"The Biggest Redistribution Of Wealth From The Middle Class And Poor To The Rich Ever - page 2
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taxation can not exist in any form in a healthy capitalistic society...
and how are you going to pay to fix roads and manage infrastructure? There are many examples of countries that function well with reasonable levels of taxation. I was reading in an Italian newspaper yesterday that the city of Rome, Italy has 31,000 employees with a deficit of a billion euros. This is an example of excessive government. The problem of socialism in Europe is that governments serve two roles, one is public administration and the other is false employment. You can't compare productivity between someone employed in the private sector and someone in the public sector. If in some imaginary world government employees were paid based on productivity as opposed to hours worked probably you could downsize government by 50%. The consequence would be a vast increase in total unemployment which is politically unacceptable in today's economies. Politicians are reluctant to downsize government because they know very well that the private sector is unwilling to absorb those jobs even with incentives.
On the issue of redistribution of wealth, you have two choices capitalism or communism. Anything in between (socialism) only really works in text books. Take a look at Venezuela as an economy which has shifted dramatically to the left politically since 1999. They have more equality but no toilet paper. It all comes down to which of the two is the lesser evil.
... On the issue of redistribution of wealth, you have two choices capitalism or communism. Anything in between (socialism) only really works in text books. Take a look at Venezuela as an economy which has shifted dramatically to the left politically since 1999. They have more equality but no toilet paper. It all comes down to which of the two is the lesser evil.
I would agree with that if there was just one "kind" of capitalism or just one "kind" of communism. But that is as far from the truth as it can be. It is enough to compare the US type of capitalism and Scandinavian type of capitalism. It all depends on the implementation of a system and the US system per moment is not a bright moment in the history of a mankind
I agree, the point was that unless you are dealing with the extremes, everything in between becomes abstract and this is the problem every country is facing. In an environment of near zero growth in G-20 countries on average, governments are having a tough time servicing their debt. The path of least resistance is to raise taxes and not reduce the size of government. All governments are trying to create jobs by injecting liquidity and manipulate their currencies in an attempt to drive economic growth. They don't want to add to the problem of unemployment. This does not even begin to touch on on the subject of whether quantitative easing is inflationary or deflationary and if decades of deficit spending has created this disparity between the super rich and poor.
It seems that we agree then
The main problem that I see is the lack of transparency in what is being done (which makes it a kind of a conspiracy) and clearly goals that do not have to do anything with the declared goals. And being taken for a mere fool is never a good feeling especially when it comes from people that were shadding tears for us in the time of election. All in all, if we are just numbers that are to be dealt with, that kind of a system has a major flaw and I do not like the direction it is going in
Rolling Stone Resurrects Karl Marx (And No - It Was Not Satire)
The Problem of Economic Ignorance
The fact that economic ignorance is widespread is really a big problem in our view. Unfortunately even what is broadly considered the economic mainstream thought is riddled with stuff that we think just doesn't represent good economics. This is not meant to say that there is absolutely nothing worthwhile offered by the so-called mainstream. Often one comes across valuable insights and stimulating ideas. Still, there are a number of very fundamental issues on which various schools of economic thought don't agree – beginning with basic questions of methodology.
Regarding the place economics should have in our lives, Ludwig von Mises once wrote:
We agree wholeheartedly with this sentiment. There is little harm in leaving astronomy to astronomers and quantum physics to experts in theoretical physics. With economics it is different, because even though it is supposed to be wertfrei (value-free) as a science, economics necessarily has a political dimension, since politics is all about the acquisition and distribution of property by political (as opposed to economic) means. In other words, economic policy is the main topic around which politics revolves.
When Mises wrote the above words, he thought of economics as a more or less unified science, in broad agreement on basic concepts. In a way that is still true, but it is less true than it once was. For instance, to briefly come back to the point about methodology, Mises spent a lot of effort on systematizing the economic method and discussing the epistemological problems of economics. However, while doing so, he never doubted for a moment that it was quite clear to all economists that the science had to proceed by means of deductive reasoning and logic. He probably didn't expect that positivism would eventually conquer economics. As an aside, if one looks closely, one soon realizes that even the most committed positivists and econometricians secretly agree that there actually is such a thing as the laws of economics, and that these laws are not necessarily all derived from empirical observation.
Be that as it may, there is definitely a great deal of economic ignorance out there. Partly it is actually furthered by statist propaganda and obfuscation. For instance, the average citizen is not supposed to question the centrally planned monetary system, and neither is he supposed to actually understand how it works (hence what is actually a pretty straightforward operation has become a fairly complex variation of the Three Card Monte, designed to obfuscate the system's inherently fraudulent nature).
How much ignorance there is regularly becomes evident by things such as e.g. the enduring popularity of protectionism (it is almost as though consumers enjoy harming themselves).
Another glaring example is the still widespread idea that socialism – or rather, communism (i.e., full-scale socialism as opposed to its milder 'democratic' version) – would be 'the best possible system of social and economic organization if only it were implemented correctly', or the variant ' … if only human nature were different and we were morally more advanced than we actually are'.
The main problem with this train of thought is that it is actually completely wrong. When confronting supporters of socialism with the total failure and murderous nature of the communist system in the real world, a common retort is that 'this wasn't real socialism'. In other words, if Lenin, Stalin, Mao and their followers had only implemented everything according to the precepts of Karl Marx, then things would have been perfectly fine, and the communists would have erected a king of land of Cockaigne.
However, not only did they in fact follow the precepts laid down by Marx and Engels, but even if e.g. Stalin had been a veritable angel, the system would still have failed. Socialism is literally impossible as Mises has already proved in 1920. In brief: it is a system in which rational economic calculation becomes impossible, because there are no longer prices for capital goods once private property in the means of production is abolished. A system bereft of economic calculation can no longer allocate scarce resources efficiently. It cannot really be called an economy anymore. It a system that is doomed to break down in short order, and the only reason why it survived as long as it did in the former Eastern Bloc was that the COMECON planners were able to observe the price system in the capitalist countries and so could engage in a rudimentary form of economic calculation. Had the whole world become socialistic, the economy and division of labor would have completely collapsed within a few years and people would have been forced to return to a hand-to-mouth existence, barely able to subsist. Life would once again have become 'nasty, brutish and short'.
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World's richest have same wealth as 3.5 billion poorest
The combined wealth of the world's richest 85 people is now equivalent to that owned by half of the world's population – or 3.5 billion of the poorest people – according to a new report from Oxfam.
In a report titled "Working for the Few" released Monday, the global aid and development organization detailed the extent of global economic inequality created by the rapidly increasing wealth of the richest, warning of the major risks it poses to "human progress."
According to the report, 210 people have become billionaires in the past year, joining a select group of 1,426 individuals with a combined net worth of $5.4 trillion.
It added that the wealth of the richest one percent of people in the world now amounts to $110 trillion, or 65 times the total wealth of the bottom half of the world's population.
"This massive concentration of economic resources in the hands of fewer people presents a significant threat to inclusive political and economic systems," the report said.
"Instead of moving forward together, people are increasingly separated by economic and political power, inevitably heightening social tensions and increasing the risk of societal breakdown," it added.
The report comes ahead of the World Economic Forum in Davos which kicks off later this week, and Oxfam is calling on the global political and business leaders attending the meeting to take steps to turn around the rapidly exacerbating inequality.
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Global economic recovery feeds growing inequality
The economic recovery is gathering pace but too few people are feeling the benefits, and experts warn that rising inequality is the single biggest risk the world economy faces.
The top line numbers are looking brighter: The global economy should grow by 3.2% this year, up from 2.4% in 2013, according to the World Bank.
Yet for many, in the developed world and emerging markets alike, the recovery from the worst economic crisis since the 1930s has a phantom-like quality. Many people can't see an improvement in their quality of life, and the gap between the rich and poor is growing.
"Since the global financial crisis, it's been a race to the bottom in jobs, wages and living standards," said Philip Jennings, general secretary of UNI Global Union.
Central banks have pumped trillions of dollars into the world financial system to stabilize their economies, sending stock markets and real estate prices soaring to the benefit of the wealthy.
At the same time, governments have slashed public sector jobs, reduced protections for those working in the private sector, cut welfare benefits and made pensions less generous -- changes that hit the young and most vulnerable the hardest. Companies continue to shed jobs, too.
The World Economic Forum, which is hosting its annual meeting of the business elite in the Swiss mountain resort of Davos this week, surveyed over 700 experts about what was the biggest risk to the global economy over the next 10 years.
The answer: a yawning gap in incomes that could put a huge strain on social cohesion.
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No..I do not...(have a solution)
probably neither
but maybe we are all alittle sad to see the world going down like this
and then powerless to be able to make a difference
we are some of the lucky ones
it just does n't seem it some times, but there is always so many worse off
do you have a solution, apart from getting rid of ObamaGovernment PRINTS Money...so they do not need to collect it from population...I know there will be abuse (with overprinting)...but Hell...we have it right now!...Any form of taxation adds up to inequality...
and how are you going to pay to fix roads and manage infrastructure? There are many examples of countries that function well with reasonable levels of taxation. I was reading in an Italian newspaper yesterday that the city of Rome, Italy has 31,000 employees with a deficit of a billion euros. This is an example of excessive government. The problem of socialism in Europe is that governments serve two roles, one is public administration and the other is false employment. You can't compare productivity between someone employed in the private sector and someone in the public sector. If in some imaginary world government employees were paid based on productivity as opposed to hours worked probably you could downsize government by 50%. The consequence would be a vast increase in total unemployment which is politically unacceptable in today's economies. Politicians are reluctant to downsize government because they know very well that the private sector is unwilling to absorb those jobs even with incentives. On the issue of redistribution of wealth, you have two choices capitalism or communism. Anything in between (socialism) only really works in text books. Take a look at Venezuela as an economy which has shifted dramatically to the left politically since 1999. They have more equality but no toilet paper. It all comes down to which of the two is the lesser evil.
Europe's Modest Proposal To End Unemployment: Slavery
Having spent weeks talking amongst themselves about the chronic and dangerous rise of youth unemployment in Europe (as we warned here), the Center of planning and Economic Research in Greece has proposed a controversial measure. As GreekReporter reports, the measure includes unpaid work for the young and unemployed up to 24 years old, so that companies would have a strong motive to hire young employees. "Unpaid" work sounds a lot like slavery to us... but it gets better; the report also suggested "exporting young unemployed persons." No comment...
Europe's youth unemployment problem is epic - 24.4% of Europe's under-25 population is unemployed...
GreekReporter notes the solution to Greece's problems...
Whether it’s Europe in the 1930’s or the US during the same period (conflicts between strikers, the National Guard and armed militias), unemployment can create a powerful cocktail of unrest.
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