There is no inalienable right to destroy society for profit — a comment regarding corporate tax evasion

15 September 2016

One of the United States' genuine existential problems is

"Slash 'em 'til they bleed out" capitalism represents a survival problem for the American republic.

Take Apple Inc's lawful tax-dodging. Like many other tax-evading corporations, Apple makes paper-based moves to other countries. In Apple's case, Ireland.

American law and Government encourage Apple and Ilk to do this. Billions of dollars in American tax money goes somewhere else.

The American public obviously has to foot the difference. American citizens arguably pay higher taxes than they should, in any sanely designed system of governance.

Recently, the European Union got tired of this tax-dodging nonsense

The European Commission recently told Ireland and Apple that their tax avoidance games were over.

Note

According to CNN, Apple paid 0.005% tax in 2014. (See video clip, here, at 0:55 minute mark.)

Naturally, the corporate toadies who run American Government were outraged. How dare those effete European bureaucrats threaten to bring the world's system of palm-greasing down?

The U.S. threatened the European Union with unnamed financial revenge measures.

If you think about this

You have to wonder why our American Government is actively sponsoring corporate tax avoidance.

The Obama Administration's response to the European Union essentially says that American government approves of (a) robbing citizen taxpayers to (b) benefit Robber Barons.

And the President's Administration added the genuinely lunatic addendum that (c) the United States will use its massive financial clout to prevent foreign entities from reversing that trend — even in their own jurisdictions.

It is apparently not enough for American Government to be "Devil" within our own land.

Just 'cause personified Mammon sez it, don't make it so

Note

Give yourself a back pat, if you spotted the legal pun(s) and woven metaphors in the preceding line.

"I" take no credit for these. My subconscious is smarter than I am.

As an attorney with experience in complex, technical litigation across jurisdictional borders — I have long pointed out that the power to incorporate is a legally granted privilege.

The grantor, meaning The Public, has the self-accorded Social Contract right to attach responsibilities to its incorporated creation:

The least of these responsibilities should be an enforceable agreement not to tear the American entity down by looting it.

In accord with this reasoning

Former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich recently made some suggestions:

[C]orporations that desert America by sheltering a large portion of their profits abroad or moving their headquarters to another country should no longer be entitled to the advantages of being American.

1. They shouldn’t be allowed to influence the U.S. government. They shouldn’t be allowed to contribute to U.S. political campaigns, or lobby Congress, or participate in U.S. government agency rule-making proceedings. And they no longer have the right to sue foreign companies in U.S. courts for acts committed outside the United States.

2. “Buy American” provisions of the law should be applied to them.

3. Their assets around the world shouldn’t any longer be protected by the U.S. government.

[T]heir interests should be of no concern to the U.S. government—in trade negotiations, climate negotiations, international treaties reconciling American law with the laws of other countries, or international disputes over access to resources.

The moral? — There is no inalienable right to destroy society for profit

This is true, contrary to American Government and its Free Market Delusion sponsored piracy.

PeteFree.com

There is no inalienable right to destroy society for profit — a comment regarding corporate tax evasion