We are living in a global community but are we all in it together?

Recent figures on demographics and profit avoidance could leave some of us feeling like an excluded kid at a birthday party. While the lucky few get to play pass the parcel with corporate profits, the rest of us have had our goody bags pilfered to pay for it. 

In the past few weeks, news that Google, Starbucks and Amazon have been routing billions in earnings through havens like Ireland, the Netherlands and Bermuda to slash their tax liability has caused outcry in the UK. Meanwhile in Ireland, big pharma warned the Taoiseach that if a competitive price for medicine was sought, they would pick up their ball and play somewhere else. 

It seems the Starship Enterprise defence shields have been breached. The benevolent facade of the new emperors of the business universe, have been penetrated not by lasers but by the passive power of the truth. 

Captains of industry holed up in the bridge, may be wishing they were Vulcans. 

Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt is unrepentant about achieving an effective corporate tax rate of less than 10% (about 6% in Ireland). In 2011, the company paid about €2.5 billion in tax on profits of €26.4 billion. And why should he feel this conflicts the company’s message of “don’t be evil”? His company is paying around the same in corporation taxes as other multinationals. For instance, Microsoft shaved nearly $2 billion off its US tax liability last year and Starbucks and Amazon were among those roasted by British MPs over their contribution to UK tax revenues.

The Economist predicts the furore and the need for greater public investment will lead to an international clampdown on the tax avoidance measures used by these and other multinationals. That however, may be bad news for Ireland, which has a substantial industry in facilitating this trade in profits.

Thinking outside the racial & national box
On the upside though, new demographic figures show the people of Ireland and the world are becoming more of a community. At home, new data shows the balance of Protestants to Catholics in the North is fast-approaching even. There is a clear, though not absolute, correlation between these religious beliefs and the border that socially and economically disadvantages all 6.1 million people living on this island. 

The data also point to a generational shift in which younger people are less concerned about historic tribalism and more concerned with prosperity and lifestyle. All this points to a gradual erosion of our physical and emotional border and suggests, in the longer term, a sense of community will replace notions of Irishness and Britishness.

And while the corporate world has been behaving in concert across borders for years, global trends suggest the populace is catching up. Donald Clarke in The Irish Times, says recent data suggests a need for a re-examination of “unimaginative, outmoded notions of what it means to be a citizen”. 

“All nationalities are mongrels. All of us are – if you go back through sufficient epochs – essentially Africans. But there were enough people who looked the same and spoke the same to allow the myth of indigenous purity to thrive.” 

However, that is gradually changing. In Europe, the power of the nation state is being eroded, and the US is becoming ever more racially mixed. Current trends suggest that by 2047, white people will no longer be the ethnic majority. However, ethnicity is becoming an outmoded classification in the US and elsewhere. As Clarke points out, “Interracial marriage has doubled in the US over the past 30 years. Young people in Los Angeles, London and Dublin are increasingly unconcerned about diluting any supposed racial identity.”

Further listening 

This post borrows the wonderful phrase “passive power of the truth” from The Only One, by Manchester Orchestra.