Dodgy money accounts for much of the world’s GDP, but this may not be all bad, writes Dan Atkinson
TAKE it from the top: counterfeit goods account for 9% of world gross domestic product (GDP), the black economy ranges in size from 5 to 25% of GDP, bribery and fraud accounts for – oh, another 5%? Then there’s fraud against the European Union, estimated by some to be 10% of its Budget, drug- trafficking, money-laundering and unlawful arms dealing.
Finally, there is tax evasion, which accounts for just about everything not covered in the other figures. Britain alone is owed 2- trillion at today’s prices for tax dodged since 1976.
Add all these up, and you have to ask yourself whether there is a straight penny in circulation. The time cannot be far off when a criminologist or economist cuts the waffle and the guestimates and tells it like it is: dodginess accounts for 100% of world GDP.
Poor old Dashiell Hammett’s nightmare of a society gone entirely criminal while maintaining outward respectability may have become horrible reality. Or maybe not so horrible.
The decline-of-the-West view has tidal waves of black money crashing over the heads of defenceless nation-states, creating misery wherever it goes.
Try the alternative, propounded by Professor Ian Angell of the London School of Economics: national governments are the real gangsters, extracting huge sums from their subjects with which to bribe their supporters. The mafiosi are the liberators – the Mafia charges 15% and keeps its word, nation states charge 60% and do not.
Criminal chieftains may replace governments, but so what? The wise will load up with hi- tech skills useful to our new masters; the foolish will continue to look to the West’s bankrupt welfare states for help.
There is, possibly, a third view. Nation states remain a fortress against misfortune, inequality and gangsterism, but their rulers, crazed with notions of ”open global markets”, have thrown the castle gates wide open.
That apart, the future’s laughs all the way.