THE ONLY thing that surprises us about the Panama Papers scandal is that so many people have been surprised by it! Indeed, who would have believed that unscrupulous capitalists would have salted away their loot so that they wouldn’t have to pay various taxes. Perish the thought!

Let’s get one thing clear – Capitalism is not a system run by kind hearted businessmen and women who just want to provide a few jobs, help the community and make a few quid profit into the bargain. Capitalism is nothing of the sort. Capitalism is based on sheer greed and exploitation.

And as the National Liberal Trade Unionists- http://nationalliberal.org/from-the-liberty-wall-%e2%80%93-national-liberal-trade-unionists-%e2%80%93-do-immigrants-cause-unemployment– have previously noted, capitalism is ‘a highly unstable and unfair system – it fluctuates between boom and bust at fairly regular intervals and allows for poverty amongst plenty.

However one thing always remains the same. And that is it’s a system that’s always stacked in favour of a very tiny minority as opposed to the vast majority.

The capitalist system is also to be opposed as it views all working folks (both blue and white collar) as mere worker ants. At the end of the day, everyone is expendable. It’s a ‘dog-eat-dog’ system whereby profit is the name of the game.

Capitalism knows no loyality or compassion. It’s the sole ‘mover and shaker’ behind the whole move towards globalisation. Indeed, it’s the only beneficiary of the policy of allowing free movement of capital and labour. This is why various industries are happy enough to ‘up sticks’ and chase – and exploit – lower wages across the globe.’

Caught in a trap? David Cameron is only one of the super-rich political and financial elite who have been caught up in the Panama Papers scandal.

With this in mind, should we really be surprised at the tax dodging shenanigans of the super rich?

Let’s be honest with ourselves, none of us really likes paying taxes (indeed, the NLP is more than sympathetic with the view that ‘taxation is theft’) but under the current financial system it’s a necessary evil. Sadly, taxes will remain with us until we totally change the financial system – from one based on debt to one based upon positive money.

However, what sticks in the craw is the fact that there appears to be one rule for them and one for the rest of us. The super-rich elite (the 1%) simply employ off-shore tax havens whilst the rest of us (the 99%) just pay our way.

So where does this leave us?

First of all, it’s clear that we need to dump the current capitalist system which only really benefits the very, very few. But what do we replace it with? Certainly not socialism, which at root, is merely a form of state capitalism. For all of its fine talk of equality, in practice socialism is elitist as the Party bosses tend to rule the roost.

The view of the National Liberal Party is that neither capitalism nor socialism are desirable economic models. They should both be replaced by distributism. Simply put, distributism is a system whereby ‘a just and sustainable social order can only exist in which the ownership of property and the means of production, distribution and exchange are widespread.’

For the moment, we’re happy enough to let people know that an alternative to capitalism and socialism exists. However, in the future we’ll be spending more time explaining the ideas behind distributism.

The second thing that strikes us about the Panama Papers scandal is that we’ll need to take an in-depth look at the way money – and thus wealth – is created. For instance, how many people are aware that, instead of letting private banks create money, the state could create it – debt free – and spend the money into the economy?

Once again, we’ll be looking at saner alternatives to the current economic system in the near future.