Joseph E. Stiglitz, economywatch.com

In the last 25 years, we have moved from a world dominated by two superpowers to one dominated by one, and now to a leaderless, multi-polar world. While we may talk about the G-7, or G-8, or G-20, the more apt description is G-0. We will have to learn how to live, and thrive, in this new world.

7 February Permalink

Americans’ concerns about the threat of big government are near record-high levels. The Occupy Wall Street movement, focused on “fighting back against the corrosive power of major banks and multinational corporations,” has drawn much attention and a large following. Still, the majority of Americans do not view big business as the greatest threat to the country when asked to choose among big business, big government, and big labor. In fact, Americans’ concerns about big business have declined significantly since 2009.

13 December 40 Permalink

As taxation is both an administrative and a political issue of prime importance to all societies and their power-structures, are changes in modes of taxation both rare and slow. Income taxes, profit taxes and VAT dominate, and are so heavily entrenched in our societies so we hardly even notice how outdated this combination has become.

Even if the taxation is merely one of the systems that need to change because of the how the world is transforming, some important points are made in this document.

this document suggest taxation of inputs rather than outputs on the corporate level - coupled with a more incentive-driven ‘stakeholder-approach’ for wage-taxes - and a flat rate coupled with variable deductions, in favour of low income earners, on the individual side.

A key point is:

the tax system must include incentives for creating common good, not simply be developed and/or used as a collection tool for the Ministry of Finance

Source: clubofamsterdam.blogspot.com

10 March Permalink

Interesting and not impossible chain of events. I have been thinking along these lines for some time and unfortunately see this as pretty likely.

1. Millions of people decide they don’t like the way the US government is handling a major issue–healthcare for example–they start protesting.
2. They use social networks to voice their concerns, Twitter almost buckles under the strain of the conversations.
3. A group of very vocal–and sophisticated–protestors start using Twitter to put together a group of hackers willing to coordinate a DDoS attack on a prominent web site–how about Whitehouse.gov?
4. Before they can unleash their “protest” the President takes control of Twitter and shuts down one of the most important communication channels of our time.
5. Twitter is deemed to be of national importance and so becomes government owned and sanitized nationalized.

Source: webpronews.com%2Fblogtalk%2F2009%2F09%2F02%2Fthe-government-could-potentially-take-control-of-twitter

7 September 1 Permalink