OPINION: CORPORATION TAX YET ANOTHER WEAPON IN THE ARMORY OF IMPERIALISM – PACKY CARTY

Packy Carty – an independent republican and ex-prisoner from Dungannon in Co. Tyrone – challenges the notion that lowering corporation tax in the Six Counties will see a dividend for anyone other than the multi-nationals already exploiting our country at the expense of the Irish people.

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George Osborne and the Tory coalition at Westminster have finally found the stick with which to beat Stormont into imposing the harshest welfare cuts since the 1930s, the ability to drop the North’s corporation tax to that of the 26-Counties.

But low corporation tax is another bonus for the rich corporations and a further trampling of the working class. The current economic crisis was created by big banks, big business, and the so-called ‘free market’. When the crash inevitably came the dog eat dog rules of capitalism were turned on their head and the governments of the West moved to bail out their funders in big business – at the expense of the taxpayer, who was not to blame for the crisis. So while the profits were privatised the debt was socialised.

Cutting the tax of the most wealthy organisations in the world will inevitably lead to the shortfall coming from the pockets of working people. It will also welcome a fire-sale of our indigenous industries, which at a later date will no doubt be exported to the cheaper labour markets of the developing world – just ask the former employees of FG Wilson, among others, who’s life work now resides in China.

The culture of lavishing public money on wealthy multi-national corporations must stop, and instead investment must be directed at new and existing indigenous industries, with an aim to securing a real and sustainable Irish economy. The punishment of the most vulnerable in society for the financial mismanagement of big banking and big business must not go unchallenged.

Only a United Ireland in control of her political and fiscal sovereignty can secure a future free from British imperialism and US neoliberalism.

Packy Carty
East Tyrone