Wikileaks horror

[TylerDurden]

I have just read that wikileaks is about to publish details of rich peoples' Swiss bank accounts. The guy who stole the details ought to be terminated immediately. I used to like wikileaks for their penchant for annoying governments or if they attacked large corporations but when they target individuals, it's just not on.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/wikileaks/8264477/WikiLeaks-Julian-Assange-could-start-publishing-leaked-details-of-Swiss-bank-tax-accounts-in-two-weeks.html

[CHK91]

Exposing wealthy individuals for tax evasion... I don't see what is wrong with this. It's not fair if they don't pay their fair share, if everyone else has to.

I'm all for lowering taxes to reduce the influence of government, but it is just not fair for everyone else if the wealthy can be exempt from the system.

[TylerDurden]

Exposing wealthy individuals for tax evasion... I don't see what is wrong with this. It's not fair if they don't pay their fair share, if everyone else has to.

I'm all for lowering taxes to reduce the influence of government, but it is just not fair for everyone else if the wealthy can be exempt from the system.

I don't believe in taxes, so tax evasion is OK, afaiac.  I would far prefer a system whereby I paid only for taxes I wanted  - so I could avoid paying taxes for the armed forces, or for the national health service or for excess state bureaucracy or the police, thus lowering my tax-percentage considerably. Instead of the police, I would like to have increased powers of self-defence like in parts of the US, so that I can easily kill any assailant/robber and so on.

[ys]

I don't believe in taxes

i don't believe in taxes either, but if we are forced to pay taxes and some rich guy is not paying his share, it means he is robbing me indirectly.  i do not like being robbed.

[TylerDurden]

i don't believe in taxes either, but if we are forced to pay taxes and some rich guy is not paying his share, it means he is robbing me indirectly.  i do not like being robbed.

  The rich guy, however, could easily argue that he is the one being robbed by the poorer people, thus making his tax evasion moral, as he is facing a much higher percentage of income-tax than them simply because he earns more, not forgetting increased taxes for those with 2nd homes etc. etc.. Now, if all taxes in a country were the same for everyone, say a flat rate of 20 percent income tax or suchlike, then tax evasion would  not be so excusable.

[dsohei]

oh isnt civilization a total bitch. since we only get one shot at life and god doesnt exist, we should definitely control everyone and everything that we perceive to be threats or just don't like

[TylerDurden]

oh isnt civilization a total bitch. since we only get one shot at life and god doesnt exist, we should definitely control everyone and everything that we perceive to be threats or just don't like

I  was actually referring, re the above post,  to increasing self-control/individual rights and criticising govenmental  control over individuals.As for the wikileaks mention, their whole thesis is to reduce the power of  the authorities - as soon as they target individuals not associated with the government, they are violating their  own principles - in which case, all those calls by US government officials to use hitmen on wikileaks people suddenly seem actually  quite reasonable.

[riy freeman]

Well, they aren't being "exposed" simply for the fact that they're rich, correct? It implies they have done something unethical. It they did, I don't see why transparency is a horrible crime.

[TylerDurden]

Well, they aren't being "exposed" simply for the fact that they're rich, correct? It implies they have done something unethical. It they did, I don't see why transparency is a horrible crime.

  The point is that people use those swiss banks in order to avoid unethical taxes. So transparency is only OK if it's reasonably ethical.

[kurite]

IMO if you want to live in places like the US or UK then you should pay the taxes that your suppose to pay to live there. If you don't then go move somewhere else. I don't like taxes but I would rather pay them and live here, than go to some 3rd world country.

[TylerDurden]

IMO if you want to live in places like the US or UK then you should pay the taxes that your suppose to pay to live there. If you don't then go move somewhere else. I don't like taxes but I would rather pay them and live here, than go to some 3rd world country.

Actually, 3rd world countries often have even higher taxes than the western world, thus proving that taxes are usually not usefully employed to give the people any decent services. There are only a few tax-havens which offer real tax benefits, anyway, and equally few countries which offer really low taxes, so until countries in the 1st world get their act together and start charging people lower taxes, it is morally acceptable for people to put their money in foreign tax havens, out of reach of a government's grasping greed.

[goodsamaritan]

Tyler, it seems you have several millions of pounds stashed in your swiss bank accounts.

I can hold several millions of pounds for you in my name as well!  

Will it help?

[riy freeman]

Just out of curiosity, how do you fund highways, libraries, schools, police, government, whatever, without taxes?

[Raw Kyle]

Just out of curiosity, how do you fund highways, libraries, schools, police, government, whatever, without taxes?

Schools is an easy one, people pay for their kids education. I've been thinking about this recently and came to the conclusion that being a school teacher today is a middle class job, and that is a very new thing. If you read old books, like the Legend of Sleepy Hollow, you'll see that back when parents had to pay teachers to teach their kids, teachers were rather poor as a profession. Only a few teachers that happened to teach wealthy children were middle or upper class. Libraries are obviously on the extreme luxury end of the spectrum of needed services.

Highways, they aren't even funded by government as it is now haha. There is no infrastructure budget to actually keep up all the stuff, at least not in the US.

[sabertooth]

Is there any real serious crime to be uncovered here, or are they just mascarading a bunch of lower level cheats out before us, while the real king pins, laugh their way to the bank, with the real Booty.

I am sceptical and believe that yes the tax cheats are guilty of hoarding the money instead of investing it to build a free-er comunity where they wouldn't have to be so deceptive with their wealth. If the lower class rich would only be the poor mans partner and work together to keep the wealth out of the fat cats paws. then the cycle of greed might be broken,  (I can still dream)

[TylerDurden]

Tyler, it seems you have several millions of pounds stashed in your swiss bank accounts.

I can hold several millions of pounds for you in my name as well! 

Will it help?

No, sadly I don't. But there are many middle-class people who have accounts in Switzerland, none of whom are millionaires, but who are desperate to avoid having their money stolen by their high-taxing governments.

I always remember the SF satirist Robert Sheckley's story "A Ticket To Tranai" in which he describes a wonderful futuristic Utopia on an alien planet full of human colonists.The president of that planet , and I think all government ministers too, all had to wear official necklaces around their necks, and if any citizen of that world was ever dissatisfied with the policies of a particular reigning politician, they only had to go to a voting booth to press a "protest" button under that person's name which would then activate an explosive device in that politician's necklace, thus killing him.

[TylerDurden]

Just out of curiosity, how do you fund highways, libraries, schools, police, government, whatever, without taxes?

Too easy. Either parents form mini groups and pay for teachers themselves, or they go in for home-schooling, a very popular practice in the US nowadays.

Police can be done away with as long as unrestricted gun-ownership is allowed everywhere. No robber, even well-armed, is going to bother stealing from entire neighbourhoods filled with most locals owning Uzis. Besides, UK police are totally useless nowadays and bound by red tape.

Highways/motorways can be started  by businesses charging tolls for usage thereof. And so on and so forth.

[riy freeman]

Wow...

[Brother]

Wikileaks has served more as a smokescreen for better more relevant news at all points. I dont trust it or its altruism for a minute and this just confirms to me what a selfrightious bunch of socialist scumbags they are. Wikileaks, lets see the documents on the FED's financial standing shall we. Oh...thats what you wanted nobody to see. Thought so! 

I will give them that the Afghanistan docs were interresting. But since then they have mostly functioned as the tabloid press. The last batch of documents told us that diplomats are salesmen in false smiles and lukewarm promises.... Well no shit! thats what they get their ridiculous pay for!!! these manouvre salesmen keep wars and conflict at bay. Thank heavens!

Peace comes when we all pretend to like eachother, because the real thing is not going to happen. Ever!

I am all for honesty and whistle blowing. So wiki. start blowing the fucking whistle on things that matters. and stop wasting everybodys time!

[sabertooth]

The big conspiracy that is going around now is that wikileaks has somehow been compromised and although it still has independent well intentioned truth seekers working within the organization, the actual leak's that it receives have been pre filtered as part of some agenda to bury the real crimes beneath thousands of pages of B.S. What the king pins are doing is still held in topmost secrecy and only some of the lower level skulduggery is being exposed.

Even the exposure of U S war crimes is just a distraction, in my opinion, and seems more tabloid than substance.I have my own underground sources, and have talked to people in the military and was aware about the general corruption and misbehavior that was reported by the leaks, long before I ever heard of wikileaks. If they are for real then tell me something I don't know for Christ sake.

[Brother]

Meh. Conspiracy theories are 5 cents a kilo. Another one say that it is really a Mossad front. I have no idea, there are not enough facts available. But Ì have notived how pretty important pieces of news got a total pass by the world press while everybody was up in roar about an accusation of being and inconciderate date. They call this rape in sweden apparently.

I did not hear about this;
http://poorrichards-blog.blogspot.com/2010/12/wall-street-pentagon-papers-biggest.html

Short synopsis

The Fed Operates as a “global pawnshop:” $9 trillion to 18 financial institutions

What the report shows is that the Fed operated as a global pawnshop taking in practically anything the banks had for collateral. What is even more disturbing is that the Federal Reserve did not enact any punitive charges to these borrowers so you had banks like Goldman Sachs utilizing the crisis to siphon off cheap collateral. The Fed is quick to point out that “taxpayers were fully protected” but mention little of the destruction they have caused to the US dollar. This is a hidden cost to Americans and it also didn’t help that they were the fuel that set off the biggest global housing bubble ever witnessed by humanity.

I am happy for the FED. They put our "national" bank on wellfare, along with many others. We were better of financially than Americans to begin with and have rode the crisis like a surfer on a wave so thanks for the free money guys. But if I was an American I would be searching for my torch and pitchfork about now.  

Pay attention to how rich people have started to hoard metals. That should tell you something. Gold dispensers (yes, those exists), Canada just revealed the worlds largest most expensive gold coin etc.

edit; excellent quote on the subject; "Probably 2,000 uniportant rich folk who need to be moved down a couple of steps from the capstone".

[ys]

Just out of curiosity, how do you fund highways, libraries, schools, police, government, whatever, without taxes?

some taxation is OK in my opinion, but not to the horrendous extent that we are getting taxed.

some of the personal taxes
-federal
-state
-Soc Sec
-Medicare
-real estate(pays for county, municipality, public schools)

on top of it we are double taxed on these items(that is we pay with money that already been taxed above)
-sales, in IL it is as high as 10%
-state car tax(license plate)
-municipal car tax(so called parking sticker)

the answer is simple in my opinion
-stop all wasteful and nonsense social programs including welfare.  no one has ever proved that those things work.  
-get rid of bloated government.  we have agencies that regulate other agencies that regulate other agencies.  stop all this nonsense.
-get rid of unions (the same way Reagan did with traffic controllers) and government bloated pensions.
-and finally flat tax for everyone.  i do not believe in punishing the success

then i'll be more than happy to pay my share.

[sabertooth]

I scream conspiracy about the whole wikileaks blowing the whistle on Swedish bank accounts. It was reported over a year ago that under new global financial reforms(perpetrated by the central bankers) that the loopholes that allowed for lower level wealth to have a safe haven were going to be closed. Its a total money grab, the supper rich no longer are going to let the subclass rich keep their loot. Everything is going to be flipped into the new scam and the public will see a few scapegoats lose their Swiss bank accounts and believe that the reforms are going to save the system.

The more predominate issues being leaked are about the counterfeiting of trillions by the Fed. Its very complicated, it will be interesting to see how the fraud will be covered up this time around. The last time the Pentagon did a real investigation into the missing trillions a decade ago, a missile was fired at the secton of the Pentagon where the records were kept and the records were destroyed and the investigation never happened. This was James Bond type operation and its still not believed many who have bought into the official propaganda. Most people still believe it was an airplain that hit the Pentagon and that titanium engines disintegrate upon impact.( sorry if that's a little crazy sounding, but its what I believe)

[laterade]

It should be obvious by now. There is no conspiracy to worry about, all is in the open, they are selling it to the common person and a shitty price. Either an enormous amount of people are going to wake up this year, or get ready to live in the wild.
I really do hope the former takes place, but I am also ready to eat wild game more often. That would also be nice

[sabertooth]

It is all in the open and has been for some time, long before wikileakes put it two cents into Pandora's box, but only the fringe knew the details and could point out the skeletons. 

I see wikileaks acting as a kind of cleanup effort to put spin on what is already known to have leaked out.(Its a containment field) The Swedish tax cheats were already targeted for a shake down long before the leaks came out.

Many people have known about the stolen trillions and many more have woken up after the bailout bonanza, so some leaks regarding the mega financial meltdown will have to be let out, but in a way that can be managed by damage control. Its already a trainwreck, so it cant be hidden any longer. Even if the truth cannot be contained it can always be spun. This is what I see happening.  I don't see things going to hell in a handbasket over the crimes that have already been going on long before I was born. The establishment will forge on regardless of how leaky the vessel becomes  and I doubt that the empire will put its top ranking on trial, so we have to just render onto Caesar some things that we can never know and have faith in the men behind the curtain, while we prey they still have souls.