Paradise Lost

Thieves broke into the personal financial data of millions of private citizens involving their off shore investments  and passed the cache on to an international organisation of journalist who pored over them for a year and then released  the information to media outlets.Instead of this provoking a universal cry of outrage at such flagrant and wanton  violation of privacy and individual rights the media true to form has whipped up a frenzy of synthetic rage at the details of tax avoidance individuals have engage in including celebrities and even the British monarchy.

Such orchestrated faux moral outrage re taxation always begins with the following unquestioned,unchallenged and baseless premise: taxation is a moral good and all who avoid or circumvent it are immoral. I would like to reverse that conventional wisdom and instead say: taxation is immoral and all who attempt to avoid it are moral.

Since when did tax avoidance become immoral or the implication is, illegal? The distinction between avoidance and evasion has always been a semantic conceit of convenience but it has served a useful purpose of saving the world from complete economic meltdown and facilitated the continued functioning of what is at best a compromised semi capitalist mixed economy.Remove that and the world becomes an economic basket case of Venezuelan proportions.

In a sane world the felons engaged in such violation of privacy and depradation of individual rights would be hunted down,tried in a court of law and if found guilty as they would in any objective jujidicial process thrown in jail for a bare minimum of 10 years.