The lucky man who beat off the competition, got the job. At least he will be OK. He is paid $2 for the afternoon to use the combine harvester to harvest $200,000 of wheat. $20,000 is paid by the corporation to the local elite in taxes, offset by government subsidies previously received by the corporation to develop the land and provide “jobs”. $2,000 is paid for hire of the combine harvester to some friends in the advanced technology sector back home. And of course $2 to the worker. Further, the corporation must pay $20,000 to the international financiers running the market for the stock on Wall Street. That leaves $157 998 for the corporation. Not bad for an afternoon’s work.
And what happened to the $20,000 paid in taxes for public spending? Typical US client dictators do not meet the needs of people with taxes. The Panama Papers only confirmed what we already knew – they put the proceeds in shell companies in numbered accounts in offshore tax havens. Who ever heard of a local Dictator leaving office without a huge personal fortune stashed abroad? If it happens all the time, in every case, wherever you look then it’s not called corruption – it’s called the System and it’s working very well indeed.
And the net gain for the people out of this system? Remember the $2 that the worker got paid for the afternoon? That’s it. Well no, it’s not even that.
Of that $2, the worker will pay some in income tax, some in VAT, some in local taxes, some in petrol tax, leaving him with maybe $1.
That’s the gain. Just walking around the country is evidence enough that $1 is the sum total of what the people made from the Imperial system. And then the worker considers how lucky he is that it was him who beat off the competition to win the $2. He buys his can of Coke – water with added gas, chemicals and sugar – for a dollar, and boasts to his envious friends how free his chains have made him. Even the $1 found its way back to America. They take it all.
How can the U.S. give and give and give, and the workers of the country work and work and work – and decades later their grandchildren are still growing up with nothing to their name? They take it all.
If the wage went up and standards rose, then the profits would fall. And this won’t do… so they take it all.
Exports rocket. Fantastic economic growth. Spectacular environmental decline. Everything of value has been removed onto the Stock Market. Well oiled, legitimised theft.
The worker has made his contribution and even stopped off at the vending machine to put his wages back into the system. The system is content in the knowedge that not one dollar of power has escaped from its orbit and can carry on with business as usual.