( A four minute read)

Be Aware of Invisibility;

One bad Apple leads to another.

This decision by the European Commission has implications far beyond Europe Union it opens the hornet’s nest of Capitalism.

The European Commission has launched an effort to rewrite Apple’s history in Europe, ignore Ireland’s tax laws and up-end the international tax system in the process. Every company in Ireland and across Europe is suddenly at risk of being subjected to taxes under laws that never existed.

The Unelected European Commission has ruled that two tax rulings issued by the Irish tax administration on the tax treatment of Apple’s corporate profits represent illegal state aid under EU law.

Brussels has no power over corporation tax rates, which member states have always been able to set themselves. The commissioner is trying to make sure the single market function is maintained and member states do not win business at the cost of others’ tax base.
In practice such rulings destroy fair market competition and undermine the tax sovereignty of democratic states.

So why should Ireland take any notice.

Other than it is a huge sum – more than the €12.9bn annual government spending on the Irish health service and nearly one-third of Ireland’s total government tax revenue in 2015, which was €45.6bn.

It is also the equivalent of €2,830 for every one of Ireland’s 4.6 million population.

It is a potential windfall – but one that the Government does not want.

Under EU rules it would mean that – as it is a once-off payment – it would have to be used to pay down debt, rather than used to fund extra Government spending.

There is little point in the EU enforcing Ireland to issue Apple with a tax bill in order to recoup EU financial Aid.

So are we looking at Cowboy Capitalism.

We all know that the world economy needs to be fundamentally reformed and if let alone it will not right it’s self.

In light of the technological revolution which is going to make most of us unemployable, structural changes are needed to the soul less of systems, one in which the fortune of one individual is most often possible at the expense of another.

The real question is:

How can the tendency of modern-day capitalism ( which is producing high levels of inequality and unsustainable uses of limited resources) be rethought.

Simply put Capitalism ultimate goal is profit. I got mine so fuck you! approach to life.

Trickle down economics is a joke. Capitalism has produced a society which no longer focuses on cooperation but on individual gain at any cost. We live in a society that now prides profit over prudence, compulsively over compassion, technology over tactility. And not too far away Trump over truth.

Global economic rules allow jobs to be offshore and capital to be reallocated in ways that do not benefit the vast majority of people.

Division and fear are sown by our world media . Compliance and desperation are reaped. And as always , there’s a profit.

Soon we will have a generation that does not know anything that does not come out of a smart phone, the God that will make or break presidents, popes, prime ministers, European Union’s, etc.

The most awesome goddamn propaganda force in the whole godless world. Owned by Apple.

We all know that it cannot remain the same and the core responsibility of democratic nations is to provide the ground rules. But should these rules be about how should technology best be deployed to serve human needs.

European feudalism failed a long time ago and now it seems that the European Union is also on the verge of failure.

Free enterprise and the market have led to private capitalism’s accumulation.

Capitalism’s problems are so deep that they are almost intractable, and benefits of private enterprise and markets against those of public enterprises and government planning have become blurred.

Giving that the European Union now has the apparatus to play a central role in the economy of its member has this decision reinforced an excessive concentration of power in politics and culture moving the EU to a state form of Capitalism which England recently voted to leave.

Once England it is outside the EU, Britain would have even more leeway than Ireland or other European Countries to offer special deals to multinationals in the hope they would invest in the UK.

That said, such moves could leave Britain looking more and more like a tax haven, and could hamper the willingness of other countries to trade openly with the UK.

With the way the Technological Revolution is going I would say FUNDAMENTAL REFORM IS NEEDED.

The thought that technology is innately progressive and all-powerful so it can solve capitalism’s problems for us by leaving firms and wealthy investors alone to do as they wish will ultimately leads all of us to greater insecurity.

The sheer trickery of Apple’s tax arrangements renders their claims to corporate social responsibility risible, and the economic harm caused by these arrangements is also enormous.

The evidence points in one direction Capitalism is the wrong economic system for the material world that is emerging.

It’s time to redesign.

There is only one way of resetting the elite-driven international capitalism.

All profit for profit sake should be caped with a world aid commission of 0.05%. ( See previous posts)