62 people have more wealth than half the worlds population

[kranky al]

You talk about it like we are at the end of history. Something being the way it is now doesn't mean it will remain forever. And I never said capitalism should or would be abolished and replaced. Maybe it should but I have a feeling we have never really had a true capitalism, more like a corporatism where government and capital scratch each others backs. If government was a step removed from capital and implemented a social democratic model for capitalism to work within, maybe it would work.



"Abolishing" capitalism is an extreme view - I'm not talking about that, I'm talking about liberal/social democracy where the government puts protections in place for the benefit of the wider community, not for the benefit of corporations and billionaires. Numerous democratic governments and movements have been subverted, overthrown or worse by western intelligence/military agencies in the pursuit of corporate protection.

Even taking your argument, we can't know whether any country that has tried a different system would work as they have never been allowed to unfettered. How would we know how a Cuba for example may have turned out without having to worry about coups, assassinations, invasions, economic sanctions etc etc



They can do what they want - but in the long term it is untenable for so many resources to be concentrated in the hands of so few, which was my original argument. Even some of the wealthy are coming to realise it. Donating to charities is all well and good and I applaud those that do. But its like using a bandaid to repair a lacerated throat.

My local mp is melissa price.

We live in an electorate where all water comes from a bore - there is no dams or rivers to dam. It is very arid here.

This year they have started fracking in the same place where our water is bored.

Even if you completely dismiss any damage that can be done by fracking - it uses gigalitres of water.

A vast overwhelming majority of residents in her electorate do not want fracking in this area.

Does melissa :

A) oppose fracking unconditionally
B) feel ambivalent about fracking personally - but due to the will of her electorate take steps to make sure it doesnt go ahead.
C) make wishy washy statements saying if they ever prove fracking causes damage she will oppose it - but for now supports it.


That question and the correct answer is exactly what is wrong with our current model of capitalism - which is more of a kleptochracy than anything else.

 

[Subutai]

You realise these rich people have so much skin in the game on their own companies that if their companies went down or they passed on their shares, their wealth would decrease significantly. Their wealth isn't in cash. It is in their own shares, assets and potentially illiquid assets.

Take a look at Gina for example, lose a partial amount of her shareholding and iron tanks suddenly she is the 2nd richest.

Why did you put quotation marks around 'gave'? You're right, if you gave that 'money' (And I say 'money' as most of it is almost certainly not cash but some form of asset like shares) to the poor then it would make a real difference.
But so what? That's their call, not yours (and many make that call). And if you legislate to take it away from them they wouldn't have bothered making that wealth in the first place.
Bottom line is that if Facebook shares drop by 90% and Zuckerberg loses billions, that makes at best zero difference to the world's poor.

$7.6 trillion, or 8 percent of the world’s total wealth, is held in tax havens.

What if you were to share the pie with the worlds underprivileged?

 

[Long Live HFC]

$7.6 trillion, or 8 percent of the world’s total wealth, is held in tax havens.

What if you were to share the pie with the worlds underprivileged?

yeah, like they did in Zimbabwe! that turned out well.

 

[Moo]

And people will still trot out this '1%' meme.

Sixty-two people is, what, 0.00000008% ? Or thereabouts, how many zeros in a billion? I can't remember, better check my bank account.

I refuse to believe that one person out of every hundred that I meet yields significantly more power over society than anyone else.

That's because we don't invite you to our social gatherings

 

[JCHolmes]

what kind of world would we live in if we didn't have facebook? oh yeh a better one. Trust me when i say this, huge companies, big ones, would sell you deep fried horse s**t as chicken nuggets with an array of dipping sauces if they could make a buck out of it. And thats the worlds moral bottom line right there. Money before ''is this the right thing''?. Is there money in it? yes. okay but is it the right thing? no. But theres money in it you say? yes. Well lets do it then. What about the group of locals that we are exploiting and teh environment thats now ruined? yeh but its in some butt * country, the people who enjoy these things that we make dont live here so its all g.

 

[Max zero]

My local mp is melissa price.

We live in an electorate where all water comes from a bore - there is no dams or rivers to dam. It is very arid here.

This year they have started fracking in the same place where our water is bored.

Even if you completely dismiss any damage that can be done by fracking - it uses gigalitres of water.

A vast overwhelming majority of residents in her electorate do not want fracking in this area.

Does melissa :

A) oppose fracking unconditionally
B) feel ambivalent about fracking personally - but due to the will of her electorate take steps to make sure it doesnt go ahead.
C) make wishy washy statements saying if they ever prove fracking causes damage she will oppose it - but for now supports it.


That question and the correct answer is exactly what is wrong with our current model of capitalism - which is more of a kleptochracy than anything else.

Then half of them will vote for her in the next election because they got bribed with a handout.

 

[Pessimistic]

what kind of world would we live in if we didn't have facebook? oh yeh a better one. Trust me when i say this, huge companies, big ones, would sell you deep fried horse s**t as chicken nuggets with an array of dipping sauces if they could make a buck out of it. And thats the worlds moral bottom line right there. Money before ''is this the right thing''?. Is there money in it? yes. okay but is it the right thing? no. But theres money in it you say? yes. Well lets do it then. What about the group of locals that we are exploiting and teh environment thats now ruined? yeh but its in some butt **** country, the people who enjoy these things that we make dont live here so its all g.

And any number of ideologues who barefaced recite and repeat 'if its good for the market, its good for everything, including the planet'
eg They not only want to do it, they want to see themselves as morals too

 

[JCHolmes]

And any number of ideologues who barefaced recite and repeat 'if its good for the market, its good for everything, including the planet'
eg They not only want to do it, they want to see themselves as morals too

Yeh true, the morals of the free market = no morals at all. I call up the some big company and wait for half an hour just to speak with someone about my own money i put into them. that has never happened with a small business in my experience. You know why you wait for half an hour or more? coz ther service to you aint as important as they bottom line. end of story. and they bottom line could be 100M or it could be 400M. do the right thing profit of 100m do the dodgy passive thing profit of 400m. the morals they speak of are somewhere in between those two figures. Yes i understand that big companies provide alot for us. But WE actually provide alot more for THEM. Symbiosis in a way, yet if you try an pull up some big company about some s**t they will throw millions of monies at legal costs like nothing. You the individual on the other hand have no say or power pretty much. But consumers rule apparently, nah we being ruled by complacency and comfort. Of which massive cos provide for us.

 

[Pessimistic]

Maybe the market thing IS right, and we should have let the financial sector take a massive correction back in the GFC

Kay says that, in Britain, bank lending to firms and individuals in the real economy amounts to only about 3 per cent of their total lending.

All the rest is lending to other banks and institutions busy buying and selling bits of paper to each other – making bets with each other that the prices of those bits of paper will rise or fall in coming days.

Kay makes what, for an economist, is the very strong condemnation that almost all this speculative activity is "socially unproductive". It might or might not benefit the people doing the trading, but it's of no benefit to the rest of the economy.





Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/comment/ba...their-bets-20160201-gmj9f8.html#ixzz3z4WcObGz
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[Pessimistic]

If 3% is true, that is pathetic.

Makes property overvalued by double look positively robust in comparison

 

[M Malice]

the CEC has some out there ideas, though i like the separation of speculative banking practices and other commercial type practices. ie. glass steagall.
http://cecaust.com.au/main.asp?sub=Glass-Steagall&id=Why_Aus_needs_GS_separation.html
don't mind their idea of a national infrastructure bank either. it's a bit long winded and he goes off on tangents, could have been explained in 5 minutes. if you watch from around the 8 minute mark it's not too much of a snore fest.

 

[Pessimistic]

For transport infrastructure, I like to explore the feasibility of direct funding, ie mainly from road users but from others too.

Mainly this comes from the fule levies, which should be given over to the states directly, in a contra swap for some GST revenue.

Then road users are given the opportunity to opt in to gps based direct road charges, and then allowed to buy fuel tax free. It would need to be a much fairer charging system than the way transurbun for example operate.

Private road users can opt in. Commercial vehicles will find it compulsory. They pay taxes on profits anyway

States then get a solid income stream to be spent on transport infrastucture, and road users can see a corellation, therefore feel better about spending thir contributions.

Gst would be more about education and health type infrastucture

 

[Lebbo73]

For transport infrastructure, I like to explore the feasibility of direct funding, ie mainly from road users but from others too.

Mainly this comes from the fule levies, which should be given over to the states directly, in a contra swap for some GST revenue.

Then road users are given the opportunity to opt in to gps based direct road charges, and then allowed to buy fuel tax free. It would need to be a much fairer charging system than the way transurbun for example operate.

Private road users can opt in. Commercial vehicles will find it compulsory. They pay taxes on profits anyway

States then get a solid income stream to be spent on transport infrastucture, and road users can see a corellation, therefore feel better about spending thir contributions.

Gst would be more about education and health type infrastucture

I support what you are saying, Pess. However, if something like this is ever introduced, I honestly believe it will be on top of what is already charged. They will probably only reduce fuel taxes, rego, etc and mostly everyone will be worse off.

 

[Pessimistic]

I support what you are saying, Pess. However, if something like this is ever introduced, I honestly believe it will be on top of what is already charged. They will probably only reduce fuel taxes, rego, etc and mostly everyone will be worse off.

Which is why the population will oppose it vehemently.

But if it could get up, in a fair form, the whole thing would be more efficient

 

[Subutai]

Maybe the market thing IS right, and we should have let the financial sector take a massive correction back in the GFC

Not things are too big to fail.

Better the people bail them out...

#capitalism?

 

[Pessimistic]

Maybe the sector is too big and unsustainable

 

[EagleShore]

the CEC has some out there ideas, though i like the separation of speculative banking practices and other commercial type practices. ie. glass steagall.
http://cecaust.com.au/main.asp?sub=Glass-Steagall&id=Why_Aus_needs_GS_separation.html
don't mind their idea of a national infrastructure bank either. it's a bit long winded and he goes off on tangents, could have been explained in 5 minutes. if you watch from around the 8 minute mark it's not too much of a snore fest.

Yet not many people have ever heard of the Citizens Electoral Council. Not saying that following Larouche is the political ideal but in economic terms, they have some sound policies.

 

[M Malice]

Yet not many people have ever heard of the Citizens Electoral Council. Not saying that following Larouche is the political ideal but in economic terms, they have some sound policies.

yep. just because some people/entities have what some would call a ridiculous idea, it does not necessarily follow that all their ideas are not worth exploring.

 

[kranky al]

And any number of ideologues who barefaced recite and repeat 'if its good for the market, its good for everything, including the planet'
eg They not only want to do it, they want to see themselves as morals too

 

[Rotayjay]

Nothing wrong with capitalism (along with science, it's responsible for much of our standard of living) - as long as its purpose is bettering people. If people pay reasonable prices for products and services so entrepreneurs make lots of money, that's good. If people are gouged in prices and already-rich entrepreneurs benefit from these rip-offs, that's bad (For example: Petrol companies who are paying decade-low prices for oil but still charge us the same price for fuel. Power companies which charge you an arm and a leg for electricity but give you bugger-all when you feed it back into the grid. Banks who charge so much more interest than they give, while making billions of dollars per year).

 

[rank and file]

How's the Bank of Japan with their negative interest rates,they charge you to keep your money in their bank.

 

[Pessimistic]

How's the Bank of Japan with their negative interest rates,they charge you to keep your money in their bank.

Do they pay people to borrow it?

 

[Werewolf]

How's the Bank of Japan with their negative interest rates,they charge you to keep your money in their bank.

Bunch of crooks. Even a zero interest rate effectively counts as theft due to inflation

 

[rank and file]

Do they pay people to borrow it?

Pretty sure they only slug other banks,don't leave your money laying around,lend more sort of thing.Doesn't really affect normal people.

 

[Long Live HFC]

Bunch of crooks. Even a zero interest rate effectively counts as theft due to inflation

um, the whole point is that japan doesn't really have any inflation.