Gold Beneath The Ruins

I blogged, once upon a time, about how screwed up the infrastructure of my home town is, and why it doesn't necessarily get fixed. In doing so, I talked about how Beirut got rebuilt, and the fact that doing so was considered an investment by the company doing it.

A ruined city, torn apart by a civil war that nobody living in it really wanted, became an investment opportunity.

For a more recent example - if you somehow missed the fact that Halliburton, a company that the US vice-president of the time (Dick Cheney) headed for five years, was given the keys (and the cash) to rebuild Iraq following the 2003 invasion... here is a reminder

It's not just actual warfare or mass destruction that results in profits, either. No, there's other ways. Shorting shares, for example. If you don't know how that works, there's a good description here, but let me give an example:

You know the price of milk is going to tank (harhar) so you go to your mate Billy the Milkman and ask if you can have ten bottles. You promise you will give them back tomorrow, and maybe give him some money on top of that. So he gives you ten bottles of milk.

You then go and sell the milk for its current market price - and overnight, the price of milk crashes. You sold the milk for £1 a bottle, and now it only costs 50p a bottle in the shops. (I don't know what would cause this, just roll with it.)

So - you take the £10 you made from selling the milk that wasn't yours, you buy 10 bottles for Billy the Milkman for £5, you give the bottles back to him, and give him £1 for his trouble. £4 profit for you, for essentially doing very little indeed, with things that aren't even yours.

It's only the rather unique way the stock and share markets work that allow this to happen, obviously. The thing is, though - it also allows people who can directly make money from shorting, to be in the sphere of influence or friendship with the kind of people who can influence share prices.

Let's say you are mates with Sheila the Shop Owner. Have been for years, went to school together, you used to work for the shop once upon a time. So you have a means to, for a period, influence the price of milk. So you go to Billy the Milkman, and instead of borrowing ten bottles, you borrow ten thousand.

You sell the ten thousand bottles of milk for £1 each. The next day, the town wakes up and the Shop is selling milk for - let's be conservative - 80p a bottle. So you take the £10,000 you just made, and you spend £8,000 to buy back the ten thousand bottles. You give them back to Billy. You give Billy £200 for his trouble, you give Sheila £800 for her time, and you pocket a cool £1,000.

These two examples are grossly simplified, but I think they give an accurate depiction of how this whole thing works.

Of course, shorting and share-dealing isn't available to literally everyone. It's a level of brokerage that you require expertise to get into, expertise and money of your own - getting that expertise also requires money - it's a literal class barrier.

What is missing from the example above, however, is what it means to everyday people like you and me - and how that would be represented is simple:

To cover the shortfall from a 20% reduction in milk prices, Sheila the Shop Owner cuts staff wages and increases prices everywhere else.

So we have two kinds of people, here; the majority, who would suffer if share prices suddenly dropped because the costs of such losses would be pushed down the line to the average consumer - and the minority, who would stand to not only avoid suffering under such circumstances, but could also make a significant profit from everyone else's misery.

That's pretty gross. It's amoral, obviously. It's also a built-in function of the system as it stands.

Why is this relevant?

Well - there have been several reasons why a referendum on our membership with the European Union has been suggested in the past ten years, one of the first being that our then-Prime Minister David Cameron wished to garner the support of the eurosceptics within his party. Throughout Ed Milliband's tenure in charge of the Labour party, he was strongly opposed to a referendum on leaving, which of course made Cameron's position much more concrete. More anti-immigration rhetoric started to creep into the justifications around 2014. It wasn't until the years following that the movement really started to pick up steam, though.

It was formalised in late 2015 - and the very beginning of 2016 began the formal introduction of an EU directive that had been years in the making, a package of anti tax-avoidance measures. Just a coincidence, I'm sure. Definitely just an absolute coincidence, that the Economic and Financial Affairs Council reached agreement on the directive literally two days before the referendum was due to take place. Just... plain lucky, I suppose.

But is that enough? The government has been utterly baffled by how much this little exercise is going to cost us individually and as a nation, or at least, has made little effort to be transparent to the public about such costs. Going so far as to quash the release of internal reports detailing suggested emergency measures, for when we start running out of insulin and all of the ports are in gridlock. It should still be patently obvious that the cost is going to be significant. We're already suffering for it.

Meet Jacob Rees-Mogg.

I'm going to do my best to not make any jokes about this man. What I will stick to is how he is relevant to what I am talking about.

1. Rees-Mogg is one of the hard-line Brexiteers within the Conservative party - he has gone on record as saying that the EU is a "threat to British democracy", which is a delicious irony given our current unelected PM just shut down Parliament because he wanted to.
2. Up until July 2019, Rees-Mogg was an advisor in finance company Somerset Capital Management. He "stepped down" from his role when he was made Leader of the House of Commons. He still owns 15% of the company, mind. It took the protective measure of opening a branch in Dublin to fend off some of the damage the finance sector will suffer during Brexit, another irony.
3. Rees-Mogg's father, William Rees-Mogg, was a Baron when he died in 2012. He'd worked for the Times, the BBC, and described Rupert Murdoch as a thoroughly nice chap. One of the books that Rees-Mogg Senior co-wrote with James Dale Davidson (ardent supporter of right-wing news company Newsmax TV) was all about how to make money in a crisis, and it was literally titled, Blood In The Streets. It was released in 1987. Here's the cover.

"The time to buy is when blood is running in the streets."

And that is why Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson will happily prorogue Parliament to push this through. That is why he will do literally anything he can to maintain the majority of one that he currently enjoys. That is why he will sidestep and countermand any check or balance that would allow Parliament from stopping us from leaving the European Union by any means necessary.

Because people like him, and people like Jacob Rees-Mogg, are part of that minority that will be just fine when it all crashes down. Because people like them already know how they are going to profit from the collapse. Because people like them have probably already optioned shares in the companies that will be brought in to fix the nightmare that will follow.

They have prorogued parliament, they will see Brexit through, they will call an election in November, and then let the chips fall where they may. All the better if they aren't the ones in government when the costs really start being counted and people really start hurting - when people start dying - when the blood is running in the streets.

Then you can watch them slink off, one at a time, resigning or retiring or taking some family time. To go back to their investment portfolios and their overseas homes, to avoid the fallout of their work.

They'll still be able to profit from the gold beneath the ruins.

But yeah, sure, project fear, we'll be fine.

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Thou Shalt Fill Out An Exemption Form

Churches don't pay taxes, and there's allegedly a good reason.

So the argument behind this is that if churches paid taxes, then they would be forced into making political statements and supporting the individuals that would offer to lower their taxes. Which means that church and state would no longer be divided.

Which is...patently absurd.

For one thing, the stance of tax exemption creates its own political support. Why would a church ever afford any kind of support to change that? It's a law that is in dire need of re-evaluation, surely.

Or maybe the argument is that they shouldn't have to pay taxes because they shouldn't pay for the fiscal needs of their community because they attend to the spiritual needs of their community. Which means that their priests and clergy and other assorted staff should do it for the sake of the community too, right? SO they shouldn't benefit or be able to claim any money from...oh.

I like the idea of people paying proportionate taxes. Like, it is a proven successful model. Even the most incompetent and buffoonish of governments in most democracies seems to do a slightly better job than individuals would if they paid no taxes but had to provide everything themselves.

It's already reasonably easy for those with means to just...avoid paying taxes if they want to. It's hard to ignore that fact. That's not cool. I suppose that it would be naive of me to think that people who push trickle-down economics would actually willingly let some of their wealth trickle down. Stupid of me.

But if you're fabulously wealthy, AND vaguely religious? ...well you just...sidestep it all.

I can't imagine that there's an army of revenue service people chasing down every rich preacher who claims that their private jet is for congregational or spiritual purposes. Probably too busy writing angry letters when someone misses £10 from their council tax payment.

The thing about taxes is that...when something needs doing for the benefit of everybody, it is easier to draw from a pool that has already been assembled - and spend in a way that (in theory) people qualified to make the decisions have prescribed as best - than it is to just let everyone keep their taxes and hope that they all do the right thing. Most drivers don't know how to resurface a road (though I live on the Isle of Wight so I have doubts about some of the professionals too), most mortals don't know how to spend their money efficiently on shares of medical hardware, and most homeowners don't know how to put in individual flood protection.

We take it for granted. We grumble about the taxes we spend, as we walk on a pavement, over a sewage system, under streetlights, on streets not under several gallons of water.

And then something happens like Harvey.

Not just Harvey obviously. It's the example I am drawing from as it bears relevance to my initial point. Storms, floods, awful shit like it happens all over the world with terrible regularity, and is only getting worse due to man-induced climate change (YES IT IS SCIENCE NO IT IS NOT UP FOR DEBATE). But what you need, when something like that happens, is a large amount of centralised resources with which you can help those locally.

Of course, I have talked about something similar to this before.

Those who have, panic. They want to shore up their investment, their stuff, their things, their resources. They want to make sure the house stays locked so, while they wait it out in their aunt's house in Missouri, they won't have to worry about the silverware being snatched away. Because, you know. When I am drowning, I always go for the silverware.

So it's common for the wealthy to hoist up the ladders and leave everyone else to fend for themselves, and thus worthy of comment and compliment when they don't.

Joel Osteen.

This Tim Allen looking motherfucker.

So not only does this guy run a faith-based scam - as I call all "prosperity churches" and the like, who seem to make those in charge of them very wealthy and not a whole lot of prosperity goes anywhere else. Not only is he made rich essentially through playing shell games with people's beliefs, but he doesn't pay any damn taxes.

Houston gets dumped under enough water to swallow the Alien Mothership from Independence Day - and this guy's massive church just...sits there with the doors locked and bolted, while the city's mosques and other religious institutions immediately offer sanctuary and aid to anyone who can get to them.

Takes this guy three days to help, at all. In that time, even Dumpy Trumpy has managed to put a hand in his pocket, though seemingly unaware that perhaps his cuts on flood protections and other federal investments might make him doing so seem to be two-faced in the extreme.

And Osteen's excuse? Tax-dodging conman Osteen? That preacher who looks a lot like the dude from Home Improvement? He says he didn't open up the church...

...because the city didn't ask him to.

Which is of course why the Good Samaritan was like: fuck this guy by the side of the road, the Pharisees haven't told me to help him.

Which is of course why Jesus didn't feed the five thousand, because he didn't have any official requests from the local government.

Which is why Oscar Schindler didn't save anyone, because there's no way the Moravian protectorate's administrator would have given him permission.

So not only has he taken away people's money, which they may have been taxed on, which could have been allocated to FEMA and other localised measures - nor has he paid any taxes of his own on that money, which again could have gone into protective measures - but this fucking great ugly-ass building that he built with his effectively stolen money didn't even open its doors until the waters had started to subside.

They are shitweasels, people. Shitweasels who don't deserve what they have.

And that's why they should fucking pay tax.

No, Really, Not The Same

There is a very common ailment that affects the logical process of many human beings on a daily basis. It is a form of logical fallacy, and it is known as False Equivalence.

I'm sure we've all heard this kind of argument. Dogs have tails, cats have tails, therefore, cats are the same as dogs. Absurd, isn't it? And yet, people genuinely engage in such things daily. Their worldview is coloured distinctly by all sorts of logical fallacy.

Let us take, for example, the assumption that - if one person does a job badly, and someone else does the same job, then they will both do that job badly. A lot of people have this with doctors. It's a form of anecdotal fallacy - I had a bad experience and so I don't trust doctors, or I heard that so-and-so had to wait for three hours and so the entire medial profession is corrupt. Regardless of evidence to indicate that most people receive fair-to-good treatment regularly.

In terms of politics, the "They're All The Same" line gets trotted out a lot. One can sometimes see why - back in the mid-90s, as the Conservative party under John Major faced the threat of New Labour's more right-wing leaning, there was a distinct race to the middle ground. Everyone tried to look like the moderate, and tried to paint everyone else who disagreed with them as a shade of extremist. That's probably where a lot of the rhetoric originated from - politicians desperate to get to the most middling position before their competitors.

It is a statement that can be challenged, though. It is objectively possible to measure if a politician is good or not. We can measure this by attendance, by claims of expenses, by all sorts of yardsticks. Even if we discard this particular means of judgement, however, the fact that you can look at all their voting records right here should tell you that they don't all vote the same. Regardless of the words that come out of them, regardless of whether or not they say aloud what they believe - voting records don't lie.

And yet still, their "all being the same" is a line widely touted - a false equivalence. Mhairi Black, a highly morally sound and upstanding young woman, is a politician; so is Boris Johnson, whose clown persona has more in common with Pennywise than Bonzo. But they are both politicians, and thus are both the same - right?

Often a false equivalency is generated out of a lack of more in-depth knowledge. Where money is being spent, what people actually get up to, what the law actually says, what statistics are actually reliable. It's easy to not pay attention to this kind of thing - but if you don't have a base of knowledge to work from, then you should be honest about that before you start making sweeping statements.

There's a current state of false equivalence highly prevalent right now, and that is that both Hillary Rodham Clinton and Donald John Trump are as bad as each other.

Let's pare this down to the basics.

Even IF Clinton had engaged in the kind of behaviour that Trump has made synonimous with his name - such as calling for the actual physical harm of protesters, mocking disabled people, making several veiled insinuations calling for the harm or arrest of his competition...

...even IF Clinton had outright said that she pays no tax (and is smart because of it) and that the majority of immigrants from Mexico are bringing a "lot of problems" with them...

...even IF Clinton had been recorded talking about sexually assaulting people being okay because she's wealthy...

...then you know what? She'd STILL be a better choice to run the country.

Even if in terms of character they were EXACTLY the same - which they objectively are not - then we still have to concede the difference of career. Clinton has spent nearly two decades in politics. She has lived the life and played the game. People find her objectionable for all sorts of reasons, but the majority of them are things she has done in the political arena. (And are things that they don't necessarily hold the right people accountable for, either - but that is, again, an entirely different blog.)

While Trump's political acumen is...well...

...yeah, there isn't any, is there?

Hillary Clinton receives flak for being "untrustworthy", while Donald Trump collects kudos for "telling it how it is". Now if I am living in a world of ideals, then I want all of our politicians to be 100% honest all the time - but we do not live in this world. We live in a world where diplomacy relies on humility, decency and tact. Look at each of those words, imagine each candidate, and tell me how far each apple falls from the tree.

I am not a huge fan of Clinton. She strikes me as a little more Hawkish than she wants to be perceived, a little more right-wing than my taste - but then, that is how you get to be president. It's no secret that I am a Bernie fan.

But there isn't any hope in hell that I could even conceive of her being worse at the job of the President than that man. She isn't even in the same ballpark. She outstrips him by such a degree that it is embarassing to even think they could be considered "just as bad as each other".

But some people do still think this.

Which is, let's face it, literally False Equivalency.

The Gold Road

The way you think about money is wrong.

Okay, that statement is purely there to pique the interest, I'm sorry. I think I can state with confidence, more accurately, that the way most people think about money colours how they perceive other monetary interactions.

We've all had money, haven't we? We have got it, and we have spent it. We have spent years earning it and working out how to earn more, saving it, exchanging it for goods and experiences. We probably have some with us now. Our lives are pretty much devoted to its acquisition, if only because it is our shortest, simplest way to comfort and security - which can often lead to big problems, but I digress.

The way we handle our funds, and their physical existence in our perception of the world, implants a quintessential untruth about how it works and how it circulates. The difference between budgeting and economics is that economics looks at the whole, while budgeting looks at the individual case. People don't study economics - they budget, and thus they have a great understanding of budgeting...

...but not necessarily of economics.

I am not formally educated on the topic. I have done a lot of reading, I have debated it with a great number of people that know a fair amount on the subject. All of this is opinion backed with some research, not given as evidenced fact - so please, utilise a pinch of salt during your reading.

Why do folks hate people on benefits so much?

Because the way they see it, these individuals are being rewarded for something. They are being given something, and they don't apparently deserve it (not as much as the complainant at least). We all know someone who thinks that those who don't work shouldn't get anything, because they've worked hard their whole lives, etc, etc, repeat ad nauseam.

We probably know more people that believe refugees and immigrants shouldn't be given anything at all. They will often use terms like "charity begins at home", despite giving very little to charity themselves, or "why should we", or "where is it going to come from". I don't think that everyone who believes this is racist. I think that there are people who are racist that use those terms to mask their less socially acceptable thoughts, but I think the majority of people who wish to withhold support for expatriates (as I will be referring to them from now on) are doing so because they think we can't afford it.

And who is to blame them. We are seeing public services get cut because we "can't afford them". This is a line that has been touted so often that people repeat it without even questioning it. Even in the face of actual displays of where money is being spent, and how much of it can be reallocated to those in need. As I often say: It is never about not having enough, only about misallocation.

The mistake we make is assuming that, when someone on Jobseekers receives the kings ransom of £72.40 to last them for two weeks, the money simply vanishes.

Which is absurd, when you think about it.

So let us assume that there is an individual who has no other source of income. They receive housing benefit that pays for 100% of their rent and jobseekers allowance that pays them the aforementioned £72.40 a fortnight.

(If you aren't in the UK, these two things are means-tested benefits given to you by the government for various reasons, which are paid for out of public taxes. The circumstances in which you are allowed either housing benefit or jobseekers allowance are regularly reshuffled and usually made tighter. The welfare of poor people is not in the interest of our current government.)

To begin with - housing benefit is paid directly to the landlord. (Edit: it was, for a time. Now it is paid to the recipient of the benefit - but it is probably paid on in rent, seeing as there's not a huge rash of people claiming housing that immediately become homeless. Thanks for the correction, Nick.) That landlord is more than likely some kind of housing group or business, which has lucrative contracts with the local council; or the landlord is a private individual who owns the property and is kind enough to rent to those being assisted by the state. Trust me: many don't.

So the housing benefit only benefits the person receiving it insofar as it gives them somewhere to live. Meanwhile it guarantees the landlord a return on their initial investment, after removing the costs of maintaining the property. Either the private individual has any net profit to spend on their own day to day lives, their own house, their groveries, their luxuries - or the group or business receives a net profit, which it uses to keep running and pay its employees, who again go out to pay their rent and buy their groceries and purchase their luxuries.

The jobseeker's allowance, £36.20 a week of it, gets spent - because people in poverty don't actually have the option to save. The margins of affording to eat and not are too small. Where does it get spent? Shops usually - local small concerns and chain stores.

The money spent there, after covering costs, pays the employees (and in the case of bigger stores the shareholders). They then spend that money in other shops and on other things. Once more, that money is allocated and spent. And over and over it goes.

What happens every time someone spends money?

Tax.

While the UK doesn't have sales tax like the US does, the vast majority of products bought and sold have a rate of Value Added Tax (VAT). It is invisible to us because it is included in the price on the box. If you've ever been to the US from the UK and been stung by the sales tax - like you went to buy a dollar soda and it turns out to be a dollar and five cents, but the label says nothing about it - then what occurs with VAT is the reverse.

Standard VAT rate is 20%. Some goods - goods for children, electricity and utilities - are charged at 5%. Some goods, like basic food and apparent "necessities", are totally exempt. (Apparently condoms are considered a necessity and tampons aren't, which is absolutely fucking ridiculous, but that is an outrage for another blog.) Some goods and services even have special taxes in and of themselves - fuel pays an extra 10-50 pence per litre on top of the 20% VAT, 6% on insurance, 20% on travel insurance, significant additional taxes on tobacco and alcohol above and beyond the 20% VAT rate.

Almost every time someone spends money, they pay tax back to the government, back to the public purse. £20 of the benefit recipient's money gets spent in a local shop - £2-4 of that goes to the government, the rest goes to the shop. Out of the rest, a portion goes on costs, and the rest goes into the pocket of the people that work in the shop, which gets spent elsewhere. Every time the money moves from point to point, an amount ends up in the same purse that is paying for the benefit recipient in question. Even if they can't afford a car, they take the bus - and the money they spend on the bus not only funds the driver's purchases that week, but also pays a significant amount of fuel tax right back to the government.

Then there's savings and investment. Now, the average recipient of benefits doesn't get enough to save anything - it's just not possible, as previously mentioned. Margins are too small. However - those who benefit from the money of those recipients (see what I did there) invest. They put money away for a rainy day. That money goes into banks, who - since the dissolution of the division between investment banks and savings banks - use it to invest and make money. Those banks don't pay taxes, but they do provide loans to people who do - and those loans are spent on things, which again attracts tax.

Always, always, it finds a way back. It leaves the public purse and flows through wallets and pockets and by inches and yards makes its way back.

"But John," I hear you cry, desperately pushing aside the crowding lobster pots filled with pokemon miniatures. "Doesn't this prove that trickle-down economics works?"

To you I say... nay nay.

See, as I have pointed out - those below a certain level of income can't invest. The money is needed for survival. It can't be squirrelled away in savings accounts, or used in share trading, or utilised in other financial instruments used to make large amounts of money. That requires a significant initial investment.

The money spent by those with a lot of it tends to stay within a certain circle of expenditure. I've blogged before about class and about those with high income. We can probably infer that high-value goods and luxuries are more their purview than anything you would buy in Pound Land. Likewise, the reason why "millenials aren't buying diamonds" is because they can't. They can't afford it. We can maybe squirrel away something in an ISA or a holiday fund. Cost of living has risen so much faster than wages.

But those big companies who sell a lot of products to those with lower income - I am loath to actually name any, as that is stereotyping, but I am sure you can think of your own - have wealthy shareholders who are not people who use those products. The inverse is not possible. DeBeers doesn't pay dividends to a bunch of minimum-wage folks; hell, it barely pays minimum wage to its own employees, but I digress.

Rich money may trickle down a little; but it trickles up far more. It's the money of everyday people that keeps the companies aloft, and lines the pockets of the shareholders and executives that are invested in them, and the politicos that they lobby. If it isn't money that they poured into the system, it is the product of their labour - every factory needs workers. It also bears consideration that those who are wealthy try and find ways to not pay taxes, while those who aren't, can't. Not really.

If the wealthy are made more wealthy by the money in the pockets of those who are not - and if the government is made more wealthy by the same - then...

...why aren't we giving more money to those that don't have much?

If we bring expatriates here, and if we look after them; if we fund the poor, and those on limited income; then not only will the government fund be further refurbished, but so will the companies that pay us our wages. If foreigners show up and they need houses, then build them. Sell them. Make money. Pay tax. Help the government. Help yourselves.

If I am to put my left-wing tendencies aside and speak in right-wing monetary terms: the poor and disenfranchised are an investment opportunity. Stop seeing them as scroungers and start seeing them as debt you can sell that WILL repay to you, sooner or later, in some way. The gold road will run and run, all the way through. Every step it takes, it feeds back into public funds. Sooner or later, it will have paid for itself in entirety - and paid some other people's way besides.

And hey - maybe if you put enough money in an expatriate's pocket, they might have something to save. Wouldn't that be nice for the banks?

I mean the only way you'd think this is a bad idea is if you were some kind of bigot.

The Panama Cabal

If you aren't sure what the Panama Papers are, haven't heard the name Mossack Fonseca or aren't sure why David Cameron is being questioned a lot about his taxes in the last few days, then I might suggest putting this blog down for a minute and taking a gander at whatever news site you think appropriate.

Was anyone actually surprised that this was happening?

Did anyone truly not suspect, at all, that there were companies set up exclusively to ensure that very rich people could dodge taxes in quasi-legal ways?

Nobody should be surprised. Surprised that there is actual paperwork and evidence, yes - but unless you're a buffoon, then you can't think it's never happened.

Isn't that fact in itself a damning indictment of this entire farce?

Nobody wants to pay taxes. Everyone wants to benefit from what those taxes pay for, of course. Everyone wants to eat the lobster, nobody wants to foot the bill. That's just the nature of humanity. We're greedy creatures at heart, and in a society and system that determines success by possessing both Things and Way-To-Get-Things, any means of getting Things without losing Way-To-Get-Things is going to be exploited to the maximum.

There is a bottom rate at the cost of living in any given country. A pure minimum, which is the basest essentials. Anything above and beyond this particular rate, well, here come the taxes. You go shopping, you pay tax. You rent or own, you pay tax. You contribute directly to the welfare of the entirety of society. At least - that is how it is meant to work.
Those on benefits - the people commonly painted as the bad guys whenever the boys from Eton roll out their media machine - spend damn near everything they receive in ways that make it back to the government via tax or otherwise bolster the economy. If what they buy isn't taxed, then it is paid to a shop or corporation that is in itself taxed based on its income. In a way, benefits are an almost guaranteed investment made by a government to itself.

The wealthier you are, though, the more opportunities there are for you to not contribute at all. Churches don't after all. Some companies just choose not to, and when asked about it, offer an insulting paltry sum as a way of indicating they've read the papers and know that people don't like them. Offshore accounts exist. They've existed for a long, long time, and they exist so that the rich can make their money and then keep it to themselves.

Why should anyone else benefit from their hard-earned cash after all? I mean, they earned it all fair and square, right? They earned it working hard just like all of us did, and so they shouldn't have to pay any of it to anyone -

- except for the fact that everyone else pays. The person that shined your shoes this morning pays. The taxi driver pays. The waiter pays, tip or not. The little people in your life all pay. They pay for things that you use, like roads and police and infrastructure and education. They pay and you don't.

You put your money in some account in some foreign nation that by virtue of paperwork means you don't have to pay tax on it, and in doing so, you become the freeloader. Even by HMRC's most conservative estimate in 2012, tax avoidance cost the public four times more than benefit fraud. There are bad apples in both barrels, but the tax barrel is worth a lot more, and those apples stink to high heaven.

And here comes the Panama Papers. Unmasking legions of wealthy individuals twisting the system to further line pockets already stuffed full while the rest of us continue to scrape by. There's been resignations and fall-downs already. Iceland's PM suffered a very public tearing-down.

So now, in this time of austerity, in this time of belts being tightened and people being told to make do with what they have, in this time of us all being in it together, we find out that not only is the Prime Minister deeply implicated in tax avoidance, but several other members of the government could be as well, including the Chancellor, who actually has stakes in a business that in itself doesn't pay tax.

What happens here, you ask?

...nothing.

Nothing, because we're good calves, and we'll just keep eating the grass and getting nice and fat.

In another era, this would have been a powder keg. Protests would have become riots and streets would have burned, and perhaps, rightly so. The anger at the government for hurting all of us so very deeply and in such a hypocritical fashion...it would be a fire so hot the asphalt would melt.

But no. Today everyone shrugs and murmurs about things that don't matter and just go on with their lives. It's easier for us that way. We can absolve guilt with such incredible ease, all the tools have been handed to us for generations. Before the baby boomers even knew who they were, the language and theory behind apathy and denial had set in.

So those that contribute will be painted as leeches, and those that steal will be painted as heroes, and we will just keep on eating it up until we're happy as pigs in shit.

You know what happens to pigs?

The people that own them butcher them for profit.

Time and again, you have been fucking warned.

Forgive the anger, but it's been a bad year.