
The 1% hide their money offshore, then use it to corrupt our democracy - dineshp2
http://www.theguardian.com/news/commentisfree/2016/apr/10/money-offshore-corrupt-democracy-political-influence
======
windexh8er
While I've been meaning to read Noam Chomsky's: "Understanding Power" I ran
across the documentary: "Requiem for the American Dream" over the weekend and
this is clearly showcased within the first 5 minutes as he begins to describe
"The 10 Principles of Concentration of Wealth & Power" and starts out with
this infographic: [http://imgur.com/QVcagot](http://imgur.com/QVcagot).

Quoting Chomsky from this portion of the film: "Concentration of wealth yields
concentration of power. Particularly so as the cost of elections skyrockets
which forces the parties into the pockets of major corporations. And this
political power directly translates into legislation that increases the
concentration of wealth. So fiscal policy like tax policy, deregulation, rules
of corporate governance, and a whole variety of measures - political measures
designed to increase the concentration of wealth and power, which in turn
yields more political power to do the same thing."

The documentary has spurred me to start reading the book, but falls in line
with what's coming to light in the mainstream media today unfortunately.

Edit: Honest question - why the downvote? Directly falls in line with the
original post.

~~~
tim333
It's changed so much since Carter's day:

>Carter compared elections now-a-days to those when he was running for office,
saying, “In those days when I ran against Gerald Ford, who was incumbent
president or later Ronald Reagan, who challenged me, we didn’t raise a single
penny to finance our campaign to run against each other. We just used the $1
per person checkoff that every taxpayer indicates at the end of his or her
income tax return."

Guess things could be changed back?

~~~
bdavisx
With the Citizens United decision, that's no longer possible without either a
Constitutional Amendment or the Supreme Court overturning their own decision -
neither one is very likely.

~~~
agrover
With Scalia gone you still think it's unlikely?

~~~
venomsnake
I don't claim to understand SCOTUS - but they are extremely conservative
institution. I mean dictionary definition of conservative - upholding the
status quo. And they prefer to not get involved in the day to day affairs of
the country.

So even a bad SCOTUS decision could stay on the books for a long time - just
to save face and uphold the credibility of the institution.

They look to rock the boat the least. Even in their current hyperpartisan
state.

~~~
pc86
Saying that the Court upholds precedent to "save face" shows an complete and
total lack of understanding of the body.

------
infogulch
I know that "1%" has a nice ring to it, but articles like this that mention
"billionaires," "David Cameron," and the "Koch Brothers" aren't talking about
1-in-100, they're talking about _1-in-100,000_ or more. The 1% are your small
town local doctor and lawyer, and they're not tax dodging on their
(nonexistent) huge hordes of cash by moving them out of the country.

~~~
jimmytidey
In the UK, a one percenter earns £160k or above [1]. That's above the salary
of any kind of doctor or consultant in the NHS, though they may earn more
privately[2]. Very few doctors of any kind are likely to exceed this salary.

Lawyers potentially could earn far in excess of £160k, though the vast
majority would not.[3]

I would guess that working in finance is the single mostly likely way of
earning over £160k.

I appreciate this may well be different in the US.

[1] [https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/percentile-
points-f...](https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/percentile-points-
from-1-to-99-for-total-income-before-and-after-tax)

[2] [http://www.bma.org.uk/support-at-work/pay-fees-
allowances/pa...](http://www.bma.org.uk/support-at-work/pay-fees-
allowances/pay-scales/consultants-pay-england)

[3] [http://www.chambersstudent.co.uk/where-to-
start/newsletter/h...](http://www.chambersstudent.co.uk/where-to-
start/newsletter/how-much-do-barristers-earn)

~~~
retube
That defines a 1%er _in the UK_. On a global basis a much, much more modest
income will put you in the 1%.

~~~
jeremysmyth
I would guess that a large proportion of people reading this comment have
_incomes_ in the top 1% globally.

[http://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-
finance/050615...](http://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-
finance/050615/are-you-top-one-percent-world.asp)

Interestingly, this is less likely to be the case in _wealth_ terms; many
people globally with a lot of wealth (e.g. in agricultural land) have
relatively low incomes, and the opposite is also true.

~~~
bzbarsky
Measuring wealth without adjusting for lifecycle effects (which is how it's
usually done) is a meaningless exercise. A doctor four years into his or her
career almost certainly has negative wealth, while any retiree not solely
depending on a government pension presumably has some reasonable wealth.

------
barney54
I didn't see anything in this article where the author explain how offshore
money corrupted democracy. He also throws out the Koch Brothers as some kind
of left-wing talisman, even though I haven't seen them implicated in the
Panama Papers.

It is certainly possible that offshore money could be corrupting democracy,
but I don't see any evidence in this article.

~~~
lucozade
When I was at school, we used to play a game in English whereby we each had an
obscure word that we had to get into compositions as often as possible without
the teacher spotting it. The record, if I recall correctly, was something like
6 mentions of chiaroscuro.

I sometimes feel that Guardian political journalists aren't paid by the word
but using some form of buzzword bingo similar to the game we played. So the
more times they get terms like 1%, neo-liberal, progressive etc the more they
make. Polly Toynbee is definitely the master at that but Chakrabortty is
pretty good too.

~~~
soared
Keyword stuffing?

------
alva
Even more tax hypocrisy being spouted by the Guardian.

[http://order-order.com/2012/11/26/the-guardians-offshore-
sec...](http://order-order.com/2012/11/26/the-guardians-offshore-secrets-
guardian-media-group-still-operates-caymans-company/)
[http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2013/06/28/the-
insuf...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2013/06/28/the-insufferable-
hypocrisy-of-the-guardian-on-corporation-tax/#4ec0bd22b232)
[http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/guardian-
med...](http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/guardian-media-firm-
makes-186m-but-pays-only-200000-tax-8675818.html)

~~~
x5n1
Ad-hominem. Does not make their articles any less relevant or wrong.

Specifically:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tu_quoque](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tu_quoque)

~~~
alva
ad hominem "directed against a person rather than the position"

The Guardian position is that avoiding tax using offshore companies is morally
wrong. The Guardian avoids tax using offshore companies

hypocrisy "the practice of claiming to have higher standards or more noble
beliefs than is the case."

edit: You are right that it does not make their articles any less relevant and
I did not claim that it did.

~~~
devishard
One of the most valuable realizations I had in my mid-20s was that just
because someone is a hypocrite doesn't mean they're wrong.

~~~
sievebrain
The reason people tend to pay less attention to arguments by hypocrites is
that arguments are often about tradeoffs that cannot be scientifically
computed or discovered purely through rational debate, and actions speak
louder than words.

If someone is arguing for tradeoff A, and relying on moral/emotional/somewhat
vague arguments for it, whilst simultaneously their actions suggest they
actually prefer tradeoff B, then that suggests their proposed weighting of the
tradeoffs is actually wrong and thus that their words are not worth very much.

In this case, the Guardian loves to argue that tax avoidance is wrong, using
arguments that are vague and emotional at their core (e.g. fairness), but
actually engages in it rampantly themselves. Given that actions speak louder
than words, that suggests that their proposed tradeoff is perhaps not the
right one.

~~~
devishard
> The reason people tend to pay less attention to arguments by hypocrites is
> that arguments are often about tradeoffs that cannot be scientifically
> computed or discovered purely through rational debate,

Wow, you've just chosen to discard rationality right at the beginning? I guess
that's one way to go about it but I sure don't feel like I need to say much to
prove that assuming hypocrites are wrong is irrational.

> actions speak louder than words.

This is a great rule of thumb when applied to judging a person's character,
but completely irrelevant to evaluating the correctness of an argument.

> If someone is arguing for tradeoff A, and relying on
> moral/emotional/somewhat vague arguments for it, whilst simultaneously their
> actions suggest they actually prefer tradeoff B, then that suggests their
> proposed weighting of the tradeoffs is actually wrong and thus that their
> words are not worth very much.

Sure, moral/emotional/somewhat vague arguments are poor arguments. Actions
still have nothing to do with it.

> In this case, the Guardian loves to argue that tax avoidance is wrong, using
> arguments that are vague and emotional at their core (e.g. fairness),

So attack their arguments. If their arguments are invalid they can be proven
invalid without attacking The Guardian. The Guardian's hypocrisy remains
irrelevant to this conversation.

> Given that actions speak louder than words, that suggests that their
> proposed tradeoff is perhaps not the right one.

No, it doesn't suggest anything of the sort. Even if we could consider the
Guardian to be a single entity--which is isn't: as another poster pointed out,
the writing staff are not the same people as the finance department--but even
if we could consider the Guardian to be a single entity that was condemning
behaviors while engaging in them, that would only prove that The Guardian is
kind of an asshole. It doesn't prove that they're wrong.

~~~
sievebrain
You cannot evaluate the "correctness" of arguments about many things in the
political space. Bob says that the country would be better if taxes were
raised on the rich and spent on the poor. Charlie says that this would make
the country worse and a better approach is to focus on educational attainment.
Who is right? How do you arrive at a situation where both Bob and Charlie
agree with each other?

Experience tells us that this isn't possible. They're probably arguing from
different assumptions, they very likely have different ideas about what
"better" means, and even if they could agree on those things, which path would
actually yield better results is impossible to simulate or predict accurately.

That doesn't mean Bob or Charlie have discarded rationality, it just means
that pure application of logic cannot solve most of the problems on which
politics dwells.

When you say "attach the Guardian's arguments" after I just said that their
arguments are vague and emotional, you're requesting something that won't go
anywhere. The Guardian argues that companies should feel a moral obligation to
pay more tax. At the same time, they don't appear to feel that obligation
themselves. That's a fundamental inconsistency that invalidates their own
"argument" (using the term loosely). There's nothing to refute: they did it
themselves.

~~~
devishard
> You cannot evaluate the "correctness" of arguments about many things in the
> political space.

Of course you can. How do you vote, just pick the guy who you'd like to have a
beer with? Give me a break.

Again, you're starting off by rejecting rationality as an approach, so I
really don't need to prove that you're irrational here.

> How do you arrive at a situation where both Bob and Charlie agree with each
> other?

We don't. Bob and Charlie's agreement is entirely unnecessary. Why is this
even your goal?

> which path would actually yield better results is impossible to simulate or
> predict accurately.

This is rarely true in practice for major voting issues.

> That doesn't mean Bob or Charlie have discarded rationality, it just means
> that pure application of logic cannot solve most of the problems on which
> politics dwells.

Nobody is claiming that Bob and Charlie have discarded rationality, but I'm
claiming that you're discarding rationality. You've again state this fact for
me.

If logic can't solve your problem, it can't be solved.

> The Guardian argues that companies should feel a moral obligation to pay
> more tax.

That's not The Guardian's argument as far as I know, so let's stop right
there. I doubt anyone with The Guardian's caliber would bother with the idea
that companies should feel.

------
merpnderp
When I see the Koch brothers mentioned, but not George Soros, who's donated
far more money and influenced far more country's politics, it always strikes
me as highly partisan. When it comes to influencers of US politics, the Koch
brothers are relative pikers.

~~~
knowaveragejoe
Do you have a source for this assertion? So far as I have seen, Soros has
donated more money _personally_ than the Kochs have - but the Kochs have an
extensive network of "grassroots" political organizations which in aggregate
have funneled _far_ money to politicians than Soros has done personally(on the
order of hundreds of millions). I suppose at some level they are all using
tricks and loopholes.

~~~
pakled_engineer
Clinton's FOIA emails are full of Soros literally giving orders to her and
other reps. Use Wikileaks archive to read them/search for Soros.

He's also bought electronic voting corps and managed to get them into
primaries like Utah. There were all kinds of shenanigans with them recently
like denial of service to some voters.

~~~
knowaveragejoe
Sources would be good for this. I'd like to see him literally giving orders
via email.

------
whatok
Really disappointed with the recent flood of clickbait Guardian articles
submitted.

~~~
whitegrape
It's The Guardian, what do you expect? Lots of HN users like reading trash it
seems.

------
golergka
1) Avoiding tax is in legal bounds is completely moral and is practised by
everyone who is able to do that. I know a _lot_ of programmers in US who
establish private consulting companies to write off all their private expenses
and get 15% effective tax rate. If you think avoiding tax is immoral, you
should hate them just as much as you hate billionaires.

2) Most of the people believe in political causes that are likely to directly
benefit them. College students and young professionals are upset about college
loans, old people are concerned with pensions, etc.

3) It's completely legal and moral to put effort and money to support
political causes you believe in.

So, everything the article describes is completely normal and moral for an
ordinary man — but it seems that when billionaires exhibit the same behaviour,
scaled with their personal wealth and it's influence, everyone thinks it's
awful, immoral and illegal. How so?

~~~
Eridrus
> 1) Avoiding tax is in legal bounds is completely moral and is practised by
> everyone who is able to do that. I know a _lot_ of programmers in US who
> establish private consulting companies to write off all their private
> expenses and get 15% effective tax rate. If you think avoiding tax is
> immoral, you should hate them just as much as you hate billionaires.

Morality is not binary, and it is quite reasonable to think that while
programmers evading taxes is bad, billionaires doing so is worse.

~~~
golergka
Why worse if it's the same %?

~~~
rlucas
When does a difference in degree become a difference in kind?

(Not arguing the specific point -- but differences of degree do matter in the
messy empirical real world.)

------
Loughla
Here's a non-snarky question.

What can we do about this? I've seen coverage about all of this, and the
question I'm hearing across everyone I know is - what can we do?

Any thoughts?

~~~
binarymax
Here's a thought - which to many people is a very crazy one. Treat the world
as a unified world and economy, instead of having individual nations with
separation of certain laws related to finance and human rights. All the
nations just become states under a single union, with open trade and a
standard on taxation.

~~~
sergiosgc
One of the lessons that history in the XIX and XX century taught us is that
economic competition between states is essential for determining how to best
organize societies. A single worldwide ruling hierarchy negates this
competition and may hold humanity in a local maximum.

Even today, there are major choices that are different between successful
societies, and the definition of what is best is yet to be found. Is it better
to have state paid medical care, like in Europe, or private medical care, like
in the US? Is it better to have strong unemployment benefits (Sweden, Denmark)
or strong worker protection laws (France)? Is pure capitalism (US) better than
Social Democracy (EU), or is the better choice Capital Oriented Communism
(China)?

The freedom for states to compete fiscally has produced an aberration, though,
in the form of offshores. We should work towards severely limiting capital
flux between our societies an unregulated tax havens. Without hurting the
basic competition principle, though.

Throw the bath water out, keep the baby.

------
WalterBright
It isn't remembered today, but in the 80's Reagan made a deal to get his tax
cuts through by eliminating tax shelters (tax shelters are poorly performing
investments made worthwhile only because of favored tax status).

This caused investment to flow out of poorly performing investments into
better performing ones, which was good for the economy. I suspect that had a
lot to do with economic growth in the 80's.

Moving investment money offshore to reduce tax liability is the same thing,
and the solution is the same - reduce tax rates so that it is no longer
worthwhile to invest elsewhere.

------
jgrahamc
_Newspapers so often bandy about the million unit that readers can get inured
to its true significance. But if at the stroke of midnight on New Year’s Day
you were lucky enough to get one pound coin every single second, it would
still take 114 days to amass £10m. You would even now be waiting till Sunday
week to collect the whole amount._

I have a very hard time imagining that. Surely it would be better to describe
what having £10m would allow you to do.

~~~
zeeZ
You and a 130 other people could eat a £1 cheeseburger three times a day for
the rest of your lives.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Actually, forever, because interest?

~~~
zeeZ
Life expectancy is also increasing, so, maybe not? But then again eating 3
cheese burgers a day may work against that...

------
pdkl95
We're still linking to The Guardian? The government stenographers that are
protecting the intelligence community by sitting on their part of the Snowden
archive?

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJValv4YQcY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJValv4YQcY)

(warning: video contains strong language. Jacob Appelbaum isn't pulling his
punches at The Guardian)

------
apsec112
Hmmmm, strange how these supposedly all-powerful billionaires who own all the
politicians through their nefarious offshore tentacles can't manage to get a
bridge built:

[http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_18423887](http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_18423887)

[http://www.mv-voice.com/news/2013/12/12/council-deadlocks-
on...](http://www.mv-voice.com/news/2013/12/12/council-deadlocks-on-google-
bridge-idea)

(note that the second article is two and a half years after the first - two
and a half years of fighting for a simple two-lane bridge)

~~~
Terr_
Well, it _is_ easier to destroy than create...

------
sickbeard
Meh can we keep this hyperbole shit off HN?

~~~
cpncrunch
I'm disappointed both in the Guardian and HN users for posting this crap. The
article doesn't even have any evidence that Cameron evaded tax (which is the
implication).

Cameron says he paid tax on the capital gains, so why the doubt? I know
Cameron is a huge ass, but that doesn't mean he's guilty of tax fraud. In the
UK you can't legally avoid tax by investing in an offshore fund. If you are UK
resident you must pay capital gains tax when you sell the asset.

------
cmrdporcupine
While I appreciate the general thrust of the Occupy emphasis on "the 1%", as
an old school socialist I believe the real issue with the distribution of
wealth is on who controls the institutions of wealth generation and power, not
who happens to be holding large amounts of units of currency. That some people
are 1% and others are in the 99% is a product of unequal distribution of
power.

By some calculations, I am briefly in "the 1%" in my country but I own know
corporations, factories, large quantities of stock, and am in that tier only
on account of a set of temporary circumstances, and I've paid over half of it
out in income taxes. And I have no more power than any other average voter.

Whereas there are people who have far more influence, and it isn't necessarily
due to how much wealth they have, but more to do with the kind of control they
have over wealth generation itself.

~~~
jtuente
> who controls the institutions of wealth generation and power

What would you define as the institutions of wealth generation and power?

> And I have no more power than any other average voter.

Is that because of your wealth of lack thereof or because you do not value
that power over other interests?

------
x5n1
Why is income from money, you know that which is earned because you have lots
of capital, taxed at a much lower rate than incoming from labor? The < 1% are
hiding their money in plain sight and not paying the same level of taxes as
people who trade their labor for money.

~~~
ska
Partially from economic theories about the use of capital in a market economy.

Partially because the socio-economic class of people who benefit from such tax
laws overlaps heavily with the socio-economic class of people who create tax
laws.

~~~
rlucas
Please don't forget the economic theorizers, and the subtle and not-so-subtle
pressures that keep them in line.

(Put another way: in "[1] economic theories about the use of [2] capital in a
[3] market economy" there's a whole lot of assumptions and underpinnings, at
least three of them, that are not laws of physics, but rather are ways of
perpetuating and recapitulating our present system.)

~~~
ska
I fail to see how my statement did not include what you are saying, or how it
suggested anything else.

~~~
rlucas
Wanted to give the same critical emphasis to the economic theory explanation
as you had given to the socioeconomic class interest bit.

The statement articulated two "parts" of the explanation.

The second "part" was phrased as a matter of class self-interest, with a
critical tone.

But the phrasing of the first, as being "from" economic theories, can very
easily be read as giving those theories a pass, esp. in environments like HN.

If we wanted to explain with some finality, we might answer, "why do we
mandate lead shielding around radioisotopes" by saying the reason is "from
physical and biochemical theories [about harm from ionizing your DNA]."

Or we might answer, "why are some traits observed to be epigenetic / both
heritable and environmental" by saying the reason is "from biological
theories."

The appeal to science-y authority is pretty conversation-ending in
technically-oriented conversation venues like HN, I find. Or more properly, it
might not end conversations but it makes that piece a leaf node.

I just like to remind people that economic theories are far, far more than
their hard-science counterparts, political products.

~~~
ska
Ok, I guess that makes more sense now. I do t see the imbalance of emphasis
you read in it, but that is fine.

------
tn13
Rich people corrupt democracy ? Does this mean if rich people leave
politicians alone, politicians will be somehow honest?

I am used to Guardians amateurish articles but this puts the bar even lower.
Just like there is no such thing as "natural balance" there is no such thing
as "honest democracy".

All sort of special interest groups will always try to influence power in many
ways. Rich people will always be at top. We have two choices. Either have
entrepreneurs and free market driven ruthless rich people or more socialistic
crony capitalists who steal our money using government. I prefer the former
any day.

~~~
lerpa
Regarding representative democracy there were roughly 2 lines of though,
historically speaking:

1) the ones that believe government would work as long as we had good people
there; and that's where we need to focus, getting good politicians that can do
good things, oh well if there are bad apples, nothing is perfect

2) government is a necessary evil, that has to be constantly under check
because even if there is good such thing as a good politician, the ones that
should worry us are the bad ones even if that also hinders the good ones; oh
well if government has it's hand tied, government doesn't need to be a father
figure, and has to be limited

The first group, fueled by the symbiosis of some enlightenment naivete,
different classes of people trying to legislate advantages for themselves and
the lust for power, won over time.

------
onetimeusename
> Thirty years of runaway incomes for those at the top, and the full armoury
> of expensive financial sophistication, mean they no longer play by the same
> rules the rest of us have to follow

They wouldn't have played by the same rules even without offshore tax havens
because they would be required by law to pay higher tax percentages than most
people anways.

Is it a surprise to anyone that people try to avoid paying 45, 50, sometimes
as high as 90% on their earnings in tax and perhaps just as much on illiquid,
inheritable assets?

~~~
JoBrad
Doesn't seem like they fought in the same ways, as underhandedly, when they
were actually paying 90%.

------
dkural
With the tax evaded, we could END hunger, we could END child poverty, we could
have universal pre-school, we could pay for state college for everyone.

It is good to keep in mind that society must be balanced between to centers of
power: state/political power, and economic power. If the state has complete
consolidation of both political and economic power, then you have Russia,
China, etc. and corruption at a state level.

If you have economic power control the politicians, you have something close
to the US and some other countries where wealthy politicians pick and choose
senators and greatly influence outcomes.

Both extremes are bad - a state controlled by the wealthy, and all wealth
controlled by the state.

If the wealthy control the state, you have mass poverty, crime, a weak
democracy, corruption, etc. If the state controls the wealth it has total
power, so you have people disappear if they question it, you have mass
starvation, no one to complain towards even if mines are unsafe, etc. In
general, states killed 1000x more of their own people than corporations did.

~~~
aantix
"David Cameron's Panama Papers Show How Little Offshore Tax Dodging Is Going
On" [http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2016/04/10/david-
cam...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2016/04/10/david-camerons-
panama-papers-show-how-little-offshore-tax-dodging-is-going-on/)

------
mortona
To my mind this really throws the excesses of the financial industry into
light.

The sum of money reportedly made David Cameron's father, as the director of a
long-established stock brokerage, is less than some of my 25-year-old friends
were earning as relatively junior employees at London investment banks in 2008
(£200k+ pa).

------
chrisfromwork
Tired of the 1% categorization. People making 600k annually aren't single
handedly affecting us political outcomes or storing money offshore.

------
fblp
Why does this line of investigation happen with British leaders but not in the
US? Australia has also recently had a lot of media coverage of misuse of
government benefits by political leaders. I feel that US media is awash with
coverage on the presidential race, immigration, wars etc, but the integrity of
politicians in congress isn't explored as deeply.

~~~
lostInTheWoods3
Depends on where you get your news from. If all you do is watch the evening
news, you will never get the full picture. Most of what is on television is so
dumbed down as to be useless.

------
known
Voting != Democracy;

Voters succumb to
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockholm_syndrome](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockholm_syndrome)
and
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vote_selling](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vote_selling)

------
daveheq
They don't need to hide it offshore when America is just about as good a tax
Haven now ( _ahem_ , Arizona, Nevada)

------
hawleyal
Duh

------
pigpaws
"1%" is a joke. if you apply that to the entire world, and not just
selectively to western countries (as is the habit):

According to the Global Rich List, a website that brings awareness to
worldwide income disparities, an income of $32,400 USD a year will allow you
to make the 1% cut.

Using current exchange rates, that amounts to roughly:

    
    
        29,185 euros
        2.2 million Indian rupees, or
        211,126 Chinese yuan
    
    

[http://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-
finance/050615...](http://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-
finance/050615/are-you-top-one-percent-world.asp)

~~~
MichaelBurge
Maybe the phrase "1%" is a tool used by 1%'ers like Aditya Chakrabortty(the
author of the article) to manipulate the innocent masses against other 1%'ers
like David Cameron.

Those rich people and their political infighting. I have no doubt that Aditya
- being a member of the 1% - is at this very moment twirling his mustache and
plotting to enslave some poor African children. As soon as anyone crosses the
income threshold of $32,400, they immediately start foaming at the mouth with
an urge to bite the common man.

~~~
golergka
> As soon as anyone crosses the income threshold of $32,400, they immediately
> start foaming at the mouth with an urge to bite the common man.

Replace $32,400 back with 1%, and you get a statement that audience of this
article seems to sincerely believe in.

~~~
pigpaws
that's because it relieves them of any feeling of responsibility for
contributing to said global disparity.

