Thursday, October 07, 2021
Political Mayhem Thursday: The Pandora Papers
Some light is shining on the shadow world of the very very rich with the release of the "Pandora Papers," a set of financial documents that set out the way billionaires are able to buy influence, evade taxes, and hide their often ill-gotten gains. It's really pretty astonishing-- you can get a taste of it here.
One of the saddest parts of the whole story is that American billionaires don't even need offshore tax dodges, since they barely pay any taxes anyways. Our system is fundamentally broken-- and I hope that at some point people who supported Donald Trump's tax plan for the very rich realize that the rest of us are having to make up the difference.
Bernie Sanders was wrong about some things, but his central thesis about government and the very rich is true: that billionaires take much more than they give, and that their influence has decayed to moral and fiscal integrity of the government.
