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Fittingly, in the same week that astronomers discovered a huge new super black hole in a distant part of the galaxy, here on Earth the public got a glimpse of the gargantuan amount of money that the global elite suck into tax havens.

The so-called Panama Papers of leaked data on tax dodging by the global one percent may have been used initially as a political smear-job against Russian President Vladimir Putin. There is good evidence of CIA links to the release by the Washington DC-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. That smear-job failed the credibility test, with Putin’s name not even among the thousands of clients belonging to the Panamanian law firm specializing in setting up shell companies in tax havens.

Like a boomerang, the dirty trick against Putin then rebounded on British Prime Minister David Cameron and many other world leaders –several of who are close allies to Washington –who were actually implicated in the tax-dodging schemes set up by law firm Mossack Fonseca, based in Panama. The Icelandic premier was forced out of office and there are calls for Cameron to similarly quit.

It is appropriate that corrupt politicians and other public officials be held to account if they are caught gaming fiduciary finances.

But in all the scandalous ferment what we should bring to the fore is the enormous scale of tax dodging by the global elite, and how that wealth is sucked out of our societies, resulting in austerity and poverty for the majority.

London-based campaign group, the Tax Justice Network, estimates that worldwide there is a total of $21-$32 trillion deposited in shell companies that have been set up in Caribbean offshore tax havens like the British Virgin Islands, Bermuda and Cayman Islands.

Within the United States, tax havens are operated legally in certain states like Delaware, Nevada and Wyoming, where corporations like Apple and Coca Cola can set up front companies to avail of zero taxation by the federal government. One reason why US clients have not appeared to feature much in the leaked Panama Papers is because they don’t need exotic Caribbean tax shelters owing to the availability within the US.

Let’s take the upper estimate of $32 trillion in worldwide hidden tax wealth. That’s almost double the size of the entire US economy. Or nearly half the total world annual economic output, according to World Bank data.

Now, people like Britain’s David Cameron and the law firm Mossack Fonseca will say they have done nothing illegal. And yes that is partially correct. But avoiding tax payment is only legal because our governments have written the rules that way.

The point is that we should write laws that make the use of tax shelters illegal. Why should ordinary working people have to pay taxes when the one percent are allowed to pay nothing?

Out of the total $32 trillion in tax havens worldwide, it is estimated that that amounts to $190-$280 billion in lost revenues to government treasuries.

Let’s put that figure in perspective. The UN Food and Agriculture Organization reckons that an annual spend of some $44 billion would be enough to wipe out world hunger. That’s less than 16 per cent of the revenues lost in the planet’s firmament of tax-dodging sites.

That still leaves a lot of money that could be used to eradicate diseases, build good public services in health and education and other social development –worldwide.

The use of tax shelters by the global elite has gained increasing prominence over the past three decades as governments increasingly pander to a wealthy minority. This is in line with the burden of taxation shifting more and more on to ordinary workers and their families. The shift is also correlated to the exploding gap between a super rich elite and the rest of us.

The figures are well known by now. In the US the top one percent own more wealth than the bottom 90 percent. A few dozen billionaires own more wealth than half the American population. Worldwide, the aid agency Oxfam estimates that 62 multi-billionaires own more wealth than half the world’s entire population –some 3.5 billion people.

This grotesque and relentless polarization of wealth both within countries and internationally is unsustainable. It is killing our societies, destroying communities, spawning unemployment, poverty, ill health and crumby schools. And yet the status quo of governments especially in Western countries tell us that there is no money in the public coffers and hence we must endure economic austerity and cutbacks to pay off fiscal deficits.

The polarization of wealth and the concomitant degeneration of societies is what happens under capitalism. Politicians and media get bought off and fix the rules of the game leading to further distortion and degeneration. And the tax havens that operate worldwide with governments’tacit consent are an instrument for this unsustainable capitalism.

The wealth that rich people and corporations have shunted from out societies is more than enough to fix our broken societies and literally make another world possible.

But, for that, we the people need to elect politicians and governments that actually represent us. All that is missing is the political will to bring rapacious banks, corporations and their one percent under control. A reasonable start would be shutting down tax havens and getting the rich to pay their long overdue fair share.

Tax havens are not in outer space like black holes, operating above the laws of physics. They are within reach of democratic laws. We just have to make those laws through democratic governments that actually work for us.