Perhaps you’ve heard of the Panama Papers in the news the last couple of days. Don’t worry if you haven’t yet, you will. The Panama Papers are poised to create some serious problems for the world’s richest and most powerful people. So you don’t get too lost in the wormhole though let me give you the short short version; stop me if you’ve heard this one before.
Wealthy people around the world play a shell game with their money to avoid paying taxes and screw over everyone else. Of course, you’ve heard this before. You are in the 99% (the .01% are probably over reading Forbes) and as anyone in this super elite group can tell you, we know the system is rigged against us.
I’m generally not a fan of internet leaks, but in this case, I have to admit it feels good. There is something unusually gratifying to see the snakes in the grass being exposed. Too harsh? Let’s profile the people who are currently being exposed:
Right. As I was saying, snakes.
I’m generally a fan of capitalism in theory. I like the idea that if you work hard, you are rewarded. While I freely admit that “tax pain” is a real thing, I generally don’t mind paying it. It means we have better infrastructure, a health care system, an education system—the very things that make Canada such a wonderful place to live. The catch is that everyone needs to contribute their fair share. Free markets should “technically” mean a better life for everyone, but we’re about as far from that as we can get. Here’s why:
The 99% work hard for their money. They put in 40+ hour work weeks, they pay their taxes and yet they’re still not getting ahead, because the .01% keep downloading the cost of running a functioning society to them. Our taxes keep rising, and our services continue to be cut because we literally can not keep up. Let’s remember that the 99% only hold roughly half of the world’s wealth, and that percentage keeps falling. This means that the other half of the wealth is funding terrorism, helping rich men get laid, politician's retirement plans, and generally keeping the rest of us under their thumbs.
The centre can’t hold on this, guys.
By 2015, our former government cut budgets to numerous federal departments by $10.8 billion dollars a year. These cuts represent real loss of jobs, not to mention loss of services for those who truly need it. According to The Toronto Star, it is estimated that annual tax loss due to offshore accounts is between $6 billion and $7.8 billion. It’s not hard to see that greed is definitely not good.
A couple of years ago I watched a fascinating TEDX talk by zillionaire Nick Hanauer that warned his fellow plutocrats that the pitchforks were coming. I’ve never really forgotten it, and today it seems to me that the time may be here. We are only a couple of days into the fallout from the Panama Papers and we are already seeing uprisings in Iceland calling for their Prime Minister’s resignation. As the over 400 journalists around the world who worked on this in secret for over a year continue to expose the names behind the fraud, the protests will only continue to ramp up.
It's not lost on me that I'm writing this article from a position of privilege. That I even know that this is happening is testament to my privilege. It means I have an education, access to information, and a platform with which to express my opinions. There are over 836 million people around the globe who live in extreme poverty. That means they live on under $1.25 a day, an amount so measly to me I couldn't even get a coffee at my local Starbucks with it. These people have no access to safe, clean drinking water. They struggle daily to find enough to eat. They may not know what keeps them under but I do, and that's why it's more important than ever that we speak up.
I’m not hoping for violence. I don’t condone destruction of property. Those things make no sense. What I do hope is that our government will step up and not only tighten but enforce laws against hiding money and evading taxes. Don't pay us lip service, actually do something. I hope that the obscenely wealthy grow a conscience once they’ve been exposed and I don’t even feel a little bit bad about their privacy. Even if what they are doing might not be illegal in all cases, it’s at the very least, lacking in common decency. Finally, I hope that the 99% doesn’t lose focus on this, because nothing is going to change, unless we demand it.
So to the uber-wealthy out there who have been on our backs for far too long now, we see you. We know who you are and we're done. We've picked up the proverbial pitchfork and are telling you it's time to pay your own way.
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