15 August 2017
Inequality and the broken economy demonstrated in one graph |
|
UPDATE (please see below for a UK graph) If
you ever believed that the inequality levels we’re seeing today in most
so-called developed economies are inevitable, not so very remarkable, and not
as extreme as some might have us believe, economists Thomas Piketty, Emmanuel
Saez and Gabriel Zucman have produced a graph that demonstrates the […] The
post Inequality and the broken economy demonstrated in one graph appeared
first on Tax Justice Network.
|
Click here to see detailed findings and methodology
The Conversation
08 Aug 2017
In Sydney and Melbourne, the squeeze is on. Population is booming; house prices are still rising; roads and trains are...Read more
Three decades after the somewhat chilling Grim Reaper AIDS ads first aired, businessman Dick Smith is set to launch a new version of the ad, but with a slightly different message.
Using the same voice-over from the 30-year-old ad, the impassioned TV spot will launch at a media conference with Smith at the Hilton Hotel in Sydney tomorrow morning. However, Smith says he's angry that he has to spend $1 million on an ad that should be going to charities like St Vincent de Paul and the Salvos, but instead “is being sent to wealthy TV station and newsprint owners”.
Entrepreneur Smith, who founded Dick Smith Electronics in 1968 before it was sold to Woolworths Ltd in 1982 - and was subsequently acquired by Kogan.com last year - believes because of the growing rift between the wealthy and the poor that we are changing the egalitarian country that we once knew.
“Endless growth will destroy Australia as we know it today,” Smith says.
“Aussie families can have up to 20 kids during their lifetime, but none do. They decide on a number they can give a good life to. But our major political parties have no similar plan for Australia.
“It is simply endless growth and endless greed – meaning the finite wealth has to be divided between more people, and that means less for most.”
The ad features snippets of Prime Minster Malcom Turnbull, opposition Leader Bill Shorten along with Julie Bishop, Kevin Rudd, Joe Hockey, Wayne Swan, Penny Wong, Alex Hawke, Mathias Cormann, Bruce Billson and Scott Morrison.
He says Australia’s wealthiest 1% own more than the bottom 70% - which is 17 million Aussies.
Smith says eight out of 10 Australians he talks to want a proper population plan, but no major political party reflects this – adding they are “so obsessed” with pleasing the 1% who have all the money that the greed overruns all.
Dick Smith anti-immigration ad: Stop the Ponzi scheme or face revolt 'Angry' Dick Smith 'forced' to spend $1m on new Grim Reaper TV ad
dicksmithfairgo.com.au
MILLIONAIRE businessman Dick Smith has taken aim at his own generation, saying its greed has crippled young people’s ability to own their first home.
He launched a scathing attack on Australia’s politicians, accusing them of being too scared to make tax changes that would be unpopular with the generation already on the “homeownership gravy train”.
“These people may be aware that the system that has skewed the game so heavily in their favour is locking the next generation out,” he wrote in Dick Smith Fair Go released this week.
Dick Smith blames his generation for housing crisis
The Tents In Martin Place Are Just The Tip Of The Homelessness Iceberg
Without government legislation for affordable housing targets our cities will become playgrounds for the rich.
In the book he also takes aim at “turbocharged bank lending”; overseas investors; and tax benefits as causing an “almost impossible-to-fix” situation of housing affordability. Mr Smith pointed out that in just two generations, the price of a house had increased eightfold from 1.5 times the average annual income to 12 times the average annual income.
“A dramatically increasing population, a tax regime that unfairly subsidises the wealthy and overseas investors are the key drivers of the crisis,” the book, says.
The book can be downloaded for free at: dicksmithfairgo.com.au
Why Dick Smith says Aussie SMEs could be forced to pay 27% interest on business'They'll become terrorists': Millionaire entrepreneur Dick Smith says
Millionaire entrepreneur Dick Smith predicts Australia will suffer from a spate of terrorist attacks if it continues taking in 200,000 migrants a year.
'Halal would have made OzEmite expensive': Dick Smith
Canada publishes mining transparency data
Canada publishes mining transparency data
Canada
has become the latest country to force mining and extractive industry
companies to disclose payments made to governments. This is a particularly
significant move as a significant number of the world’s mining companies
are based in Canada.
The
One Campaign has this
post on the issue, highlighting how the data can be used to help
people in natural resource rich countries follow the money and hold their
governments to account.
For
example, a company might declare that it has contributed an amount of money
to forestry, but which projects got the money, how was it spent? Those are
vital questions that would not be possible without the data being
published.
Canada publishes mining transparency data
The
UK government has stopped
companies employing a scheme where it was paying directors in
gold bullion to avoid taxes.
The
attempted dodge, which sounds like a tax avoidance scheme from the 1970s,
involved a highly convoluted series of trusts and trades designed to take
advantage of loopholes in the law.
The
scheme however was defeated by the UK’s General Anti Avoidance Rule (GAAR).
That rule can reverse any tax advantage from a transaction if the purpose
of that transaction was purely to create a tax benefit.
The
GAAR is an interesting device, the guidance for the instrument states “[the
GAAR] rejects the proposition that taxpayers have unlimited freedom to use
their ingenuity to reduce their tax bills by any lawful means.” Which is of
course a direct challenge to tax planners who have long claimed that their
clients do have that freedom.
The
GAAR has come in for some criticism in the UK, as in order for it to be
activated it requires the opinion of an expert panel and many of the
members of that panel are tax advisors in the private sector, who may well
have been involved in dreaming up such schemes.
It
has taken four years for the panel to consider its first case, and there is
a suspicion that the outlandish gold bullion scheme may well have been
referred to them by HMRC just to remind the world that they exist at all.
Pfizer’s billion dollar tax doping
Pfizer, the big-pharma
multinational has been accused of using the Netherlands to engage in a billion
dollar tax dodge.
Leading Australian investigative
journalist Michael West has detailed a series of paper transactions which he
claims created a billion dollar tax loss, which the company then used to write
off their tax bill in Australia.
Pfizer’s tax advisors were
KPMG and according to West, this is not the first time the two have been caught
cooking up tax schemes in Australia.