Study: $21 trillion hoard hidden from taxman by global elite

[luke viia]

i don't know about a world of little people, but i am eagerly awaiting the day when agricultural production of food is simply a luxury and most of us survive on easily consumed nutritional food paste. healthy diets are a lot of work and food production is clearly fucking up this planet. vote viia 2052 and receive a free pack of nootropic high-protein chocolate pizza flavored paste sticks for your health.

[SR4]

lol enhancement of smaller people

 

 

 

then we have a world run by the rich with all the resources, and everyone else is too tiny to lift up a rifle.

[BCM]

seriously, i need to be put in charge of EVERYTHING.

 

now pls.

[Hoodie]

the loopholes will never be closed because the only ones who can close the loopholes do not want them to be closed. this is a result of politics being connected to money and i don't see any easy way to sever the relationship between the two.

[goDel]

They will get closed as soon as countries will go bankrupt and take the international financial system down with them if they don't get closed (Spain, Italy, ...). Countries can be too big too fail as well.

[azatoth]

Seize this wealth like if they were terrorists and use it to bail out these failing banks. It's not like these people would be forced to join the breadline.

Overall things need to change a lot in the finance business, it's like the wild west there. Tighter regulation and real consequences for the bank directors if they gamble with other peoples money and lose it, not golden handshakes and multimillion bonuses like it is now. Brazil has the right idea when the bank directors are personally liable if shit goes bad, their houses and assets can be confiscated and lo and behold their banking system is in good shape and the global finance crisis has affected them very little.

[schlucharski]

occupy starbucks ! the root of the problem

 

 

with a fair trade latte macchiato

 

 

[SR4]

but dont the super-rich run these countries? i don't understand how demanding this money will help anything.

[BCM]

yep. the only way anything will change is if the "ordinary man on the street" is willing to risk everything and get out there and take action. but this is never going to happen as everybody's got too much to lose and we're all to selfish to do things for the common good (if we have things to lose, which most of us do). so i'm afraid we're stuck with things as they are. forever.

[Guest ruiagnelo]

yep. the only way anything will change is if the "ordinary man on the street" is willing to risk everything and get out there and take action. but this is never going to happen as everybody's got too much to lose and we're all to selfish to do things for the common good (if we have things to lose, which most of us do). so i'm afraid we're stuck with things as they are. forever.

 

in a way, everyone of us thinks in such way to our deep, inner selves. I don't think we have anything to lose at this point, but we all have gotten to a point where plenty of commodities are taken for granted, since most of us were even born, so it gets a lot harder to stand up and fight for anything, when there is just a glimpse of what fighting for something is, in our genes. I am talking about you, me, watmm and pretty much everyone who uses the internet and can affoard the basic things of a decent life, even thought we are actually so poor and can't notice that. Everyone is guilty, no one is aside. I wonder what little is there left so that we can free ourselves from the way we think, from our computers, and actually care for something.

Of course i am writing this from the commodity of my room and internet connection, but i guess we all think this way, consciously or unconsciously...

[Joyrex]

It's The Golden Rule... The People With The Gold Makes The Rules.

 

This will never change, and if anything, things will get worse. I give mankind about 100 more years at the most, perhaps 200 at a stretch. More importantly, we won't have the technology to get off this rock and live on another world viably for at least another 500-1000 years, so our self-extinction though greed is almost assured.

[BobDobalina]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QcvjoWOwnn4

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_lR5JkgCnU

 

[eugene]

i love violent revolutions and brainless neohippes as much as the next man, but let's not get carried away, things are getting better pretty much universally.

 

http://hdr.undp.org/en/reports/global/hdr2010/news/title,21577,en.html

[sweepstakes]

This will never change, and if anything, things will get worse. I give mankind about 100 more years at the most, perhaps 200 at a stretch. More importantly, we won't have the technology to get off this rock and live on another world viably for at least another 500-1000 years, so our self-extinction though greed is almost assured.

Yeah I want to be optimistic but deep down, this is what I believe.

The greed/sociopathy paradigm is far too prevalent now, at least for those holding the reins.

Hang on as tight as you can to what you've got until it all disintegrates into dust.

[vamos scorcho]

"humanity" barely exists. as Dunsty say Melancholia - "Earth is evil," "nobody will miss it." and that's true.

 

there are two ways to go ... either say "fuck it" and give up on humanity itself, declare it worthless and horrible

 

or make the choice to smile, hug, and look upward. this truly is the culmination of nihilism, we've reached that point.

 

now it is a choice we all must face. band together in positivity or drown in nihilism

 

Transformers 3 is a masterpiece of nihilism, and will be remembered as a cultural touchstone in 50 years or more, if we pull out.

[sweepstakes]

or make the choice to smile, hug, and look upward. this truly is the culmination of nihilism, we've reached that point.

Yeah, this is where I'm at. What's the point in being angry or trying to hang on anymore? It's all dying, just enjoy it while it lasts and be as kind as you can.

[Dale]

It's The Golden Rule... The People With The Gold Makes The Rules.

 

This will never change, and if anything, things will get worse. I give mankind about 100 more years at the most, perhaps 200 at a stretch. More importantly, we won't have the technology to get off this rock and live on another world viably for at least another 500-1000 years, so our self-extinction though greed is almost assured.

one thing to note though; greed caused by environmental factors - not 'inherited' greed.

change the system.

[Guest A/D]

I see more and more people fed up with greed. I think we're going to make it. I don't know if we'll change without a cataclysmic event, but even if such an event happens I feel most people will survive it.

 

My two cents - get involved with local politics. Learn who your congressional and senatorial candidates are. If there's a good one, work for them, donate to them, whatever. Get your friends to vote. There are a few races going on right now where populist candidates are defeating assholes with way more funding than them in the polls. Honestly, we're lucky that the middle & lower classes are being squeezed - in America, we haven't learned to care about government yet, and we won't until we have to. We can do it now. There are people running who give a shit.

[SR4]

greed is a survival instinct.

 

capitalism was the next test stage of natural selection.

 

 

newsflash: we all failed.

 

 

edit i dunno wtf im talking about

[vamos scorcho]

Watch Transformers 3... then everything will make sense...

[Guest A/D]

greed is a survival instinct.

 

capitalism was the next test stage of natural selection.

Heh. I agree, it's easy to think this way. But cooperation is imo a stronger instinct. Our brains are hardwired to get pleasure from cooperation (happy to google if you don't want to). We certainly get immense pleasure from love. To paraphrase Gandhi, history and the news are mostly records of when human cooperation doesn't work - a small percentage of the time, even though conditions for it are often terrible.

[Guest theSun]

the mistake made by society is the assumption that money = evolutionary advantage. this will fuck up humans for many many generations.

 

side note - in the 50s, there was the idea that gradually, as society became more efficient, humans would work less, and we would all enjoy lives of leisure. while tech advantages have certainly made more things possible, i don't think it has translated to a decrease in work for common folk.

[Guest mafted]

i don't understand those that defend the 1%.. and people like Romney who have off shore accounts for most of their money while complaining about the taxes they don't have to pay. these people actually want more taxes for poorer people than rich and that is beyond any type of collective mentality.. that is straight greed.

[SR4]

i don't understand those that defend the 1%.. and people like Romney who have off shore accounts for most of their money while complaining about the taxes they don't have to pay. these people actually want more taxes for poorer people than rich and that is beyond any type of collective mentality.. that is straight greed.

 

its not about having more for some of these people though, its like Gekko said in Wall Street, when you get to that level its a zero-sum game. A complete and utter power trip. Its all a game, winners and losers. The money is only an indication of how badly you have beaten your opponent.

 

If you have a billion dollars, getting another two million means essentially nothing to you, except for that you succeeded or triumphed over an opposing force. the further up you go, the more likely it is that this game becomes your entire reality, and you forget where you started out.

 

so in that sense, the 1% have seen nothing but success for most of their lives, and that success is translatable in dollars. Thus, the more money they save, the more successful they are. Thus, the 99% are preventing their success and are obstacles to reaching it. They must be overcome.

 

does everyone know that one guy or girl at work that is completely full of themselves and maintains this freakishly arrogant positivism around their abilities and everything they do? Right, now imagine that person thinking like that and succeeding at absolutely everything.

[patternoverlap]

Hurray for the free market.

 

 

And further, they demonize those who criticize their tactics. The biggest horror is that there's a lot of middle and lower class people who defend the 1%'s right to treat the economy like their own personal betting stash; calling it picking on the job creators. If these people were actually reinvesting this money back into their respective economies then a lot of the issues we are having wouldn't exist.