vtsnowedin wrote:kenneal - lagger wrote:vtsnowedin wrote:.......
People carry on as if half (or whatever the number is) of the worlds wealth was hoarded as gold and diamonds in vaults somewhere and the greedy owners were forcing the rest of the world to starve out in the cold.
It's worse than that. It's held in worthless bits of paper and PONZI schemes, the CDOs and other derivatives which have been invented to sok up all the excess wealth sloshing around the system. For years now the money has been going into the financial market because the returns there have been greater than in the general economy in which you find all the good things you list below.
But you are wrong in that. The vast majority of wealth held by the one percenters is held in their business, stocks and real estate.
And because you are wrong in that the rest of your argument falls away.
What exactly is your remedy for this situation?
What utter bullshit.
Your pathetic shoulder shrugging at the obscene differentials in wealth, not least in your own country, is on the basis of, presumably, that it matters little if one person gains on the back of another's loss just so long as the total size of the pie can be said to be remaining constant or, indeed, growing. Such a position, however, is deeply, deeply stupid. Any economy in which most citizens are doing worse year after year (an economy like America’s, for example) is extremely unlikely to perform well over the long term.
For a start, increasing inequality is the other side of a coin on whose opposing side is decreasing opportunity. Decreasing opportunity equates to inefficient allocation of the most valuable asset of all; people and their creative talents.
Secondly, the underlying monopolies of power that lead to inequality also undermine systemic economic efficiency. For example, many young and talented people, seeing this monopoly of power in the financial sector have entered that sector as the only viable means of getting on in life instead of directing their talents towards more productive industries and, consequently, a more productive and healthy economy.
Thirdly, an efficient economy requires infrastructure that can be funded only via collective means such as central taxation and allocation of those taxes on things such as roads, railways, eduction, health, social security and all the rest. All of which is undermined by a wealthy elite who are too f***ing selfish to promote any kind of agenda other than one which diminishes their tax contributions.
And the reason for this is simple; the wealthy don’t need to rely on the state for public roads, for healthcare, for eduction and for all of the other myriad things that the impoverished majority need due to their growing impoverishment. The wealthy can, of course, buy all these things for themselves. But, in doing so, they remove their lives and life-experiences ever more from those of ordinary citizens, in turn losing whatever semblance of empathy they may once have possessed.
There's a war coming between these fuckers and the rest of us and you're batting for the wrong side mister.
