The End of Altruism?

The theme of my past couple of posts is the ability for money to corrupt. It's quite evident that the age of altruism is almost over. Sure, there are still a few Billionaires that donate to charity to ease their souls, but there is an increasing number of the elite that want to hold onto their money. For whatever reason, be it greed, or competition with others, there seems to be a new relentlessness when it comes to the accumulation of money amongst the 1%

The increase in conspicuous consumption has been well documented on TV, with programmes showing Swarovski-studded supercars, or even rocking horses for the kids, ever more elaborate food choices and so on, rubbing our noses in the greed of the gaudy mega-rich.

I blame the Eighties, with the rise of "Greed is Good" and the Yuppie era.

One of the downsides of the Thatcher era with the prosperity her tenure brought, it also began a selfish mentality, with people hanging on to their money. The mega-rich started to pay less in real terms towards the upkeep of the state. Companies (thanks to EU rules) were able to pay taxes offshore in low-tax countries like Luxembourg and Ireland. rather than contribute to UK coffers.

It's a regime that has to be changed. It's no wonder the elites want to keep us in the EU and saddled with the regime that allows corporations to get away with paying zero tax in the UK.It's a point that hasn't been pressed with those Socialists that want to keep us in the EU: how do we pay for welfare if big corporations have the ability to pay tax outside the UK? Of course they pay employees and employers N.I. but general taxation is poorer by billions thanks to the likes of eBay, PayPal, Facebook, Amazon et al domiciling their head offices in other EU countries and paying corporation tax there.

This ability of the mega-rich to avoid payment of their dues is something that has to be clamped down on seriously. It's very annoying to see the HMRC clamping down on agency workers and the like using the IR35 tax codes to scratch around for crumbs tax-wise when the big corporations get way with not paying billions into the exchequer.

I find the dichotomy of the Socialist push for centralised control by the elitist EU against the ability to control and fund social welfare by becoming more local and accountable very interesting. I says volumes about the Socialist movement in the UK and it's hijacking by red elites. They may talk the socialist talk, but their actions are the very model of an entitled elite.

I'm sure I'll find more and more of this the more I look.