Actor Atlas

At the global online consultation:

• Question: How do we ensure that all people, especially the most vulnerable and marginalized, have the food, water, energy, health care and education they need?

• Answer: Improved distributive performance of presently available institutional instruments can be achieved if global compliance to standards can be forged. The low hanging fruits in this regard are twofold:
  • The financing for universal access to health, education and social protection must be secured from solving the worlds Stolen Asset Problem: The World Bank’s Stolen Asset Recovery (StAR) initiative has endorsed estimates that illicit financial flows across borders add up to $1-1.6 trillion per year, about half from developing and transitional economies. Others estimate that illicit financial flows out of developing countries alone stood at around $800 billion - $1.26 trillion in 2008. Looking at a related issue, the Tax Justice Network has estimated, conservatively, that about $250 billion is lost in taxes each year by governments worldwide, solely as a result of wealthy individuals holding their assets offshore.
  • 1st recommendation: Secrecy jurisdictions must be held accountable for crimes against humanity if they continue refusing to comply to international standards.
  • Improved sector governance: there is strong evidence that financial sector, intellectual property and public governance institutions excessively favour the accumulation by few of "institutionally constructed" wealth, in spite of this wealth being available in abundance (money, IPR access to political power are man made, they have no planetary limits). The combination of (billionaire's) concentrations and (less-than-a-dollar-a-day) deprivations are also institutional failures. In the Jewish society the cumulative impact of such failures were compensated by the Jubilee. Market systems, taxation and social protection schemes might slow the evolution to extremes, but apparently they don't do that in a sufficient manner.
  • 2nd recommendation: Do a thorough analysis and redesign of the relevant institutions.

Edward D. Kleinbard in the Los Angeles Times, Sept. 7, 2012 (Opinion) contrasts the contemporary views on tax policy of the Democrats and the Republicans Tax planning? Or tax cheating? Laws that encourage corporate tax havens are bad for America.

It is instructive to evaluate both views with respect to the Citizen participation Principle of Democracy.