Documentary Podcast, Super-rich Swedes

By 2021, there were 542 "kronor billionaires", according to a similar analysis by daily newspaper Aftonbladet, and between them they owned a wealth equivalent to 70% of the nation's GDP, a measure of the total value of goods and services in the economy.

Sweden - with a population of just 10 million - also has one of the world's highest proportions of "dollar billionaires" per capita. Forbes listed 43 Swedes worth $1bn or more in its 2024 rich list.

That equates to around four per million people, compared to about two per million in the US (which has 813 billionaires - the most of any nation - but is home to more than 342 million people).

"This has come about in a sort of a stealthy way - that you haven't really noticed it until after it happened," says Andreas Cervenka, a journalist at Aftonbladet, and author of the book Greedy Sweden, in which he explores the steady rise of Sweden's super rich.

"But in Stockholm, you can see the wealth with your own eyes, and the contrast between super rich people in some areas of Stockholm and quite poor people in other parts."

One reason for the rise of the new super rich is Sweden's thriving tech scene. The country has a reputation as the Silicon Valley of Europe, having produced more than 40 so-called unicorn start-ups - companies worth more than $1bn - in the past two decades.

Skype and Spotify were founded here, as well as gaming firms King and Mojang. More recent global success stories include the financial tech start-up Tink, which Visa acquired for around $2bn during the pandemic, healthcare company Kry, and the e-scooter company Voi.

At Epicenter - a shared office and community space with a giant glass atrium - veteran entrepreneur Ola Ahlvarsson traces this success back to the 1990s. He says a tax rebate on home computers in Sweden "wired or connected all of us much faster than other countries".

A serial co-founder himself, he also points to a strong "culture of collaboration" in the start-up scene, with accomplished entrepreneurs often becoming role models for - and investors in - the next generation of tech companies.

Sweden's size makes it a popular test market, too. "If you want to see if it works on a larger market, you can - at limited cost and without too much risk for your brand or for your stock price - try things here," says Mr Ahlvarsson.

But Mr Cervenka argues there is another narrative that deserves more attention - monetary policies which he says have helped transform the country into a paradise for the super rich.

Sweden had very low interest rates from the early 2010s until a couple of years ago. This made it cheap to borrow money, so Swedes with cash to spare often chose to invest in property, or high risk investments like tech start-ups, many of which shot up in value as a result.

"One of the big factors that's driven this huge increase in billionaires is that we've had, for a number of years, quite a strong inflation in the value of assets," says Mr Cervenka.

Although top earners in Sweden are taxed more than 50% of their personal incomes - one of the highest rates in Europe - he argues that successive governments - on the right and left - have adjusted some taxes in a way that favours the rich.

The country scrapped wealth and inheritance taxes in the 2000s, and tax rates on money made from stocks and pay outs to company shareholders are much lower than taxes on salaries. The corporate tax rate has also dropped from around 30% in the 1990s to around 20% - slightly lower than the European average.

"You don't have to move out of Sweden if you're a billionaire today. And actually, some billionaires are moving here," says Mr Cervenka.

Back on Lidingö island, Konrad Bergström agrees that Sweden has "a very favourable tax system if you are building companies". However he says his wealth has a positive impact because his businesses - and homes - provide employment for others.

"We have a nanny and we have a gardener and cleaners… and that also gives more jobs. So we shouldn't forget about how we're building the society."

Mr Bergström points out that wealthy Swedish entrepreneurs and venture capitalists are also increasingly reinvesting their money in so-called "impact" start-ups, which have a focus on improving society or the environment.

In 2023, 74% of all venture capital funding to Swedish start-ups went to impact companies. This the highest percentage in the EU, and far above the European average of 35%, according to figures from Dealroom, which maps data on start-ups.

Perhaps the country's most high profile impact investor is Niklas Adalberth, who co-founded the unicorn payments platform Klarna. In 2017, he used $130m of his fortune to launch the Norrsken Foundation, an organisation that supports and invests in impact companies.

"I don't have the habits of a billionaire in terms of having a yacht or a private jet or anything like that," says Mr Adalberth. "This is my recipe for happiness."

But others argue that Sweden is missing a nuanced public debate about billionaire wealth, beyond a good-bad dichotomy of how entrepreneurs are spending their fortunes.

Recent research from Örebro University concluded that the media image of Swedish billionaires is predominantly positive, and suggested that their fortunes are rarely explained in the context of the nation's shifting economic policies.

"As long as the super-rich are seen to embody the ideals of the neoliberal era, such as hard work, taking risks, and an entrepreneurial attitude, the inequality behind this is not questioned," says media researcher Axel Vikström.

Mr Cervenka adds that debates about taxing the super rich are not as pronounced in Sweden as they are in many other western countries, such as the US.

"That's sort of a paradox. One would think that with our background - being perceived as a socialist country - this would be top of mind," says the author. "I think it has to do with [the fact] that we have become more of a mentality of 'winner takes it all'.

"That, if you just play your cards right, you can also become a billionaire… And that's quite a significant shift, I think, in Swedish mentality."

Sweden's rich list also reveals that the nation's wealth remains largely concentrated in the hands of white men, despite the country's large immigrant population and decades of policies championing gender equality.

"Yes, it's where people can create new money, create new wealth, but it's still very closed and the double standards are quite high in terms of who gets their ideas funded," says Lola Akinmade, a Nigerian-Swedish novelist and entrepreneur. "Sweden is an incredible country that's a leader in many ways, but there's still a lot of people excluded from the system."

 

The government has to find money somewhere.
Let's talk about something we all agree, across the political spectrum.
Weapons.
We need F35s and F16s and submarines fitted with electronic equpment capable of evading detection and antisubmarine traps.
So it's "δει δη χρημάτων ω άνδρες Αθηναίοι", is the truth.
With this in mind there are gross injustices and the socialists like to tax the poor in an absurd way.

Back in 1994 there was the propaganda about the doctors of Kolonaki (the posh district) who were "tax evading".
Whether they were doing or not and whether doctors who had their surgeries in working class neighbourhoods were not doing it, I have no idea.
But after the socialists won the heavy tax fell not only on the doctors as the stupid masses believed it would, but on the doctors as well as the chestnut vendors and the
poor scuba divers who collect sponges in the islands !
Then in 2010 the same propaganda again against the doctors of Kolonaki again, to justify new taxes. I was surprised because it was the same as before, but the stupid
masses had forgotten all about it - to them it was new propaganda !
Yet the effect was that many people declared bankruptcy so after that they were paying no tax at all.
That tells us it's not only about money but also social engineering.

I don't care about the big companies and the multinationals.
Some say they should be taxed more, some others say they should be taxed less so as to encourage investment.
All I know is I 'm destroyed by the governments (socialist and other) while at the same time companies Citroen, Opel, Mercedes Benz never hurt me - not directly at least.

If I could I would go to Australia.
The Aussies are soft hearted and if I cry they will let me stay there.
 

Edited September 7 by cosmicway

[Vesper 28,763]

"The Four Billionaire Horseman of the American Apocalypse"

Acrylic Paint, 2021

 

Richest people on the planet atm

1 (when combined)

Larry Page
$126.3 B

Sergey Brin
$121.1 B

Total combined $247.4 B

Both are 51
Google
United States
 

2
Elon Musk
$241.8 B

53
Tesla, SpaceX
United States
    
3
Jeff Bezos
$190.4 B
60
Amazon
United States
    
4
Mark Zuckerberg
$175.4 B
40
Facebook
United States
    

 

Edited September 7 by Vesper

[Vesper 28,763]

5 minutes ago, cosmicway said:

I don't care about the big companies and the multinationals.

and there is a fatal flaw, m8

[cosmicway 1,318]

2 minutes ago, Vesper said:

"The Four Billionaire Horseman of the American Apocalypse"

Acrylic Paint, 2021

 

Richest people on the planet atm

1 (when combined)

Larry Page
$126.3 B

Sergey Brin
$121.1 B

Total combined $247.4 B

Both are 51
Google
United States
 

2
Elon Musk
$241.8 B

53
Tesla, SpaceX
United States
    
3
Jeff Bezos
$190.4 B
60
Amazon
United States
    
4
Mark Zuckerberg
$173.4 B
40
Facebook
United States
    

 

I never liked facebook all that much.
The reason is we can't have debates.
When something like a debate starts it dies in a few hours.
In a forum I can start a thread and it stays for ever. It may even be revived two years from now.
Anyway when writing sums of money, you should tell us what you 'd like to do with it (and if you say I 'd like them for myself it does n't count).
 

[cosmicway 1,318]

2 minutes ago, Vesper said:

and there is a fatal flaw, m8

You must add all the monies you are targetting and then divide them with the population total.
Otherwise it is becoming like Buckingham palace. The peoples commissars take it, open the corridors to the tourists and then what ? I would probably not even go there. I prefer the strip tease clubs in Piccadilly.
The idea of supertaxation has flaws in it.
It does n't work.
Governments are more interested in the lifetime of money.
So every euro coin that comes out of your pocket has a lifetime. You buy chewing gum, 10% goes to the government. With the remaining you buy something else and again a percentage goes to the government. Ultimately the one euro returns to it's base, the government and the faster this happens the more happy they are.
My problem is simply why they want to tax people out of business and then get nothing from them.

[Vesper 28,763]

Just now, cosmicway said:

I never liked facebook all that much.
The reason is we can't have debates.
When something like a debate starts it dies in a few hours.
In a forum I can start a thread and it stays for ever. It may even be revived two years from now.
Anyway when writing sums of money, you should tell us what you 'd like to do with it (and if you say I 'd like them for myself it does n't count).
 

In re the West and core first world:

Smash the gobal systemic banking system (on international, national, and massive private banking levels)

Wealth inequality reduction on a massive scale

End austerity regimes for social welfare regimes

Scupper the military industrial complexes and the endless wars to preserve the petrol/dollar matrix

Remove the for-profit nature from vital human services (like heathcare)

All-out assault, on a global basis, to combat global climate change

Kick off a half century (or a full century, if need be) plan to sort out Africa

Introduce UBI

THINK BIG