Tax Havens Report: Small Businesses Pay The Price For Big Corporations | Huffington Post

When big corporations use offshore tax havens, small businesses pay the price — literally. If they were to cover the cost of corporate abuse of tax havens in 2011, the average U.S. small business would pay $2,116, according to a report released Tuesday by consumer group U.S. PIRG. The estimate is based on Census numbers for businesses with fewer than 100 employees. Continue reading…

Spain’s general strike is also a day of action for the 99% | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk

Spain is about to experience huge austerity cuts that may prove explosive. On Friday Mariano Rajoy, the prime minister, is set to announce what even he describes as a “very, very austere budget” to reduce the deficit. According to El País, the EU is demanding cuts larger than those of Greece, Ireland or Portugal: “There is no comparable adjustment in [our] economic history,” says the paper.

As a result of this and recent changes to labour laws, only four months after the new conservative government took power, Spain’s two largest unions have called for a general strike on the day before the budget announcement. Continue reading…

Britain is not just ‘undergoing privatisation’, this is a modern enclosure movement | openDemocracy

Those who oppose the neo-liberal drive towards the “small state” need to re-imagine the the full enormity of what is going on. Cameron and co – a group which includes Nick Clegg and Danny Alexander and their two parties are engaged in the destruction of the historic postwar compromise between the public and private sectors with the wholesale transfer of public functions to private enterprise. Their project amounts to no less than a modern enclosure movement, in which it is not common land but what is still left in the public sphere as a whole that is being wrested from the people.Continue reading…

Who got left behind? How rising inequality is affecting countries across the G20 | openDemocracy

The correlation between economic growth and inequality is not as strong as many would like to believe. Combating inequality can, in fact, lift the poor out of extreme poverty, but this can happen in countries with only modest growth. Continue reading…

Greek economic crisis turns tragic for children abandoned by their families | World news | The Guardian

Nation shocked by stories of parents forced to give up children because of poverty – but charities warn of more cases to come. Read more…

Rich People Lack Empathy, Study Finds | Huffington Post.com

Social psychologists are making an argument that Occupy Wall Street protesters have been saying for months: Many rich people just aren’t in the habit of thinking of others. Read more…

Study: Wealth Inequality In America May Be Worse Than It Was In Ancient Rome | ThinkProgress

The 99 Percent Movement effectively changed the American political debate from debt and deficits to income inequality, highlighting the fact that income inequality has increased so much in the U.S. that it is now more unequal than countries like Ivory Coast and Pakistan. While those numbers are startling, a study from two historians suggests that American wealth inequality may actually be worse than it was in Ancient Rome — a society built on slave labor, a defined class structure, and centuries of warfare and conquest. Read more…

Revealed: huge increase in executive pay for America’s top bosses | Business | guardian.co.uk

Exclusive survey shows America’s CEOs enjoyed pay hikes of up to 40% last year – with one chief executive earning $145m. Read more…

Paris bans beggars from most popular shopping and tourist hotspots | World news | guardian.co.uk

With the French economy in crisis and the looming spectre of another recession, Paris’s poor and homeless people are more present than ever in doorways and metro entrances. Campaigners have demanded action on the country’s housing crisis. Instead President Nicolas Sarkozy has launched a war on beggars, setting himself against Paris’s popular mayor. Read more…

The Return Of Debtor’s Prisons: Thousands Of Americans Jailed For Not Paying Their Bills | ThinkProgress

Federal imprisonment for unpaid debt has been illegal in the U.S. since 1833. It’s a practice people associate more with the age of Dickens than modern-day America. But as more Americans struggle to pay their bills in the wake of the recession, collection agencies are using harsher methods to get their money, ushering in the return of debtor’s prisons. NPR reports that it’s becoming increasingly common for people to serve jail time as a result of their debt. Read more…