- cross-posted to:
- aboringdystopia
- eattherich
- [email protected]
- cross-posted to:
- aboringdystopia
- eattherich
- [email protected]
The amount of untaxed wealth hidden offshore by the richest 0.1 percent exceeds the entire wealth of the poorest half of humanity (4.1 billion people), reveals new Oxfam analysis published today ahead of the 10th anniversary of the Panama Papers. The findings show that, a decade later, the super-rich continue to exploit offshore systems to evade taxes and conceal assets, highlighting the urgent need for coordinated international action to tax extreme wealth and end the use of tax havens.
Oxfam estimates that $3.55 trillion in untaxed wealth was stashed offshore in tax havens and unreported accounts in 2024. This sum exceeds the GDP of France and is more than twice the combined GDP of the world’s 44 least developed countries.
The richest 0.1 percent holds approximately 80 percent of all untaxed offshore wealth, or around $2.84 trillion. Within this tiny group, the ultra-wealthiest 0.01 percent holds roughly half ($1.77 trillion).
Well you got to work ontologically. A nation is a system with existing controls. And national control is already dicey at best. Implementing a direct solution at the international level would require a system that to my knowledge doesn’t even exists. We treat the UN like an optional club not a world government.
The scale at which we exert political control has been increasing consistently for, approximately, the last 10k years. The rate has been accelerating too. There’s no reason to believe that the current hodge podge of 300 or so regional factions (nations) is the natural or final solution, and every reason to expect that political/economic power will escalate to the global level, and soon.
We should be focused on ensuring that transition is peaceful and collaborative, that the solution we converge on is fair and sustainable. We should especially be concerned with preventing that transition from being a dominance play by the players currently holding the greatest defacto power (i.e., economic, transnational corporations, and military, the USA).
One major impediment to this is the idea that all we—the ordinary people all over the world—can do is fight amongst each other at a national level about relatively trivial social issues (i.e., by voting for the marginally less bad alternative in our national elections). We can, and should, organise and strive for a democratic, fair, well-designed global political system that keeps economic power in check.
Other major impediments are the lies that a) the only alternative to the current system is totalitarian communism, or other 19th century political models, and b) that we—you and I—need to have a perfect solution in hand already. We can demand, via our respective nations, that the world’s best minds come together and design the best system possible, and that was transition to that system peacefully and rationally.
Ah… So if I’m reading you right, you’re saying:
Yes, no system currently accounts for what we NEED it to do. So the most DIRECT solution would be to create a new movement, a new SYSTEM of people, control, and influence that transcends existing abstractions like nationalities, race, culture, and have this ontologically encompassing system implement that change from its larger frame of reference.
I like that. I hadn’t considered that approach and it’s probably right on the money. I think the first step is recognition of the issue and the need for such a movement. As such… Have you thought about names?
Something you would call such an endeavor, or movement, or coalition. Something that would be instantly recognizable as to what the goal or at least spirit or attitude behind it would be? Probably seems like a silly thing to fixate on this early, but sometimes the right name is a powerful tool.
Lol.
I actually agree with most of your statement, except for “DIRECT”. That’s not part of my claim, and it shouldn’t be a goal of yours.
The terrain has been rigged so that all the direct, the locally advantageous, locally practical solutions lead back to the same toxic equilibrium. We are stuck in a historical basin of attraction and need to escape it.
The only long-term stable/viable solution, the only solution that honours our responsibility to future generations, is to avoid the immediate direct solutions, the ones that the manipulated incentive structures are set up to anticipate, and to do what you described. I’m not claiming it’s easy, or likely to happen, merely that it’s our only chance to save our species from itself.