' 1. What is total spending of the federal budget?And the answers, take a read... Maybe try this out on any US 'liberals'!
2. What is the federal deficit?
3. What is the national debt?
4. What was the most recent interest payment on the national debt?'
Of course very similar questions could be asked of the many supporters of the Labour Party, Trade Unionists and BBC commentators who denounce the 'savage cuts' with no understanding of why they are necessary. Maybe I should put together the equivalent figures for the UK, unles someone has them to hand...?
15 comments:
Your argument is a bit academic. If we taxed the rich at the levels they should be taxed, we wouldn't need to make any austerity cuts. large companies are well known to be tax avoiders, even if the avoiding is technically legal, through legal loopholes and UK mandated tax havens. Once you've done the UK figures, go ask philip green how much tax he didn't pay last year, and then take that off the total. If it still looks dismal I'll come back here and give you some other capitalists tax records to at. Happy new year notasheep x
OK then how much tax avoidance have you identified re Philip Green and others? £1 billion? £5 billion? How does that compare with the Annual deficit?
The TUC put uk corporate tax avoidance at £12 billion last year, but the figure is very tricky to estimate as tax havens cannot be probed. There are outstanding tax cases against, for example, vodafone, for around 6 billion.
britains budget deficit this year is £170 billion which is obviously more than could be raised by clamping down on tax avoidance alone. Maybe the govt could sell those banks that we bought in 2008? Trident is a blatant waste of money as well. My point is that we are all led to believe that this austerity is inevitable, but it's a political, ideological decision to enforce cuts. The poor are being openly looted and people such as yourself who legitimize this looting as a natural state of things are complicit. But that's the nature of capitalism I suppose. People point at graphs, others become desperately poor, meanwhile power continues to become more centralized and less accountable. It's crony capitalism and when you appeal to what you consider to be economically illiterate people to understand why the cuts are necessary, well then unfortunately you become one of the cronies. Happy new year notasheepmaybeagoatmaybebaphomet x
I thought the HMRC Vodafone case had been settled, am I wrong? Let's accept the TUC's £12 billion, that leaves (on your figures) £158 billion to find. How mcuh would selling the banks raise (a one off figure for one year, don't forget)? I seem to remember that Trident costs around £3 billion per year and that the Trident replacement will cost £20 - £30 billion (over a period, let's say 5 years - although I think it will be more). That leaves an annual deficit of around £149 billion; where do you think that money can be found? It's no good grasping at slogans re the cuts, such as 'we are all led to believe that this austerity is inevitable, but it's a political, ideological decision to enforce cuts. The poor are being openly looted and people such as yourself who legitimize this looting as a natural state of things are complicit.' If you believe there is another way, what is it? Where do we find even £100 billion a year if not from cuts?
BTW what is a 'phomet' as in 'notasheepmaybeagoatmaybebaphomet'?
i take your points, in the commonly accepted analysis, curbing tax avoidance would not solely balance the budget deficit. but i am arguing at the same time that the accepted analysis is incorrect; the concept of debt serves only the institutions of capital, who seek to keep a one way power relationship between those that have and those that do not. if 'capital' says we are indebted to it, it does not mean that we actually are. the whole concept is built on a house of cards - in the marxist anaylsis, if the people realise that it is only through their acceptance of an abusive power structure that the power structure can continue, and in this specific instance, austerity cuts being inevitable is a sham, to protect the interests of capital, to first make the poor pay for the bailout of the rich banks, and then for the poor to pay again with certain political, ideological aims, for example the privitisation of education, to more deeply embed this economic power structure .
i know you think you are being logical, i am saying that you have unfortunately been blinded by the institutions who wish to maintain this power relationship, and to me this is more logical than your position. does my position make sense to you, even if you may not agree with it?
anyway, its because of your promotion of the exploitative crony capitalism that i, very tongue-in-cheek, referred to you as an apparition of baphomet - who is often stylised as a goat.
'in the commonly accepted analysis, curbing tax avoidance would not solely balance the budget deficit. but i am arguing at the same time that the accepted analysis is incorrect;'. This is a simple matter of mathematics; does the amount of money lost to tax evasion equal or exceed the annual deficit? If it odes then your original assertion is correct, if it does not then your are wrong. My assertion is that the amount of taxation lost to tax evasion, whilst large and 'wrong' does not nearly add up to the amount of the national deficit.
Your position makes perfect sense if you accept the Marxist view of economics. Unfortunately, for you, I and most people don't.
Thanks for introducing me to Baphomet, a pagan deity that had escaped my attention. I didn't realise that 'The Devil' in the Rider-Waite tarot deck was Baphomet.
you are correct, most people seem to adhere to the neo-classical theory of economics - supply and demand etc. as this theory has been universally declared as 'in crisis', its probably best for the majority of people to have a re-think. multinational conglomerates now rival sovereign nations in terms of power and control over peoples' lives. corporations have more effect on the policies of governments than voters. this is what neo-classical economics gives us. is this what we want?
Universally declared as 'in crisis' - universally?
'multinational conglomerates now rival sovereign nations in terms of power and control over peoples' lives. corporations have more effect on the policies of governments than voters.' - 'rival', I would say exceed in many cases.
'is this what we want?' - No it is not.
However, if the alternative is the sort of Marxist economics that laid waste to the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, large tracts of the Far East and still ruins the lives of millions in Cuba, North Korea and others. Now I know that you will say that these are not pure Marxist economies. I would argue that they are what you get when you start on that path.
notasheep, there you go again, getting all doomsday, no hope for humanity, woe are we! you dont have to be a communist to accept a Marxian view of economics. of course those countries weren't socialist. if you read Marx, he said that the people could only change to a socialist form of governance if the whole world converted at the same time, because if there are still capitalist ideas in play, they will corrupt socialism. the USSR tried to inoculate against this by following "socialism in one country", (an anarchronism in the Marxian analysis), and the economy that they then found themselves operating was state-capitalist - not socialist.
can we reduce this argument to these basic components: you think society should be organised on hierarchical lines and i think it should be organised on lines of equality. is that a fair reduction?
but getting back to my original point. yes HMRC and vodafone have settled, if you call paying £1bn instead of £7bn a decent settlement for us taxpayers. this article portrays the very essence of crony capitalism:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/nov/14/vodafone-tax-evasion-revenue-customs
and it turns out HSBC are allegedly attempting to plough a similarly shallow tax furrow themselves, following vodafone's success. now thats just two companies. meanwhile, tax accountants are being paid £500,000 a time to find new tax loopholes. people work at HMRC and then as a tax accountant in the corporate world, much like the political revolving door between cabinet and the board of directors of large companies. cabs for hire. there is a culture of evasion of responsibilities by the rich, and it is systemic. which means the system is broken. i would love to hear your method for fixing it. but please dont tell me that it should start with a cabinet full of millionaires telling us, the great unwashed, that we have to pay for it all!
I am well aware of 'socialism in one country', are you asking me to put my faith in an economic system that is untried and will only work if everybody adopts it?
No that is not a fair reduction of our views. However hierachical does not equal unfair or unequal.
The opportunities for unfair tax evasion by large companies and individuals should be restricted. However the amount of money collected as a result will not come close to equalling the annual deficit, so how do we make up the difference?
I fear that it is a fact of life that those who become senior MPs tend to have had better educations than most. Thanks to our dreadful Comprehensive education system that means that many current Conservative cabinet ministers were educated at Eton just as senior members of the last Labour cabinet were educated at Fettes, St Pauls Girls School etc. I have never understood the hatred many on the left of British politics have for someone who had a decent education and having seen the mess that Gordon Brown made of the country and experienced the full force of John Prescott's intellect, I understand this venom even less.
No I did not go to Eton!
"are you asking me to put my faith in an economic system that is untried and will only work if everybody adopts it?"
thats a weird way of putting it. the marxist analysis sees it as an inevitability, not a choice. the only choice we have as individuals is whether to be on the side of capital or the side of the people. this will influence when the inevitability occurs, but not whether it will occur or not.
re: private educations, its not a problem per se, except that many captains of industry went to the same schools. we're back to cronyism again. it always amazes me when free-marketeers cannot see that their cherished system involves not freedom of competition, but a highly protectionist, self-reinforcing network of power looking out for its own interests, with unfair access to politicians, and systemic inequality. which bring me to my last point:
"hierachical does not equal unfair or unequal." it does to me, and that is the root of our difference of opinion.
So because Marxists say it is inevitable it is? What's the timescale? What proportion of people have to be on the side of 'the people' rather than 'capital' for the 'inevitability' to happen?
So if the cabinet was full of people who'd all been to North London College that would be equally wrong? Surely the best educated should run the Country and Eton does give one an exceedingly good education. Have you ever met an old-Etonian and discussed politics, economics, science, mathematics etc. with them? Try it and prepare to be amazed at the breadth and depth of knowledge displayed.
'"hierachical does not equal unfair or unequal." it does to me, and that is the root of our difference of opinion.' Indeed it does, but which of us is right?
"Like someone convicted of murdering his parents who demands leniency as an orphan, corporate America demands conservative government and austerity on the grounds of excessive budget deficits. Mainstream media and politicians take those corporate demands seriously, reminding us who controls whom...
...Since the early 1970s, workers' wage increases came to an end, their benefits and job security shrank and government supports for average people came under conservative attack. These increasing burdens were justified as absolutely necessary to enable more investment and, therefore, greater economic growth. A bigger economic pie would then provide more for everyone including workers. While workers' conditions deteriorated, capitalist surpluses and profits soared and stock markets boomed. Income and wealth were redistributed from poor and middle to the rich. But the promised results never materialised: neither more investment, nor greater economic growth...growth actually slowed and then the whole system imploded into a catastrophic crisis...
....capitalism was like a train hurtling toward the stone wall of crisis. To return to a pre-crisis capitalism risks resuming our places on a similar train heading for a similar crash.
Republican and Democratic politicians alike dare not link this crisis to an economic system that has never stopped producing those "downturns" that regularly cost so many millions of jobs, wasted resources, lost outputs and injured lives. For them, the economic system is beyond questioning. They bow before the unspoken taboo: never criticise the system upon which your careers depend. Thus, this crisis and its burdens will continue until capitalists see sufficiently attractive opportunities for profit to resume investing and hiring people in the US as well as elsewhere. The freedoms of US capitalists to gain immense government supports as needed, and yet to invest only when, where and how they can maximise their private profits are paramount: the first obligations of government....In good times, as in bad, capitalism is a system that places a small minority of people with one set of goals (profits, disproportionally high incomes, dominant political power, etc) in the positions to receive and distribute enormous wealth. Those people include the boards of directors that gather the net revenues of business into their hands and decide, together with the major shareholders in those businesses, how to distribute that wealth. Not surprisingly, they use it to achieve their goals and to make sure government secures their positions.
No Keynesian monetary or fiscal policies address, let alone change, how that system works and who uses its wealth to what ends. No reforms or regulations passed or even proposed under Obama would do that either. To avoid the instability of capitalism and its huge social costs requires changing the system. That remains the basic issue for a new year and a new generation. Will they break today's version of a dangerous old taboo: never question the existing system?"
"Like someone convicted of murdering his parents who demands leniency as an orphan, corporate America demands conservative government and austerity on the grounds of excessive budget deficits. Mainstream media and politicians take those corporate demands seriously, reminding us who controls whom...
...Since the early 1970s, workers' wage increases came to an end, their benefits and job security shrank and government supports for average people came under conservative attack. These increasing burdens were justified as absolutely necessary to enable more investment and, therefore, greater economic growth. A bigger economic pie would then provide more for everyone including workers. While workers' conditions deteriorated, capitalist surpluses and profits soared and stock markets boomed. Income and wealth were redistributed from poor and middle to the rich. But the promised results never materialised: neither more investment, nor greater economic growth...growth actually slowed and then the whole system imploded into a catastrophic crisis...
....capitalism was like a train hurtling toward the stone wall of crisis. To return to a pre-crisis capitalism risks resuming our places on a similar train heading for a similar crash.
Republican and Democratic politicians alike dare not link this crisis to an economic system that has never stopped producing those "downturns" that regularly cost so many millions of jobs, wasted resources, lost outputs and injured lives. For them, the economic system is beyond questioning. They bow before the unspoken taboo: never criticise the system upon which your careers depend. Thus, this crisis and its burdens will continue until capitalists see sufficiently attractive opportunities for profit to resume investing and hiring people in the US as well as elsewhere. The freedoms of US capitalists to gain immense government supports as needed, and yet to invest only when, where and how they can maximise their private profits are paramount: the first obligations of government....In good times, as in bad, capitalism is a system that places a small minority of people with one set of goals (profits, disproportionally high incomes, dominant political power, etc) in the positions to receive and distribute enormous wealth. Those people include the boards of directors that gather the net revenues of business into their hands and decide, together with the major shareholders in those businesses, how to distribute that wealth. Not surprisingly, they use it to achieve their goals and to make sure government secures their positions.
No
Keynesian monetary or fiscal policies address, let alone change, how that system works and who uses its wealth to what ends. No reforms or regulations passed or even proposed under Obama would do that either. To avoid the instability of capitalism and its huge social costs requires changing the system. That remains the basic issue for a new year and a new generation. Will they break today's version of a dangerous old taboo: never question the existing system?"
Post a Comment