One could say that every single penny (except in Canada, where, with the
penny being phased out, it's been said that Harper has left the country
without a single cent) counts towards jobs, even if it's paid out to
rent, utilities, or beer. or short selling that only gives the broker
their fee. The point was that the corporations are claiming that they,
above the rest, deserve tax exemption because they create jobs and
economic stimulus--which is seriously questionable. Let's just take one
obvious example--the financial sector. They are listed amongst the most
lucrative, with profits now into the trillions annually. They have all
let staff go, been involved in other job-loss activities for which the
public have bailed them out to the tune of trillions, and reap the
biggest profits through transactions that do nothing for the economy at
large, and if anything, simply add to the overall defeat of public
wealth. Their pennies are used quite differently from those of working
folk, whose bulk of funds goes directly into the economy, and unlike
wage earnings, have special status attached to them which the public is
forced to protect from devaluation, supposedly for their own benefit.
The public pennies lost to high rents or inflated goods are lost forever.
From a letter posted at:
http://buildingmarkets.org/blogs/afghanistan/2012/01/31/wealth-creation-no-longer-creates-jobs-unemployment-sucks/
Phil Colgan says:
February 9, 2012 at 2:15 pm
<http://buildingmarkets.org/blogs/afghanistan/2012/01/31/wealth-creation-no-longer-creates-jobs-unemployment-sucks/comment-page-1/#comment-8017>
(snip)
Last night Lord Levene, the former chairman of Lloyd's insurance market
(who did a good deal to restore its reputation -- and its finances) in a
speech to the Worshipful Company of International Bankers, said:
"If we examine the business model of many of the largest financial
institutions operating today, you will find that a large part of their
operations, are concerned with trading with each other in financial
products that operate virtually in a closed loop and are not relevant in
the wider economy.
"Where activity in banks is completely disconnected from the real world,
then ultimately it will create no value except for those people involved
in it. It potentially destroys value elsewhere, and the whole thing
crashes. The wrong people make off with the money. We have, sadly, seen
plenty of evidence of this over the past few years.
"So, part of our responsibility, as an industry, is to ensure that all
our activities connect to the real economy. Banks should be there to
provide services, not to be self-serving."
Too many financial transactions are essentially just bets (and hugely
complex wagers at that) by banks for their own gain (or taxpayers'
bailouts when the bets go wrong as we've seen), rather than genuine
attempts to serve businesses and households who make up the economy as a
whole.
(snip)
Regarding philanthropy, you can only say few billionaires are giving at
a rate much higher than the average person. Take away Buffett's gifts,
and the average rate of billionaire charitable donations is 0.5-1% of
net worth. Carnegie was exceptional, giving away about 78% of his
$10.3b. The reason most others are not so giving is because they love
money above all else, and the power that comes with it. Most are just as
insecure as the rest of us. Gates, who gives primarily to his own
tax-sheltered foundation of, in the estimate of many, dubious motives,
could easily part with billions more to relieve world hunger and
suffering, but he can't stand to lose his wealth status. Buffett, on the
other hand, is exceptionally secure about his self-worth, and secure
enough to live modestly. His defenselessness, sharing of business
knowledge and generosity make him a less resented billionaire.
I agree that the average citizen is better off in most ways than a
century ago, but what we have building here is the fact that the
wealthiest are tipping the scales because of depleting resources,
thereby leaving barren soil, filthy waters, depleted ozone and war-torn
wastelands. We have them able to get the public to pay for their
gambling and their wars, whose costs are far greater per capita,
inflation taken into account, than ever before. There exist few laws to
make them accountable, yet laws are rigidly in place to punish the less
wealthy criminals in society. Laws for the rich have always been
different, but in the past there was at least a modicum of
accountability legislated. Reagan, then Clinton, then Bush removed
these. Now the average citizen has little hope of becoming middle class,
and world youth, unlike in the days of the robber barons, have a great
future at Burger King.
Wealth flaunting is nothing new. It was once a thing of awe, a la
Diamond Jim Brady., whose flaunting stirred admiration more than envy.
Your point about historic/genetic fairness is well taken, but the levels
of wealth of today's elite are disproportionate to the level of societal
benefits their wealth generates. Rockefeller employed many people
nationally, but today's billionaires make profit by firing people and
using slave labour overseas. And most significantly, their wealth isn't
real.No gold backing it at all, unlike the wealth of the former elite,
therefore it's hurting society and the economy at large.
I can indeed blame the rich for lack of jobs. It is they who defeat job
creation at every turn. If this were not the case, we would now be
firmly on the path toward sustainable energy and industry, but the
influence of the elite in government has ensured the continuance of oil
extraction at huge costs to both economy and environment. War for oil
and security/defensiveness as the largest growing industries.No strong
environmental policies lest it hurt a flawed economy. It is they who
suck up publicly owned finite natural resources, and leave little for
future generations by which to sustain life. Sure, automation is a
consequence of advanced technology, but the wealthy have prevented
/replacement/ industries from getting off the ground. Expense of
fledgling beneficial industries has always been borne by the public,
like hydro and public water works were. The public once owned these, yet
the wealthy convinced government that they could convince us we never
did. Now, we still pay, but the profits are no longer ours to share in.
Privatization is out of control, and has benefited only those who have
partial funds by which to operate these giants for a very limited time.
The citizens get hit up for the balance in higher rate fees, and
additional ones for so-called capital improvements.
Investing in maximally profitable ventures is standard mostly because of
laws that were implemented for the wealthy by government, but you can't
say the wealthy /didn't/ put pressure on government to get those laws
passed. So, when the wealthy put all their money in off-shore banks,
because they can, I will still say they are to blame for our inability
to tax their wealth. It's a choice they make to evade responsibility to
the country they predominantly exploited in order to create that wealth.
Taxing status objects is fine and widely in place, as long as you can
keep tabs on them, which you really can't. But this does nothing for
removing the opportunity to ferret those billions by which they are able
to afford the status objects in the first place--the actual source of
the purse. The stuff that ends up off-shore. Further, most wealthy
people are money hoarders, and spend little proportionate to their
assets and holdings. Profits from a corporation should be taxed in the
same way as an individual's income, and even there, remember that
Buffett's secretary, for example, is taxed at a higher rate than is he,
so laws still need tweaking on the individual level as well.
Once again, Keeeth, I hope you don't mind me answering for my brilliant
invisible sister, Natalie.
*Natalia*
On 21/04/2012 1:53 AM, Keith Hudson wrote:
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/ /Les Leopold/ <http://www.alternet.org/authors/8894/>/
/We're far from poor -- we just have a wildly lopsided distribution
of wealth that makes us seem poor.
(snip)
It wasn't 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. We're 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 (PDF
<http://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/z1/current/z1r-5.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
/(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
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
*
_______________________________________________
Futurework mailing list
[email protected]
https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
Keith Hudson, Saltford, England http://allisstatus.wordpress.com
<http://allisstatus.wordpress.com/>
_______________________________________________
Futurework mailing list
[email protected]
https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
