Exxon is the name of Esso in the US. In 1971 (expecting all words ending in ‘xon’ were going to be the future- eg, Nixon) the company changed its name. What didn’t change was the way it operates.

Two years ago (and I do apologise, but I’ve lost the archive involved – it’s on a dongle in a cupboard somewhere) The Slog’s mother site nby ran an analysis showing how small UK businesses pay too much tax, megacorps pay almost none, and banks avoid any – but then cost us all $23 trillion to bailout globally. I thought that was bad enough -but get a load of this.

Exxon Mobil, the largest U.S. energy company, made a profit of $35 billion last year. Much of that profit magically disappeared into wholly owned subsidiaries around the world – wholly owned subsids under US tax law being a euphemism for Tax Shelter.

And Exxon is not alone in doing this. GE submitted a 24,000-page tax return, avoiding income tax for profits worth $10.3 billion. According to a report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) about fiscal 2008, two in three US companies paid no federal tax between 1998 and 2005. The aggregate sales of those companies came to $2.5 trillion.

During 2008 in the UK, less than 10% of global concerns paid over a £1 million in tax. From the US corporate perspective of course, this proves that Britain is a thinly-disguised Communist regime.

But to the rest of us, adding all this squirrelled-away cash to the ridiculous cost of bailing out the reptiles who raise money for the gargoyles kind of suggests that some of the rich folks are not exactly pulling their weight when it comes to paying for the civic services of life.

Forty years ago as a radical student, I would’ve been writing this piece from the viewpoint of an anti-capitalist. Having long ago discovered how insanely youthful and naive that view was, for years now I have been churning out this stuff as a means of showing people that globalist, free-market capitalism screws the small supplier, screws the Government, and – at every opportunity – screws the consumer.

It’s funny how, even though one drifts across the political spectrum from Left to Right over four decades, the guys you thought were complete assholes in 1970 are still complete assholes in 2010.

You really don’t have to be a commie or a social democrat to write these words: Friedmanite economics combined with greedy shareholders are never going to produce anything other than cyclical fiscal disaster and social inequity. Inequality is the natural order of things, but cheating is illegal – and the rich having soccer teams of tax accountants while the rest of us have nothing is simply unfair.