Appleby claims these documents were obtained during a security incident last year:
https://www.applebyglobal.com/news/news-2017/media-coverage-...
Paradise Papers: New leak from offshore finance firm
121–130 of 459 posts
Re: Paradise Papers: New leak from offshore finance firm
#122Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It's the wrong angle. One should not look at corporations as the moral saviours. [...] Rather, it is the governments of the world we should be going at if we want this behaviour to change. Let us pretend that corporations have no influence over laws and governments, and merely play a game they had no hand in designing.
So the corporation is still the symptom. What we should be doing is insulating the government from outside influence.
> we should be doing is insulating the government from outside influence.
We should be insulating it from the influence of money, not of voters. The influence of voters is the foundation of democracy and legitimate government.
Re: Paradise Papers: New leak from offshore finance firm
#123Comment from economist Tyler Cowen when the same group of journalists released the Panama papers: Was it wrong to hack and leak the Panama Papers? Let’s say a group of criminal defense lawyers kept a database of their confidential conversations with their clients. That would include clients charged with murder, robbery, DUI, drug abuse, and so on. In turn, a hacker would break into that database and post the informat…
I would say this is a false equivocation to the extent that the "database" that the author referenced in beginning of the metaphor should not include victimless crimes such as "drug abuse".
The author also assumes that there would be a de-facto backlash against the "hacker"'s behavior. I don't think so. If the justice system is "innocent until proven guilty", and these people are proven guilty in a court of law by evidence (even if such evidence is blasted to the world by this 'hacker'), there is no difference between whether they make $10 or $10 million per year.
This does invoke a bit of a quandary as referenced earlier over whether certain victimless crimes should actually be classified as crimes, but I believe that is orthogonal to the conversation to some extent.
The stronger argument was mentioned below: Do you as a citizen strive to minimize your tax burden to the most extent it makes sense and is legal? If yes, then why should it be any different whether you make $10 or $10 million in a year? Is there some sort of arbitrary monetary amount where you are supposed to make this moral decision "oh I made enough money now, it's time to pay more taxes than I am legally required to". If so, when is it? If not, then the tax code and subsequently the government are the systems you need to look at if legal lowering of the rich man's tax burden is something you find reprehensible.
Re: Paradise Papers: New leak from offshore finance firm
#124Since there are no top level comments putting this out for probably obvious reasons, here is a supportive comment for the article. This is what people feel in their guts when they drive out on tattered roads and avoid going to the hospital even though they are sick, when they don't have a real increase in wages but are working longer hours. They have the sense that something isn't right, that there are two sets of ru…
> politicians get off for things magnitudes more illegal than what they've done, That indeed demands justice. > I think isn't a bad thing as long as the poorest among us have some basic level of livelihood. The problem is that in the US, that isn't true, and so, people clamor for justice. That is not a demand for justice, but charity. Words have a meaning, please don't misuse them.
How is this charity? Isn't "the poorest among us have some basic level of livelihood" exactly justice, and exactly the job of a government?
Please don't use this kind of argument to turn HN into reddit.
Re: Paradise Papers: New leak from offshore finance firm
#125Earlier quoted context omitted.
Money that you spend on buying software, hiring etc isn’t generally taxable anyway. A business is generally taxed on income, not revenue. You also have to ask, where is the money coming from? In this case, it would appear to be through radically increasing the deficit. There will ultimately be consequences to that (for instance, in a few years, as the US’s credit rating comes under pressure, increased repayments may…
> Money that you spend on buying software, hiring etc isn’t generally taxable anyway. A business is generally taxed on income, not revenue. But reducing my quarterly and annual tax liabilies allows me to spend more on these things because there is more cash for the business at the end of the day.
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Re: Paradise Papers: New leak from offshore finance firm
#126Since there are no top level comments putting this out for probably obvious reasons, here is a supportive comment for the article. This is what people feel in their guts when they drive out on tattered roads and avoid going to the hospital even though they are sick, when they don't have a real increase in wages but are working longer hours. They have the sense that something isn't right, that there are two sets of ru…
> politicians get off for things magnitudes more illegal than what they've done, That indeed demands justice. > I think isn't a bad thing as long as the poorest among us have some basic level of livelihood. The problem is that in the US, that isn't true, and so, people clamor for justice. That is not a demand for justice, but charity. Words have a meaning, please don't misuse them.
It's always disappointing to find people on the web who don't believe in basic human rights.
Don't we all have the right to a basic level of livelihood? Why should the family I was born to determine wether I have clean water to drink or not, for example?
Re: Paradise Papers: New leak from offshore finance firm
#127It's the wrong angle. One should not look at corporations as the moral saviours. As Supreme Court Judge Learned Hand once said: "Over and over again courts have said that there is nothing 851*851 sinister in so arranging one's affairs as to keep taxes as low as possible. Everybody does so, rich or poor; and all do right, for nobody owes any public duty to pay more than the law demands: taxes are enforced exactions, n…
> It's the wrong angle. One should not look at corporations as the moral saviours.
It's too late. You're arguing a return to the past, "money is just money, corporations are just doing what's in their self interest."
That's still the dominant ideology, but it's on the wane.
It will be replaced when cash is replaced. Cash will be replaced by bonds. I won't pay McDonalds in cash for a burger, I will pay them in a bond specifically to be disbursed according to how I want the money to be disbursed. Yes more burgers. Yes advertise all you want. No, this money may not be spent on rainforest destruction. If they misuse funds, the bond will be broken and they'll be subject to penalties. Intentionality will reach forward and back across the disbursement boundary. Cash will die.
Capitalists have always talked about cash as if it had the color of a bond, "vote with your dollars" and that kind of thing. And repeat purchases do start to act like a bond. If I'm a large repeat customer and I complain, the business is likely to respond.
But that setup, where the bond is just implicit in the revenue stream, inevitably caters to the wealthy. If you're a big fish, your cash is treated as a bond. If you're a small fish, it's treated as cash.
Digital currencies will allow us to actually pay for small transactions with microbonds, giving much more power to small purchasers.
Re: Paradise Papers: New leak from offshore finance firm
#128Earlier quoted context omitted.
> politicians get off for things magnitudes more illegal than what they've done, That indeed demands justice. > I think isn't a bad thing as long as the poorest among us have some basic level of livelihood. The problem is that in the US, that isn't true, and so, people clamor for justice. That is not a demand for justice, but charity. Words have a meaning, please don't misuse them.
How is this charity? Isn't "the poorest among us have some basic level of livelihood" exactly justice, and exactly the job of a government? Please don't use this kind of argument to turn HN into reddit.
In my humble opinion, the job of the government is absolutely not to give money to the poorest people, not even to maintain a "basic level of livelyhood".
I'm also fairly certain this has nothing to do with the concept of justice.
Re: Paradise Papers: New leak from offshore finance firm
#129Since there are no top level comments putting this out for probably obvious reasons, here is a supportive comment for the article. This is what people feel in their guts when they drive out on tattered roads and avoid going to the hospital even though they are sick, when they don't have a real increase in wages but are working longer hours. They have the sense that something isn't right, that there are two sets of ru…
It's important to note that, in the US, worker __compensation__ has increased steadily. However, __wages__ have not. A lot of this has to do with employer provided health insurance and ballooning healthcare costs, which are fairly specific problems to the US. Housing and education costs have also increased much faster than overall worker compensation.
Couldn't you argue that an increase in compensation driven by 'ballooning healthcare costs' wouldn't actually improve the standard of living of workers? Comparing wages (rather than total compensation) to cost of living would seem more pertinent in this regard.
Re: Paradise Papers: New leak from offshore finance firm
#130Earlier quoted context omitted.
Military spending got you the Internet, GPS, jet engines, microwave ovens and a million more things that you take for granted ...
Anyone with less than half the money the militars spend should had "got" me all those things. Militars have that awful economic drag building expensive things just to blow them in some far away place without any return.
Anyone with less than half the money the militars spend should had "got" me all those things.
But they didn't. As the old saying goes, the Swiss had peace for 500 years and all they invented was the cuckoo clock.