Absconded Capital in the 21st Century
When I was a kid I asked my economist father if they put all the money in the world in one place and divided it up with everybody on the planet (I must have been a nascent communist), whether would all be reasonably well off or not. My father replied there wasn't such wealth in the world to make everybody well off, let alone wealthy. We would all get about a month's pay and then the money would be spent.
Of course, that's a long time ago and since then we've learned through such things as the Panama Papers that global wealth locked up and hidden away from the prying eyes of tax offices of various governments is such that it would make us all rather well off, if not wealthy, if redistributed globally. Thomas Piketty's big book essentially underlined how this terrible state came to be.
The drain of wealth out of nations via Tax Haven has got to be one of the worst injustices going around. The fact that that capital largely does not work - i.e. put to good use in building factories and towards production and instead sits around on government bonds and debt structures around the world exacerbates the various injustices threefold: once for the tax not paid, once for the misapplication of capital, and once again for the lack of debt forgiveness that condemns the third world to its third world existence. You know, those world vision starving kids and all that, is a side effect of this money sitting on all those bonds. You gotta laugh when the charities come knocking on your door, that they expect piling up your $5 will somehow counteract the mountain of bonds.
While I don't believe in a radical redistribution wealth like I did when I was 5, I do sort of think the least the billionaire classes can do is pay their fucking fair share of taxes.
...and so, to this song!