WHEN does a wealth creator become a
wealth thief? It's an important question because just now the very
people who have been telling us how much we need wealth creators are
furiously defending the very same people for stealing away with the
wealth they have created.
For context remember this – all those
tax haven customers include the same people whose various activities
led to the Great Crash and the same people who called, regardless of
politics, for the government of the day to bail out the banks. And
all those trillions of pounds of national cash disappeared into the
same buckets as started the rot in the first place. Ask yourself how
much went into offshore tax havens and private (secret) bank
accounts.
So let's examine the idea of the wealth
creator. This propaganda seeks to encourage us all to admire
'entrepreneurs'* and similar 'investors' for the fact that, it is
said, we would not be so well off without them. But the reality is a
long way from that simplistic approach.
A wealth creator is someone who employs
other people to make or do things that earn money. In return the
workers get paid and the wealth creator takes the profits. Properly
organised there is nothing wrong with that. A bit of regulation to
protect the workers and consumers and some taxation to provide the
education, health, welfare and transportation that workers and
consumers rely on and all is well. But it costs and everyone needs to
pay according to their ability and needs.
The workers and the consumers have
little choice or method for not paying their taxes, whether income or
expenditure based. Not so the 'wealth creator' whose taxation is
complex and capable of adjustment or even avoidance.
Now we come to the crux – these
wealth creators as they are miscalled - choose to live and do their
stuff in Great Britain because they see it as either a good place to
live or to do business – or both.
The people they employ depend upon the
infrastructure that taxation pays for. The wealth creators benefit
directly from all this infrastructure, even if they have private
schooling, private health and a private jet. And their wealth
creating activities demand ever better4 educated, ever healthier
workers and place every heavier burdens on transportation,
environment and even the air we breathe and the water we drink.
If they avoid paying their share of
that and squirrel away their wealth they are thieves. Worse, because
they bang on about how important they are to the rest of us, they are
liars and hypocrites.
On top of that we are governed,
currently in particular, by politicians who want us to believe we
need these people for the wealth they create. No we don't. If they
quit Britain they will end up NOT paying taxes in another country and
what would we care?
Of course, amongst these shysters and
crooks are some good people – wealth creators who see to it that
they share the wealth they create with their workers. Who do pay most
if not all of the taxes they owe. And who don't lecture the rest of
us from beneath their slimy stones from which, to be frank, emergence
is too good for them.
The majority of the 'wealth' we the
workers have created has been stolen, secreted away in secret banks
and vaults, turned into promissory notes, fiddled into piles of gold
and diamonds and silver.
Do not be in doubt – if they all left
tomorrow we would in reality be a lot better off. To hell with the
lot of them.
*By the way an 'entrepreneur' is the
first into something – Marconi counted; Dyson just about counts;
most of the rest do not. The majority are just people starting
businesses – good for them if they do it right.
