{"id":2656,"date":"2011-02-19T10:40:33","date_gmt":"2011-02-19T15:40:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/?p=2656"},"modified":"2011-05-27T08:53:46","modified_gmt":"2011-05-27T13:53:46","slug":"tax-evasion-the-dismantling-of-the-public-sector","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2011\/02\/19\/tax-evasion-the-dismantling-of-the-public-sector\/","title":{"rendered":"Tax evasion & the dismantling of the public sector"},"content":{"rendered":"

Johann Hari’s article in The Nation on How to Build a Progressive Tea Party<\/a> is one of the more exciting and inspiring pieces of news I’ve read recently. Hari recounts how a group of Twitter-linked citizens outraged by David Cameron’s \u00a37 billion cuts to social programs when a single company, cellphone giant Vodafone, was allowed to get away without paying \u00a36 billion in British taxes, organized to shut down Vodafone stores across the country.<\/p>\n

All the cuts in housing subsidies, driving all those people out of their homes [200,000 in London alone, apparently], are part of a package of cuts to the poor, adding up to \u00a37 billion. Yet the magazine Private Eye<\/em> reported that one company alone\u2014Vodafone, one of Britain\u2019s leading cellphone firms\u2014owed an outstanding bill of \u00a36 billion to the British taxpayers. According to Private Eye<\/em>, <\/em>Vodaphone had been refusing to pay for years, claiming that a crucial part of its business ran through a post office box in ultra-low-tax Luxembourg. The last Labour government, for all its many flaws, had insisted it pay up. But when the Conservatives came to power, David Hartnett, head of the British equivalent of the Internal Revenue Service, apologized to rich people for being \u201ctoo black and white about the law.\u201d Soon after, Vodafone\u2019s bill was reported to be largely canceled, with just over \u00a31 billion paid in the end.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Add to that billions of pounds in other tax loopholes allowing people and corporations to get off without contributing to the society that makes their business possible.<\/p>\n

The movement, called UK Uncut, spread, forcing Cameron’s Conservative Party and their Liberal Democrat allies to take some action against tax evaders, and even getting sympathetic attention in the country’s right wing press — except for Rupert Murdoch’s News International.<\/p>\n

That exception is very, very intriguing… Apparently, News International, which owns Fox News, hardly pays taxes in the U.K. or in the U.S. — which sounds like a Golden Opportunity to me… Back to that in a minute.<\/p>\n

Here’s how Hari responds to the argument that people like Sir Philip Green — the UK’s ninth wealthiest citizen who runs some of the leading High Street chain stores, advises Cameron, and pays NO TAXES because he claims his income is earned by his wife who lives in the tax haven of Monaco — should not pay taxes because they “earn their money all on their own”:<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s take one branch of Topshop, and for twelve months we\u2019ll deny any services funded by collective taxation to that store. When the rubbish piles up, we won\u2019t send garbage men to collect it. When the rat outbreak begins, we won\u2019t send pest control. When they catch a shoplifter, we won\u2019t send the police. When there\u2019s a fire, we won\u2019t send the fire brigade. When suppliers want to get their goods to the store, there may be a problem: we won\u2019t maintain the roads. When the employees get sick, we won\u2019t treat them in the publicly funded hospitals. Then let Philip Green come back and tell us he does it all himself.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Could this Tea Party-like but real<\/em> populist form of activism be transferred to the United States? Hari notes that 83 of the 100 largest US corporations hide fortunes in tax havens. Sixty-one percent of Americans polled — far more than would back any alternative options — support increasing taxes on the rich as a way to cut the deficit. (That’s not the message you get from the mass media, is it?)<\/p>\n

The main tax evaders in the US, according to Hari, are pharmaceutical and financial companies, who don’t have storefronts that could be boycotted. But other brands — Apple, Bank of America, Best Buy, ExxonMobil, FedEx, Kraft, McDonald’s, Safeway, and Target — do.<\/p>\n

And could we not shut down Fox News around this country? I’m not sure how, though I think we could be creative (starting by letting MSNBC’s stalwart Fox-pickers pick up on this story, if their bosses at GE let them). I’m not even sure how to measure whether Fox, or Murdoch individually, pay their U.S. taxes or not. Any ideas or information about that are welcome.<\/p>\n

The point is that the conservative strategy of attacking unions and dismantling the public sector while letting billionnaires rake in ever greater profits (see Wisconsin, Ohio, Florida, et al.) is not the way to address the deficit. If politicians — like Obama, who said he would clamp down on tax evaders — won’t do their job because they rely on those tax evaders to fund their campaigns, then citizens should do it for them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Johann Hari’s article in The Nation on How to Build a Progressive Tea Party is one of the more exciting and inspiring pieces of news I’ve read recently. Hari recounts how a group of Twitter-linked citizens outraged by David Cameron’s \u00a37 billion cuts to social programs when a single company, cellphone giant Vodafone, was allowed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":99,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[691215],"tags":[397,123663,17814,16930,17815],"class_list":["post-2656","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics_postpolitics","tag-activism","tag-politics","tag-social-movements","tag-tea-party","tag-twitter"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4IC4a-GQ","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1306,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2010\/06\/27\/retreat\/","url_meta":{"origin":2656,"position":0},"title":"retreat","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"June 27, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Being TV-free (but wifi-capable) in the wilds of northeast Vermont, Facebook has become my main news source about the G20 protests in Toronto. http:\/\/vimeo.com\/12883752 I'm taking the liberty of posting a snippet of (anonymous) conversation involving a friend who is there and a handful of interlocutors watching from a distance:\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Politics"","block_context":{"text":"Politics","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/politics_postpolitics\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4530,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2011\/06\/06\/the-state-of-higher-ed\/","url_meta":{"origin":2656,"position":1},"title":"The state of higher ed","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"June 6, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"The Chronicle of Higher Ed has a good article by Tom Lutz on the state of declining education in this country. While the University of California system is being hit particularly hard, the trends are the same at public institutions everywhere, including here at the University of Vermont (class sizes\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Academe"","block_context":{"text":"Academe","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/academe\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":8443,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2015\/11\/09\/whats-happening\/","url_meta":{"origin":2656,"position":2},"title":"What’s happening?","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"November 9, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"The beginning of COP 21, the UN Conference on Climate Change,\u00a0is three weeks away. So what else is happening, you ask? 1) The Campaign Against Climate Change's\u00a0Time to Act!\u00a0campaign, 350.org, Reclaim Power, and various other formations are preparing actions around the world on the eve of the summit (November 28-29)\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Climate change"","block_context":{"text":"Climate change","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/climate-politics\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"ClimateGames-meme-e1444227629407","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2015\/11\/ClimateGames-meme-e1444227629407-275x143.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1357,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2010\/10\/23\/letter-to-a-tea-party-sympathizer\/","url_meta":{"origin":2656,"position":3},"title":"letter to a Tea Party sympathizer","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"October 23, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"As another political season (leading to the midterm elections) winds down here in the US, people get wound up. Here's part of something I wrote to a friend who happens to be a Tea Party sympathizer - which surprised me when I found this out, but life is full of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Politics"","block_context":{"text":"Politics","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/politics_postpolitics\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5324,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2011\/09\/26\/wall-street-occupation\/","url_meta":{"origin":2656,"position":4},"title":"Wall Street occupation","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"September 26, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"Why are the Wall Street protests not getting the media coverage similar events in other countries, or in Tea Party country, get? (Keith Olbermann asks this, below.) \u00a0Discuss. http:\/\/youtu.be\/BSn-IgwQAGY More here and here.","rel":"","context":"In "Media ecology"","block_context":{"text":"Media ecology","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/media_ecology\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/img.youtube.com\/vi\/BSn-IgwQAGY\/0.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1368,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2010\/11\/13\/inside-job\/","url_meta":{"origin":2656,"position":5},"title":"inside job","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"November 13, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=X2DRm5ES-uA?fs=1&hl=en_US It's not as good a film as I would have liked -- there are too many talking heads, and director\/interviewer Charles Ferguson (who remains conveniently invisible throughout) has an annoying tendency to look for \"gotcha\" moments, when his interview subjects hesitate and stumble in answering his questions, as if\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Cinema"","block_context":{"text":"Cinema","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/cinema_zone\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/img.youtube.com\/vi\/X2DRm5ES-uA\/0.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2656","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/99"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2656"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2656\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4278,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2656\/revisions\/4278"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2656"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2656"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2656"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}