I'm finding that the pithiest political and economic commentary comes from sport/celebrity columnists. This one from the UK drove it home, and really flayed the Tax Cuts for the Accumulators of Wealth argument.
For the past 30 years, we've been treated to the bogus "the productive can't function without further tax cuts" whine, and some of us actually got sucked in. What this really accomplished was to magnify and strengthen the status quo on wealth and concomitant political power - the wealthy got wealthier, the poor got poorer, and the middle class stagnated and retreated.
While this was going on, the beneficiaries of this largesse - the hyperwealthy - smiled upon us ubermenschen and bestowed on us a few crumbs from the recesses of their larders. In the meantime, they collected kudos and adulation, networked in tuxedoes and basked in the pretense that they were somehow valuable, contributing members of society - instead of skimming parasites sucking off the lifeblood of humanity.
This was a brilliant article and brought it all home in a crashing instant.
Stanford epitomises the uber-rich who hid behind a fig-leaf of charity while avoiding their dues and helping banks to collapse
The wealth creation of the past quarter century has dwarfed any other period in history, anointing billionaire after billionaire, philanthrocapitalists who have reached into all aspects of society. Last week on these pages we saluted those chaps who'd taken time off from collapsing banks to draft government white papers on the NHS and so on. Yet it's not just social policy over which such people's influence has been brought to bear, but the arts, broadcasting, charity - all areas of public life. Including cricket, evidently.
Awesome observation.
Of Stanford himself, an Antiguan neighbour once remarked to this newspaper: "He is either one of the world's greatest philanthropists or one of its biggest crooks." The temptation is to ask which way, if you'd had a fiver, you'd have staked it, but in practice the question was rarely asked. "Billionaire philanthropist" has been one of the Homeric epithets of the age in which it has seemed as if one implied the other.
Ah, she notes the hero worship implicit in the activity.
Were they really "putting something back", or is the bell now tolling for this age of showy philanthropy, this world of benefit galas and humanitarian award ceremonies? In light of new information, many of these now look like legitimising poses, profile-enhancing activities which, when set against our rich philanthropists' failings in their day jobs, don't add up to much more than fig leaves for the great and the good - who have turned out to be neither very great nor very good at all.
Writing in a philanthropic periodical, the director of a private American foundation pointed out the irony of visiting Malawi last September as the financial crisis unfolded, and "instructing painstakingly well-run shoestring village organisations in prudent financial management ... If there was ever a moment to turn the tables in our discussions of accountability," he concluded, "and to require from the sources of our funding the same transparency, good faith, and reliable results that we require from our guarantee partners, this was it."
Oops - that's an inconvenient, halo-dulling bit of recognizance.
Now for the money shot:
Charity may begin at home, but philanthropy begins with paying tax. Not only was Stanford a "philanthropist" who owed $212m in unpaid taxes, but a man whose business was dedicated to enabling countless others to evade tax. This week, the tax campaigner Richard Murphy considered the Stanford-assisted hardship Antigua will now face, and declared: "Now is the time for developed countries to show to secrecy jurisdictions that there is life after this pernicious activity: that aid will be given to help them redevelop their economies and that there are alternatives."
Even a man of Stanford's preposterous bluster would struggle to explain how enabling tax dodging has anything to do with giving a toss about other people. He and his ilk are fauxlanthropists. If governments are brave enough, the real philanthropy should begin now.
Bring on some wealth redistribution.