Buy Buy Europe, Part 3: Tax Haven Europe

by Stuart Jeanne Bramhall, Film Review

Buy, Buy Europe by Peter De Vos (2013) is a five-part miniseries describing how European banks have hijacked the euro monetary union to vastly increase their wealth.
Part 3:  Tax Haven Europe
This segment begins by profiling the Greek shipping magnates who run the largest merchant fleet in the world and pay virtually no tax. Corporations and the super rich pay far less tax than working people in all the EU countries. This massive tax avoidance forces all European governments to acquire major debt to keep from collapsing.
The documentary offers the example of Belgium, where the average tax rate is 12.5% and the most profitable corporations pay only 5% of their earnings in tax.
The filmmakers maintain that workers create wealth, though I doubt most neoliberals would see it that way. In 1981 Europe, 74% of the wealth workers created was returned to them as wages and government benefits. By 2012 only 49% of this wealth was returned to them and the super rich claimed the rest.

Dr. Stuart Jeanne Bramhall is a retired child psychiatrist, activist, author, blogger, and journalist.   She is the author of The Most Revolutionary Act: Memoir of an American Refugee (e-book, soft cover), 21st Century Revolution, a collection of political essays, and two young adult novels, The Battle for Tomorrow (e-book, soft cover) and A Rebel Comes of Age.

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