In the previous month, two major tax-related developments have occurred to signal and hasten our society’s already speedy descent into oligarchy.
November saw the release of the 14.3 million Paradise Papers leak, an unbelievably damning who’s-who of tax evading corporations, billionaires, celebrities, and (big surprise) universities. Since this news has already fully dissipated into the dark void of news cycles past, it is convenient that our determined Republican “representatives’” in Congress have successfully resurfaced the issue by ramming through last Sunday’s egregious tax bill.
By my calculations, this should us give us at least another week-long window to publicly acknowledge the dramatic ascendancy of corporate power, before it’s inevitably cut off by, I don’t know, news that Trump is turning the EPA headquarters into a casino. (You heard it hear first.)
Jokes/clairvoyant predictions aside, what these two events really did was confirm in ugly detail the extent to which the world’s reigning companies and elite citizens have fallen from membership in any commonwealth, besides the tax-free one stitched together by their intrepid army of morally bankrupt lawyers, toadyish politicians and unending shell companies.
If we weren’t so numb to it, and so enthralled by the charms of these companies’ products and the celebrities that advertise them, there would probably be riots. The Papers showed us who these actors are and the clever tricks they’re pulling to privately benefit, but the tax bill shows that the bolder among them have grown weary of maintaining a civic façade.
We are entering a new phase of political consolidation, wherein corporate interests are secure enough in their control of the American government that they don’t really have to concoct psejudo-economic arguments anymore. Just look at the smirk on Mitch McConnell’s face when he announces that the tax plan will benefit mainly “regular working folks” (or something along those lines) — they know that their popular opposition is currently toothless, and their base is so riled up by whatever/whoever Sean Hannity is telling them to despise that they hardly analyze the details.
(I actually checked the Fox News website while writing this and the only front-page mention of the tax plan was an op-ed by McConnell in the bottom corner entitled “How Our Tax Plan Will Help You.”)
It is not simply the sheer injustice of it that is so concerning, even though the fact that people in poverty or undocumented immigrants are paying proportionally more in taxes than multibillion-dollar companies is patently horrendous. Nor is it, according to a 2016 Oxfam report, the $111 billion dollars the U.S. government loses in tax revenue every year to tax evasion, more than enough to cover all public college tuition, or any number of welfare programs; and this is marginal in the face of the nearly $1 trillion of lost revenue estimated to ultimately occur from the tax giveaway.
No, the greatest implication is the realization that the supposedly democratic and representative governments of the world are unwilling, and now possibly incapable, of controlling global business. It is, in effect, a slowly unfolding coup, a role reversal wherein the formerly indisputable master has become willing servant.
The crucial problem with this is that corporations are fundamentally undemocratic institutions. They are basically rigidly hierarchical constitutional monarchies, and as their power and influence swell beyond antiquated national borders, their actions and decisions become increasingly unaccountable to any sort of public interest.
For as insanely vicious as states have been in the history of the world, they are distinguished from corporations by their theoretical duty to protect and enhance the wellbeing of their citizens. Whether this actually happens is obviously subject to heated debate, but it is not structurally precluded.
However, the indivisible, primary reason for corporations to exist is to make a profit. This may be quite useful to those who are privy to the dividends of that profit, but unless it is subjected to an external, normative redistributive force, will never wholly benefit the society whose taxes and toil help to create the conditions for these corporations to exist.
Furthermore, unlike government social services, there is often no actual need for much of what these massive companies are built to provide; Coca-Cola provisions the entire world with soft drinks that are terribly unhealthy and environmentally destructive to produce or distribute, yet it is a supremely powerful political player and makes billions in revenue each year.
In other words, governments are ceding control to organizations that are largely inaccessible to public oversight, and are better suited to making and distributing piles of useless objects than administering the services necessary for fulfillment of basic needs. If the phrase ‘ceding control’ seems melodramatic, then why has there been a steady revolving door for regulators between Monsanto and the Department of Agriculture, Goldman Sachs and the Treasury, and now Exxon to the State Department?
The Paradise Papers and tax scam simply make the obvious, well, even more obvious: Our governments are blatantly corrupt, tax systems are a joke, and the poor are getting screwed so that more yachts can be sold.
Any political platform that does not see this incomprehensible injustice as the principal problem in our society is either missing the point, or more likely, has been co-opted into ensuring this paradigm continues.
Yet our lives, like our countries, have become so structured around corporate agendas that it is hard to see the current situation as the consumerist neo-aristocracy that it has become. How many more Pentagon, Panama, and Paradise Papers will it take before we get organized?
Sharp Left: Paradise Lost
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