Let's Tax Offshore Wealth
We have the technology. We know who and we know where They have hidden the cash.
[font size="1"]"Conspiratorial Wink" (detail) by Michael Samuels[/font size]
On My Mind
Tax Offshore Wealth Sitting In First World Banks
James S. Henry
07.01.10, 09:00 AM EDT
Forbes Magazine dated July 19, 2010
Let's tax offshore private wealth.
How can we get the world's wealthiest scoundrels--arms dealers, dictators, drug barons, tax evaders--to help us pay for the soaring costs of deficits, disaster relief, climate change and development? Simple: Levy a modest withholding tax on untaxed private offshore loot.
Many aboveground economies around the world are struggling, but the economic underground is booming. By my estimate, there is $15 trillion to $20 trillion in private wealth sitting offshore in bank accounts, brokerage accounts and hedge fund portfolios, completely untaxed.
SNIP...
This wealth is concentrated. Nearly half of it is owned by 91,000 people--0.001% of the world's population. Ninety-five percent is owned by the planet's wealthiest 10 million people.
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Is it feasible? Yes. The majority of offshore wealth is managed by 50 banks. As of September 2009 these banks accounted for $10.8 trillion of offshore assets--72% of the industry's total. The busiest 10 of them manage 40%.
CONTINUED....
http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2010/0719/opinions-taxation-tax-havens-banking-on-my-mind.html
This would beat the alternative. No, not austerity; the guillotine.
= new reply since forum marked as read
Drone attack the foreign banks that hold their money?
Perhaps a vacuum-cleaner mop-up operation afterward, like the transforming planet destroyer MegaMaid in Spaceballs, could collect what isn't vaporized from the rubble and cash boxes.
In all seriousness: If these banks want to keep their depositors' monies in the global economy, they would have to play ball with Justice.
These people need to be held to account for their thievery--they have been playing the system that they created, for their own benefit...or they can be the first against the wall when the revolution comes (h/t Douglas Adams).
I'm old now and I doubt if I will see it, but the possibility is there and SOMETHING is coming. Whether it's a socialist revolution or a fascist takeover or (even more probable in the medium term IMO) a Bonapartist dictatorship, something is coming.
Trotsky said that two of the conditions that have to be extant for a revolution is that the ruling class cannot keep control in the old way and that the working class cannot go on in the old way. The first condition is coming true more rapidly than the second, but both are happening before our eyes. We're seeing the rise in fascistic methods of control from the capitalists and their toadies in the political class because the old ways of control don't work as well anymore. The working class has to catch up with their part of it and that's what I meant in my previous post about the working class becoming a class FOR itself. That's all about raising consciousness of the inherent power that resides in the class that toils for somebody else's profits.
I think that even most (not all, but most) hardened revolutionaries would prefer evolution to revolution because of the very things that you mentioned. Unfortunately, we are revolutionary because reform hasn't worked and has never worked and we don't believe anymore that it CAN work. As I said in the previous post, capitalism ALWAYS breaks it's regulatory chains, sooner or later. This is why you see this type of behavior from the capitalist class throughout history. And it always leads to a reaction because people don't want the unregulated version of capitalism. So it's time to smash the system and try something new. Hopefully, we've got a few "bad" examples to avoid from the past, so it's up to us to make it work. This time. That's another reason I'm a Trotskyist. His is the Marxist road not taken.
One last point. There aren't any "...neat, simple theories of what comes next". If there were there wouldn't be any need for organizing, propagandizing, agitation and analyses of current situations and trends. If a worker's state was an inevitability then we could all just sit around and wait for it. There are other options that are worse for the working class, but are possibilities in a revolutionary situation. Our work is to MAKE the socialist revolution the only viable option out of the options arising from the revolutionary situation.
BTW, thanks for allowing me to explain. 
