It's especially ironic in this situation because the Guardian itself uses offshore tax avoidance techniques to lower its tax bill.
That is not the reason they dodge taxes. Also, tax funded infrastructure and general stability are major factors in why any business is able to thrive but that success is assumed to be wholly owned.
So, the reason is...
> Also, tax funded infrastructure and general stability are major factors in why any business is able to thrive but that success is assumed to be wholly owned.
Just like politicians taking credit and blame for economic conditions. Is your argument that they dodge because think taxation is theft? Fine, figure out a way to get them to pay for the government goods and services they use. If they don't pay, they don't get to use them!
Which is totally irrelevant to the main point being debated: it's not about wealth relative to the past, but about wealth relative to everyone else in the present. The reasons are simple: wealth buys political power, and political power is inevitably used to further concentrate wealth in the hands of those who have a lot of it.
> it's not about wealth relative to the past, but about wealth relative to everyone else in the present.
Who is debating that, exactly? I said things can be a lot better and fairer. But steady improvement over 50 years is nothing to be scoffed at and needs to be recognized and analyzed if we want to preserve those gains for those most marginalized.
> wealth buys political power.... is inevitably used to further concentrate wealth
What if this was shown not to be the case? Would you still be okay with the inequality? And if it is the case, how does this make you and me worse off in the absolute sense?
But there hasn't been a steady improvement over 50 years. Here's what the OECD says [1]: "According to the OECD income distribution database, income inequality among total population in the United States has steady increased from 1974 to 2010."
And here's what the US Census Bureau says about poverty in the United States [2]: "In the late 1950s, the poverty rate was approximately 22 percent, with just shy of 40 million Americans living in poverty. The rate declined steadily, reaching a low of 11.1 percent in 1973 and rising to a high of nearly 15 percent three times – in 1983, 1993 and 2011. However, the 46.2 million Americans in poverty in 2011 is the most ever recorded."
[1] http://www.oecd.org/els/soc/OECDIncomeDistributionDataReview...
[2] https://www.debt.org/faqs/americans-in-debt/poverty-united-s...
Who is centralizing power undemocratically?
I would be okay with it, yes.
But since we have mountains upon mountains of evidence to the contrary (i.e. the wealthy corrupt the political system and make it serve their own ends at the expense of others), your hypothetical is rather meaningless.
>>And if it is the case, how does this make you and me worse off in the absolute sense?
Because it goes against the "one person, one vote" principle of democracy.
Do you mean the mountains of insinuation and innuendo in that article? Just because the Koch brothers want lower taxes and the people who engaged in these tax avoidance schemes do too, doesn't necessarily mean they are colluding to buy elections.
You might as well claim that Apple and Google are buying political power because of the billions they keep offshore, too. They buy power alright, just like all corporations that want to snuff out competition by influencing the laws in their favor. That also keeps the rich rich. But you don't hear of anybody attacking lobbyists, do you?
You wouldn't know it by reading articles like this, and certainly things can be a lot better and fairer, but over the last 50 years, every single ethnic group in this country is better off when you look at this Census report on median household income: https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publicatio.... Welfare programs have only expanded, and necessities like food and clothing have only gotten cheaper.
I admit it isn't staggering advancement, but 50 years is a blip on the grand scheme of things. At the same time we might have just been lucky. But things aren't dire and many in the 1% have contributed in ways that have made us all better off.
Real solutions to the tax dodging problem don't come by slinging emotionally charged statements like this around:
"In so doing, you rob your own society of cash for hospitals, schools, roads…"
Real solutions start by asking why wealthy people don't see value in publicly-financed goods and services, and if these people would have created more or fewer jobs under a more progressive tax regime, and if we want more jobs or more/better social services, and if we want new people in the top 1% every year. These are real tradeoffs that go beyond just negatively impacting the top 1%.