That shoots the trickle-down theory into the trash can. Note that this report shows: -- with $32 trillion, the Euro crisis could be solved and portions of Africa could become more habitable. Diseases could be eradicated. It could literally end world hunger.“These estimates reveal a staggering failure,” the Tax Justice Network’s John Christensen told The Guardian. “Inequality is much, much worse than official statistics show, but politicians are still relying on trickle-down to transfer wealth to poorer people. This new data shows the exact opposite has happened: for three decades extraordinary wealth has been cascading into the offshore accounts of a tiny number of super-rich.”
EXCERPTS: Nations’ problems of debt and deficit could be easily solved by applying taxes to profits held in offshore tax havens, where the global business elite have hidden up to $32 trillion to skirt their responsibilities to tax agencies all over the world, the Tax Justice Network reported this week.
The Tax Justice Network said that its estimates of wealth held in offshore havens ranged from $21 trillion to $32 trillion — the lowest of which is still massively larger than the roughly $11.5 trillion held in those same havens in 2005. The latest report refers to the practice of hiding wealth as “the dark side of globalization” — and shows that practice is still growing rapidly.
For perspective, the entire gross domestic product (GDP) of the U.S. economy for 2011 was $15.9 trillion, whereas U.S. public debt (household debt plus government debt) stands at about $15.8 trillion. If $32 trillion were dolled out evenly to every single American citizen, each person would receive about $102,698.
But the profits don’t just come from U.S. shores: all over the world, business elites are sending their money offshore and away from government taxing authorities, a phenomena the study’s authors say is making social inequality much worse.
From a global perspective, the figures are even more staggering: with $32 trillion, the Euro crisis could be solved and portions of Africa could become more habitable. Diseases could be eradicated. It could literally end world hunger.
“These estimates reveal a staggering failure,” the Tax Justice Network’s John Christensen told The Guardian. “Inequality is much, much worse than official statistics show, but politicians are still relying on trickle-down to transfer wealth to poorer people. This new data shows the exact opposite has happened: for three decades extraordinary wealth has been cascading into the offshore accounts of a tiny number of super-rich.”
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