Charitable aid vs trade - perhaps we need a new definition in our dictionary? When charity is given, on the pretext of free aid, but the conditions of that aid are tied to a bunch of agreements that require the beneficiary to use that aid to purchase only certain things from a limited number of Western suppliers, then what can we call it? Its not really trade either because the beneficiary gave nothing in return. Perhaps it should be labelled a tax or more correctly, an income redistribution? Now where the parties to the financial arrangements happen to be the government (via the taxpayer) and a domestic company, isnt it effectively the same net result if the government just passed a mandatory tax on its citizens, and/else forced them to buy a product from Company (Domestic A) and then donate it to the recipient of the charity? How are we to view it if Company (Domestic A) is also a big political donor itself to the government of the day? Now dont we have a political campaign funding situation going on? (You contribute to my political campaign, and Ill get you a trade, I mean, aid deal). If Robin Hood were alive today, Im pretty sure hed have to be content with the fact that hed only be robbing back part of the very original robberies which came from the administrative function levels of society itself. The above is just one example of how things work. The counter-argument is probably the social security system (which is meant to distribute from the haves to the have-nots), but if youre middle-class, youre only going to realise that you are funding both ends of society... Your taxes are paying for the poor and the big business clawback arrangements... A lot of big business doesnt pay much tax, but get a lot of benefit from the political machinery... For which their reduced tax rate is a buy-off political donation (to secure the income stream trade-aid deal, which can also be simply a public contract asset). We might hold to an ideal of Robin Hood in fairy tales, but that would be dangerous in 2014. In a Robin Hood world, you dont want Robin Hood or the Sheriff of Nottingham anywhere around. Both will cost you, because if the GFC taught us something, its that the rich will get it back somehow, and its just a matter of what they call it? Bail-out, asset-relief program, quantitative easing, aid, trade. Nearly all of the solutions end up in the middle... Probably a Bell-shaped normally-distributive curve. This it seems, is the gist of a most normal distribution!
Posted on: Sun, 16 Nov 2014 06:16:05 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015