Friday 19 October 2012

Wealth does NOT trickle down to the poor

Some groundbreaking research for the Tax Justice Network, carried out by James Henry, a former chief economist at McKinstry and expert on tax havens, has shown that the super rich have hidden, and thus paid no tax on, assets of some £20trillion. Of the World's approx 7bn people about 10million are rich enough to play this game but only some 100000 are so disgustingly rich that they account for about half the hidden assets. The unpaid tax would be enough to wipe out Africa's debt or go a long way to solving the Eurocrisis. John Christensen of the of The Tax Justice Network said " For three decades extraordinary wealth has been cascading into the offshore accounts of a tiny number of super -rich. This is a staggering failure [of world governance] - - - but politicians are still relying on trickle down to transfer wealth to poorer people"

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