Her Majesty’s Revenue & Customs offers amnesty 

for millionaire tax dodgers

Written by Niklas Albin SvenssonTuesday, 05 October 2010

Very rarely does one venture into the “personal finance” section of the business papers. Maybe it is because advice on how to invest your million pound fortune doesn't seem that relevant to your life situation. Sometimes, however, it pays off.

Photo: ToabiIn the October 1^st edition of City AM, Juliet Samuel offers kind advice on how to avoid paying taxes on your “untaxed funds” (that is, money that you've lied to the tax authorities about). It turns out that HMRC [Her Majesty’s Revenue & Customs] have offered an amnesty for precisely this crime.

Apparently, it is very expensive to prosecute tax evaders and very rarely do successful prosecutions land significant amounts of money, so the HMRC has simply decided to ask for volunteers to come clean and declare their previously undeclared earnings.

City AM, gracefully provides an example of how anyone with £10 million undeclared income in Lichtenstein could benefit from this. If you, in June 1990 deposited £10 million in Lichtenstein from some undeclared source and this money today is worth £20 million, you would normally have to pay around £14 million in taxes on interest and of course the original 40% income tax, plus a fine of around £3.2 million. However, with the amnesty, if you agree to pay £3.2 million in taxes plus a penalty of £0.2 million, you can now have amnesty from future prosecution. Thus, you can save about £14 million and sleep easier at night in your million pound mansion knowing that the HMRC is not after you.

Not everything is song and dance in tax dodger land, however. In spite of this generous offer, only 419 people registered in the first six months of the offer (the number in the past six months is rumoured to be around twice that), as opposed to the around 5,000 British investors holding £2-3 billion between them in accounts there (that is, half a million each on average). Law firm DLA Piper partner Simon Airey thinks that this might be because the deal has not been publicised enough by the HMRC. So, we can presume that City AM is lending a hand now.

It is not hard to understand why the HMRC has kept quiet about their offer of amnesty for rich tax dodgers with million pound tax accounts in tax havens. At a time when the government is introducing austerity measures in the public sector and benefits, giving tax breaks for the rich squares badly with the idea that “we are all in this together”.

The Deindustrialization 

Of America Michael Snyder The Insider

     The United States is rapidly becoming the very first "post-industrial" nation on the globe.  All great economic empires eventually become fat and lazy and squander the great wealth that their forefathers have left them, but the pace at which America is accomplishing this is absolutely amazing.  It was America that was at the forefront of the industrial revolution.

It was America that showed the world how to mass produce everything from automobiles to televisions to airplanes.  It was the great American manufacturing base that crushed Germany and Japan in World War II.  But now we are witnessing the deindustrialization of America.  Tens of thousands of factories have left the United States in the past decade alone.  Millions upon millions of manufacturing jobs have been lost in the same time period.  The United States has become a nation that consumes everything in sight and yet produces increasingly little.  Do you know what our biggest export is today?

Waste paper.  Yes, trash is the number one thing that we ship out to the rest of the world as we voraciously blow our money on whatever the rest of the world wants to sell to us.  The United States has become bloated and spoiled and our economy is now  just a shadow of what it once was.  Once upon a time America could literally outproduce the rest of the world combined.  Today that is no longer true, but Americans sure do consume more than anyone else in the world.  If the deindustrialization of America continues at this current pace, what possible kind of a future are we going to be leaving to our children?

Any great nation throughout history has been great at making things.  So if the United States continues to allow its manufacturing base to erode at a staggering pace how in the world can the U.S. continue to consider itself to be a great nation?  We have created the biggest debt bubble in the history of the world in an effort to maintain a very high standard of living, but the current state of affairs is not anywhere close to sustainable.  Every single month America does into more debt and every single month America gets poorer.

So what happens when the debt bubble pops?

The deindustrialization of the United States should be a top concern for every man, woman and child in the country.  But sadly, most Americans do not have any idea what is going on around them.

For people like that, take this article and print it out and hand it to them.  Perhaps what they will read below will shock them badly enough to awaken them from their slumber.

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/deindustrialization-factory-closing-2010-9#ixzz10lK9zoES

SELF INTERESTED 

BU££$HIT 

Berkshire Rises to Highest Since 2008 as Buffett Touts Growth

Berkshire Hathaway Inc. rose to a 23-month high after Chief Executive Officer Warren Buffett said the company is expanding with the U.S. economy.

Berkshire’s Class A stock advanced $790 to $125,300 yesterday in New York Stock Exchange composite trading. Berkshire last closed above $125,000 on Oct. 6, 2008.

Buffett, 80, ruled out a second recession for the U.S. and said at a conference this week that businesses owned by Omaha, Nebraska-based Berkshire continue to grow. Berkshire is adding workers as demand rebounds for its machine tools, recreational vehicles and freight space in its railcars. The stock has gained 26 percent this year through yesterday, compared with a gain of less than 1 percent for the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index.

“We still think it’s undervalued,” said Bill Bergman, a Morningstar Inc. analyst. As the economy improves Berkshire will benefit from “the earnings power in the operating subsidiaries that have been hit so hard during the recession,” he said in an interview.

Berkshire’s record close was $149,200 on Dec. 10, 2007. The stock fell to a six-year low of $72,400 on March 5, 2009, as the recession reduced demand for Berkshire’s products and the equity market slump contributed to derivative losses.

Profits at Berkshire’s manufacturing units surged in the first half as economic expansion boosted spending and costs were curbed by job cuts last year. Buffett’s firm eliminated more than 20,000 positions companywide in 2009. The manufacturing, service and retailing businesses more than doubled earnings to $671 million in the second quarter on gains at RV-maker Forest River and toolmaker Iscar Metalworking Cos.

Acquisitions

Buffett built Berkshire into a $206 billion provider of insurance, energy and luxury goods and services over four decades of acquisitions and stock picks. In February, Berkshire bought railroad Burlington Northern Santa Fe Corp. for $27 billion in a deal that Buffett called a bet on the U.S. economy.

“I am a huge bull on this country,” Buffett, who also is Berkshire’s chairman, said in remarks to the Montana Economic Development Summit on Sept. 13. “We will not have a double-dip recession at all. I see our businesses coming back almost across the board.”

The world’s largest economy grew at a 1.6 percent annual pace in the second quarter, exceeding the median forecast of economists surveyed by Bloomberg News, revised figures from the Commerce Department showed on Aug. 27. U.S. economic growth will slow to 2.5 percent next year from a projected 2.7 percent this year as unemployment above 9 percent tempers consumer spending, according to the median forecast of economists surveyed by Bloomberg News this month.

Berkshire’s third-quarter operating earnings may rise 26 percent to $1,669 a share, according to the average estimate of five analysts surveyed by Bloomberg. Berkshire’s Class B stock was added to the S&P 500 in February after the company split the shares in a transaction connected to the Burlington Northern acquisition.

To contact the reporter on this story: Andrew Frye in New York at afrye@bloomberg.net;

 THE ULTIMATE NIGHTMARE  Deja vu 

Party Like it's 1979

The Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government in Britain is made up of and advised by millionaires and billionaires. And while they live a life that millions would dream of, they spend their time investigating how much they can cut spending on social services, healthcare, education and pensions. The contradiction is clear for all to see.

The Con/Dem coalition is a government of Big Business, nothing more, nothing less. Despite the protests of David Cameron that he is just a regular “middle class” fellow, he is related to Royalty (William IV), went to Eton and Oxford, and is married to an aristocrat. The Cabinet, the Fellowship of Threadneedle Street, is composed of 18 millionaires.

The latest additional “advisers” to this Big Business government are Lord Levene, the veteran City financier and the retail capitalist Sir Philip Green. They have been engaged to find “savings” before the October spending review and both are, as we can see, very well qualified for this onerous task of squeezing the poor.

Lord Levene “advised” John Major on efficiency from 1992 to 1997. His long career includes stints as chairman and chief executive of Canary Wharf and working for Morgan Stanley and Deutsche Bank.

Sir Philip Green’s Arcadia business includes Bhs, Topshop and Dorothy Perkins (he has also bid three times for Marks and Spencer) and he has lived in Monaco, a tax haven, since 1998. To avoid paying tax, his company paid a small £1.2 billion dividend to his wife, a Monaco resident and ineligible for tax.

Knighted four years ago, this tycoon enjoys a flamboyant lifestyle of yachts and extravagant parties, which makes him a very suitable candidate for the government’s austerity cuts! At the same time, Deputy PM, Nick Clegg, vows to “break Britain’s entrenched class structures.” He presides over a Cabinet of millionaires advised by millionaires on how to slash working class living standards and cut billions from public services… services they will never use themselves.

According to the Financial Times, “Sir Philip, speaking from his yacht in Italy, said he and Ian Grabiner, chief executive of Abcadia, would handle the day-to-day work and would start gathering information today.” (13 August).

Their attacks will hit the most vulnerable in society who rely on these public services: the old, the sick, and the infirm. The Budget cuts are threatening to close Britain’s only mobile TB unit this December. TB has become an important health problem, with London reporting the highest rates of the infection of any city in Western Europe. The disease affects those living in cramped, poorly ventilated and unhygienic conditions, hardly a concern of our government of millionaires.

Chancellor Osborn at the CBI dinner, surrounded by the Chief executive of IBM, the president of CBI and the chief executive of CBI. Photo by the CBI.Waiting lists for social housing are at record levels, with some 4.5 million seeking accommodation. With planned cuts to affordable homes, a further half million will join the waiting list. They will be trapped in bed-sits and campsite accommodation, never being able to find a home.

Next year nearly one million people will see their housing benefit cut by an average of £12 a week. With home building at its lowest level since the 1920s, we will see a return to “Cathy Come Home” conditions for many, 50 years after the film shocked the nation. In addition, Cameron has also suggested removing the right of council house tenants to remain in their homes.

“Some seem to think that austerity is a one-off event – something that has already happened in the Budget”, explained the big business Financial Timesrecently. However it warns, “The promised cuts in public spending have scarcely begun to bite.” Such retrenchment will bring “real pain.”

The government bailed out the banking system using tax-payers’ money. Now the banks are making billions. Barclays saw its profits jump to almost £4bn, up from £2.75bn last year. HSBC’s profits more than doubled to $11.1bn. The biggest five banks made more than £15bn in pre-tax profits in the first half of the year. Not only that, but the bankers are being asked to join the government as “advisers”. They did such a great job in the slump that Stephen Green, HSBC chairman, is to lead a “taskforce” made up of chief executives of Lloyds Banking Group, Royal Bank of Scotland, Barclays, HSBC, Santander and Standard Chartered to help the banks.

And, of course, the working class is now being presented with the bill for the crisis through cuts in services, wage cuts and mass unemployment. They will make cuts to try and eliminate the £149bn deficit in just five years.

No wonder consumers in Britain are amongst the most pessimistic in the world over their economy, with 34% believing it was in a “very bad” state.

Youth unemployment has rocketed, with 17.5% of the six million 18-24 year olds jobless. When BT recently offered 221 apprenticeships, 24,000 young people applied for the

While bankers’ profits are booming, the crisis is certainly not over for millions of people. They face years, if not decades of austerity.

This failure is a failure of the capitalist system, which produces for profit and not for need. Rather than austerity, there is sufficient productive potential, if used properly, to give everyone a job and dramatically increase living standards. Unfortunately, it is in the hands of the bankers, capitalists and speculators. There is no solution while this remains. All they can offer is counter-reforms and attacks.

Postmodern Theory –

A Broad and Ambiguous View of Reality

Postmodern theory is a broad and somewhat ambiguous belief system tied to the philosophical and cultural reaction to the convictions of Modernism (sometimes equated with Humanism). Postmodernism is the philosophical proposal that reality is ultimately inaccessible by human investigation, that knowledge is a social construction, that truth-claims are political power plays, and that the meaning of words is to be determined by readers not authors. In brief, Postmodern theory sees reality as what individuals or social groups make it to be.

Postmodern Theory – The Individual Elements
Our friends at Summit Ministries have helped us explain the basics of Postmodern theory across ten major categories. For comprehensive coverage of each concept, please click on READ MORE at the end of each paragraph.


Postmodern Theology– Atheism Postmodernists are not atheists in the same sense that Secular Humanists and Marxist-Leninists are. They may look the same superficially, but the motivation for denying the existence of God has nothing to do with the lack of scientific evidence. Rather, they would assert that, as Nietzsche said, “God is dead” because He’s unbelievable, not because He’s unprovable. READ MORE

Postmodern Philosophy – Anti-Realism The belief in an objective reality is rejected by Postmodernists. Rather, they assert that reality is the subjective construction of human thought. As a consequence, they also deny universal truth, rejecting anything that smacks of a metanarrative, which is an explanation that purports to unify the world in a broad, over-arching story. READ MORE 

  Postmodern Ethics – Cultural Relativism If philosophical truth (what we can know about reality) resides in the local community, it follows that moral truth (how we should behave) resides in the same community. Since, as the Postmodernist suggests, there is no “grand narrative” telling us what is real and how to behave, each community develops its own “little narratives” to fulfill those needs. READ MORE

Postmodern Science – Punctuated Evolution The Postmodernists are not comfortable with the traditional theory of evolution because of the metanarrative aspect of it, they feel the most comfortable with punctuated evolutionary theory because of the aspects of chance and discontinuity. READ MORE 

  Postmodern Psychology – Socially-Constructed Selves Within Postmodern theory, there’s neither a clear-cut nor a single answer to the question “Who am I?” According to Postmodern psychologists, there is no single, separate, unified self. Rather, we are made up of many selves. The way that we come to this multiplicity is through the collective influences of various social factors, including language, geography, family, education, government, etc. Therefore, rather than having a static nature, we are a social construction. READ MORE 

  Postmodern Sociology – Sexual Egalitarianism The Postmodern sociology seeks to even the playing field by emphasizing the value of those typically considered on the cultural fringe, such as the poor and oppressed. Unfortunately this emphasis often turns into a demonization of those who have traditionally enjoyed positions of power, such as white males.READ MORE 

Postmodern Law – Critical Legal Studies From a Postmodern theoretical perspective, the source of knowledge and justice within the Western paradigm is the root of the problem. Postmodernists insist that Western law, which grew out of Christianity and the Enlightenment, reflects white male bias. For this reason, Postmodernists are intent on eliminating religious roots and transcendent qualities from Western law, desiring more fragmentation and subjectivity, and less objective morality than the Judeo-Christian tradition demands. In the end, Postmodernists are intent on creating and using their own brand of social justice merely for their own political purposes. Critical legal studies, then, becomes the means to discover the subjective and biased intent of the law. READ MORE

  Postmodern Politics – Leftism Many Postmodernists believe that white males from Western culture have been the only ones to enjoy power in the past few centuries. As such, many Postmodernists seek to empower the powerless, that is, women, minorities, and homosexuals, through methods of social justice and identity politics. READ MORE

Postmodern Economics – Interventionism Postmodern theory sees economics as the way to alleviate human suffering. Postmodernists seek this goal through some form of government intervention within a free market environment. READ MORE 

  Postmodern History – Historicism Because Postmoderns believe that historical facts are inaccessible, they believe that historians are simply left to their own imagination and ideological bent to reconstruct what happened in the past. Thus, history is closer to what we think of as fiction rather than conclusions reached as a result of an objective, scientific process. Because of their emphasis on the subjective, Postmodernists have adopted historicism as their approach to history, which is to say that all historical questions must be settled within the cultural and social context in which they are raised.READ MORE

Postmodern Theory – Conclusion
The impact of Postmodern theory is clearly seen in cultural perceptions regarding truth and morality. According to George Barna, 72% of Americans agree, "There is no such thing as absolute truth; two people could define truth in totally conflicting ways, but both could still be correct."¹ 71% of Americans agree, "There are no absolute standards that apply to everybody in all situations."² 53% of those who claim there is no such thing as absolute truth identify themselves as born-again Christians.³42% of those who identify themselves as evangelical Christians agree, "There is no such thing as absolute truth; two people could define truth in totally conflicting ways but both could still be correct."⁴ Indeed, Postmodern theory has saturated the mainstream and religious culture of the 21st century.
Learn More!

Cultural Materialism - Marvin Harris

Cultural Materialism is an anthropological paradigm founded upon, but not constrained by, Marxist Materialistic thought. The term Cultural Materialism, first coined by Marvin Harris in his The Rise of Anthropological Theory (1968), is derived from two English words: "Culture" (social structure, language, law, religion, politics, art, science, superstition, etc.) and "Materialism" (materiality, rather than intellect or spirituality, is fundamental to reality). Harris developed Cultural Materialism by borrowing from existing anthropological doctrines, especially Marxist Materialism.

Cultural Materialism - Infrastructure, Structure and Superstructure
Cultural Materialism retains and expands upon the Marxist Three Levels of Culture Model: Infrastructure, Structure and Superstructure.

• Infrastructure -- population, basic biological need, and resources (labor, equipment, technology, etc.).
• Structure -- pattern of organization (government, education, production regulation, etc.).
• Superstructure -- social institutions (law, religion, politics, art, science, superstition, values, emotions, traditions, etc.).

Marxist Dialectical Materialism (concepts and ideas are the result of material condition) and Marxist Historical Materialism (influential members of society hold sway on material condition, while society's social institutions are founded upon material condition) differ from Cultural Materialism in a few key aspects. Cultural Materialism holds that Infrastructure has influence on Structure, while Structure exerts little influence upon Infrastructure. Marxist Materialism, on the other hand, maintains that Infrastructure and Structure are influential to each other. Another distinction between Marxist and Cultural Materialism is Class Theory. Marxist Materialism believes social change is beneficial to the ruling (Bourgeoisie) class only, while Cultural Materialists believe social change is beneficial to the working (Proletariat) class as well.

Cultural Materialism - Organization, Ideology and Symbolism
Cultural Materialism seeks to explain cultural organization, ideology and symbolism within a materialistic (Infrastructure/structure/superstructure) framework. Cultural Materialists believe society develops on a trial and error basis. If something is not beneficial to a society's ability to produce and/or reproduce, or causes production and/or reproduction to exceed acceptable limits, it will disappear from society altogether. Therefore, law, government, religion, family values, etc. must be beneficial to society or they will cease to exist within society. Cultural Materialists ignore "Emic" (society's opinion) in favor of "Etic" (observation of phenomenon via scientific method).

Cultural Materialism - Criticisms
Proponents of alternative anthropological doctrines criticize Cultural Materialism for various reasons. Marxists criticize Cultural Materialism for ignoring Structure's influence upon Infrastructure. Postmodernists believe that reliance upon "Etic" in studying culture is not appropriate, as science is merely a function of culture. Idealists criticize Cultural Materialism for ignoring variables such as genetics, and believe "Emic" is more significant than Cultural Materialists allow. Finally, it seems that Materialism is too simplistic. We must consider intellectual and spiritual influences upon society as well. We are intelligent creatures who tend to have spiritual inclinations that cannot be accounted for by material means alone.

THE FRUITS OF DEMOCRACY OR CAPITALISM?

The scandal of child labour in US farming

The false representation of immigrants 'stealing' farm jobs paints out the reality that children are being exploited to do the work

• 
• 
  
  • Susana Adame
  • guardian.co.uk, Monday 31 May 2010 15.04 BST
  • Article history

Earlier in the month, Human Rights Watch (HRW) announced thebeginning of its campaign to end child labour in US agriculture. The campaign, among other things, calls for the "same age and hour requirements to children working in agriculture that already apply to all other working children" and for the government to "strengthen provisions regarding children's exposure to pesticides".

HRW's campaign begins just as anti-immigrant action in the US hasheated up. Arizona recently passed the draconian SB 1070 legislation that requires local police to check the immigration status of anybody they have a "reasonable" suspicion of being undocumented. Arizona also outlawed ethnic studies classes shortly thereafter and is forbiddingteachers with heavy accents from teaching English.

Most of these actions (and subsequent actions in other states) are being justified based on the state of labour in the US. That is, undocumented workers are "stealing" the jobs of citizens and as such, we need to come down particularly hard on any who might be undocumented. The Southern Poverty Law Centre (an organisation that monitors hate groups), has done an excellent job in documenting how labour gets centred in the immigration debate:

"[The Coalition for the Future American Worker] ran an ad featuring a couple sitting at a kitchen table with a baby crying in the background. The husband tells his wife that he failed to get a job because 'they hired all foreign workers'. During a 2004 Texas congressional race, it ran television ads that included images of dark-skinned men loitering on street corners and running from police cars."

But the HRW campaign exposes a conflict between how immigration and labour is represented – and what it is in reality. HRW estimates that at least 9% of farm workers are children, and this number may be significantly higher. What this means is that a very big percentage of the actual people doing the "stealing" are kids rather than grown men, and those kids, more often than not, may actually be citizens, having been born in the US after their parents immigrated.

Unfortunately, the false representation of adult male labourers "stealing" jobs of citizens is becoming more mainstream, with the result being that consumers are largely ignorant of the immensity of the problem, or oddly, they even regard child labour as a good thing. Drawing on a mythical past where youth spent their summers on family farms working for a little spending money, the argument is that what was good for grandparents then is good for children today. It "builds strength of character" and teaches good lessons.

The problem here is that there is a significant difference between anagricultural industrial farm and a family owned farm. Most farms in the US today are owned by massive corporations that use tools, heavy machinery and engage in extensive pesticide spraying. Child labourers (who are often as young as seven or eight) working on these industrial farms can expect to work 14-16 hours a day, seven days a week. Lunch breaks are often only a half hour and as with most farm workers, bathrooms and even clean water to drink are rarely supplied by the growers. Federal minimum wage is $7.50 an hour, but because farm workers are paid by the bucket rather than by the hour, their wages often average out to as low as $2.38 an hour.

For children, payment for labour presents a unique problem. Because children are often too young to collect their own pay, parents are paid instead. While it may not necessarily be a bad thing for kids to give their earnings to parents to help with bills, it does seem ironic at best that children are working full-time jobs but because they are not officially on the books, they are not eligible for worker's compensation should they get sick or hurt, unemployment benefits during any period they aren't working, nor are they even getting credit for paying into social security. If we have no problem "teaching" kids the benefits of working full time, then shouldn't we also be teaching them what rights they have as workers?

When I first read HRW's stance against child labour violations, I did not feel that the campaign went far enough to protect children. But given the context of the US political atmosphere in which the campaign was announced, I think it's a beneficial campaign if only for the education and worker testimony it provides to consumers who are being bombarded by messages that simply don't reflect reality. Whether this campaign will gain any meaningful momentum towards achieving the goals it calls for, however, remains to be seen.