If you are on the social networking site Facebook, or want to join it (go to
www.facebook.com), you may be interested in either or both of the following
groups (and you may like to read the descriptions anyway)...

Close all tax loopholes - make the rich pay their fair share of tax!
(http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=6703288194)

Rich people and big corporations avoid paying most or even all the tax that the
governments in their countries have decided they should pay by employing
expensive accountants to find loopholes in the tax regulations. They also use
overseas tax havens to avoid paying tax altogether.

We should demand that legislation is passed to close tax loopholes as soon as
they are discovered and that all tax havens around the world are closed down. If
companies and individuals still try to avoid paying their fair share of tax
using tax havens that remain or by relocating overseas, their assets should be
confiscated! This includes money in bank accounts, shares on stock markets, call
centres, factories, oil rigs, stock and equipment.

Get political parties (whether mainstream or socialist) to adopt a serious
policy of closing tax loopholes. I think this is the key demand to create a much
more ethical world. I have set up an Ethical Capitalism Network (at
http://www.ethicalcapitalism.net) which advocates such a policy as well as other
ethical demands and a fair electoral system - proportional representation (PR)
by single transferable vote.

I am unsure whether a truly ethical capitalist system would be achievable or
stable; trying to implement such policies could lead to some sort of socialist
revolution. I (Steve Wallis) am personally a socialist, but this group is open
to ethical capitalists too.

My interest in this issue was sparked by comments made by Senator John Kerry in
the second live TV debate against George W Bush in the 2004 US presidential
election. He pledged that he would tax the rich (reversing 85 or 90 billion
dollars of tax cuts, I forget which) to those earning over $200,000 a year, and
also to close tax loopholes. No wonder Kerry was defrauded in that election! I
set up a US Electoral Fraud discussion group (at
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/us-electoral-fraud) to publicise the massive
levels of fraud in that election, perpetrated largely due to the use of
computers to cast and count votes.

In 2007, British political parties have taken up demands for the closure of tax
loopholes in a token way. At the Tory conference, David Cameron proposed that
"non-domiciles" (foreigners living in the UK to avoid paying tax on overseas
income) pay a poll tax of £25,000 a year - supposedly to increase the
inheritance tax threshold from £300,000 to £1,000,000, although their sums
don't add up. The New Labour government made a similar pledge on non-domiciles
and has now fixed capital gains tax at a flat rate of 18%, reducing tax for some
but increasing it from the lowest rate of 10% for some including private equity
firms. This is ridiculously low, and those equity firms would still pay much
less tax than the level of corporation tax.

A massive economic crisis is looming, largely due to the credit crunch, that
will perhaps even lead to some sort of meltdown on the stock markets. This will
lead to big opportunities to change the world in a positive direction. Let's
seize the time to create a fairer, more ethical, society!


Oppose long-term (e.g. three-year) pay deals – inflation is soaring!
(http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=11220502884)

The New Labour government in the UK is trying to get public sector workers to
accept three-year pay deals. This could be emulated in the private sector, and a
similar strategy may be adopted in other countries.

The official rate of inflation in the UK is about 2%, so deals like the offer to
nurses of 8% over three years, with 2.75% immediately, sound quite good.
However, real inflation is much higher than that – the retail prices index is
about 4% and food and fuel prices are increasing at a much higher rate than
that. “A basket of staple food items” has risen by 17% in a year, according
to an article by Emma Lunn in the Business & Money section of the 23rd of March
Scotland on Sunday newspaper.

Increases in food prices are particularly large and devastating in the “third
world”. The prices of the staple food items distributed by the World Food
Programme (WFP), the United Nations agency responsible for distributing aid from
donations by governments around the world, had risen by an average of 40%
between June 2007 and the 25th of February 2008 when the WFP announced a $500
million budget shortfall.

The WFP reported that food prices had risen by another 20%, in the “third
world” markets where they now buy food, in the three weeks after making that
announcement. This probably reflects panic buying and the hoarding of food by
those worried about rising prices and/or shortages in the shops. For more
information about the food crisis and how it could lead to financial meltdown,
largely because most mortgages in the USA have fixed interest rates for the
entire term, read the message on “The food crisis and financial meltdown” at
http://www.facebook.com/topic.php?uid=11220502884&topic=4193.

The economic crisis, sometimes called the “credit crunch”, with banks
unwilling to lend to each other due to bad debts, will probably lead to
inflation soaring even further, and millions could starve to death. Right-wing
trade union bureaucrats will meekly roll over and accept pay deals that are bad
for workers as usual. Unfortunately, left-wing activists have largely just
opposed three-year pay deals on the basis that they are lower than current rates
of inflation, and (perhaps because they accept the optimistic economic forecasts
of capitalists) have failed to point out that inflation is likely to rise
substantially as the economic crisis of capitalism deepens.

Even if you have been swindled into accepting a long-term pay deal, you should
consider striking for decent pay increases part way through the term of the
deal, if inflation does contue soaring as I suggest. A strike wave for higher
pay, together with other measures such as trying to force the rich to pay tax
(see my group "Close all tax loopholes - make the rich pay their fair share of
tax!" at http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=6703288194) in a time of economic
crisis (perhaps with big banks going bankrupt), could even threaten the
capitalist economic system itself!

--
Steve Wallis (Glasgow, Scotland)
For important/urgent communications, please email: warcrysteve@...
Blogs: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/steve-wallis-socialist-blog,
http://blog.myspace.com/galaxiasteve
My socialist website: http://www.socialiststeve.me.uk
My socialist musical poetry: http://www.socialiststeve.me.uk/poetry.htm (and at
my MySpace and Multiply pages)
My pages at MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/galaxiasteve, Facebook:
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=731729407 and Multiply:
http://socialiststeve.multiply.com
Founder, Good Intentions Network: http//www.goodintentionsnetwork.org
Funder, Ethical Capitalism Network: http://www.ethicalcapitalism.net
Founder, Foundation for PR-based Socialism: http://www.PRsocialism.org
Founder, Revolutionary Platform Network: http://www.revolutionaryplatform.net
My socialist band, Red Day: http://www.red-day.net
Author, "Revolution Destroyed? Have I ensured that a world socialist revolution
will never happen?": http://www.revolutiondestroyed.net
For discussion of the credit crunch, go to
http://www.revolutionaryplatform.net/forum/index.php?board=156

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