I don't give to the Big Issue Seller
'Cause he's probably on heroin
I walk past him with a grin
And if I can, I kick his dog

No I don't give to the busker
He's talentless and lazy
He's ruining the country
I think he should get a job

Instead I give my money to:
Walmart, for its tax evasion
Primark, for its child labour
Texaco for the next invasion
Don't give a fuck about you

Give my money to the millionaires
Give my money to the millionaires
Give all my money to the millionaires
And I don't give a fuck about you

No, I don't give to the beggar
That's what I pay my taxes for
The government should shove him through the door
Of a prison cell, or a hospital

I don't give to the homeless pisshead
He'll blow it all on booze instead
Such a waster doesn't deserve a bed
What do you mean welfare is dead?

Because I give my money to:
Walmart, for its tax evasion
Primark, for its child labour
Texaco for the next invasion
Don't give a fuck about you

Give my money to the millionaires
Give my money to the millionaires
Give all my money to the millionaires
And I don't give a fuck about you

Give my money to:
Starbucks, in case they get hard up
BP, 'cause making living ain't easy
Barclays, do they look after me?
And I don't give a fuck about you

Give my money to the millionaires
Give my money to the millionaires
Give all my money to the millionaires
And I don't give a fuck about you

Haven't seen this one in circulation yet:

Dear Chancellor Merkel,

The never-ending austerity that Europe is force-feeding the Greek people is simply not working. Now Greece has loudly said no more.

As most of the world knew it would, austerity has crushed the Greek economy, led to mass unemployment, a collapse of the banking system, made the external debt crisis far worse, with the debt problem escalating to an unpayable 175% of GDP. The economy now lies broken with tax receipts nose-diving, output and employment depressed, and businesses starved of capital.

The humanitarian impact has been colossal – 40% of children now live in poverty, infant mortality is sky-rocketing and youth unemployment is close to 50%. Corruption, tax evasion and bad accounting by previous Greek governments helped create the debt problem. But the series of so-called adjustment programs has served only to make a Great Depression the likes of which have been unseen in Europe since 1929-1933. The medicine prescribed by the German Finance Ministry and Brussels has bled the patient, not cured the disease.

Together we urge you to lead Europe to a course correction before it is too late for Greece and for the Eurozone. Right now, the Greek government is being asked to put a gun to its head and pull the trigger. Sadly, the bullet will not only kill off Greece’s future in Europe. The collateral damage will kill the Eurozone as a beacon of hope, prosperity, and democracy, and could lead to far-reaching economic consequences across the world.

In the 1950s Europe was founded on the forgiveness of past debts, notably Germany’s, which generated a massive contribution to post-war economic growth, peace, and democracy. Today we need to restructure and reduce Greek debt, give the economy breathing room to recover, and allow Greece to pay off a reduced burden of debt over a long period of time. Now is the time for a humane rethink of the punitive and failed programme of austerity of recent years and to agree to a major reduction of Greece’s debts in conjunction with much needed reforms in Greece.

We urge you to take this vital action of leadership for Greece and Germany, and also for the world. History will remember you for your actions this week. We expect and count on you to provide the bold and generous steps towards Greece that will serve Europe for generations to come.

Yours sincerely,

Heiner Flassbeck, former State Secretary in the German Federal Ministry of Finance;

Thomas Piketty, Professor of Economics at the Paris School of Economics;

Jeffrey D. Sachs, Professor of Sustainable Development, Professor of Health Policy and Management, and Director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University;

Dani Rodrik, Albert O. Hirschman Professor of Social Sciences at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton;

Simon Wren-Lewis, Professor of economics, Blavatnik School of Government, Oxford University

Keynes and others made the same argument against the Treaty of Versailles. You mentioned how that turned out.

Folks did in fact learn from that mistake, but after everything is said and done, it was the Soviet expansion that made the case. Germany was the frontier and to turn it into some shithole or even a failed state would have made it worthless in the struggle against Soviet expansion. Germany was expected to a) keep them in check, and b) serve as a prime example of how much better life is within the realm of capitalism. If it hadn't been for T-34s in Berlin, I'm not entirely sure we would have been treated as favourably as we were.

In any case, even after much of the debt was written off, the remaining payments were stretched out over decades, so as to not be too much of a drain on the economic development of the country.

Still, it's not the same with Greece. We only torched half the continent, but they dodged their taxes. That's a million times worse, it seems.

While we're on the subject of tax evasion: Luxembourg alone accounts for about €20b-€30b a year of lost tax revenue in Germany. Yap, the tax system implemented by none other than troika member Jean-Claude Juncker is more of a drain on the public budget in Germany than Greece could ever be.

@RedSky

Selling assets and, to a certain degree, the reduction of public employment is an unreasonable demand. There's too much controversy about the effects it has, with me being clearly biased to one side.

Privatisation of essential services (healthcare, public transport, electricity, water) is being opposed or even undone in significant parts of Europe, since it generally came with worse service at much higher costs and no accountability whatsoever. Therefore I see it as very reasonable for Syriza to stop the privatisation of their electricity grid and their railroad. There are, of course, unessentials that might be handed over to the private sector, but like Varoufakis said, not in the shape of a fire sale within a crisis. That'll only profit the usual scavengers, not the people.

Similarly, public employment. There's good public employment (essential services, administration) and "bad" public employment. Troika demands included the firing of cleaning personnel, who were replaced by a significantly more expensive private service. And a Greek court decision ruled the firing as flat out illegal. For Syriza to not hire them back would not only have been unreasonable financially as well as socially, it would have been a violation of a court order. Same for thousands of others who were fired illegally, according to a ruling by the Greek Supreme Court.

Troika demands are all too often against Greek or even European law, and while the previous governments were fine with being criminals, Syriza might actually be inclined to uphold the law.


On the issue of reforms, I would argue that the previous governments did bugger all to establish working institutions. Famously, the posts of department heads of the tax collection agency were auctioned for money, even under the last government. Everything is in shambles, with no intent of changing anything that would have undermined the nepotic rules of the five families. Syriza's program has been very clear about the changes they plan to institute, so if it really was the intent of the troika to see meaningful reform the way it is being advocated to their folks at home, they would be in support of Syriza.

Interventions by the troika have crashed the health care system, the educational system and the pension system. Public pension funds were practically wiped out during the first haircut in 2012, creating a hole of about 20 billion Euros in the next five years.

I would like to address the issue of taxation specifically. Luxembourg adopted as a business model to be an enabler of tax evasion, even worse than Switzerland. In charge at that time was none other than Jean-Claude Juncker, who was just elected President of the European Commission. He's directly involved in tax evasion on a scale of hundreds of billions of Euros every year. How is the troika to have any credibility in this matter with him in charge?

Similarly, German politicians are particularly vocal about corruption and bribery in Greece. Well, who are the biggest sources of bribery in Greece? German corporations. Just last week there was another report of a major German arms manufacturer who paid outrageous bribes to officials in Greece. As much as I support the fight against corruption and bribery, some humility would suit them well.


As for the GDP growth in Greece: I think it's a fluke. The deflation skewers the numbers to a point where I can't take them seriously until the complete dataset is available. Might be growth, might not be. Definatly not enough to fight off a humanitarian crisis.

Surpluses. If everyone was a zealous as Germany, the deficit would in fact be considerably narrower, which is a good thing. Unfortunatly, it would have been a race to the bottom. Germany could only suppress wage growth, and subsequently domestic demand, so radically, because the other members of the Eurozone were eager to expand. They ran higher-than-average growth, which allowed Germany to undercut them without going into deflation. Nowadays, Germany still has below-target wage growth, so the only way for Greece, Spain, Portugal and Italy to gain competetiveness against Germany is to go into deflation. That's where we are in Europe: half a continent in deflation. With all its side effects of mass unemployment (11%+ in Europe, after lots of trickery), falling demand, falling investment, etc. Not good. Keynes' idea of an International Clearing Union might work better, especially since we already use similar concepts within nations to balance regions.

Bond yields of Germany could not have spiked at the same time as those of the rest of the Eurozone. The legal requirements for pension funds, insurance funds, etc demand a high percentage of safe bonds, and when the peripheral countries were declared unsafe, they had nowhere to go but Germany. Also, a bet against France is quite a risk, but a bet against Germany is downright foolish. Still, supply of safe bonds is tight right now, given the cuts all over the place. French yields are at historic lows, German yield is negative. Even Italian and Spanish yields were in the green as soon as Draghi said the ECB would do whatever it takes.

The current spike in Greek yields strikes me as a bet that there will be a face-off between the troika and Greece, with very few positive outcomes for the Greek economy in the short run.

QE: 100% agreement. Fistful of cash to citizens would not have solved any of the core issues of the Eurozone (highly unequal ULCs, systemic tax evasion, tax competition/undercutting, no European institutions, etc), but it would have been infinitely better than anything they did. If they were to put it on the table right now as a means to combat deflation, I'd say go for it. Take the helicopters airborne, as long as it's bottom-up and not trickle-down. Though to reliably increase inflation there would have to be widescale increases in wages. Not going to happen. Maybe if Podemos wins in Spain later his year.

Same for the last paragraph. The ECB could have stuffed the EIB to the brim, which in return could have funded highly beneficial and much needed projects, like a proper European electricity grid. Won't happen though. Debt is bad, even monetised debt during a deflation used purely for investments.

Nothing is good about this situation and there is no reason to think this will end in anything but Greek default.

Greece's government, elected by its citizens ran up a large and unsustainable debt which was masked by easy credit before the GFC and fraudulent accounting.

There were many contributors. Corruption, hugely wasteful state owned enterprises, joining the euro zone before they were ready to lose the ability to devalue their currency and lower interest rates, and flagrant tax evasion.

But as a country they're collectively responsible for not demanding the necessary reforms of their politicians to ensure they were not vulnerable to a credit crisis when the GFC hit and lenders began to look more scrupulously at individual European countries rather than Europe as a whole. Equally, Italy is responsible for voting Berlusconi into power for every year their economy recorded negative growth under his government. Spain is responsible for not providing sufficient oversight to bad bank lending leading a huge indebting bailout package.

Some of Syriza's reforms are reasonable. Tackling corruption and trying to break up oligopolies are worthy ideas, but they are unlikely to be easy and yield any immediate benefit. Raising the minimum wage and planning to hire back state workers as they have already promised will almost guarantee they will cease to receive EU funding/ECB assistance and later IMF funding.

The simple truth from the point of view of Germany and other austerity backing Nordic countries is if they buy their loans (and in effect transfer money to Greece) without austerity stipulations, there will be no pressure or guarantee that structural reforms that allow Greece to function independently will ever be implemented. These lender government and by extension its people have no interest in transferring wealth to Greece if it stalls its reforms.

Yes fire sales of state owned enterprises suck but the likely alternative at this point if the Troika lending is stopped is that all other lending stops and Greece defaults. At that point there would be mass loss of state sector jobs and sky-rocketing unemployment relative to what is now being experienced. It would take years of reform for the Greek government to be lend-worthy again. There is simply no trust for any alternative to austerity on the part of north Europe.

Currently Greece has reported positive growth in the past quarter and excluding debt repayments is running a budget surplus. Realistically, yes they cannot pay back the 180% of GDP. The likely way forward is after several more years of real reform they (+ Spain & Portugal) would get better terms from the EU as politically, leaders in Germany and elsewhere will be able to make the case that their objective has been achieved.

The ECB's QE package is in some ways already part of this. What I guarantee won't happen is electing Syriza to oppose bailout terms helping to secure that. Germany et al will quite rightly see that if they acquiesce to Greece they will encourage other populist parties in Spain, Portugal, Italy and France and stall reforms.

Could Germany and others in theory provide a huge cash infusion to Greece, Spain and Portugal now? Sure. And those parties would be voted out in the next election and the terms reversed. Even with the relative stinginess of current loan terms, the likes of UKIP and the National Front with their anti-EU stance, have gained political standing in the EU parliament and will likely see huge boosts in upcoming domestic elections.

Guess what. This video can be found nowhere. The fucking government don't dare have this level of hypocrisy out there, when a couple of years down the line, their allowance of tax evasion to their cronies is at an all-time high. Grrr.

It certainly looks like the IRS is guilty of some excesses.

The problem is, it's hard for your average person to separate a legitimate complaint such as that vs the standard rabblerabblerabble whining about having to pay taxes in the first place.

One of the late night pundits nailed it. The IRS can't win. Even if they do their job perfectly, people still hate them because their job is to collect taxes. People want gov't services but they will do anything to avoid paying the bill. It's fucking stupid.

Tax evasion is a crime, bitches.

As for Mr. Issa's argument. He said these groups were being disenfranchised. Weren't all the petitions for the exemption status granted? Maybe you can make the argument that they had unfair scrutiny, but where is the crime if the exemption was granted anyway.

If anything, it seems to me that the exemption status is being abused horribly. It's one thing to be non-profit and seeking exemption. But if you're a political organization (left or right) with the ability to lobby, then you need to be taxed motherfucker. Or at the very least, someone needs to give me a good reason why a political organization shouldn't be taxed.

No taxation? Then no representation!

I don't care if you think we've got a spending problem or a revenue problem, the bottom line is that we have a budget problem and it's irresponsibility at it's highest to only focus on one side of that budget. You HAVE to look at spending AND revenue. We've been through this before, taxes do not kill private spending, at least not as a whole they don't.

The IRS excesses are definite issues that need to be dealt with, but the rest looks like another case of mock outrage.

Up here in the Great White North they can use the catch-everything-that-isn't-like-murder-or-rape-or-tax-evasion of "Public Mischief". A real dick who loves ultimately useless paperwork could try for "Interfering with a Police Officer". Probably end up with something akin to "illegal use of high beams".

>> ^Boise_Lib:

I got to 1:48 where he said, "Liberals say tax the rich and that will do it."
Umm...I don't remember ANYONE saying that that is enough. It's not.
Cut military spending DRASTICALLY!! AND tax the rich and corporations.
To be fair @surfingyt doesn't say if he thinks this is true, he (she?) just posted a video.
@GenjiKilpatrick -- No, he hasn't stopped his "self-help" racket.
He's helping himself to a big ol' bag of PAC money.
Downvote.


I agree that cutting military spending is an area that does need to be addressed quite seriously, not sure what it is now, but last i heard it was more than 2 Trillion a year (correct me if wrong).
If the military is still contracting out to those $$companies that suck up the funding and do stupid wasteful stuff like buying/building new trucks instead of repairing few-month old trucks because they make a bigger profit, then that needs to stop immediately.. military's should not be privatized like that.

In saying that I also think it's unwise to take out all the government armed forces funding as a country still needs to defend itself for it's citizens security, especially if they've pissed off a bunch of other nations. But the extent of the funding the US engages in is well past an obsessive degree and needs to be pulled into line.

Large corporations being taxed at low rates and in a lot of cases not even being audited for tax evasion (as TYT mentioned recently) is disgusting when the poor get smashed by taxes and audits.

I admittedly can't find statistics on this. My google-fu must be tuned to much with finding tech related stuff too much now.

Consumption taxes cost the gov't a lot of money, not businesses per se. Most of what the stats I saw was due to consumption taxes actually being more prone to fraud. Granted, there's plenty of tax evasion with income tax, but it's actually less costly to find relevant info to detect and bust those people. It's easy to pull bank records, payroll info, etc.

If I find this data, I'll PM it to you or post in a relevant area.

If you're looking for a system that fits perfectly with ideals, you'll likely object to a progressive income tax. I'm not interested in what is philosophically ideal as much as I am in a system that works for the economy. I don't really care that I pay for other people's education, health care, etc. I care that as many people as possible are employed, that there's lower crime, that overall everyone is more prosperous on average, etc. That is far more important than me paying a few extra dollars in taxes for maybe even things I disagree with, and don't want to pay for. I didn't go around protesting that my tax dollars were being spent on the most recent Iraqi war, saying that their decision to go to Iraq inhibited my personal freedoms to do what I want with my money. It was for common defense, even if I disagreed with going in.

The individual freedom argument is oversimplifying the issue. Case in point, if a flat tax caused crime to go up, how is it a gain in personal freedom that you don't have to pay more taxes for things you object to if you're more prone to being robbed or murdered? If you're an entrepreneur, how are you more free if you don't have to pay for other people's education, but you can't make your business work because you can't find the skills necessary in your labor force?

It was progress for society to setup compulsory education for all people. You could argue it restricted people's freedom to not go to school, or parents to choose to not educate their kids. But that's frankly a ridiculous argument to say that progress at the cost of individual liberty isn't progress at all. Society progressed because the general population became literate through a compulsory requirement to become educated as children.

The truth is we have and should continue to make decisions like this based on what would benefit society, not what fits an ideology. Ideologies provide frameworks that help come up with new ideas, but those ideas should then be looked at with what the results would be, not lock us into only using ideas from that school of thought. Those discoveries that violate common ideologies eventually end up forcing us to change our ideologies in small ways or completely abandon ideologies altogether because they don't work anymore. But we should never do something only for the sake of ideological consistency.

I can't see how a flat consumption tax would help society. Objectively speaking, one issue our economy is facing right now is there is too much wealth concentration in the hands of the rich, so there's an incredibly weak market for purchasing goods and services business owners are producing. I'm not saying this to proclaim the rich are evil or anything of the sort; I'm just saying pragmatically the economy can't work for business owners nor the poor and middle class if consumers don't have money to buy goods and services the rich are producing. One way to remedy that is progressive taxation.

>> ^GeeSussFreeK:

I don't know where the 98% efficient is coming from. The compliance cost alone I have read is close to 5 billion hours or so. With computers, I would imagine the sales/consumption tax is nearly automatic. Hard to find examples that aren't in someones sphere of influence. As for the "not progressive enough", that isn't really in the spirit of compromise. If I don't want it at all, and you want it all, halfway seems like the only way it will end up. A consumption tax seems easy enough halfway point. If you find it lacking, then join a charity that subsidies it out of your own pocket. Stop trying to be fair with other peoples money. Maybe I don't want to give every single useless tom dick and harry a leg up in life, I only want to help people I know and trust. Unless we are trying to make being a reclusive shut in completely against the law now. Progress at the cost of individual liberty isn't really progress at all.
Edit: Here is a less new, but more exhaustive link on costs.
http://www.taxfoundation.org/files/sr138.pdf
Last edit I swear:
I know you might not trust this, but this is a little blurb from the "Fair Tax" http://www.fairtax.org/site/PageServer?pagename=about_faq_answers
It is progressive, which I don't like, but it is the best compromise I can find around. Seems reasonable enough.

>> ^GeeSussFreeK:

@snoozedoctor One flaw I find with the logic is governments don't provide service typically. Only in the military does the government provide this service to a client.
I would like add as an aside that when you raise taxes higher and higher to capture income that people avoid, the people that don't avoid it, the load becomes so burdensome that they can't afford to compete on the same playing field. It forces a feedback loop of insidious tax evasion to the point of not only avoiding paying a fair share, but any share at all. It also drives money over seas to avoid taxation. A simpler, and easier to follow tax code would be a benefit to everyone, including those who want it to be progressive. I found a couple of tax systems interesting, even though I don't support progressive taxes, mainly, "the fair tax". It is a flat tax but rebates all citizens the basic poverty level of good and services worth of tax back. It ends up having a similar effect as Milton Friedman's negative income tax where by people who don't make enough to meet the minimum standard of living don't pay any tax, and actually get some extra in their pocket. Some are critical that we are rewarding people for being poor in that instance, but no one wants to be poor, so I don't see it as a feedback loop like higher taxes causing money to go overseas is.
Fairly speaking though, the current system is completely broken, so people who want flat rates OR progressive rates are both not getting what they want. The entire tax structure needs an overhaul because this isn't working anymore. It is the same in the coding world. When your code beast becomes to difficult to manage, you start your new revision with all the knowledge you learned from the last revision. Tax 3.0 is needed, and soon.


Wonderful, but no country in the world has tried this, and none seem willing to. It ends up just being a right wing scape goat argument. "I want flat taxes, but...we'll take care of the poor, we promise."

I'LL BELIEVE IT WHEN I SEE IT.

@snoozedoctor One flaw I find with the logic is governments don't provide service typically. Only in the military does the government provide this service to a client.

I would like add as an aside that when you raise taxes higher and higher to capture income that people avoid, the people that don't avoid it, the load becomes so burdensome that they can't afford to compete on the same playing field. It forces a feedback loop of insidious tax evasion to the point of not only avoiding paying a fair share, but any share at all. It also drives money over seas to avoid taxation. A simpler, and easier to follow tax code would be a benefit to everyone, including those who want it to be progressive. I found a couple of tax systems interesting, even though I don't support progressive taxes, mainly, "the fair tax". It is a flat tax but rebates all citizens the basic poverty level of good and services worth of tax back. It ends up having a similar effect as Milton Friedman's negative income tax where by people who don't make enough to meet the minimum standard of living don't pay any tax, and actually get some extra in their pocket. Some are critical that we are rewarding people for being poor in that instance, but no one wants to be poor, so I don't see it as a feedback loop like higher taxes causing money to go overseas is.

Fairly speaking though, the current system is completely broken, so people who want flat rates OR progressive rates are both not getting what they want. The entire tax structure needs an overhaul because this isn't working anymore. It is the same in the coding world. When your code beast becomes to difficult to manage, you start your new revision with all the knowledge you learned from the last revision. Tax 3.0 is needed, and soon.

on top of all that is the time and effort spent trying to make sure you do everything correctly and just trying learn how to do it in the first place. my time costs $70/hr. i've probably spent $1000 worth of my time this week alone trying to learn how to be a good accountant and financial advisor.

now i'm going to start my own religion and make tax evasion one of its prime tenants. but, we will burn the works of ayn rand and forbid anyone from "pulling themselves up by their own bootstraps". we shall instead study the writings of vonnegut, devote ourselves to the history of radical anarchist movements of the 20th century, forbid sexual repression and of course, we will love our bodies and never think them sinful or imperfect. instead of taking the sacrament, we will rub each others backs and necks and shoulders and legs. the power of touch will be > than the power of prayer. and we will look at the teachings of new age healers with great skepticism, despite what we may or may not have in common with them. hallelujah. amen.

In reply to this comment by blankfist:
Yeah, I noticed that when I was self-employed (read that as being a freelancer), my taxes went way up. I now owe back taxes. It becomes difficult to remain solvent. It's like the high taxes are there to discourage people from competing with the larger companies, and I've almost caved multiple times and gone back to working for corporations. I shudder to think.

And then there's the problem of where your money is spent. It's not locally generally. A lot of it goes to wars and death. I'd much rather spend locally and help those I have a chance of encountering daily.

In reply to this comment by peggedbea:
being self-employed may or may not be turning me into a libertarian. i feel like i'd rather take 20% of my income and just hand it over directly to my elderly neighbors than send it to the pilfering sociopaths in washington. ... i'm currently researching the best ways to commit tax evasion.

Yeah, I noticed that when I was self-employed (read that as being a freelancer), my taxes went way up. I now owe back taxes. It becomes difficult to remain solvent. It's like the high taxes are there to discourage people from competing with the larger companies, and I've almost caved multiple times and gone back to working for corporations. I shudder to think.

And then there's the problem of where your money is spent. It's not locally generally. A lot of it goes to wars and death. I'd much rather spend locally and help those I have a chance of encountering daily.

In reply to this comment by peggedbea:
being self-employed may or may not be turning me into a libertarian. i feel like i'd rather take 20% of my income and just hand it over directly to my elderly neighbors than send it to the pilfering sociopaths in washington. ... i'm currently researching the best ways to commit tax evasion.