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Aug 25 '19
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u/zaparans Aug 25 '19
I mean, it doesn’t speed up the process either when the defendant lives in Panama and adds an international element to it. But sure. It’s just cause of wealth.
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Aug 25 '19
Charges filed in 2018, trial 2020. That's actually fast for our justice system. Things like simple DUI charges can take over a year to make it to court.
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u/NeuroSciCommunist Aug 26 '19
Arguably the point is that the charges should have been filed a lot sooner near the release of the papers in 2015.
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u/LordDongler Aug 26 '19
Will be pushed back a minimum of 2 years "to allow the defense time to gather evidence" (to shred)
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u/theswannwholaughs Aug 26 '19
The state is bad too but capitalism and wealth accumulation is the worst.
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u/zaparans Aug 26 '19
Wealth is not a zero sum game. Someone else being rich doesn’t make others poor.
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u/NoMoreNicksLeft Aug 25 '19
"Please tax that money and buy more drone bombs to drop on Yemeni weddings." -- Every "pay their fair share" Democrat whining about tax cheats, ever.
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u/ArianaFan224 Aug 25 '19
sure but the rich and powerful get away scott-free when they dont pay whereas we regular folk will be locked up for life. plus theres the whole killing-the-journalist-who-exposed-you thing
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u/NoMoreNicksLeft Aug 25 '19
sure but the rich and powerful get away scott-free when they dont pay whereas we regular folk will be locked up for life.
You can't even not pay. It's withheld from your paycheck.
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u/Komi_Ishmael Aug 25 '19
Regular folks have options to "not pay", also. They just don't educate themselves on how to use it - or consider it to be a "loophole". Everyone is playing the same game, but not many understand the rules.
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u/bananosecond Aug 26 '19
You're right that it's unfair, but your anger should be directed at the government taking regular folks' money rather than at others evading taxes.
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Aug 26 '19
Hmm, I wonder if anyone other than liberals has anything to say about wealth inequality...
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u/Dhaerrow Aug 25 '19
Serious question: How was the wealth "stolen"?
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u/NoShit_94 Aug 25 '19
Leftists think profits are stolen from the workers.
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Aug 26 '19
I would say this is an inaccurate representation of the theory of surplus value. Yes, absolutely leftist say this but I would disagree with them in that's not the Marxist interpretation of what is happening (not all leftist are Marxists, but most are and even more subscribe to some of his ideas). Its not that the surplus value is stolen but rather due to the imbalance of power between the owners of capital and the workers the workers have no say in how surplus value is used. It's not an issue of stealing, it's an issue of the product of your time and labor being solely decided by those who already wealthy. Strangely enough they always seem to opt into making themselves more wealthy. No other facet of western society is less democratic than the workplace. Imagine more people having more direct control over a the part of their life where they spend almost half of their waking life? The gall.
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u/NoShit_94 Aug 26 '19 edited Aug 26 '19
Its not that the surplus value is stolen but rather due to the imbalance of power between the owners of capital and the workers the workers have no say in how surplus value is used.
This still assumes surplus value exists, which it doesn't, since value is subjective.
it's an issue of the product of your time and labor being solely decided by those who already wealthy.
The owner get's to solely decide what to do with the final good, but you in exchange gets to solely decide what to do with your salary. You get wealthier too.
The owner values your time and labour more than the wage he pays you, but you value the wage he pays you more than your time and labour, therefore both parties profit from the exchange
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Aug 26 '19
Damn right they are. Your boss can't turn a profit unless he's paying you less than what you're worth.
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u/Conservative-Hippie Aug 26 '19
What if your boss isn't turning a profit? Are you then stealing from him? Or is it only theft when it's convenient to you?
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u/NoShit_94 Aug 26 '19
Value is subjective. What you're "worth" is not a fixed quantity, it's instead merely a subjective evaluation of each person. Your boss thinks you're worth more than the wages he pays, or he wouldn't hire you, and you think the wages are worth more than your labour, or you wouldn't take the job.
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u/CommiesCanSuckMyNuts Aug 26 '19
You voluntarily entered into an employment contract. Nothing was stolen from you.
Fucking socialists, I swear.
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u/CrazyKing508 Aug 25 '19
Normal people pay taxes. They did not. In our current system they are supposed to contribute tax money. They did not.
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u/Gretshus Aug 25 '19
also, they can't make the excuse of "this is international" because America has international taxation. I should know, I live overseas.
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u/mkay0 Aug 25 '19
Price controls because there is no competition because the people at the top have a huge advantage, for one.
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Aug 26 '19
Because corporations get money from the government and all the government's money is stolen.
The government also passes laws and regulations that favor larger corporations over upstarts, which again, is funded by the government and its stolen money.
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u/PoetAlcoholic Aug 25 '19
They cheated on their taxes and disenfranchised a lot of workers.
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u/Dhaerrow Aug 25 '19
What taxes, should they have been subject to that tax, and how did they disenfranchise anyone?
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u/PoetAlcoholic Aug 25 '19
Taxes that they would have payed had the wealth been in America where it was created, yes they should have been, and they made a lot of people poorer because the money that public officials were supposed to use for public works was now being horded in tax havens in Panama.
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u/Viktor_Hadah Aug 25 '19
Maybe, the government should stop taxing people for public works and let the free market handle that. So there would not be as much of an incentive to use tax havens.
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u/Ismokeshatter92 Aug 25 '19
You sound like you’ll be really successful in life blaming everyone for your problems 😂
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u/zaparans Aug 25 '19
Not this shit again. A fuckton came out of the Panama papers. Anybody who thinks differently is a fucking retard who didn’t pay attention
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u/spelling_reformer Aug 26 '19
And the reporter's murder had nothing to do with the Panama Papers. She was investing unrelated organized crime IIRC.
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u/heyugl Aug 26 '19
yeah, she was assassinated because she was investigating corruption on the Maltese government not for the papers.-
so is actually another reason for dismantling the state, they are corrupted af and if you dare to try to prove it, they will kill you (or start an international persecution, hi Snowden).-
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u/zaparans Aug 26 '19
They never found out who did it but she was also investigating some other nasty stuff
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u/DarthSulla Aug 25 '19 edited Aug 26 '19
Seriously they just keep reposting this for upvotes. Anyone can google and see a lot of people were forced to pay taxes after this by their respective governments.
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u/fartsniffer87 Aug 25 '19
Seriously, the damn PM of Iceland had to step down for chrissake
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Aug 25 '19
step down
That's not a punishment. That's a preemptive measure to escape punishment. Just like police officers going on leave instead of being charged after raping a handcuffed woman in the back of their cruiser, it's a hand-wave to avoid actual justice being done.
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u/Mysteriouspaul Aug 26 '19
Oh great the Prime Minister of a tiny rock on the very edge of the globe with barely anyone to govern went down in the wreckage. Watch out world leaders
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u/sanjih Aug 25 '19
I think I see this post everyday on Reddit and it's always called out in the comments. It was wrong when it was written, and It's still wrong today.
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Aug 25 '19
They assume that rich folks are the source of all global problems, and that cracking down on them would make a huge dent that would affect their lives. ie the magic influx of money that would pay for Medicare for all etc.
Turns out the crackdown is not a panacea and they didn’t personally feel any effects. They assume that’s because of inaction and corruption, when in reality they’ve misidentified the problems that really impact their lives.
Crack down for sure but don’t think it’s going to do much in terms of global human well being. You need rule of law, property rights and markets for that, not just a one time redistribution of some billionaires’ seized assets.
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Aug 25 '19
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u/wwwwwwhitey Aug 26 '19
I work in tax law in Europe and A LOT came out of it. I don’t know about the criminal stuff, but there’s been afflux of communication between tax administration, stricter anti abuse clauses in new multilateral tax treaties. Switzerland doesn’t have banking secret anymore, which changes a lot.
It’s pretty complicated but to sum it up, the partner at my firm has been telling me she used to almost exclusively do non judicial tax schemes and now most of the work is pre judicial or judicial (when they’re already in trouble with the tax administration)
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u/Noodle36 Aug 26 '19
Was Daphne Caruana Galizia "the reporter behind the story" on the Panama Papers? There may be some way in which she was more key to the whole thing than I'm aware of, but my understanding of the story (and I'm a news producer who had to deal with the logistics of this) was that it was a collaborative effort by literally hundreds or thousands of journalists via the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, which arranged for stories to be worked on & published simultaneously in countries around the world - so here in Australia we had local names working local angles, and similar in all other countries.
It seems like Daphne Caruana Galizia was in that role for Malta, where people high up in the government were revealed to have ownership in companies by the leaked papers. She was assassinated a few months after revealing that the wife of the Maltese Prime Minister was involved in one of these companies. It sounds like she was doing great and important work in Malta (including exposing organised crime, which may be a more proximate cause for her murder), but I think this meme slides her up in prominence to imply a much larger conspiracy than Maltese corruption. The Panama Papers embarrassed Australia's then-Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull too, but Nassim Khadem and Elise Worthington are both walking around remarkably unexploded.
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u/bond___vagabond Aug 26 '19
Hey, if the billionaires paid taxes, that could be used to lessen the severity of climate change, how could they afford quite as nice of climate apocalypse bunkers in New Zealand and outer space?/s
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u/hippymule Aug 26 '19 edited Aug 26 '19
Kinda surprised people are upvoting this in this sub, because people here tend to circle jerk the rich.
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Aug 25 '19
People keeping more of the money they earn? How dare they
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u/justgot86d Aug 25 '19
Yeah but murdering the reporter still violates the NAP
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u/zaparans Aug 25 '19
It’s unclear who murdered her but I doubt it was every entity affected by the PP
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u/mkay0 Aug 25 '19
Rigging a system to make sure that there is no actual free market, and those at the top can only succeed? Yeah, how dare they
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u/Olangotang Aug 25 '19
People who make billions of dollars, that completely fuck up the government for non rich people, while simultaneously brainwashing them that they need to give them more power.
How dare they.
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u/NiceTryIWontReply Aug 25 '19
Oh yes how dare we question the almighty job creators. They own us, we should just quietly let them do whatever they want like good peasants.
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u/Ismokeshatter92 Aug 25 '19
You should create a business if you hate job creators so much
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u/Viktor_Hadah Aug 25 '19
Yes, But not sarcastically. We should let people quietly do what they want.
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u/Comrade_Comski Aug 26 '19
Am I still on r_libertarian or has this sub been completely taken over?
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Aug 25 '19
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u/staytrue1985 Aug 25 '19
It's ok, these people are working on solving global warming and hate speech at this very moment. Just sit tight and don't have any wrong thoughts.
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u/KaikoLeaflock Aug 25 '19
Yeah, Poseidon’s got everything under control as soon as he’s done procreating with a particularly handsome goat.
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u/Gretshus Aug 25 '19
yeah, climate scientists still aren't entirely sure about how to approach global warming, so our politicians should know exactly what to do /s
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u/selectrix Aug 26 '19
climate scientists still aren't entirely sure about how to approach global warming
That's not true. The approach is "reduce fucking carbon emissions already. Or better yet 40 years ago." Scientists have been saying that for decades.
Or maybe you were talking about specifics like tax incentives and regulations, in which case it has to be said that those things are not the scientists' job, whereas they are the politicians' job. In other words, I'm really not seeing why you think politicians wouldn't have a better idea how to handle political approaches.
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u/Death_Soup Aug 26 '19
We're not entirely sure how to combat climate change so let's do absolutely nothing in the meantime. In fact let's continue to dump more and more pollution into the atmosphere /s
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u/silver-saguaro Aug 26 '19
Can't get a weather forecast right an hour into the future but we sure can tell you what to expect in the next 12 years.
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Aug 26 '19
It’s kind of ridiculous to put SJWs and global warming on the same level.
“Once someone told me not to be a cunt on the internet, and once I handle that I’ll start caring about the death of the planet”
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u/bunnysuitfrank Aug 25 '19
And the Michael Hastings prequel.
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Aug 26 '19
His last story, "Why Democrats Love to Spy On Americans", was published by BuzzFeed on June 7, 2013.
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u/bunnysuitfrank Aug 26 '19
Yeah. And he was apparently working on a story about the CIA just before he died, and he was super paranoid about it. He even thought that someone was tampering with his car leading up to and the night of his death. He crash his car going “top speed” at 4:30am. It was so fast that his engine flew 60ft out of his car upon impact. There’s apparently video showing his car zooming by and “sparking”. (His car eventually was engulfed in flames.)
Foul play was ruled out 2 days later, and cause of death was determined to be extreme blunt force trauma. His body was all burned up, but was still able to be identified via fingerprints.
Obviously due to the nature of his work, there was a lot of suspicion about his death. Some people in the national security field said that the accident sounded exactly like what could happen if you wanted to assassinate someone by hacking into their car. However, his family has come out against these claims.
His brother was staying with him the week leading up to his death. He said he’d believe the conspiracy theories if he hadn’t. He said his brother was going through a manic episode, possibly triggered by drug use, similar to one he’d gone through 15 years prior, and snuck out the night he died.
I don’t know. Very suspicious, but plausible. I give it a 90% chance the official story is true. Fucked up either way.
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u/Like1OngoingOrgasm Aug 26 '19
Almost like the economic and political system favors rich elites at the expense of the working class...
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u/Der_Absender Aug 26 '19
Nooo, it is just the political system. The inherent hierarchical aspects of wage labour that would radicalize and create more poverty for workers, because of rationalization, wage dropping and prize rising, without the protection of the state, which are even with it's protection remarkably efficient at producing poverty, has nothing to do with it.
Just the state.
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u/theswannwholaughs Aug 26 '19
I was gonna say something about the fact that capitalism would be even worse with no state but I googled murray bookchin.
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u/aeeneas Aug 26 '19
And in both cases “the rich people” are actually politicians and their close friends, who are democratically elected to care for tHe pOoRs.
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u/qdobaisbetter Aug 26 '19
No no citizen. Nothing to see here. All is well and the law is equally applied to all.
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u/JillsACheatNMean Aug 26 '19
I just watched a video on r/joerogan about Epstein’s origins. Regardless if you believe them or not it was wasn’t a waste of ten minutes.
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Aug 25 '19
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u/bjt23 Aug 25 '19
I'm middle class and it's ridiculous how much is taken out of my paycheck when I actually look. I could afford a really nice car with that money, or put more towards retirement! Instead it's being wasted on bombs and bureaucracy.
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u/cheesecrystal Aug 26 '19
The crazy thing is income was never supposed to be taxed, only capital gains were taxable. Give a mouse a cookie.... it’s pretty fucking gross that someone renting their time as labor in exchange for a wage is subject to the government taking 30% of it. I remember this being explained to me when I got my first job while in high school. I was pissed that the government was entitled to some of my $5/ hr that I earned busting my ass. I’d made me not want to work, and turned me on to hiding every red cent I can from uncle sam’s broke- misappropriating ass.
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Aug 25 '19
Mainly bureaucracy and handouts. Bombs make up only a small bit of the budget.
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u/Verbose_Headline Aug 26 '19
Too much though. Food stamps have a positive effect on the economy in which they fe used. Bombs do not.
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u/TheDunadan29 Aug 26 '19
Coming soon! Also paying for everyone's college!
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u/Radagastroenterology Aug 26 '19
They pays for itself in future GDP. It's like complaining about paying for the fire department.
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u/selectrix Aug 26 '19
I'm with you on the corruption, waste, and debt, but...
Government programs are what makes the middle class. You can either look at existing countries today and see the correlation between middle class size and government support programs, or look at the rest of recorded history to see that the "natural" state of things in human society is for wealth and power to accumulate in the hands of a very small group of people. To maintain a middle class takes a lot of work, and until some new, altruistic evolution of homo sapiens takes over the planet you need a government to organize and motivate the huge number of people who do all of said work. You've got your police/fire/etc to protect the middle class's private property, your court system to give them a fighting chance against the big guys, your consumer protection and regulatory agencies to make sure they're not getting fucked over in the first place, your welfare system to keep the impoverished people from stealing from, dying on the street around, or otherwise harming them; possibly even to help move those impoverished people into the middle class so they can stop being a drain, if we're optimistic. I'm sure there's plenty more.
Point being, by all means be mad about how your taxes are being spent- it's certainly abhorrent at the moment. But keep in mind that taxes are what supports and grows a middle class, one way or another.
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u/TheDunadan29 Aug 26 '19
Correlation doesn't equal causation though. But then again, I carefully count how many Nicolas Cage movies are out and plan my pool parties accordingly.
Perhaps we have a wealth of government programs because we have a healthy middle class that supports it. The rich have no need, and the poor can't pay for it, so it's the middle class that makes these programs possible.
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u/sahuxley2 Aug 26 '19
Don't forget public education. It's an enormous enabler for those who otherwise would remain poor for generations. Historically, education was an enormous class divider. It still is, but public education mitigates it greatly.
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u/theswannwholaughs Aug 26 '19
I believe homo sapiens is altruistic in nature but capitalism and any system with power to a few that supports not being altruistic will have its worst elements at power both in politics and wealth.
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Aug 25 '19
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u/mkay0 Aug 25 '19
Amazon pays no taxes, but you and I pay 40 percent? yeah, that's fucking stealing, m8
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u/_okcody Aug 26 '19
It’s kind of misleading to say Amazon doesn’t pay taxes, they pay significantly less than you’d expect for a company of their size but that’s largely because they reinvest profits into infrastructure and development. The government intentionally allows for this tax avoidance measure because pouring your profits into development means more jobs. It would be different if Amazon hoarded that money and did nothing with it, shelving it in offshore accounts to defer taxes.
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u/45321200 Aug 25 '19
Who's doing the stealing? The one trying to keep their money, or the govt using threat of violence to take your money?
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Aug 25 '19
It’s stealing when the mugger takes your wallet. The next guy isn’t stealing when he hides his wallet so the mugger can’t get it.
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u/NoShit_94 Aug 25 '19
Yeah, it's the government stealing from you. What does Amazon have to do with that?
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Aug 25 '19
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u/ArianaFan224 Aug 25 '19
to quote myself,
sure but the rich and powerful get away scott-free when they dont pay whereas we regular folk will be locked up for life. plus theres the whole killing-the-journalist-who-exposed-you thing6
u/TheGourmet9 Aug 26 '19
This journalist was not behind the Panama Papers. She was reporting on all kinds of corruption in her country in Malta for a very long time, which the Panama Papers, but specifically about her government in Malta. The op is intentionally misleading, making it seem like she's the one who discovered the papers and was assassinated for it by the powerful people of the world as revenge for it.
Everything about her journalism and reason she died had to do with her coverage of corruption within Malta. An island with less than 500,000 people in it. What happened to her has nothing to do with the rich and powerful of America.
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u/matts2 Aug 26 '19
No one gets locked up for failing to pay. A small number who engage in large scale fraud go to jail. But if you stopped paying and filing today and never responded to the IRS you would not go to jail.
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Aug 25 '19
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u/thelawsmithy Aug 25 '19
It appears that OP is complaining about the double standard he says is being applied. That isn’t illogical. You can hate taxation, and still reasonably decry a double standard where some suffer the consequences more heavily than favored people who don’t.
Still, wish I had me some of those tax havens.
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Aug 26 '19
You can do both, if you understand that when they evaded taxes their transgression wasn’t against the state that demanded those taxes, but the society which might’ve benefited from them.
Of course the US government wouldn’t have used the tax dollars anywhere near correctly, but it would be the height of naïveté to believe that billionaires evade taxes for that reason.
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Aug 25 '19
Ideologically pure libertarians would say any taxation is theft, but then you’re talking to someone closer to an ancap.
Most libertarians don’t advocate for 0 taxes. We want a smaller government that has less power and responsibility as this would leave less room for corruption and authoritarianism.
The ultra wealthy dodging their taxes consequence free is brought up here because the rest of us without government connections would be in prison for this same thing over much less money.
The ultra wealthy use government power to create barriers of entry and unfair playing fields in market places. Limiting the government’s power is the most effective way to stop that corruption.
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Aug 26 '19 edited Aug 26 '19
Taxation is theft. Imprisonment is kidnapping.
But unless you have saints, there is some minimal amount required for the social contract.
In other words, government is a "necessary evil".
EDIT: Interestingly, I am not familiar with the common phrase "necessary good". Turns out some of life just sucks.
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u/NeuroSciCommunist Aug 26 '19
Minarchism eh? If argue that the government should be able to do as much good things as possible, such as wealth redistribution, things that create a more equal world, at least when it comes to countering the circumstances of your birth or circumstances out of your control deciding your fate, while the government should be weak when it comes to bad things like domestic surveillance, imprisonment for victimless crimes, and any kind of censorship, among other things. The goal should be to make the best most fair country possible, not to simply enable fortunate people to have as much wealth as they can possibly attain.
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u/selectrix Aug 26 '19
We want a smaller government that has less power and responsibility as this would leave less room for corruption and authoritarianism.
Just curious- is there any extant correlation between government size and authoritarianism? Because offhand it looks like the countries with the "biggest" governments are first world democracies for the most part whereas those with smaller governments are more likely to be developing economically and authoritarian.
The ultra wealthy dodging their taxes consequence free is brought up here because the rest of us without government connections would be in prison for this same thing over much less money.
"Power steering's acting weird, honey, time to get rid of the car!"
The ultra wealthy use government power to create barriers of entry and unfair playing fields in market places.
Right, because the government is there to [hopefully] stop them from using outright violence. Due to the government monopoly on said violence (which is a good thing, as you can see here).
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u/SpiderPiggies Aug 26 '19
The average age of an empire is roughly 250 years (we're currently in what I'd call the American empire era starting roughly 1815-1865 (end of the Frech revolution to the end of the US civil war) which puts the US and most of Europe historically towards the second half of this era).
When a new empire is formed there is little 'government' oversight and you end up with societies like the so called 'wild west' where people are typically left to deal with their own problems for better or worse. Over time oversight increases steadily until the empire can no longer sustain itself. For instance around 1900, USA government spending was between 10-15% of gdp compared to today's just over 30%. Federal income tax only existed in the US briefly prior to 1900 during the civil war. It was re-implemented to pay for the first world war and we've never looked back. This increase in government influence over the course of an era is well documented but rarely discussed and in my opinion almost always leads to authoritarian leaders before an inevitable collapse.
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u/princecharlz Aug 26 '19
Ummmm ya, early America from 1700 or before to 1900 thrived with very little government interference. And a good example, Hong Kong when it was still a British state saw very little oversight from Britain and thrived and became one of the wealthiest parts of China… The wealthiest part of China. Because it was mostly free. Now look at it.
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Aug 26 '19
What first world democracy with big government are you talking about? European countries? Their individual governments aren’t always the biggest, if you want to see what I mean then look at how cumbersome and corrupt the EU gets.
“All these new extra features they added at the dealership keep breaking and don’t work as advertised, let’s strip the added features”.
The government is not so independent from the wealthy as you seem to assume. The government having a monopoly on violence simply put the power of that violence into the hands of the wealthy who buy politicians.
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u/theswannwholaughs Aug 26 '19
But those limits would be put in place by the ultra wealthy if they had the power to do it (and im interested to know how they wouldnt).
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u/Ashleyj590 Aug 26 '19
If money determines the size and scope of government, the problem is the ultra wealthy and not government.
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Aug 26 '19
Money doesn’t determine its size, the amount of authority and responsibility it has does. Money just allows people to corrupt the government. If you want to stop corruption then you either take away people’s money that could be used to influence the government, or you take away the power that people are looking to influence.
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u/kolikaal Aug 25 '19
Xi Jinping used the list to purge potential challengers from the Chinese Communist Party, so theres that as well.