No Representation Without Taxation

Lobbying is not illegal in most countries, but it can nevertheless be a problem for public finances. Lobbying is -by definition- a way of ensuring legislation or regulation favorable to a company, business sector or group of people. More not than often, lobbying results to benefit for public interest, but in most case it is about securing unfair profitability or protection from competition or lowering of standards or something else as ambiguous as that. One of the results of this kind of professional pressure on an international in not global level, is the ability of -mostly large to behemoth- corporations to avoid paying any substantial amount of taxes, by piggybacking on existing legislation with the addition of convenient exemption or redefinition.

There would be two ways of dealing with this problem. One would be to outlaw lobbying altogether, but there is always the risk of returning to the old school practice of covert relations between corporations or interest groups and legislators.

The alternative could be to level the playing field: First by making it mandatory for companies or groups to accurately disclose their activities in this field.

Second, and most important, by enforcing the full and verifiable disclosure of tax payments by companies or groups of companies, together with their results, in a way that enables independent observers to judge the fiscal responsibility of business and inform the public on the matter. Then it would be up to consumers to decide if they really want to pay for this or that mobile phone, cup of coffee or banking service.

Useful reading

http://www.parliament.uk/business/publications/parliamentary-archives/archives-highlights/archives-stamp-act/

http://www.tagesspiegel.de/themen/agenda/eintritt-ins-parlament-der-bundestag-haelt-geheim-welche-lobbyisten-er-hineinlaesst/11544806.html

Public business should be public property. Period

Everything public belongs to the community. Public utilities should never become private because they never cease to be public business. Even the waste or pollution it generates.
When the public pays for utilities and infrastructure, it should as well enjoy the profit these assets generate. It is irrational to concede all public wealth to individuals and then be willing to borrow money from them, with interest, in order to cover public expenses.

Albert Einstein: Economic anarchy of capitalist society real source of all evil

The economic anarchy of capitalist society as it exists today is, in my opinion, the real source of the evil. We see before us a huge community of producers the members of which are unceasingly striving to deprive each other of the fruits of their collective labor—not by force, but on the whole in faithful compliance with legally established rules. In this respect, it is important to realize that the means of production—that is to say, the entire productive capacity that is needed for producing consumer goods as well as additional capital goods—may legally be, and for the most part are, the private property of individuals.

From "Why Socialism?", an article written by Albert Einstein in May 1949 for the first issue of the socialist journal Monthly Review

Un-deregulate banking and finance

Self-regulation of globalized banking and finance was a hoax. It only led to "real money" being swapped for "funny money", at the expense of taxpayers, bank depositors and other available victims. So, paradoxically, debt is now deemed more valuable than savings, and leverage is dictating the rules of engagement in this war. Time to re-establish the Chinese Wall between retail banking and investment banking. For starters...