The world ‘at the other end’ of the Corona tunnel could never be the same as before. It could be so much better than ever – with a real opportunity to put it on the rails that will make it the place we desire it to be.
Or: it could be same, but indeed worse place then ever. Where past misbehaviours is ignored at best, OK’ed at worse.
But what does past misbehaviour mean?
In particular of the governmental and corporate type? Here a selected few ideas:
- abundant use of tax havens across the world (legal in US since the Reagan ara)
- artificial payment of R&D fees to parent companies, so as to export revenues from higher taxed areas (e.g. France, Germany, California) to low tax areas (e.g. Delaware, Virgin Islands, Keyman Islands. Bahamas)
- abundant used of stock buy backs (e.g. Boeing, American Airlines to just name 2) (legal in US since the Reagan ara)
- systemic racism or even genocide (e.g. Isreal’s treatment of Palestine, particularly during the current Covid crisis; India’s treatment of the non-Hindu minorities; China’s treatment of Uighur Muslim minority; Myanmar’s treatment of its Ronghya minority to just name a few).
- China’s over proportional damming of upstream Mekong water, which caused droughts further downstream
But we have a choice – and a unique window as global citizen to put this world on rails that is different, and will maybe give us a future vastly different – hopefully better – than what we come to live in the last few decades.
What could concrete measures be?
As individuals, communities, and citizens of our countries we can demand that: bailed out companies and industry must
- not be located in tax haven
- pay revenue taxes in the countries these were generated, and those revenues must not exported to headquarter geographies
- draw up business plans in line with the Paris Agreement climate trajectory
- not do stock buy backs at all any more going forward
‘Bail outs’ in this context may at the very least mean one of several things:
- direct governmental cash given to the business
- governments contributing to maintaining staff, e.g. through partial unemployment or furloughing mechanisms
- governments taking on debt guarantees for companies so they can weather the current crisis
I would also argue that any company that has made redundant a significant number of people (e.g. above 10% over the course of the time period from mid-March to end of April 2020) would equally fall in this category, as they simply are outsourcing their responsibility as an employer to the government. As such, the unemployment system is doubling as a ‘bail out’ system for staff expenditures, and therefore, also they would fall into the broad category of profiting from government funding.
It goes without saying though that unless the common citizen makes a point to demand such changes in the streets, in the digital media, and with their local government representatives vocally and insistently, by no margin we will see anything remotely akin to the above.
We have the choice. The choice is ours.
‘Democracy Now’: Amy Goodman in conversation with Noam Chomsky on on COVID-19, WHO, China, Gaza and Global Capitalism.
Full article and video source: https://www.democracynow.org/2020/4/17/noam_chomsky_coronavirus_trump_gaza_palestine
