http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-VOJ7T8PvLwU/VWt6i2tqiNI/AAAAAAAAX88/i6L8mZDircc/s1600/british%2Bempire.jpg

Some of this might come in handy ;

http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21571873-how-stop-companies-and-people-dodging-tax-delaware-well-grand-cayman-missing-20

Just out of curiosity, at what point do we say that the rich pay a fair share?

The top decile already pay over 30% of all income taxes. If you confiscated the entire net worth of the top 100 in the Sunday Times rich list, it still wouldn’t even cover 2 years worth of government deficits.

Is the problem really one of not taxing the rich enough?

John G – good points!

Nothing to disagree with Dork. I’ve lost track with why we bother. Better, I guess, feeling this when we are old than as youngsters. The funny money of debt is no answer. Most economics reminds me of Keith Vaz slagging the PCC guy Sean Wright. Pot calls kettle black and this microcosm ignores the magnitude of the problem. Elsewhere, whilst failing to act for tens of thousands of abused kids, we prosecute innocent carers using dubious forensics in such as shaken baby syndrome and have a forthcoming witch trial of an expert prepared to tell the truth. We spend more on arms than green energy development. In slavery terms, we oldies are not wanted other than as a block vote for the neo-liberal failure

“A disturbing reflection of this is the exercise electorally of “grey power” in recent years, where as a result payments to over-65s, regardless of their circumstances, have largely been protected while those to other, younger groups have been cut.

I find it extraordinary, for example, that when travelling on public transport children from all backgrounds have to pay but I and others aged over 65, regardless of financial circumstance, do not. And very soon it looks like we will not have to pay GP bills either”

A apparent concern for the young who are somehow extracted from society by the old……
Yet this is not the case.
The old in general do not burn a large amount of physical capital as they are not engaged in the cuirent workforce.
You see the current workforce (through no fault of their own) are engaged in mainly pointless work in the search for scarce money.
The vast amount of high quality fuel is burned in the search for it.

Economic success for this scarcity merchant is more Keronsene burned on the Dublin to London route (once the busiest air route in the world) for no human scale purpose whatsoever as no production happens in either of these financialized cities.

We are seeing a general rise in (pointless) economic activitiy within the UK and Ireland sphere as “economic growth” is expressed in the back and forth motion of this Brownian motion economy.
Meanwhile the capital burned in this quest to be in constant motion is epic.

As I have stated in the past Euroland and the Uk is exiting the 1820s banking crash phase and moving towards a real physical crisis of famine in time of plenty. (1840s)
As the real costs for most outside their network happens when banks have recovered.
They will again issue their credit poison into the system once again and call it “growth”
But this time it will become fatal for millions.

Merchants such as the above calling for the death of millions is the signal for the next phase of extraction.

Buried under history, at the sort of safe depth the neolibs would like to inter Mayhew and Henry George and of course Marx. When they’re as obscure as John C there’s no need to get off the chaise longue to refute their common sense, or rather traduce it.

As I can’t comment at Jesse’s I will point out to him here that Mark Crispin Miller is another plain dealer in uncomfortable truths whose work will be rubbed out of the future. The process has already begun with his books, but it’s interesting that he is involved in an effort to rescue ‘important but elite unfriendly and therefore obscure’ books:

http://dissenter.firedoglake.com/2014/07/10/forbidden-bookshelf-series-acquaints-public-with-books-vanished-by-government-or-powerful-interests/

“There is none righteous, no, not one. There is none who understands. There is none who seeks after God. They have all turned aside. They have together become unprofitable. There is none who does good, no, not one! Their throats are an open sewer. With their tongues they have practiced deceit. The poison of asps is behind their lips. Whose mouths are full of cursing and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood. Destruction and misery are in their ways. The way of peace they have not known. There is no fear of God before their eyes.” (Romans 3)
“Therefore you are inexcusable, O man, whoever you are who judge. For in whatever you judge another, you condemn yourself, for you yourself practice the same things. (Romans 2)
Without God man can do nothing. Faith in God must come first, and then all these other things will fall into place. But we are too “wise” to be so “foolish.” We must become “fools” in order to become wise.