Natalie,
But the sort of emotive talk by Les Leopold and
others about wealth is of absolutely no
constructive use. The rich may be greedy, but
then so is everybody else given an opportunity.
One never hears of an inheritance or a lottery
win ever being turned down. Every single penny of
the wealth of a rich person goes into jobs. It is
either spent into the products or services of
existing jobs, or it is invested, which produces
new jobs, or it goes into philanthropy, which
also produces jobs. Even wealth which goes into
"dead" ends, such as personal ornamentation or luxury yachts involves jobs.
Once again, as I'm continually saying on FW (but
which hasn't been remarked upon, never mind
disputed), the wealth of today's billionaires
(well over 1,000 of them and growing fast) is not
as disproportionate as the wealth of the 'robber
barons' (Rockefeller, Carnegie, etc) of a century
ago, nor that of the even wealthier landed
aristocracy of previous agricultural times, nor
that of the royalty of ancient empires. Overall,
we are, in fact, steadily becoming more
egalitarian. It's hard to believe perhaps but it is so.
What makes us unhappy is that the wealth of some
of the rich is constantly flaunted in the media.
Emotionally we can't cope with this. The effect
is that what biologists call a "super stimulus".
We have no defences against this because although
our genes know what "fair play" is (proven as an
instinct in all primates as well as some monkeys)
we've evolved for millions of years in
environments in which great disparities in wealth
were never possible. Emotionally we can't cope
with examples of great disparity in wealth when
it's thrust in front of us, whether of a
next-door neighbour who flaunts it or the antics of distant billionaires.
The rich can't be blamed for the growing
structural unemployment in the advanced countries
either. Without any overt conspiracy between
them, each one of them will tend to park their
investments with businesses that are maximally
profitable at that time. And that means growing
automation. Unless we extinguish our intellectual
curiosity in our minds and the growth of the
scientific method then automation has a long way to go yet.
I'm greatly in favour of taxing the wealthy --
and heavily, too. But the only sure way of doing
this so that it can't be evaded is to tax the
status objects that are visible to us -- their
personal ornamentations, houses, luxury yachts,
etc. Some rich people might even welcome this
form of taxation because being able to quote
their tax band would only add even more status to
themselves. But this tax will never happen
because it doesn't give any opportunity for
politicians to grant favours to the rich and thus
be able to divert some of their wealth to
themselves. All other, more sophisticated, forms
of taxation give the opportunity for rich people
to employ clever professionals and evade
taxation. And you can't blame the rich for
wanting to evade taxation. All of us would do so given the opportunity.
Keith
At 23:38 20/04/2012, Natalie wrote:
What If the Greedy Rich Paid Their Share? 8
Things to Know About Wealth and Poverty in the US
By <http://www.alternet.org/authors/8894/>Les Leopold
We're far from poor -- we just have a wildly
lopsided distribution of wealth that makes us seem poor.
(snip)
It wasnt an act of God, or the blind forces of
technological change, or the mysterious
movements of markets. Nor did the super-rich
become enormously smarter than before. Instead,
flesh-and-blood policy makers decided that
deregulation and tax cuts should become the
order of the day starting in the mid-1970s. The
idea was that if we cut taxes on the super-rich
and deregulated the economy (and especially Wall
Street), investment would dramatically increase
and all boats would rise. But as we can see from
the chart below, the average worker's wage in
real terms stalled and even declined after the
mid-'70s. The fruits of productivity no longer
were shared equitably. The enormous gap between
the two lines (trillions of dollars per year)
went almost entirely to the super-rich. The
wealth of the wealthy skyrocketed, not by
accident, but by policy design. "Greed is good"
replaced the middle-class American dream.
(snip)
What Is Wealth and Who Has It?
Wealth or net worth is the total value of what
you own (your assets) minus the total value of
your debts (your liabilities.) Our collective
net worth is really huge. Were talking big, big
numbers. As of the end of 2011, U.S. households
had $30 trillion in private assets and $13.6
trillion in liabilities for a total net worth of
$16.4 trillion
(<http://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/z1/current/z1r-5.pdf>PDF).
How much is that? It comes to an average of
$141,000 per household free and clear of any debts.
(snip)
full story with graph at:
<http://www.alternet.org/economy/155025/what_if_the_greedy_rich_paid_their_share_8_things_to_know_about_wealth_and_poverty_in_the_us>http://www.alternet.org/economy/155025/what_if_the_greedy_rich_paid_their_share_8_things_to_know_about_wealth_and_poverty_in_the_us
(my comment)
Apart from reversing market deregulation and tax
exemptions for the wealthy, he may have
mentioned that many industrialists are wealthy
because government allows them, by virtue of
promises like job creation and economic
stimulus, to exploit the commons without much
compensation. Such agreements result in
unjustified tax exemption, despite immense
profits. Corporations today fail miserably to
employ or stimulate regional economies, as do
ever floundering free-market entrepreneurs.
<http://capitalism-creates-poverty.blogspot.ca/2012/03/free-market-myths-no3-entrpreneurs.html>http://capitalism-creates-poverty.blogspot.ca/2012/03/free-market-myths-no3-entrpreneurs.html
Government should, on behalf of the people whose
commons are being exploited, have recourse to
tax the income (profits) of the corporation by
the same measure as for individuals. If the
corporation downsizes and ships most production
overseas, citizens should have recourse, through
government, not only to tax that income as well,
but to revoke the agreement within the first
year of outsourcing. With proper taxation of
industry, there wouldn't be so much concentration of wealth.
Further, if the commons were legally recognized
as incorporate of predominately finite
resources, we would be looking at sustainable,
rather than exploitative, approaches toward
extractions, and industry would be paying high
taxes for the privilege of using public lands' raw materials.
Natalia
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Keith Hudson, Saltford, England http://allisstatus.wordpress.com
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