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Panama Papers: Mossack Fonseca leak reveals elite's tax havens

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Re: Panama Papers: Mossack Fonseca leak reveals elite's tax havens

#181
post #43

Selected quote: "The ICIJ findings include evidence that: - Offshore companies linked to the family of China's top leader, Xi Jinping, as well as Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, who has positioned himself as a reformer in a country shaken by corruption scandals - 29 billionaires featured in Forbes Magazine's list of the world's 500 richest people - Icelandic Prime Minister Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson and his w…

For what it's worth, being featured in these documents is not in and of itself evidence of any wrongdoing. There are entirely lawful and legitimate reasons for making use of offshore company structures.

I'd replace wrongdoing with illegal. If you ask me, if you're a billionaire and you're not willing to pay taxes and spend 0.0001% of your wealth on the expertise to reduce your tax bill by 99%, in legal ways that 99.99% of the rest of the population doesn't engage in, then by all means that's wrongdoing to me and I think most would be with me on that.

Of course it's not necessarily illegal.

Re: Panama Papers: Mossack Fonseca leak reveals elite's tax havens

#182
post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes you think that recent elections were not free? I am Russian and vast majority of people I know (like 90%) went to vote for Putin. I have one friend who was worried about elections not being free since he was voting for Prokhorov and really disliked Putin, so he signed up as an independent observer at one of the St.Petersburg voting booths, and he was shocked when he saw the amount of people that came to vo…

Last Duma elections were definitely rigged. For example, Moscow voted as two different cities: https://github.com/alamar/elegraph/blob/master/moscow.png Note the two obvious centers of blobs. I'm yet to see any non-handwavy explanation of that phenomenon, and why it then disappeared for the next President elections.

Can you explain to me how this chart proves that "elections were DEFINITELY rigged"? I just don't understand what do you mean by "obvious centers of blobs" and how does it correlates with rigged elections?

Re: Panama Papers: Mossack Fonseca leak reveals elite's tax havens

#183
post #174
post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You buy a recurring ticket for your phone and it's billed for anything else. It's like a tax plus extra use fees. Privatization is not a general solution though. It needs regulation and oversight to keep unfair market practices to a minimum. I totally get why you'd not want to finance many things, and I'm with you on most of those, but the world isn't that simple and human behavior/psychology surely isn't. 1, 2, 3, 4…

> Privatization is not a general solution though. It needs regulation and oversight to keep unfair market practices to a minimum. That's a statement, not an axiom, although it's taught as an axiom. Did you know that the US military is the biggest polluter? Who regulates it? If government can't regulate itself, what kind of regulation of private companies do you expect from it, when said private companies have money t…

Regulation bodies: Of course regulators need oversight and regulation and it's hard to get right.

Total transparency is the first step in everything. No penny can cross a table visibly without being accounted for.

But it's easy to involve malevolent parties in oversight, looking for their own outcome rather than find a universally beneficial regulation. Hard nut to crack.

Election: Probably getting rid of all the financial madness and imitate countries where even right wing idiots can get into congress is a start. That is a reflection of the people's opinions after all. But you need to educate people and eradicate unfounded fears which are exploited by politicians. Not all education is correct as can be seen in some folks' strong opinions that look like straight from the dark ages.

Unproductive gambler: You cannot expel the guy, you cannot shutdown the guy, so you can therapy him or support his lifestyle enough that he doesn't become a larger burden. This will be hard to sell and seen as fascist style government (or that's what people will reference anyway) if you force him to lead a more productive life.

Spending: Put into law that misspending has consequences like getting fired. How nice it would be if, for a change, those who made the final decision or ignored the work of their underlings would have to face consequences. This is something that I believe is deeply ingrained in Japanese society but I don't know if it works. And, like a company, if you spend N, then there's no magic fountain for another N amount of money. That alone would solve a lot. Making taxes purpose-bound would go a long way in the right direction. In Germany trucks pay a road toll per kilometer but from the greater than 7 billion EUROs not much seems to be left for roads, judging by the debates on missing funds for road infrastructure. In a company people do not use the training budget for buying smokes and if they do it's a badly managed company.

Idea1: Make government office about points to gain for problems solved, like friggin school. More points equals more credit to spend extra. If you mess up you lose rights to spend and make executive decisions.

Idea2: Oversight and regulation for those who actually lobby and/or come up with policies for officials to sign off. Those are the same group of people lingering around DC for 50 years, and everybody thinks it makes a difference whether Trump or Bob Hope is elected president.

Idea3: Hold candidates accountable to promises they make. Suddenly they will stop or use imprecise light rethoric that doesn't convey anything. Either way it would stop false belief in someone's promise.

Re: Panama Papers: Mossack Fonseca leak reveals elite's tax havens

#186
post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Last Duma elections were definitely rigged. For example, Moscow voted as two different cities: https://github.com/alamar/elegraph/blob/master/moscow.png Note the two obvious centers of blobs. I'm yet to see any non-handwavy explanation of that phenomenon, and why it then disappeared for the next President elections.

Can you explain to me how this chart proves that "elections were DEFINITELY rigged"? I just don't understand what do you mean by "obvious centers of blobs" and how does it correlates with rigged elections?

You would imagine, if Moscow is a city comprised of similar election districts, that election results in that districts will form a continuity.

There would be a few outliers and a massive core of "typical" districts with similar results in them. We're even bound to get Gauss distribution of results or something similar.

However, for Duma election, there's no continuity. There are two distinct profiles. There are a lot of districts with one kind of results, a lot of districts with different kind of results. As if it was two different cities, possibly in two different countries. Or if election results were rigged in a large subset of districts.

Why would that be?

Re: Panama Papers: Mossack Fonseca leak reveals elite's tax havens

#187
post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a Ukrainian, I'm livid. Our media mentioned Putin's offshores but obviously forgot about Poroshenko's. Same shit, different day.

One of the biggest Ukrainian news sites wrote about Poroshenko at 22:17 of local time: http://www.pravda.com.ua/news/2016/04/3/7104295/

This guy made a table:

https://twitter.com/vorobyov/status/716731020880568320

Re: Panama Papers: Mossack Fonseca leak reveals elite's tax havens

#188
post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you really believe that western media care a single bit about free elections in Russia? The only reason they care about it is because The position of Russia government does not match the western narrative.

> Ohh, please stop, do you really believe that western media care a single bit about free elections in Russia? I think any person in the "west" would be delighted to see free elections in Russia. Why wouldn't we? Since it would be a missive influence on our lives, of course western media should care! A government elected by popular vote would be stabilizing to the region (and the world) since it wouldn't have the sam…

> I think any person in the "west" would be delighted to see free elections in Russia.

No, they will be delighted to see the candidate they (westerns) like more - win, they won't care who most people really voted and supported in Russia. Putin won on the recent elections and I did not notice any "delighted west media" after that, even thought as I said in a separate comment - vast majority of the people in Russia actually did support Putin vs other candidates. It's hard to see from the outside, but most people in Russia are actually supporting Putin, I think the reason is that those who were against Putin have a better reach to international media since they speak english and are more socially active thus from the outside it looks like most of the population dislikes Putin, which in reality is not true.

Re: Panama Papers: Mossack Fonseca leak reveals elite's tax havens

#189

Selected quote: "The ICIJ findings include evidence that: - Offshore companies linked to the family of China's top leader, Xi Jinping, as well as Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, who has positioned himself as a reformer in a country shaken by corruption scandals - 29 billionaires featured in Forbes Magazine's list of the world's 500 richest people - Icelandic Prime Minister Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson and his w…

I did not find these references in the linked BBC story. Where is this quoted from?

Re: Panama Papers: Mossack Fonseca leak reveals elite's tax havens

#190
post #114

Selected quote: "The ICIJ findings include evidence that: - Offshore companies linked to the family of China's top leader, Xi Jinping, as well as Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, who has positioned himself as a reformer in a country shaken by corruption scandals - 29 billionaires featured in Forbes Magazine's list of the world's 500 richest people - Icelandic Prime Minister Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson and his w…

> British Prime Minister David Cameron, a leader in the push for tax-haven reform There was a load of rhetoric in 2011 about offshore/tax reform, but very little in the way of action since then. As with tradition in Cameron's brand of "Compassionate Conservatism", it's a depressingly cynical slight of hand and nothing more.

How much is he able to influence the British Virgin Islands? As they seem to be one of the top havens for years.

If he is, and being a leader in the push for reform, what was on his agenda for BVI?

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