How the Kleptocrats’ $12 Trillion Heist Helps Keep Most of the World Impoverished

[Octafish]

How the Kleptocrats’ $12 Trillion Heist Helps Keep Most of the World Impoverished

An investigative economist has crunched 45 years of official statistics to discover just how much kleptocrats have plundered from 150 mostly poor nations.

David Cay Johnston
The Daily Beast, May 3, 2016

For the first time we have a reliable estimate of how much money thieving dictators and others have looted from 150 mostly poor nations and hidden offshore: $12.1 trillion.

That huge figure equals a nickel on each dollar of global wealth and yet it excludes the wealthiest regions of the planet: America, Canada, Europe, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand.

That so much money is missing from these poorer nations explains why vast numbers of people live in abject poverty even in countries where economic activity per capita is above the world average. In Equatorial Guinea, for example, the national economy’s output per person comes to 60 cents for each dollar Americans enjoy, measured using what economists call purchasing power equivalents, yet living standards remain abysmal.

The $12.1 trillion estimate—which amounts to two-thirds of America’s annual GDP being taken out of the economies of much poorer nations—is for flight wealth built up since 1970.

Add to that flight wealth from the world’s rich regions, much of it due to tax evasion and criminal activities like drug dealing, and the global figure for hidden offshore wealth totals as much as $36 trillion.

CONTINUED...

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/05/03/how-the-kleptocrats-12-trillion-heist-helps-keep-most-of-the-world-impoverished.html

Golly. Things must be getting pretty scary if Newsweek is noticing.

[Octafish]

1. Guaranteed National Income should come to at least about $130k/year per family.

It'd certainy help people go shopping.

Global first? Every Swiss could be guaranteed $2,600 a month tax-free

msn.com (no date visible)

As the concept of basic income gets traction across Europe, could a similar policy be adopted in the U.S.?

“Before it could be taken seriously, the middle class would need to experience far more job and wage loss than it has already,” Robert Reich, former U.S. secretary of Labor and now professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, told USA TODAY.

“Unfortunately, those losses are inevitable,” he added. “We'll have a serious discussion about a minimum basic income about a decade from now.”

http://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/global-first-every-swiss-could-be-guaranteed-dollar2600-a-month-tax-free/ar-BBsFZLq?ocid=spartanntp

Tip o' the tentacle to the great DUer yortsed snacilbuper, which is easier to say than spell.