If I need to single-handedly reboot the Occupy Movement for this one, I’ll do it, I tell ya [emphasis is mine]:
A month ago, I had a conversation with Deb Hutton, wife of PC leader Tim Hudak, who said the chances of the Conservatives picking up any of the five seats up for grabs on byelection night were pretty remote.
“They’re all Liberal seats,” she said. “It’s summer time when our most loyal supporters are away at the cottage. We’re obviously going to give it our best, but….” Her voice trailed off and expectations were set appropriately low.
The most loyal Ontario Conservative Party members generally are at their cottages. They have cottages. So do lots of the middle class? But really, not so much. If you own a cottage, you own a vacation property. That’s not so middle class.
Let’s not forget that the 1% and perhaps some in the top 5% or so who can afford cottages make up the loyal Conservative Party supporters. I expect that tracks well for other provinces and federally.
When people who can’t afford cottages are speaking well of Conservatives, remind them that they, as the 1% [or nearby’s or wannabe’s] do not speak for you or the vast majority who rent, rent precariously, rent inadequate housing, or own something precariously.
It’s Friday. It’s been a long week. Like most weeks. We are taught to fit in and obey.
We are told that individuality and the search for social justice will get us in trouble, either by government surveillance or social ostracism.
We speak out, still. We put on our Guy Fawkes masks, or not. We endure trolls online.
But this one’s for you.
If the Occupy Movement were no threat, there wouldn’t have been a massive, coordinated, international effort among the elites, their media and their governments to squash it FAST before it dug in.
I recall the email a little over two years ago from Adbusters. Truly, that email changed the world as we know it.
But we have been sidelined. We have been fatigued, threatened, and coerced into no longer taking kids in strollers to rallies lest we get kettled and our children taken from us.
But they want us to be afraid. To stay silent. They want us to feel overwhelmed. But every time we hit the streets, they send the riot cops.
It’s not about democracy anymore. It’s about the survival of the elites.
Are you mad as hell and not going to take it anymore? Even Network was a warning to us because even Howard Beale was assassinated, by, it turns out, his corporate overlords/parasites.
But we are more like Anonymous than Howard Beale. We have the numbers.
Next week when we wake up, let’s remember how much we outnumber the 1%, the elites, the ones who send the police when we try to express ourselves.
I have this rose-coloured, nostalgic dream of history. Once upon a time we emerged from feudalism with a democratic revolution. All were equal. Well, most.
But the hope of democracy was to rid the world of the despot rule of aristocracy. But then we got corporations. Many of the aristocratic elite ended up entrenching their power through these fake humans. And we still have the aristocrats today. And for centuries, the rest of the elite have wielded power through corporations.
So this year when data was leaked with information about who is using tax havens, governments lined up to do nothing to stop it. Governments are compradors who serve the elite. They are in no rush to go after cash socked away in tax havens, even if it means eroding the capacity of governments to do the work of government.
US$11.5 TRILLION are socked away in tax havens.
And that’s no accident. The elites do not like governments. They include regulations that box in the elites and attempt to distribute their wealth through taxes in order to serve the people. Like some kind of democracy. Or something.
But as you will read below, you will see a few features of the feudalism we currently live in:
The Conservative Party and the elites want to get rid of governments to the extent that they can, which is why they go out of their way to reduce possibilities of increasing revenue.
Stashing money in tax-free zones is the elite’s nest egg.
Canada is foregoing billions of dollars in tax revenue by not pursuing taxing this hidden money.
Tax evasion is illegal, unless the government does not pursue your evasion, which is the norm for corporations.
All I know is that if I got a job and tried to set up a corporations in an off-shore tax haven, I wouldn’t be able to convince my employer to pay my corporation instead of me. Humans with SINs need to pay taxes.
But if I decided to not work for anyone as an employee, I could create a corporation registered in an off-shore tax haven. Then if I could contract out my work so an organization hires my corporation to do work, I could conceivably not have to pay tax if I work my accounting correctly. Donating money to the federal Conservative Party may help discourage CRA from pursuing the wealth I could sock away in a tax haven.
And I’d have to go back and check to see if the Liberal Party in government was any good at tracking down offshore stashed cash. But considering what kind of an offshore expert Paul Martin is, I’d doubt their record is any better.
And where does this leave us?
Well, firstly, we need to remember that class war is alive and well. There is a collection of rich elites who are really running things by influencing/being governing parties and by being untouchable. And the rest of us are serfs.
Secondly, the goals of the Occupy Movement were bang on. And they still exist.
Thirdly, when you see a politician speaking and acting strongly to support democracy instead of neglecting the elites, support them. But you’ll hear a lot of crickets.
Fourthly, expect more decadent, despotic behaviour from the elites. They seem to get off on it.
Earlier this year, 2.5 million files and 120,000 companies and trusts who use offshore tax havens was revealed by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) that caused an international furor. What also became apparent when this list was revealed was, that like the Lagarde list, governments had access to this information for years and were not doing anything to hunt down these funds. In fact, the Harper government has eschewed all efforts to pursue this money, while at the same time laying off 3,000 tax collectors at the CRA this budget year.
“The offshore system is the secret underpinning for the political and financial power of Wall Street today. It is the fortified refuge of big finance,” Nicholas Shaxson, author of Treasure Islands, a 2011 book on offshore tax havens, has said. And he is quite right.
Today, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) claims that offshore banks globally hide some (US) $5-trillion to (US) $7-trillion from tax authorities, or about 8 per cent of the world’s assets under management. Moreover, an estimated (US) $11.5-trillion is being stashed in offshore accounts worldwide for one reason or another.
Now governments talk about the so-called “tax gap” — the difference between what they could collect and do collect — caused by the use of offshore havens. In the U.K., this estimate ranges from £50 billion to £100-billion annually. Of that, about £20-billion sits in offshore tax havens. Meanwhile, though, the CRA refuses to make an estimate of the tax gap in Canada, but it’s safe to say if they did they would find it’s in the many tens of billions.
The offshore tax haven issue speaks to one of the Great Lies currently promulgated by conservative, liberal and even social democratic governments: which is that governments are broke. And hence they must lay off civil servants, impose cuts and wage restraints on the public sector. And it is why governments are desperately trying to avoid the issue: after all, they’ve all encouraged tax evasion and avoidance by offering corporations and the wealthy lower and lower taxes and greater tax breaks over the years. Now they are reaping what they have sown.
So, did you get a 3% raise last year? The average Canadian did. See the first chart below.
If not, you’re behind the average Canadian. And even with a small offset of increased hours worked going up by only 1% for the 12 months ending last June, at worst, the average Canadian saw a 2% raise. And if you want to see if people in your province earned even MORE than that 2%, scroll all the way down. Hint: only 3 provinces were below the average.
So did you get a 2% raise? If not, do you know who, politically, is responsible for that?
Could it be the 1% and their political compatriots?
I think so.
Average weekly earnings of non-farm payroll employees were $898.00 in June, up 0.6% from the previous month. On a year-over-year basis, earnings increased 3.0%.
Chart 1
Year-over-year change in average weekly hours and average weekly earnings
Some of the Politics, Re-Spun crew explore it from each of our perspectives:
1. Are people naive to expect the Quebec tuition protesters to be the leaders of a Maple Spring to expand the Arab Spring from 2011 through Canada this year?