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Wikileaks To Name Swiss Bank Tax Evaders
eldavojohn writes "The old cliche that the rich and corrupt hold all their money in Swiss bank accounts (to avoid taxation) may finally have a bit of transparency, as the news today is that Wikileaks has been handed a list of account holders tendered by Rudolf Elmer, former banker of Julius Baer. Julian Assange promises a 'full revelation' while Elmer cited his motivation as being: 'I want to let society know how this system works. It's damaging society.' This appears to be real, as Mr. Elmer is soon to appear before a Zurich regional court on charges of coercion as well as violations of Switzerland's strict banking secrecy laws. The public may soon find out that their favorite celebrity, politician or employer doesn't feel responsible to contribute financially to the commonwealth at the expense of privacy."
Considering the love-fest for Google around these parts, but they've been effectively dodging taxes for a few years. Why would it be a shock if politicians, celebrities and sundry millionaires / billionaires do the same?
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/10_44/b4201043146825.htm
While I am all for businesses making a profit, I am NOT all for a multi-billion dollar company paying effectively 2.4% while I continue to pay nearly 30% of my income. The argument "Well, that gets turned into research and good pay for employees" still doesn't float IMO, when you have the higher executives of Google being paid millions. Reduce the salaries of those PHBs down to something reasonable, pay the rank and file programmers and researchers that money, and pay taxes like everyone else.
I don't care if he's a monkey and likes to play a recorder with his butt.
It's a Good Thing (tm) this information is being made public.
These negative responses are almost as juicy as the leaks themselves. You've left us wondering whether you're a tax evader, a Freedom Fry? Or maybe it's just jealousy or a secret crush... not trying hard enough to be an astroturfer.
I'm sorry if I haven't offended anyone
Surprisingly, not much lower.
Right. It's not just how government spends money.
Let's start with the on topic portion first. I've seen it claimed that the convolutions and writhing that the rich go through to minimize or even illegally evade taxes saps about 1% in absolute value from the US GDP. My impression is that a raw 2% increase in growth separates current levels of growth from the best decade to decade growth, the US has ever had. So a considerable portion of that, perhaps as much as half, can be obtained merely by vastly simplifying the tax codes.
A lot of mileage can be gained by targeting spending that changes peoples' behavior in adverse ways, such as subsidized educational loans and financial assistance, and mandated employer health insurance. Sure, it's nice to have better educated people and the security of health insurance, but these expenses increase faster than GDP (much less inflation) and are unsustainable in the long run. In the meantime, people are encouraged to go to college right after high school graduation even when they shouldn't (too immature, unready, and/or would be better off getting a job right now) and to the detriment of jobs that don't require college degrees, but still require significant training.
The main problem with health care is that it is open-ended. You can always consume vastly more tests, longer hospital stays, ever more expensive equipment, etc. And this health care is funded mostly by open-ended health insurance (which is practically only limited by co-payments paid by the insuree) and government based health care (Medicare/Medicaid, veteran health care, government health benefits, etc). It's not helpful that government at the federal and state levels also limits supply of health care (professional licensing, regulation on who can do what, and the opening of new health care facilities) and opens health care providers to remarkable malpractice liability. End result is that patients consume too much and too expensive health care directly and indirectly (through malpractice and employer/government paid health benefits).
Then there are subsidies which actively harm US interests. A couple of key examples are farm subsidies and "cost plus" contracts (a popular feature of defense R&D and related spending, where the contractor is paid a base amount plus an additional amount based on "costs" to a fixed cap).
There's an emphasis on infrastructure building at the expense of infrastructure maintenance. For example, high speed train projects can obtain considerable funds in order to build the rail and buy the trains. But there's no money to support projects which notoriously aren't covered by ridership revenue. These projects are also a great vehicle for corruption. Those in the know can buy land near the rail projects ahead of time and reap the profits. The best part is that this sort of corruption doesn't show in the bottom line for government spending.
Speaking of wealth redistribution projects, a really big and nonsensical one is the movement of wealth via Social Security from the young to the elderly. So why does a retiree need wealth more than a young person trying to get educated, raise a family, and enter the workforce? It doesn't make sense from a societal point of view. If you want to take care of the elderly, there are cheaper and more effective ways to do it (such as welfare for poor or sick elderly, for example). As it stands, the US makes all workers about 15% more expensive. That's a big jump and about 10% logarithmically of the difference between a US worker and a Chinese worker, for example. Social Security also results in vast liabilities that can't be honored (it's yet another program where the current promised costs increase faster than GDP does).
For example, if working for the agencies controlling the markets paid much better than working in those markets, do you think we would have the problems we have now? Would it not be better to have