We can have a vision of a good life that is not simply a yacht off the Virgin Islands, but one in which we have decent schools and hospitals. Photograph: Alamy
Suzanne_Moore in The Guardian
That global elite – I always suspected they were up to no good … I must be psychic! And look, here is the proof: the Panama leaks show all these vultures hiding away their money in perfectly legal schemes to avoid paying taxes in countries out of which they operate their businesses. The yachts flying Panamanian flags off the coast of some of these islands may have been a hint but somehow the wrong-doing of the super rich has simply become part of the environment. A stroll around London reveals rough sleepers among ghost mansions and empty penthouses, bought by those who will never make them homes.
This is just what a globalised capital city looks like. This is where global capital comes to hide itself. Never mind these idyllic tax havens, the UK itself is a centre for a form of money laundering. This is “our” success.
After the crash of 2008, the City rallied, paying for more than half of the Tory election campaign.
Anger at the bankers dissipated into a sort of shrug of the shoulders. Those who caused the damage hung on to their bonuses. Austerity works by saying that it is in our own self-interest to punish ourselves.
Hopefully some of this compliance is now falling apart, but the Panama leaks reveal something so massive that it’s hard to get to grips with it: big, bad, rich people do secret, mean things.
Jeremy Corbyn, as ever, seems mildly irritated by the workings of global capitalism. After all, he was elected in protest at a leadership that had simply sucked it up. New Labour was so intensely relaxed about wealth that it made up phrases such as “wealth creators”. All of this was personified by Cherie Blair, forever on some grabby supermarket sweep while her hollowed-out husband sells his services to dictators. Corbyn’s asceticism may be a relief, but its not yet an alternative.
Some things need to be said now, and said clearly. Not paying tax may not be illegal, but it is immoral. It is a form of theft. The acceptance of a caste system whereby the likes of David Cameron and George Osborne rule us, and we are not allowed to question the finances of this elite has to stop. We all pay tax to train doctors and maintain the roads they are driven on. The idea that this elite does not use the services that are provided is simply not true.
Try, for instance, calling a private ambulance and having it driven only on private roads? I note, after another strike by junior doctors, that just before the 2010 election, Jeremy Hunt, then culture secretary, reduced his tax bill by £100,000 through a deal that meant he transferred his companies’ office buildings. This is only human isn’t it? Why shouldn’t he do this?
Here is why: tax is a marker of civilisation, a form of a social contract that right now is being torn up in front of our eyes. Even Adam Smith called tax a badge of liberty. And yet for many, freedom is entirely bound up with paying as little tax as possible. The richer you are the more free you are to not contribute – though you are still free to lecture others on the benefits of hard work.
This is what is so peculiar, too, about Cameron telling us he will no longer benefit from his father’s offshore arrangements. He did. He has. That is not in question. But the new kind of privilege is one that sees itself both as God-given and hard-earned. This delusion has hit its apotheosis in Zac Goldsmith, that charisma vacuum, who is strangely listless except when he is stirring up racial tension.
But then this wealth bubble is a private-members club because it is, by nature, profoundly antisocial. Tax-dodging, aversion or whatever polite term we use, is premised on the free movement of money. The social consequences of this, be it the movement of migrants or the closure of industries, is someone else’s problem.
Part of this hyper-capitalism is the idea that only money makes money and people make nothing. “The left” went badly wrong buying into this worldview for a while. Financialisation meant only services would produce profit. But making things, whether you’re assembling a car, or a painting, or a house, still matters. We also became muddled about aspiration. It was good, then it was bad – rather than it being just a fact of life, like breathing. The need is to simply find a language of aspiration that is about all of us. The economy is increasingly spoken of as if it were the weather and completely uncontrollable. No.
We can have a vision of a good life that is not simply a yacht off the Virgin Islands, but one in which we have decent schools and hospitals, and our entrepreneurial skills are both useful and what we use to contribute. Where we understand that we pay tax precisely because there is such a thing as society; making money is neither a vice nor a virtue. Refusing to contribute, though, is a vice. That tight bastard who never buys a round in the pub though he earns more than you? Do you really want him running the country? Because that’s the country in which we currently live.
Suzanne_Moore in The Guardian
That global elite – I always suspected they were up to no good … I must be psychic! And look, here is the proof: the Panama leaks show all these vultures hiding away their money in perfectly legal schemes to avoid paying taxes in countries out of which they operate their businesses. The yachts flying Panamanian flags off the coast of some of these islands may have been a hint but somehow the wrong-doing of the super rich has simply become part of the environment. A stroll around London reveals rough sleepers among ghost mansions and empty penthouses, bought by those who will never make them homes.
This is just what a globalised capital city looks like. This is where global capital comes to hide itself. Never mind these idyllic tax havens, the UK itself is a centre for a form of money laundering. This is “our” success.
After the crash of 2008, the City rallied, paying for more than half of the Tory election campaign.
Anger at the bankers dissipated into a sort of shrug of the shoulders. Those who caused the damage hung on to their bonuses. Austerity works by saying that it is in our own self-interest to punish ourselves.
Hopefully some of this compliance is now falling apart, but the Panama leaks reveal something so massive that it’s hard to get to grips with it: big, bad, rich people do secret, mean things.
Jeremy Corbyn, as ever, seems mildly irritated by the workings of global capitalism. After all, he was elected in protest at a leadership that had simply sucked it up. New Labour was so intensely relaxed about wealth that it made up phrases such as “wealth creators”. All of this was personified by Cherie Blair, forever on some grabby supermarket sweep while her hollowed-out husband sells his services to dictators. Corbyn’s asceticism may be a relief, but its not yet an alternative.
Some things need to be said now, and said clearly. Not paying tax may not be illegal, but it is immoral. It is a form of theft. The acceptance of a caste system whereby the likes of David Cameron and George Osborne rule us, and we are not allowed to question the finances of this elite has to stop. We all pay tax to train doctors and maintain the roads they are driven on. The idea that this elite does not use the services that are provided is simply not true.
Try, for instance, calling a private ambulance and having it driven only on private roads? I note, after another strike by junior doctors, that just before the 2010 election, Jeremy Hunt, then culture secretary, reduced his tax bill by £100,000 through a deal that meant he transferred his companies’ office buildings. This is only human isn’t it? Why shouldn’t he do this?
Here is why: tax is a marker of civilisation, a form of a social contract that right now is being torn up in front of our eyes. Even Adam Smith called tax a badge of liberty. And yet for many, freedom is entirely bound up with paying as little tax as possible. The richer you are the more free you are to not contribute – though you are still free to lecture others on the benefits of hard work.
This is what is so peculiar, too, about Cameron telling us he will no longer benefit from his father’s offshore arrangements. He did. He has. That is not in question. But the new kind of privilege is one that sees itself both as God-given and hard-earned. This delusion has hit its apotheosis in Zac Goldsmith, that charisma vacuum, who is strangely listless except when he is stirring up racial tension.
But then this wealth bubble is a private-members club because it is, by nature, profoundly antisocial. Tax-dodging, aversion or whatever polite term we use, is premised on the free movement of money. The social consequences of this, be it the movement of migrants or the closure of industries, is someone else’s problem.
Part of this hyper-capitalism is the idea that only money makes money and people make nothing. “The left” went badly wrong buying into this worldview for a while. Financialisation meant only services would produce profit. But making things, whether you’re assembling a car, or a painting, or a house, still matters. We also became muddled about aspiration. It was good, then it was bad – rather than it being just a fact of life, like breathing. The need is to simply find a language of aspiration that is about all of us. The economy is increasingly spoken of as if it were the weather and completely uncontrollable. No.
We can have a vision of a good life that is not simply a yacht off the Virgin Islands, but one in which we have decent schools and hospitals, and our entrepreneurial skills are both useful and what we use to contribute. Where we understand that we pay tax precisely because there is such a thing as society; making money is neither a vice nor a virtue. Refusing to contribute, though, is a vice. That tight bastard who never buys a round in the pub though he earns more than you? Do you really want him running the country? Because that’s the country in which we currently live.
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