If I Buy a Coffee From Starbucks, am I supporting Tax Evasion? by Nick Bryans
That's not a coffee. That's an ice cream. With a straw.
Capitalism, eh? Bloody hell. Our economic system has been named by many as the culprit for the current mess the country is in. Legal loopholes allowing Vodafone and Barclays to evade mass sums in tax, whilst an unregulated banking system saw a collapse which forced the government to bail out these institutions deemed ‘too big to fail’. The on-going protests against the behaviour of certain corporations and the government’s response to them has gained an ‘anti-capitalist’ tag, with some claiming that the inherent flaws in the economic system make boom and busts cycles and widening inequality impossible to avoid. The latest demonstration has been the occupy movement in London, firstly at the stock exchange, then at St Paul’s Cathedral.
The protestors have been labelled as anarchists, communist, hippies; you name it (though a tweet from organisers requesting people bring down, amongst other items, vegan food, didn’t really help this hyper-left wing tag). Those opposing the protests, notably Conservative MP’s Teresa May and Louise Mensch, see them as nothing more than an ill-informed ‘Champagne Socialist’ rent-a-mob. Their key argument has been how certain attendees were spotted drinking Starbucks coffee. That’s multi-national conglomerate and Capitalism pin-ups, Starbucks. What with Starbucks being against everything a supposed ‘anti-capitalist’ would stand for, this, it’s argued, proves that these people don’t really have a clue what they’re talking about, and really just fancied a few days of youthful exuberance in the capital.
Now I can’t speak for everyone at the protest, but whether they were drinking a Mocha-Frappa-Wappa with extra whipped cream and caramel sauce or not, it’s really a moot point. Here’s the thing; I don’t mind capitalism that much. I have a Churchill-on-FPTP, ‘It’s the worst form of democracy, till you compare it to the others’ view on it. Capitalism, for all its flaws, is ok by me. However, just because I don’t mind capitalism, just because I buy the odd Starbucks, does not mean I condone tax evasion or casino banking.
Firstly, we need to get away from labels. Communism in Russia wasn’t ‘Communism’, and Capitalism in the UK isn’t pure capitalism. We don’t have flat rate tax, and we have a state sector which provides, amongst other things, healthcare and education. In the same vein, the banking bailout that was bemoaned by protests wasn’t a capitalistic action. Capitalism would rally against state intervention in any form, and would have let them fail, rather than partly re-nationalise them. We haven’t really got capitalism. What we have is a system with elements from different theories and theorists, with decisions made on an ad-hoc basis; not according to what an antiquated book says.
Capitalism isn’t the problem; corruption is. Corruption occurs in every political system and in every economic model. When a banker jeopardizes the future of an entire institution and with another’s life savings, it’s wrong. Not because the law says it. Not because a type of democracy or lack of regulation let it happen. But morally. When a multi-national corporation like Vodafone evades a £6bn tax bill, it’s wrong. Not because our financial system allowed it, but because it’s wrong. You can go on and on about how terrible capitalism is in allowing it to happen, but it isn’t capitalism that’s taking money away from the state sector, it’s opportunistic people, bound by their own corpulent greed. Whatever economic model we have, people will find a way to filter out more than their fair share. During the MP’s expenses scandal, one of the quotes constantly mentioned by people and politicians was that ‘the system is rotten’. The system wasn’t rotten. The people that used it were.
Whatever system we have in this country, self-serving people have an uncanny way of fucking things up. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn wrote at length in The Gulag Archipelago about the duality of man, and how, to lead a righteous life, one must learn to control and dispel part of themselves, the part that lusts over greed, vices and sin. And fundamentally, as Solzhenitsyn says, “who would be willing to destroy a piece of their own heart?”
You can say that a system that lets greed prosper is problematic, but the problem is greedy people looking to prosper. When a bailed out bank is giving out bonuses to its casino bankers, it’s not Capitalism to blame, it’s the banks. When Kim Jong Il is living in affluent decadence while the residents of Pyongyang are dying through famine, it’s not communism to blame, it’s Kim Jong Il. When the state sector gets cut due to government money being spent on a bail out, it’s not because Mr Capitalism went on a two week holiday to Barbados at the tax payers’ expense, it’s because someone had the capacity to destroy an entire financial institution, then come to the government with a begging bowl.
Your choice of beverages doesn’t dictate what you can and can’t be furious about. I could sit at the protests wearing a Nike cap, using a Macbook, drinking a Costa coffee and eating a Subway, and would still be fully justified in saying “You know what? I think tax evasion is wrong.” Being appalled at corpulent greed doesn’t require a lifestyle change. Like I said before, I can’t speak for the people at the protest, and some may disagree and think Capitalism is just the worst thing ever, but for an MP to dismiss the entire demonstration because someone had the temerity to drink a cup of coffee is palpable, and shows just how out of touch modern politicians are with their electorate. Take out the coffee chains, take out the economic model; you’d still have nob-ends. And therein lays the problem.
Look at this lot, sleeping on the floor under a tent, which they probably bought from Millets. Bourgeois left, all of them.
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I agree whole-heartedly. Top notch article.
To reword an old saying…”hate the players, not the game”