The Price We Pay

The emergence of the global rich not paying what most would consider their fair share of taxes either through tax evasion or tax avoidance - which of the two dependent on one's viewpoint - in funneling money through tax havens is presented. While individuals doing such is considered illegal in most jurisdictions, many corporations, especially larger multinationals, are able to get away with it in their business not being legally confined to one jurisdiction or another. The history of tax havens is presented, they which grew out of an old British law that allowed the Corporation of the City of London - which only constitutes one square mile of what is Metropolitan London - to control everything within their borders, including the financial sector. Because of the expense of working in London proper, many overseas British territories became those tax havens in being able to operate under such laws, some of the most famous, or infamous, again depending on viewpoint, are the Cayman Islands and the Channel Islands. These political jurisdictions only serve as the "names" in that physical moneys generally never even touch their shores, but rather float in what is a financial cloud with such financial transactions under their name without jurisdiction and thus without regulation. The notion of tax havens flourished in the 1980s with Thatcherism and Reaganism in countries, unable to stop how tax havens operate, joining the fray in competition for a piece of the global economy in offering corporations deep tax cuts to locate there in the prospect of employment for its citizenry, but which has led to the middle and working classes having to pay for a larger share of the tax base, the systematic dismantling of the welfare state, the emergence of much work in the pursuit of money not actually contributing anything meaningful in and of itself in its activity, and the financial services sector, which should solely be a support to an economy, comprising a larger proportion of global wealth. Interviewees discuss what it will take for the world to combat such if it is indeed deemed a bad thing, which many politicians in western democracies are now believing it is in especially larger multinationals not paying tax in their jurisdiction in proportion to their wealth even if on the surface they do largely operate there.