Monday, April 18, 2016

Panama Papers Confirm What We Already Know about the Super-Rich

Hide your money.  Avoid taxes.  Keep private.  Stay under the radar screen.  Be anonymous so that the exercise of your privileged wealth and power go undetected and therefore remain unchallenged.  This is what the so-called “Panama Papers” tell us about the wealthy.  Something we underlings should already know.

The wealthy do not want to be scrutinized.  They do not want their financial and business activities to be made public.  They like anonymity and secrecy, to invest, and especially to profit, by hidden means and through unseen channels.  For them, such clandestine activity leads to more power and more wealth, which in turn gives them even more influence toward more self-serving outcomes.  More means more!

Historically speaking, this is also why there have been and continue to be popular revolutions and uprisings within kingdoms and nations?  It’s always about too much money and power accumulating in the hands of too few people.  When the people have finally had enough, they rise up against the economic injustice and oppression of their wealthy powerful overlords, kings, or oligarchs.  It’s about money, power, and control and more money, power, and control benefitting only a small fraction of a populace.

The extremely wealthy of any nation-state tend to set-up and/or take advantage of economic systems that allow them to grab and take, and exploit the commoner.  The system then tends to directly and/or indirectly impose and inflict exacting taxes upon the general public, while the extremely wealthy escape sharing the same public burden.  This tendency is exactly what the Panama Papers demonstrate.

We Americans pride ourselves in our great democratic, capitalistic system.  Nevertheless, I believe that the system is breaking and is favoring more and more the super wealthy.  For example, it takes money, lots and lots of money, to get elected to office these days.  In comes Super PACS!  These financial entities are established in order to directly influence political outcomes and are free to raise unlimited sums of money to rise up or bring down political candidates.  Meanwhile, the money-backers remain anonymous—and this is absolutely legal!

This kind of secrecy is not only dangerous it is detrimental; it is a cancer to a healthy democratic political system.  I’d even go so far as to say that it tends toward evil.  For, remember, money corrupts!  The wielding of extreme amounts of secretive money is corruptive.  That is why regulation, checks and balances, and open books, openness and transparency, is always necessary at all levels in order for an economic system to remain healthy so as to benefit all classes, rich and poor alike.

Kudos to the person that gave the public the Panama Papers and kudos to the news media and journalists who are working hard at reading the millions of documents in order to shed light on what was supposed to be covert, dark and secretive transactions made by sneaky super-wealthy world leaders and government leaders and other oligarchs who, until now, thought they could get away with it.  But it is not enough.

It would seem that the American democratic system has worked out well enough, so far.  It has done so because over the decades this country has tried to maintain some systemic integrity—to be a government for the people by the people and of the people.  But we’re losing control.  The top one-percent is gaining ground, getting more and more control, having more and more of their own way, while the rest of us are paying for it.  This is not good for our long term future!

If anyone needs to “take back” America it is the people, over-against the wealthy one-percenters.  The younger generation knows this, in their guts; this is why they so eagerly welcome a political voice like Berny Sanders.  Corporate America, big business, the Wall Street wealthy One-Percenters, they DO have to be taken-on and put back in their place.  For example: Why should the commoner pay hefty taxes to rebuild and sustain a solidly working infrastructure for this nation, while the super-wealthy do all they can to avoid paying their fair share of taxes that should help pay for such infrastructure, yet still benefit from the same infrastructure they have refused to pay taxes for?

We need to glean more from the Panama Papers, what they reveal and who is disclosed.  We are so quick to pounce on the street thug for his crime.  We need to also be as quick to pounce on the Super Wealthy Oligarchs for their crimes as well.

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