As Americans vacation their way through yet another observance of Presidents’ Day, it’s well to remember the man whose name defines modern politics.
In 1513, Niccolo Machiavelli, the Florentine statesman who has been called the father of modern political science, published his best-known work: The Prince.
Niccolo Machiavelli
Among the issues he confronted was how to preserve liberty within a republic. And key to this was mediating the eternal struggle between the wealthy and the poor and middle class.
Machiavelli deeply distrusted the nobility because they stood above the law. He saw them as a major source of corruption because they could buy influence through patronage, favors or nepotism.
Successful political leaders must attain the support of the nobility or general populace. But since these groups have conflicting interests, the safest course is to choose the latter.
….He who becomes prince by help of the [wealthy] has greater difficulty in maintaining his power than he who is raised by the populace. He is surrounded by those who think themselves his equals, and is thus unable to direct or command as he pleases.
But one who is raised to leadership by popular favor finds himself alone, and has no one, or very few, who are not ready to obey him. [And] it is impossible to satisfy the [wealthy] by fair dealing and without inflicting injury upon others, whereas it is very easy to satisfy the mass of the people in this way.
For the aim of the people is more honest than that of the [wealthy], the latter desiring to oppress, and the former merely to avoid oppression. [And] the prince can never insure himself against a hostile population on account of their numbers, but he can against the hostility of the great, as they are but few.
The worst that a prince has to expect from a hostile people is to be abandoned, but from hostile nobles he has to fear not only desertion but their active opposition. And as they are more far seeing and more cunning, they are always in time to save themselves and take sides with the one who they expect will conquer.
The prince is, moreover, obliged to live always with the same people, but he can easily do without the same nobility, being able to make and unmake them at any time, and improve their position or deprive them of it as he pleases.
Unfortunately, political leaders throughout the world–including the United States–have ignored this sage advice.
The results of this wholesale favoring of the wealth and powerful have been brilliantly documented in a recent investigation of tax evasion by the world’s rich.
In 2012, Tax Justice Network, which campaigns to abolish tax havens, commissioned a study of their effect on the world’s economy.
The study was entitled, “The Price of Offshore Revisited: New Estimates for ‘Missing’ Global Private Wealth, Income, Inequality and Lost Taxes.”
http://www.taxjustice.net/cms/upload/pdf/Price_of_Offshore_Revisited_120722.pdf
The research was carried out by James Henry, former chief economist at consultants McKinsey & Co. Among its findings:
- By 2010, at least $21 to $32 trillion of the world’s private financial wealth had been invested virtually tax-free through more than 80 offshore secrecy jurisdictions.
- Since the 1970s, with eager (and often aggressive and illegal) assistance from the international private banking industry, private elites in 139 countries had accumulated $7.3 to $9.3 trillion of unrecorded offshore wealth by 2010.
- This happened while many of those countries’ public sectors were borrowing themselves into bankruptcy, suffering painful adjustment and low growth, and holding fire sales of public assets.
- The assets of these countries are held by a small number of wealthy individuals while the debts are shouldered by the ordinary people of these countries through their governments.
- The offshore industry is protected by pivate bankers, lawyers and accountants, who get paid handsomely to hide their clients’ assets and identities.
-
Bank regulators and central banks of most countries allow the world’s top tax havens and banks to hide the origins and ownership of assets under their supervision.
- Although multilateral institutions like the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), the IMF and the World Bank are supposedly insulated from politics, they have been highly compromised by the collective interests of Wall Street.
- These regulatory bodies have never required financial institutions to fully report their cross-border customer liabilities, deposits, customer assets under management or under custody.
- Less than 100,000 people, .001% of the world’s population, now control over 30% of the world’s financial wealth.
- Assuming that global offshore financial wealth of $21 trillion earns a total return of just 3% a year, and would have been taxed an average of 30% in the home country, this unrecorded wealth might have generated tax revenues of $189 billion per year.
Summing up this situation, the report notes: “We are up against one of society’s most well-entrenched interest groups. After all, there’s no interest group more rich and powerful than the rich and powerful.”
Fortunately, Machiavelli has supplied a timeless remedy to this increasingly dangerous situation:
- Assume evil among men–and most especially among those who possess the greatest concentration of wealth and power.
- Carefully monitor their activities–the way the FBI now regularly monitors those of the Mafia and major terrorist groups.
- Ruthlessly prosecute the treasonous crimes of the rich and powerful–and, upon their conviction, impose severe punishment.
Bureaucracybuster's Blog 
ABC NEWS, AFFORDABLE CARE ACT, BARACK OBAMA, CALVIN COOLIDGE, CBS NEWS, CNN, DIVINE RIGHTS OF KINGS THEORY, EMPLOYERS RESPONSIBILITY ACT, EMPLOYMENT, FACEBOOK, INCOME INEQUALITY, JOHN BOEHNER, MARK SHIELDS, MITT ROMNEY, NBC NEWS, OBAMACARE, PBS NEWSHOUR, PLUTOCRACY, REPUBLICAN PARTY, THE CHICAGO SUN-TIMES, THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE, THE LOS ANGELES TIMES, THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE WASHINGTON POST, TWITTER, USA TODAY
HOW TO DESTROY–AND CREATE–JOBS: PART ONE (OF THREE)
In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Politics, Social commentary on April 22, 2015 at 12:10 amRepublicans, always ready to attack President Barack Obama, have found a new cause for blame: Obama is responsible for increased inequality.
“Frankly, the president’s policies have made income inequality worse,” House Speaker John Boehner said on CBS’s “60 Minutes” in January.
And he blamed Obamacare for the growing inequality:
“All the regulations that are coming out of Washington make it more difficult for employers to hire more people, chief amongst those, I would argue is Obamacare–which basically puts a penalty or a tax on employers for every new job they create.”
Even Mitt Romney has suddenly discovered that millions of Americans are suffering from income inequality.
Yes, that Mitt Romney–who famously said during his 2012 campaign for President: “Corporations are people, my friend”; “I like being able to fire people”; and “I’m not concerned about the very poor.”
“Under President Obama, the rich have gotten richer, income inequality has gotten worse and there are more people in poverty than ever before,” Romney told a crowd of Republican National Committee members in January.
Mitt Romney speaking on the USS Midway
“Their liberal policies are good every four years for a campaign, but they don’t get the job done,” he said from the deck of the USS Midway in San Diego.
“The only policies that will reach into the hearts of the American people and pull people out of poverty and break the cycle of poverty are Republican principles, conservative principles.”
Click here: The reinvention of Mitt Romney – Edward-Isaac Dovere – POLITICO
But syndicated political columnist Mark Shields has another reason for why millions of Americans can’t find jobs–or jobs that pay a living wage.
His culprit: International trade agreements.
Mark Shields
“They have been a disaster for American workers, a total disaster, beginning with NAFTA,” said Shields on the April 17 edition of the PBS Newshour.
“They have put all the power in the hands of the employer.
“The employer threatens, if you don’t go along, if you don’t surrender your bargaining rights, if you don’t surrender your health and pension benefits, if you don’t surrender collective union membership, we will move your job overseas.
“And as consequence of NAFTA some 22 years ago, documented by our own government, 755,000 jobs lost immediately, five million fewer American–five million fewer American manufacturing jobs than there were….
“We see it where all–the trade agreements, the investor class capital is protected, whether it’s copyrights or whatever, intellectual property, their investments. And they just pay lip service to workers’ rights….
“Median household income in the United States was lower in 2012 than it was in 1989. I’m not saying solely because of this, but largely because of this.
“If you want to see the dominance of capital that I think these trade agreements exemplify and embody, all you have to see is the 2008 crisis, economic crisis in this country.
“Millions of ordinary Americans saw their futures, their savings, their homes wiped out. And they got nothing in the way of relief.
“Those who had caused it, who had brought the country to its knees, the big banks and the investment houses of Wall Street, were bailed out by people. They were made whole.
“So, you had a choice. Who are you going to help and who you going to leave to make out for their own?
“We have capitalism for the rich and we have free enterprise, high risk for workers. And I just think this is what it exemplifies….American workers have lost their clout politically.”
Click here: Shields and Brooks on Pacific trade deal politics
Romney is right: “The rich have gotten richer, income inequality has gotten worse and there are more people in poverty than ever before.”
And so is Shields: “American workers have lost their clout politically.”
But what neither man offered was a solution–although one is available.
It is long past time for Americans to address the following evils for which employers are directly responsible:
The solution to these evils can be summed up in three words: Employers Responsibility Act (ERA).
If passed by Congress and vigorously enforced by the U.S. Departments of Justice and Labor, an ERA would ensure full-time, permanent and productive employment for millions of capable, job-seeking Americans.
And it would achieve this without raising taxes or creating controversial government “make work” programs.
Share this: