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Second Article in this week's Economist. The Economist is "Centre-Left" According to MBFC.
(anarchaos.s3.eu-central-003.backblazeb2.com)
"The white liberal differs from the white conservative only in one way: the liberal is more deceitful than the conservative. The liberal is more hypocritical than the conservative. Both want power, but the white liberal is the one who has perfected the art of posing as the Negro's friend and benefactor; and by winning the friendship, allegiance, and support of the Negro, the white liberal is able to use the Negro as a pawn or tool in this political "football game" that is constantly raging between the white liberals and white conservatives." — Malcolm X
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The Economist is based in the UK, so they know with absolute certainty that the rich most definitelly do not "pay for everything" since in that country, much more than most, the industry for Tax Avoidance and Evasion is MASSIVE, using British Crown dependencies (like the Channel Islands and the Bahamas) and even supported by the local legislation (such as their very special Non-Resident Tax Scheme which actually applies to people resident in the UK), all of which expensive enough that they're only worth using for people who make millions per-year.
The idea that a British-based magazine specialized in Finance and Economics are unfamiliar with the kind of schemes used by the likes of the Duke Of Westminster to avoid paying any tax at all and instead think the rich pay most taxes beggars belief.
At best, the Middle and Upper-Middle Class pay for everything. De facto the rich pay less effective tax on their incomes than the lowest levels of the Working Class, some even in absolute terms (as admitted by none other than Warren Buffet when he said that "I pay less tax than my secretary").
I read The Economis for over a decade until the 2008 Crash (when I finally saw the disconnect between the ideas they claimed to defend and the actions they actually approved of, and thus stopped reading it) and I have no doubt in my mind that this is just their usual "opinion forming" mix of half-truths, cherry picked factoids and pseudo-Scientific theories knowingly built on top of lies.
The article is about the US, so doesn’t mention the UK. But to quote the article “Loopholes benefiting the very wealthy should certainly be closed. The biggest problem in the American tax system is at the very top. The resetting of the basis for capital-gains tax upon death allows billionaires who hold on to assets, borrowing against them to fund spending, to avoid the levy entirely. The dodge is outrageous. Yet ending it would yield only a tiny amount of money, probably less than 0.1% of GDP annually. The same goes for raising inheritance tax, a good tax that has never generated much money.” I suspect the same in the UK.
The key point remains reasonable though - you can do all that but you just don’t raise enough money to meet people’s expectations
As the quote from Warren Buffet I provided shows, it's exactly the same thing in the US.
My point is that those working for a Finance and Economics magazine in the country of the World with a massive International Tax Evasion & Avoidance industry are very much aware that the people with the most money do not "pay for everything", quite the contrary: they take more from the common pot via industry subsidies, the cost for the taxpayer to uphold Property Law for their assets and the societal side effects of wealth inequality - from the need for unemployment and other benefits to higher Crime due to inequality - than they put in taxes - they're parasites, not contributors.
Further, the top 1% of wealth in the US don't own 30% of all the wealth in the country throught their annual wealth increase only being 0.1% of GDP as implied by how they framed their argument around that single loophole.
That claim that a specific "loophole benefiting the very wealthy" only amount "0.1% of GDP" is either a lie or they cherry-picked a single loophole and chose not to mention all the other ones, which is a lie by omission.
Lying by omission like that definitelly matches my own experience from reading it, on how The Economist frames things and dishes out selective half-truths to "form opinion" either to excuse (even celebrate) the very wealthy or spread a message of "there's nothing we can do about it, better just do nothing" when it comes to make them pay their fair share into the common pot - the propaganda technique of this magazine doesn't seem to have change in the decade and a half since I stopped reading it.