John said:
> At 01:04 PM 1/28/01 +1300, Bob Henderson wrote:
> >My point is that there are other measurements of development rather than
> >wealth of the economy which is concentrated in the hands of few.
> That's certainly true. One such measure of this is the UN Human
> Development Index. I don't know if 2000 has been released yet, but in
> 1999 the USA ranked #3.
Behind Canada and Norway but this is another crude index that has as one of
its 3 factors, GNP/popln so wealth is still a major bias. Despite this, Cuba
is ranked 58 out of 174 which classifies it as medium rather than third
world. Imagine what the position would be if the wealth factor was removed
and availability of basic health care was a factor(:>). And why is the
richest country with 4% of the world popln consuming 26% of the world's
resources ranked behind Canada and Norway?
Because it is not a democracy and therefore doesn't have the same degree of
socialism?
"The criteria for calculating rankings is based on three distinct
components-indicators of longevity, education and income per head-it is not
exclusively focused on economic opulence (as GNP is). Within the limits of
these three components, the HDI has served to broaden substantially the
empirical attention that the assessment of development processes receives.
However, the HDI, which is inescapably a crude index, must not be
seen as anything other than an introductory move in getting people
interested in the rich collection of information that is present in the
Human Development Report. Indeed, I must admit I did not initially see much
merit in the HDI itself, which, as it happens, I was privileged to help
devise."
AMARTYA SEN, 1998 NOBEL LAUREATE IN ECONOMICS
Source - UN website.
SNIP childish propaganda.
> >History teaches us that the strong have always exploited, conned and
> >slaughtered the weak to satisfy the greed of the strong. The strong have
> >always been able to rationalise and justify such behaviour. The strong
> >attempt to control recent history through propaganda.
> >Has anything changed?
> Has anything changed? Yeah, now the rich are changed confiscatory tax
> rates of nearly 40% in order to support the poor.
I read in another thread that you label yourself as an economist. An
economist would have at the very worst a vague remembrance of the categories
of govt income and expenditure no matter how specialised his work became.
Your statement is a fine example of bigotry. Sycophantic supporters of the
rich like to blame everything on the poor and in your case you blatantly
state that the property of the rich is confiscated and given to the poor. As
a government economist it should not be difficult for you to determine the
percentage of govt revenue derived from taxes and the percentage of
expenditure on welfare for the poor.
Taxes are used for a variety of expenditures. But the main benefactors of
govt expenditure are the rich including the military/industrial complex and
oil trans-nationals. The DuPont family fortune came from their exclusive
contract to supply gunpowder to the govt in WW!. Do they still control
Monsanto, GM and other trans-nationals? They avoid income and capital gains
tax through the use of foundations which they control through a multitude of
family trusts. These foundations own stock in "their" trans-nationals
thereby avoiding tax but retaining control of the composition of the board.
But as an economist, you will know this already. It is the working and
middle classes who pay disproportionate income and capital gains tax. (They
are also the source of conscripted cannon fodder for the wars which further
enrich America's aristocracy who are difficult to find in the infantry ranks
but that is another topic.)
GW Bush profited by almost $15million from the Texas Rangers increase in
value due to the influx of $200million from govt grants and tax reliefs.
Cheney whilst at Haliburton secured increases in govt contracts of billions.
His personal reward was over 50million.
Oil corpns enjoy a lower tax rate than any other industry through an
arbitrary fixed depletion allowance. Exxon recently reported the highest
ever profit made by a corpn - ~69billion. I assume you are aware of the Bush
family ownership of oil interests as it is more widely publicised than their
WW2 joint ventures in banking and shipping with the Nazis.
Bob.
