The Panama Papers Are The Tip Of The Iceberg

As you might be expecting from the headline, I am going to be talking about the Panama papers in this article, but the Panama papers revelations are just the tip of the iceberg, so before I get there I have to spend some time talking about an array of other members of the .1 of the 1% who apparently have no concern whatsoever about breaking the law. I want to highlight this issue not only because I am angry to hear about all this cheating, but because we as a society have to do something serious about it: the costs are just too huge. It is bad enough that governments all over the world are shorted hundreds of billions of tax dollars owed, and the rest of us taxpayers have to bear the consequences. What is just as bad is that legitimate, law-abiding businesses who are doing the right thing are having to compete against the cheaters, making it less likely that good businesses succeed, and making it less likely that most businesses will play by the rules and be good corporate citizens. When governments allow lawbreakers to go unpunished, there will be a lot more law breaking.

Let's start with the Koch brothers and their circle of friends who give big checks to organizations that hate government. You don't have to get very far in Jane Mayer's superb book Dark Money to find a list of hyper-wealthy corporate conservatives who are (a) willing to invest money in far right causes, and are (b) lawbreakers on a massive scale.

[amazon]http://www.amazon.com/Dark-Money-History-Billionaires-Radical/dp/0385535597[/amazon]

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