Far be it from me to criticize a Nobel laureate—Well, maybe not so far. We can all use a bit of healthful rethinking about what we consider to be sane, rational thought. Take taxes, for example, and those who would impose them. Are taxes in the hands of bureaucrats and politicians spent on the common good? Are they spent with or without personal accountability?
Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz favors a world tax on corporations. * Just what we need, a universal tax on corporations that will provide money to be used for…
That’s just it. For what? Under whose wise direction? And with no waste? As a well known politician who currently wants to spend trillions of dollars is wont to say, “Come on, man.” Who buys into the idea that waste derived from incompetence, greed, and redundancy wouldn’t affect a world treasury filled with this proposed corporate tax? Think of the the USA’s GSA scandal. Think of any anonymous bureaucrats handed inordinate sums of money.
Name a large government bureaucracy that doesn’t overspend or spend just because the money is there.
I’m thinking of an incident years ago and a college librarian where I worked. As I was leaving the library after doing some research one night, I passed the desk of one of the librarians. Her head was down, her hands quickly turning pages of publishers’ catalogs. “Katie, what’s going on? Why are you feverishly working so late? I’m the last person here. Close up. Go home.”
“I have $20,000 more dollars to spend by tomorrow. If I don’t spend the money, the state auditors will reclaim it, and the library will lose those funds.”
“But on what are you spending it?”
“I’m ordering as many books as I can.”
“Any books? Any principle behind what you order? Faculty requests? Some ‘every library should have a copy of’ list?”
“I don’t have time, and I already filled the requests. I have to order before tomorrow,” she said as she lowered her head to peruse the catalogs.
“Okay, good luck. Order copies of Proust’s novels for me. I’m teaching him next semester and the library doesn’t seem to have copies.” **
World tax? I’m thinking now of The Stamp Act, of a tax imposed by an agency far removed from those required to pay the tax. Americans who paid some attention to their history might remember that in 1765 the British Parliament decided to levy a tax to recoup funds spent in the French and Indian War, aka the Seven Years War. The colonists didn’t like it. It was, in fact, one of those nails in the coffin of British rule in the Colonies. A group far removed from the taxed colonists wanted their money. Now imagine a world tax that Stiglitz favors. Imagine any tax imposed by an entity that might misuse not $20,000 simply because it has it to spend, but maybe $20,000,000,000! Or $20,000,000,000,000! No temptation there.
Remember the General Services Administration scandal, the $800,000 party thrown in Las Vegas, Nevada? Yes, $800,000 that included a reception that served a $19 pp charcuterie and $7,000 in sushi at the reception, a $3,200 session with a mind reader, $$5,600 for in-room parties, over $6,000 for T-shirts, water bottles, bartender fee, rented tuxedos, and vests. And, of course, $100,000 in travel costs for multiple trips pre-conference by the conference planning committee; I don’t know how much for the travel and rooms of the participants in Las Vegas, but I should mention in my incomplete account the $6,325 the GSA spent on commemorative coins in velvet boxes and the $146,000 for food. “Drop in the bucket,” right?
Between 2017 and 2019, US bureaucracies distributed grants worth $135,826,847,780 (Dept. of Education), $22,135,246,534 (Dept. of Labor), and $35,201,732,943 (Agency for International Development—USAID) plus a couple of trillion dollars more. And God bless the Ivy League Schools with their paltry collective $140 billion in endowments; they needed tax money: The US agencies gave them $9.8 billion in grant money.
Am I being naive? Isn’t the bulk of that money spent rationally? Isn’t it spent without waste on projects necessary to the common good? Or is the following list of government grants compiled by Adam Andrzejewski of Forbes something everyone should consider before following the advice of a Nobel laureate?
hookers for Jesus ($530,190)--Prayers with moaning? A new meaning for "Amen"?
tai chi classes in senior centers ($671,251)--Don't people in Asia gather on their own to do this in a park?
creating outdoor gardens at schools ($1.6 million);
space alien detection ($7 million)--Are we different from the medieval cartographers who wrote "Here there be dragons" on maps?
taxpayers-funded story time at laundromats ($248,200)--No doubt a quiet place for a dramatic reading!
sex education for prostitutes in Ethiopia ($2.1 million);
a social media war on tanning beds ($3.3 million);
webcast-livestreamed eclipses ($3.7 million);
subsidized airport on Martha’s Vineyard ($12 million)--What's wrong with the public ferry? ***
World tax. Sure. That’s what the seven billion of us need. And who will be in charge of the spending? Aren’t you glad that the G20 has discussed it? Aren’t you glad that a prestigious Nobel laureate backs it?
I’ll bet you can’t wait for the corporations to get their world tax bill. You know they won’t pass any of those costs to you, and you know that ALL that money will go to bettering the circumstances of people around the world, to maybe saving the polar bears, the coral reefs, and the massive ice sheets on Antarctica and Greenland, or maybe to…. Give me a moment….To bailing out countries that went deep-end socialist and spent all the locally collected taxes on giveaways, Greece, for example. Remember the unrest in Greece’s streets and the EU’s bail-out euros? Or maybe to maintaining the WHO that did such a wonderful job on COVID-19.
In 1766, the British Parliament repealed the unpopular Stamp Act. If the global corporate tax is imposed, who will repeal it? Once a bureaucracy forms, it grows. Imagine an unfettered one with the resources of the world’s corporations. I can envision the parties—excuse me, conferences—in Geneva, Monte Carlo, Macau, and Las Vegas.
And what will be the argument behind instituting such tax? If a Nobel laureate favors it, such a tax has to be reasonable. What could go wrong?
*https://techxplore.com/news/2021-09-nobel-laureate-stiglitz-global-tax.html
**I was a professor in the Department of English before moving into the Department of Earth Sciences.
***30 Sept 2020. Where’s the pork? U.S. taxpayers funded a lot of wasteful spending (2017-2019). Online at Forbes https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamandrzejewski/2020/09/30/wheres-the-pork-us-taxpayers-funded-a-lot-of-wasteful-spending-2017-2019/?sh=11d30c703dc0 Accessed September 8, 2021.
Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz favors a world tax on corporations. * Just what we need, a universal tax on corporations that will provide money to be used for…
That’s just it. For what? Under whose wise direction? And with no waste? As a well known politician who currently wants to spend trillions of dollars is wont to say, “Come on, man.” Who buys into the idea that waste derived from incompetence, greed, and redundancy wouldn’t affect a world treasury filled with this proposed corporate tax? Think of the the USA’s GSA scandal. Think of any anonymous bureaucrats handed inordinate sums of money.
Name a large government bureaucracy that doesn’t overspend or spend just because the money is there.
I’m thinking of an incident years ago and a college librarian where I worked. As I was leaving the library after doing some research one night, I passed the desk of one of the librarians. Her head was down, her hands quickly turning pages of publishers’ catalogs. “Katie, what’s going on? Why are you feverishly working so late? I’m the last person here. Close up. Go home.”
“I have $20,000 more dollars to spend by tomorrow. If I don’t spend the money, the state auditors will reclaim it, and the library will lose those funds.”
“But on what are you spending it?”
“I’m ordering as many books as I can.”
“Any books? Any principle behind what you order? Faculty requests? Some ‘every library should have a copy of’ list?”
“I don’t have time, and I already filled the requests. I have to order before tomorrow,” she said as she lowered her head to peruse the catalogs.
“Okay, good luck. Order copies of Proust’s novels for me. I’m teaching him next semester and the library doesn’t seem to have copies.” **
World tax? I’m thinking now of The Stamp Act, of a tax imposed by an agency far removed from those required to pay the tax. Americans who paid some attention to their history might remember that in 1765 the British Parliament decided to levy a tax to recoup funds spent in the French and Indian War, aka the Seven Years War. The colonists didn’t like it. It was, in fact, one of those nails in the coffin of British rule in the Colonies. A group far removed from the taxed colonists wanted their money. Now imagine a world tax that Stiglitz favors. Imagine any tax imposed by an entity that might misuse not $20,000 simply because it has it to spend, but maybe $20,000,000,000! Or $20,000,000,000,000! No temptation there.
Remember the General Services Administration scandal, the $800,000 party thrown in Las Vegas, Nevada? Yes, $800,000 that included a reception that served a $19 pp charcuterie and $7,000 in sushi at the reception, a $3,200 session with a mind reader, $$5,600 for in-room parties, over $6,000 for T-shirts, water bottles, bartender fee, rented tuxedos, and vests. And, of course, $100,000 in travel costs for multiple trips pre-conference by the conference planning committee; I don’t know how much for the travel and rooms of the participants in Las Vegas, but I should mention in my incomplete account the $6,325 the GSA spent on commemorative coins in velvet boxes and the $146,000 for food. “Drop in the bucket,” right?
Between 2017 and 2019, US bureaucracies distributed grants worth $135,826,847,780 (Dept. of Education), $22,135,246,534 (Dept. of Labor), and $35,201,732,943 (Agency for International Development—USAID) plus a couple of trillion dollars more. And God bless the Ivy League Schools with their paltry collective $140 billion in endowments; they needed tax money: The US agencies gave them $9.8 billion in grant money.
Am I being naive? Isn’t the bulk of that money spent rationally? Isn’t it spent without waste on projects necessary to the common good? Or is the following list of government grants compiled by Adam Andrzejewski of Forbes something everyone should consider before following the advice of a Nobel laureate?
hookers for Jesus ($530,190)--Prayers with moaning? A new meaning for "Amen"?
tai chi classes in senior centers ($671,251)--Don't people in Asia gather on their own to do this in a park?
creating outdoor gardens at schools ($1.6 million);
space alien detection ($7 million)--Are we different from the medieval cartographers who wrote "Here there be dragons" on maps?
taxpayers-funded story time at laundromats ($248,200)--No doubt a quiet place for a dramatic reading!
sex education for prostitutes in Ethiopia ($2.1 million);
a social media war on tanning beds ($3.3 million);
webcast-livestreamed eclipses ($3.7 million);
subsidized airport on Martha’s Vineyard ($12 million)--What's wrong with the public ferry? ***
World tax. Sure. That’s what the seven billion of us need. And who will be in charge of the spending? Aren’t you glad that the G20 has discussed it? Aren’t you glad that a prestigious Nobel laureate backs it?
I’ll bet you can’t wait for the corporations to get their world tax bill. You know they won’t pass any of those costs to you, and you know that ALL that money will go to bettering the circumstances of people around the world, to maybe saving the polar bears, the coral reefs, and the massive ice sheets on Antarctica and Greenland, or maybe to…. Give me a moment….To bailing out countries that went deep-end socialist and spent all the locally collected taxes on giveaways, Greece, for example. Remember the unrest in Greece’s streets and the EU’s bail-out euros? Or maybe to maintaining the WHO that did such a wonderful job on COVID-19.
In 1766, the British Parliament repealed the unpopular Stamp Act. If the global corporate tax is imposed, who will repeal it? Once a bureaucracy forms, it grows. Imagine an unfettered one with the resources of the world’s corporations. I can envision the parties—excuse me, conferences—in Geneva, Monte Carlo, Macau, and Las Vegas.
And what will be the argument behind instituting such tax? If a Nobel laureate favors it, such a tax has to be reasonable. What could go wrong?
*https://techxplore.com/news/2021-09-nobel-laureate-stiglitz-global-tax.html
**I was a professor in the Department of English before moving into the Department of Earth Sciences.
***30 Sept 2020. Where’s the pork? U.S. taxpayers funded a lot of wasteful spending (2017-2019). Online at Forbes https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamandrzejewski/2020/09/30/wheres-the-pork-us-taxpayers-funded-a-lot-of-wasteful-spending-2017-2019/?sh=11d30c703dc0 Accessed September 8, 2021.
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