Here is a great example of what’s going wrong with the economy world wide. This one is about the US Postal Services that’s on the skids. Well, dead actually. Hoping to get a hefty bailout from the government to try and survive a few more months.

The US Postal Service is government regulated. It has one particular nasty law that states:

The law prevents the post office from raising postage fees faster than inflation.

At the same time the Post Office has labour contracts that have long guaranteed no layoffs to the vast majority of its workers. And management agreed to a new no layoff-clause in a major contract last May.

In a nutshell. Can’t cut cost and can’t raise prices. The end is nigh.

It’s the very same problem facing governments of countries. Of course most of them like the UK are in a major cutting mode. Mostly services that make life easier will be shut down by Govt who hopes that the people will take the slack. Help themselves so to speak.

But where’s the increase in revenue? Taxes for the wealthy or for companies. Higher luxury goods taxes for instance such as alcohol, 5 star hotels, first class travel, luxury motor vehicles. There is more than one way to get the filthy loot out of the wealthy 1% of the population who own about 40% of all wealth, globally. Or more shockingly in the USA the top 20% own 92% of all wealth.

Using the same tax system across the board, as happens in most cases of a tax systems , the middle class is the group of folk who carry the bulk of the tax burden. Remember that taxes were first introduced to get money out of the ordinary folk to pay for excessive spending by monarchs or the church. Not much has changed since then.

It’s shown again and again by the determined manner in which the Inland Revenue folk hunt down ordinary folk to make sure they pay their last cent in taxes. Yet the wealthy are able to hide their income by paying their cars through companies, taking their holidays as business trips, newspaper subscriptions through the business, clothes expenses hidden as uniform purchases, that case of expensive scotch as Xmas gifts to customers and the list goes on. I’ve done it as accountant for a company. Easy.

That tax system needs to change to make sure that revenue is collected from the wealthy. High taxes on luxury cruises, ski trips, high end clothing etc will be more appropriate than trying to tax their ‘salaries’. They don’t earn anything.

There has to be an entire mind change in terms of taxation. And of course all of this can be implemented. The VAT system in the UK for instance is incredibly sophisticated with exemptions, scales and variations that could make anybody’s hair stand on edge. What’s stopping the UK from introducing a 50% VAT rate on first class train travel, expensive entertainment centres, art work etc. And yes there is already a high import tax paid on many of these items. But there’s no reason why not let that 20% population that owns 90% of all wealth pay a bit more.

Well, you might ask yourself, why should they. It’s capitalism. It’s reward for risk takers, hard work, innovation, the American dream and a lot more reasons why the wealthy should be entitled to their spoils.

Sure. But when it involves stealing from the general population it’s a bit different. The CEO’s paying themselves 17% more this past financial year while retrenching the workers at a rapid rate are doing just that. If Apple’s past CEO could pay himself $1 per year because he considered his wealth to be sufficient then surely the rest of the greedy big shots can do the same.

Regardless of the little man as that’s not really the point here. The point is that if Governments want to be able to balance their budgets they have to do two things. Bring in more revenue and cut costs. Only cutting costs means that the poorer folk in the system are harmed again and the wealthy folk sit pretty.

Not a good system. The Arab world’s uprising will not be the only one. There are already demonstrations in several non Arab countries. Spain has had some and more recently Israel has had it’s streets full of people asking why their cost of living is so high and their standard of living is falling. And yet they are working as hard as ever.

These demonstrations have nothing to do with lazy, unmotivated, scum of the earth type of folk. This is all about ordinary citizens seeing the world go to the wealthy and their lot getting worse. The Greeks in particular have seen a Govt system where the ordinary folk pay taxes and the upper echelon swims in money. No wonder they are angry.

There will be more and more angry people out there. A French Revolution in the brewing. It’s just a pity that as history tells us one money grabbing regime is always replaced by another money grabbing one. It just gets a different name with a new bunch of people who have spotted the opportunity of being able to the top of the money tree by riding the wave of the ordinary people.

Same ol’ Same ol’. Pity us ordinary folk are always so willing to abdicate our power to somebody who stands up and says they will do it for us. We almost deserve to get nailed by the ruthless top order. Almost.

The French Revolution, somewhat immortalised by Charles Dickens and his Tale of Two Cities novel, struck shock and horror and a kind of morbid fascination in the hearts and minds of people of all ages.

Basically what happened was that France was in the grip of a bunch of people from a few elite bodies such as the aristocracy, heads of religions and those enforcing the feudal system. These people had all the money, all the land, all the rights. But not content with that, they also made the lives of the ordinary citizens a hell by treating them shabbily. Ordinary folk had nothing going for them.

During the time of the French Revolution (1789-1799) the bunch at the top of the food chain continuously refused to admit that there was something wrong in the land of the French. And it was only the beheading of a fairly large number of the leaders that saw some sense getting beaten into the heads of the survivors. That is some survived because they either fled or got a little more intelligent.

So that’s the history. And that’s what kids get taught at school. At the same time they are taught that man learns from history.

Well! Not really.

One can, in an indirect way, see a slight similarity with the riots and political upheaval in Tunisia. The despot/president Ben Ali has just fled into Saudi Arabia. The Prime Minister, Mohamed Ghannouchi,who thought he could just take over and step into the void discovered that the rules had changed. He was not about to get a free ride into the position.

Now would this have anything to do with the French Revolution. Kind of. It’s a bunch of ordinary people who got sick and tired of the way the top echelon enriched itself by defrauding the little guys. And the little guys continue to starve and face unemployment while the big guys live it up. Corruption and nepotism. Sounds like the France that got knocked by the French Revolution.

This is all truly interesting. And yes, one can see that nobody is really learning from history. But that isn’t actually the most interesting part at all, although one feels for the Tunisian people and the many who got killed.

What is more noteworthy is that the rest of the Arab world is starting to talk about the fact that this could be the start of a trend. Could the rest of the Arabic countries end up facing a similar fate. After all similar systems are in place whether in Egypt where the son of the prime minister is being groomed for the job or in Saudi Arabia where ‘The Family’ led by King Abdullah is running the show. No wonder Ben Ali would feel welcome in Saudi Arabia.

Will Egypt, Algiers, Iran, United Emirates and the list goes on face the same revolution. Will the little guys take courage from the success of the brave in Tunisia and topple their oppressors?

Maybe not. Because what is not clear as yet is what will happen in Tunisia. Could the military and police stage a coup? After all they are the ones keeping the peace. Sort of. Or will the country actually be allowed to have elections.

Whatever the outcome. Maybe even other countries could start wondering what will happen. In a way the banks and investment houses are wielding similar powers in the USA and Europe. Huge wealth in but a few hands. When will the little guys in the USA for instance stage their own revolution to stop this indecent enrichment of individuals at the cost of the man in the street?

It will happen. There is no doubt. 25 hedge fund managers can’t possibly earn as much as 658 000 teachers and get away with it in the long run. Or can they? Check the Wall Street’s Ten Biggest Lies for 2010 on Huffpost for some illuminating information.

So it could be that not only the Arab World should be trembling a little in its shoes. Perhaps those wealthy modern day pirates on Wall Street might just be noticing a tremor or two. Something will crack. It’s only a matter of time.

Daimler agrees to pay $185m after admitting to bribery charges. These charges were made by the US Justice Department and Securities and Exchange Commission on the strength of an investigation into the company’s global sales practices.

The question that needs answering is why the US would charge a German company for bribery they committed in foreign countries i.e. not in the USA. Is this the American way of bringing in money to fund it’s various financial bail-out activities or job creation programmes one wonders.

The crimes were committed by Daimler’s German-based exports subsidiary Export and Trade Finance and the Russian business Mercedes-Benz in Russia. So how does the USA fit into this picture?

Is this now the moral police or is it a money making racket by the US government agencies.

Now there is no doubt that Daimler paid out bribes. Daimler has no problem with admitting to this. They also state that they are cleaning up their house and a fair number of people have been fired.

So the issue is not whether Daimler paid a bribe or not. It’s accepted that they did and on many occasions. The issue centres around why the USA should think they are the world wide morals police and how they come to be charging this company operating in another country.  Surely the German government should have brought this action?

But talking about bribery and corruption, the USA is not exactly the country of virtue and lily white hands. Alone the lobbying industry so popular in Washington smacks of bribery and corruption. But if one gives it a name and places it in broad daylight for all to see then suddenly it isn’t bribery anymore. Is bribery only bad if it’s done underhand?

However, going back to the issue of jurisdiction because this is what it’s about after all, does this process recently completed in the USA mean that anybody bribing somebody in the rest of the world can be charged in the USA?

Your company is registered and headquartered in Vietnam for instance where bribery and corruption is part of doing business. It’s an overhead. Don’t open a business if you are not going to pay bribes.

Suddenly you get fined by the US Justice Department and Securities and Exchange Commission. You’ve been caught paying bribes. Well yes, it’s the only way to do business in Vietnam. Can’t exist without it. Even non-profits have to play the bribery game.

But the US Justice Department calls it a crime and you get fined. Is anybody safe from the long arm of this particular law enforcement agency?

Daimler’s case is not an isolated incident.  German industrial group Siemens paid $800m in 2008 to settle a US investigation into bribes paid by the company to government officials in Argentina, Bangladesh, Iraq and Venezuela.

That’s almost $1bn.. Will come in handy when trying to balance the budget in the US one supposes.

A few years of this kind of moral policing and collection of revenue could end up being quite lucrative to the US government. Might allow them to pay for all the bail-outs that have to be made to thieving, lying and law-bending US based banks, insurance companies and other financial institutions.