Ian Welsh

The horizon is not so far as we can see, but as far as we can imagine

Yes, You CAN Tax the Rich

By

On October 25, 2019

23 Comments

Okay, once more.

It is possible to tax the rich.

It is even easy, IF the major powers (or just the US) decide to do it.

This is for three reasons:

1) None of the tax havens are powerful countries. All of them can easily be coerced.

2) Money is actually earned in specific countries. You can actually tax it before you let it leave, and once it leaves, you don’t have to let it back in.

3) There aren’t a lot of places rich people want to live.

Rich people don’t want to live in a backwater. They want, and indeed, need to live in a “world city”: New York, London, Paris, Berlin, Tokyo, San Francisco, etc. Sure, there are second- and even third-tier world cities like Hong Kong, Vancouver, and various lovely, smaller European cities, but basically, rich people want, and can only really run their businesses from, a few places.

Yes, the telecom revolution matters, and so do private jets (which should basically be illegal), but at the end of the day you need to meet people in person, and you want to live in a place where other big people are, and where all the lovely amenities are, which isn’t a police state utopia (a.k.a., Dubai, which is lovely, unless anything goes wrong, in which case you are in hell, and, no, there is no resort to law).

World elites need to live in world cities. They make their money in the big powers, often in more than one, and they need to be able to spend their money where they live and where their businesses are.

Where is Tim Cook going to go? Where is Jeff Bezos going to go? If someone has a ton of money in tax havens, but can’t get any of it into Europe, the US, and so on, that money is virtually useless to them (yeah, they can still live well, but they’re out of the game).

Regional elites, it should go without saying, are easy to tax. If you’re a big wheel in a country with almost no business outside that country, except perhaps some exporting, you have no choice. You pay or you stop doing business (and this doesn’t mean the business goes away, if the government is smart).

Clamp down on the tax havens, tax money where it is earned, before it leaves the country, and don’t let grey or black money into the country.

This doesn’t work for small countries, except with respect to their own elites, but it is something that the US Treasury and the IRS could do tomorrow if they chose. If the EU and some other countries got together, they could do it because their market is large enough.

Taxing the rich doesn’t happen because it is particularly hard to do technically, but because our governments are owned and run by rich people who do not to be taxed, and will avoid being taxed by evading their country’s taxes. The system is set up the way it is because the rich don’t want to be taxed, as Stirling Newberry has noted.

In other words, this is a political problem. It’s not that rich people inherently can’t be taxed (reading about how rich inheritors felt about being taxed during the 1930s through the 1960s in Europe and the US will disabuse you of that notion). Rich people aren’t taxed because, politically, the desire isn’t there.

Even things like bitcoin and blockchains have not effected governments’ ability to tax the rich. Bitcoin is simply a ledger which records every transaction. Blockchain is an inherently authoritarian surveillance technology, something many of its idealistic or opportunistic boosters refuse to understand or admit. Neither protects rich people’s money. I’ve worked in a financial institution, and when regulators are actually serious (they often aren’t), financial companies get really serious about obeying the law.

We can tax the rich any time a powerful enough government, or governments, choose to do so.

Not doing so is a policy choice, driven by elites’ ownership of the political class, and by politicians’ own membership in the elite class (or their desire to join the wealthy class).

It isn’t more complicated than that.

The results of the work I do, like this article, are free, but food isn’t, so if you value my work, please DONATE or SUBSCRIBE.

Trudeau Decides to Run a Minority, Conservative Government

By

On October 24, 2019

22 Comments

Justin Trudeau

Justin Trudeau

So, Trudeau has announced he won’t form a coalition with any other party (really, not with the NDP, Canada’s left wing party), or a confidence and supply agreement (in which a party agrees to support them on confidence votes but not other votes), but instead to run a minority government.

His first order of business will be a tax cut.

I said in the last post that I thought Trudeau would be more comfortable working with the Conservatives than the NDP, given he’s a staunch neoliberal, and this indicates he’s de-facto going to do that: The Conservatives never saw a tax cut they didn’t like, after all.

Minority governments don’t tend to last, so there’ll probably be another election in about two years. Trudeau would rather take a shot at a majority, with the possibility of a loss, than run a coalition government.

More importantly, I’m reasonably sure that he’s just not willing to do the things the NDP would require in return for a coalition. They, after all, want to raise taxes on the rich and corporations, for example.

We’ll see how it plays out. My sense is that an NDP coalition, through which he did some genuinely left-wing populist things, would have been a better call for him from a practical perspective (and I think not just because I prefer the NDP). He could then take credit for the stuff he was forced to do and win a majority–as his father did when he joined a coalition with the NDP.

But unlike his father, Justin is genuinely conservative–he’s a neoliberal. He’s going to make decisions based on what he actually believes in, which is… good?

I suspect he’s risking a loss. If he’s going to play conservative, people may decide they might as well get the real thing. But I’m bad at electoral predictions, so I’ll just sit back and see.

The results of the work I do, like this article, are free, but food isn’t, so if you value my work, please DONATE or SUBSCRIBE.

Liberal Party Wins a Minority in Canada

By

On October 22, 2019

16 Comments

Justin Trudeau

So, as the polls predicted, the Liberals win the most seats, but just short of a majority. The Conservatives actually got slightly more of the popular vote at 33 to 34 percent, but as their support is geographically clustered, they received less seats.

The NDP lost seats, taking them down to 24. The Bloc went from almost none to probably 32 of Quebec’s 78 ridings, making them the third largest party. This shouldn’t be taken as meaning separatism is roaring back, the Bloc downplayed separatism, but did benefit from supporting the “no religious symbols law” in Quebec (which includes hijabs and so on). The Quebecois, like the French, are still big believers in secularism and not fans of multiculturalism.

The most likely result here is a Liberal/NDP coalition government, though Trudeau could try to govern as a minority. He won’t want to ally with the Bloc as they are still officially separatists, and the rest of Canada wouldn’t like that.

My read of Trudeau’s personality is that he’s woke in the most performative sense; he doesn’t actually believe in anything left-wing, really, and he won’t like allying with the NDP. I read Trudeau right when he became leader, noting that there was no chance in hell of any electoral reform under him unless it was ranked ballots, and I stated that he was an empty shirt. His betrayal of his promises to Canada’s indigenous people and his buying a pipeline indicate I was correct.

Trudeau would be more comfortable working with the Conservatives, in my view, but that’s impossible for a variety of reasons.

So, we’ll see what he does. I’d expect him to suck it up and do a coalition, then like his father, after having been forced to do some left-wing things by the NDP, to use those as proof that he’s left-wing and not an empty shirt, and call another election. (His father, though many things, was not empty, mind you.)

However, we’ll see. Trudeau’s primary characteristic is near narcissism. He’s always been beautiful, rich, and loved. He has near divine confidence that whatever he does is right, and he’s a neoliberal at heart.

As for the longer future, nothing about this election is good. The NDP continue to slide. The Conservatives are getting stronger, and the Liberals are just neoliberals. There is no sign that Canadian politics is getting healthier, other than a minor surge by the NDP towards the end. The choice remains one between “bad” or “terrible.”

The results of the work I do, like this article, are free, but food isn’t, so if you value my work, please DONATE or SUBSCRIBE.

 

What Protests in Lebanon, France, Chile, and Ecuador Have in Common

By

On October 21, 2019

16 Comments

There’s some important events happening today: Another Brexit vote, and the Canadian federal election (whose results are not obvious), but we won’t know how either of those end until later, so let’s discuss some popular protests of massive size.

In France, the protests were sparked by an increase in diesel taxes. The demands included an increase in the minimum wage, a re-introduction of a wealth tax, and lower fuel taxes, along with Macron’s resignation.

Now what’s interesting is what they got, and what they didn’t get:

He (Macron) subsequently promised a minimum wage increase of €100 per month from 2019, cancelled a planned tax increase for low-income pensioners, and made overtime payments as well as end-of-year bonuses tax free. However, Macron refused to reinstate a wealth tax he scrapped upon entering into office

So, crushing the lower classes with regressive taxes, rolled back a bit. But the wealth tax was not re-instated. “We’re willing to give a bit on crushing the peasants into the dirt, but not on ourselves getting richer.”

In Ecuador, the protests were caused by an IMF austerity package which removed fuel subsidies. (Notice a similarity here?) The protests were so large that the government was forced to flee the capital. On at least one occasion (and maybe more), the military actually stopped the police from attacking protestors.

The austerity was rescinded, and Moreno agreed to work together with indigenous and other leaders to figure out how to tackle the debt.

In Chile, the protests were started by an increase in the fare for public transit. (Are you noticing a trend here? Transportation costs, transportation costs, transportation costs = regressive taxes, in effect.) Unfortunately, as often happens, anger led rioters to attack the immediate object of their anger; in this case they burned down metro stations, which was incredibly foolish, because now those stations will be out of commission for months.

As I have noted repeatedly, if you are going to riot, take a bit of time to head into the nice part of the town where the rich live and riot there.

The riots and protests are ongoing, there’s been a curfew imposed, and we’ll see how it plays out. But the transit fare increase has already been cancelled.

In Lebanon , we have a slight alteration in the pattern: The government was going to tax messaging on WhatsApp and other messaging services. But again, this is a regressive tax–ordinary people message and text a lot. A rich person isn’t even going to notice, but such a tax would add up quickly for people who aren’t wealthy.

This protest seems to be the most radical of the bunch. There’s a nationwide general strike called for today (Monday), and…

Ending rampant corruption is a central demand of the protesters, who say the country’s leaders have used their positions to enrich themselves for decades through favourable deals and kickbacks…

…Speaking to Al Jazeera from Beirut, Nizar Hassan, a member of Lihaqqi, an opposition progressive movement, said people want to overthrow the “political class … in peaceful, constitutional means”.

This is why they have been calling for a new cabinet that is independent of the ruling forces in the country, he noted.

“We are not settling for small kind of reforms … what we need is taxes on those who have been benefitting from the economic system for the last 30 years,” Hassan said, adding that Lebanon’s economic problems are “very structural”.

Now it’s hard to say how real this is, but the demonstrations are huge, and if the general strike actually comes off it indicates a united citizenry.

In all of these cases, what we have is a revolt against the rich. In all of these cases, we have attempts to raise taxes on the poor and middle class.

All of these protests are economic protests. They are about class, wealth, and income. They are about the fact that all four countries have very rich people, and yet taxes fall harder and harder on the non-rich.

Macron may mouth off about climate change, but what he wanted to do was make the poor pay for a climate change tax AFTER he removed a wealth tax. These people want the poorest to pay for the sins of the richest. 

And the weak and the poor are saying, “No.”

We’ll see how it all plays out. There are still some yellow vest protests in France, but they’ve died down a great deal. Lebanon and Chile are ongoing. Ecuador is in play with new negotiations.

But this is a rise of people smashed flat, finally saying, “Enough.”

I don’t think our lords and masters in most countries are able to listen, honestly. They got where they are by imposing generations of austerity (it didn’t start in 2008, it accelerated then) and it’s all they know. They like being rich and powerful, they’re used to killing people to get their way (their policies have killed plenty of people, don’t pretend otherwise), and they’re not likely to stop unless they’re scared spitless.

But the Lebanese who want them gone have the right idea. People who think this group of leaders can be made to do the right thing are simply wrong. They may give a little on specific issues, but their hearts and intentions will never change.

You need leaders who actually want to do the right thing, and they won’t and can’t come from our current ruling class.

The results of the work I do, like this article, are free, but food isn’t, so if you value my work, please DONATE or SUBSCRIBE.

 

Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – October 20, 2019

By

On October 20, 2019

5 Comments

by Tony Wikrent
North Carolina Democratic Party Progressive Caucus

Strategic Political Economy

[Wired, via The Big Picture 10-19-19]

….Mazzucato, an Italian-American economist who had spent decades researching the economics of innovation and the high tech industry, decided to look deeper into the early history of some of the world’s most innovative companies. The development of Google’s search algorithm, for instance, had been supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation, a US public grant-awarding body. Electric car company Tesla initially struggled to secure investment until it received a $465 million (£380 million) loan from the US Department of Energy. In fact, three companies founded by Elon Musk — Tesla, SolarCity and SpaceX — had jointly benefited from nearly $4.9 billion (£3.9bn) in public support of various kinds. Many other well-known US startups had been funded by the Small Business Innovation Research programme, a public venture capital fund. “It wasn’t just early research, it was also applied research, early stage finance, strategic procurement,” she says. “The more I looked, the more I realised: state investment is everywhere.”

Mazzucato included her findings in a 150-page pamphlet she submitted to UK policy think tank Demos. It was distributed to thousands of policymakers, and received coverage in daily newspapers. “It was obvious that it had touched a nerve,” she says. “The more I thought about it, the more I wanted to go straight to the core of the myths about innovation.” She decided to dissect the product that symbolised Silicon Valley’s engineering prowess: the iPhone.

Mazzucato traced the provenance of every technology that made the iPhone. The HTTP protocol, of course, had been developed by British scientist Tim Berners-Lee and implemented on the computers at CERN, in Geneva. The internet began as a network of computers called Arpanet, funded by the US Department of Defense (DoD) in the 60s to solve the problem of satellite communication. The DoD was also behind the development of GPS during the 70s, initially to determine the location of military equipment. The hard disk drive, microprocessors, memory chips and LCD display had also been funded by the DoD. Siri was the outcome of a Stanford Research Institute project to develop a virtual assistant for military staff, commissioned by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). The touchscreen was the result of graduate research at the University of Delaware, funded by the National Science Foundation and the CIA.

See also my HAWB series: How America Was Built. List of previous posts is at the bottom of this story on NASA aerodynamicist Richard Whitcomb. 
[Luke Savage, via Avedon’s Sideshow 9-30-19]

Contemporary liberals are temperamentally conservative — and what they want to conserve is a morally bankrupt political order. […] No, that instinct owes much more to watching Barack Obama summon forth a tidal wave of popular goodwill, then proceed to invite the same old cadre of apparatchiks and financiers back into the White House to carry on business as usual despite the most punishing economic crisis since the Great Depression; to seeing the ‘war on terror’ become a permanent fixture of the global landscape long after its original architects had been booted from the halls of power, courtesy of supposedly enlightened humanitarians; to witnessing a potentially monumental hunger for change be sacrificed on the altar of managerialism and technocratic respectability. It comes from watching a smiling Nick Clegg stand next to David Cameron in the Rose Garden at Number 10 Downing Street before rubber-stamping a series of lacerating cuts to Britain’s welfare state and betraying a generation of students in the process; to seeing the dexterity by which Canada’s liberals gesture to the left then govern from the right; and from seeing the radical demands of global anti-austerity movements endlessly whittled down and regurgitated as neoliberal slam poetry to be recited at Davos by the hip young innovators du jour.

I am convinced that what we have been taught about liberalism is highly inaccurate. The conclusion I am heading toward is that liberalism was created by oligarchical opponents of the American Revolution as a marketable alternative to republicanism. Liberalism has no problem with structures of economic power and wealth highly skewed to the wealthy, so long as everyone is “treated fairly.” Republicanism sees economic concentrations of wealth as dangerous to a republic as a standing army. Of course, we haven’t been taught that at all.

Corporate America’s Second War With the Rule of Law: Uber, Facebook, and Google are increasingly behaving like the law-flouting financial empires of the 1920s. We know how that turned out.

Matt Stoller [Wired, via The Big Picture 10-17-19]

Read More

Open Thread

By

On October 19, 2019

38 Comments

As usual, feel free to comment here on topics unrelated to recent posts.

AOC, Ilhan Omar, and Tlaib Endorse Sanders

By

On October 17, 2019

79 Comments

AOC

I find it interesting that many centrists are angered and surprised. They thought these three, arguably the most progressive members of the House caucus, would endorse Warren.

Certainly, by recent standards Warren is progressive and left-leaning, but she’s weak sauce compared to Sanders.

But centrists thought because she was a woman, AOC, Tlaib, and Omar would endorse her.

I’m glad to see this shift away from identity as primary. Of course, Sanders is Jewish, though no one seems to care, but they don’t care in large part because he doesn’t make a deal out of it at all. Sanders is for everyone. Some people need more help, and he wants to give it them.

And that’s what true left-wingers want. Identity can’t, and shouldn’t be ignored, because the world doesn’t ignore it, but almost everyone needs help at some point, and everyone should have a good life, and it’s good politics to talk to everyone.

Despite all the talking points about Bernie Bros, Sanders support has always actually been more female than male, and more ethnic than white. This shouldn’t be a surprise, because economic populism, combined with specific policies to help non-white males, will help them a ton.

A final note: If Warren wins the nomination, I’ll endorse her, and happily, even though I prefer Sanders. But, I do remember that she didn’t endorse Sanders in 2016 when her endorsement might have mattered in Massachusetts. These three young politicians have shown an integrity and bravery she didn’t. I’ve seen quite a few threats about how AOC (in particular) will pay a price. I’m sure Warren understood that in 2016, and thus decided to lay low.

Real allies don’t do that, and it’s one thing which has made me uneasy about Warren ever since.

AOC, Tlaib, and Omar, on the other hand, continue to earn trust. They say what they mean, and they stand up.

The results of the work I do, like this article, are free, but food isn’t, so if you value my work, please DONATE or SUBSCRIBE.

The Bullshit of Bias Evaluation and Left/Right Equivalency

By

On October 16, 2019

31 Comments

So, I stumbled across this chart recently. Apparently a librarian was using it to teach students about bias.

Where to start?

Well, first, who reading this thinks that the Economist is left wing?

Who here thinks that the New York Times opinion pages are far-left? Or for that matter, CNN opinion?

Those who read or watch the BBC will know of its unrelenting hostility to Corbyn and Labour, and that it isn’t even centrist any more.

MSNBC is as left-wing as Jacobin and the Intercept? Mother Jones is radical left when their house blogger said Bernie was to blame for Clinton losing? (And does anyone think Kevin Drum isn’t a centrist?)

The second thing is this weird equivalency. People who want universal healthcare are the same as people who are racists who want to cut taxes and impoverish people? People who want to do something about climate change are the same as climate change deniers?

The “far”-left in the US or Britain aren’t communists, they are social democrats who would have been considered weak tea in the 60s.

These bias charts and organizations are all folks with money and and an ideological agenda to push: They want to control the Overton window and say what is “reasonable.” And they’re indoctrinating children by pretending to be “scientific.”

The results of the work I do, like this article, are free, but food isn’t, so if you value my work, please DONATE or SUBSCRIBE.

Page 291 of 532

Previous

Next

Powered by WordPress & Theme by Anders Norén