https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2018/10/16/17980424/shop-local-jeremiah-moss

44 neighborhood businesses closed to make space for chains and luxury boutiques.

Neoliberal ideas around privatization or regulation — running the government like a corporation, austerity for the working classes — those ideas had been floating around, but they didn’t have any success until the fiscal crisis in New York City of the 1970s.

“This is very neoliberal orientation: Citizens are no longer citizens; we are consumers.”

Naomi Klein writes a lot about neoliberalism as a shock policy. It comes in [and] takes advantage of crises. The fiscal crisis in New York was perfect timing to introduce these concepts and to have the bankers take over the government. Undergirding that, which doesn’t get talked a lot about, is that neoliberalism worked in large part because of the underlying racism that was going on. This idea was sold that “you white people, your taxes are going to welfare for lazy black people.”

What had previously been a government for the people became a government that was catering to big business, big real estate developers like Donald Trump, and tourism. They took that public money that was going to the poor and they gave it to the wealthy in the form of different types of tax breaks or other incentives for developers.

A fair tax policy must include closing tax havens and ending tax competition.

Tax havens are a market distortion since only the super-rich can take advantage of profit shifting.

Taxes are the price we pay for living in a democracy or republic, said Oliver Wendell Holmes.

In the 1960s, corporate taxes amounted to 40% of federal US revenue; now corporate taxes amount to 8-9%! Reagan began the "crunch time" by lowering the top tax rate from 70% to 29% and shifting taxation from corporate to individual.

The state should fulfill the public interest, invest in the infrastructure and reduce poverty. Instead, the state is often the plaything of private and special interests through privatization, deregulation and liberalized markets (or speculation). Education should be critical and independent and not a source for scandalous bonuses and windfall profits.

Please check out http://www.freembtranslations.net and www.taxjustice.net for articles on tax havens.