[onlooker]

FB_IMG_1552914665969.jpg

[Tanada]

FB_IMG_1552914665969.jpg

Onlooker I usually leave you with your fantasies because they make you happy and everyone should be happy once in a while. However this meme is just silly as hell. Say for the sake of argument there are 5 billion people in 'Poverty' you want to help by taking from the wealthiest 100 persons. Lets further stipulate that those 100 are the hyper wealthy and collectively they have 10 trillion in tax havens. Now your meme also claims that you are going to tax them but still leave them 'insanely wealthy' so clearly you cannot seize more than half of their wealth or you would be formulating a lie. 'No Problemo!' you say because that still leave 5 Trillion dollars to work with right?
Well lets do a little math, five trillion is 5,000,000,000,000/5,000,000,000= $1000.00 for each of those 5 Billion 'impoverished people' you want to help.
Now to me $1,000.00 is nothing to sneeze at, but it also is not going to support a poor person in poverty in a 'middle class' lifestyle for the rest of their lives. In point of fact to live like a 'poor American' that sum will only cover about 2 months between rent, food and transportation with nothing left for entertainment or pets.

'No Problemo!'you say, 'We will just take half from all those hyper wealthy, that is 16 Trillion!'

Well see, 16 isn't really that much bigger than 5 if you stop and think about it. Sure your division of wealth went from $1,000.00 to $3,200.00 so now you are talking a poor American lifestyle for 6 months instead of the original 2 months. But you have gutted the 1% and still lifted the poor up for much less than a year. 'Okay, but its not fair they are wealthy at all, take every dollar anyone earns and distribute them completely evenly to everyone!' you say when you finally realize math means your earlier scheme doesn't work.

Well okay, their are some Kalahari bushmen whose effective pay rate is pennies an hour and there are CEO's of mega corporations making tens of millions a year and to some people this seems very unfortunate. But the number of people making that tens of millions a year or more is a tiny percentage of the world population. The last time I saw this done the numbers worked out as something like after absolutely equitable division each of us is left with something like $112/month to live on. Now if you are a Kalahari bushman that is fabulous wealth because you have lived your entire life in a seasonal desert in a dirt floored hut. The problem is the people you are taxing to get that division are used to living in a modern apartment or home with a solid structure, hot and cold running water and indoor plumbing, food of every variety in any season, electricity and internet on demand, cable TV and on and on.

That includes all the vast hoard of tax collectors you will need to take that wealth away from the haves and the law enforcement folks you will need to distribute it equitably and ensure nobody is cheating the system. Aye, and there is the first major issue, how do you get people used to a 'poor American' or better lifestyle to give it up so everyone can live a 'rich Kalahari tribesman' lifestyle instead? Who do you find willing to do all the endless paperwork and settle all the endless disputes when they get the same distribution as everyone else?

The fundamental problem with these 'punish the rich' schemes is always the same. First there are not actually that many hyper wealthy people so distributing their stuff doesn't go very far. Secondly when you create a mega bureaucracy to collect, manage and distribute all wealth you inevitably run into people with sticky fingers who siphon off more than 'their fair share'. That means you need law enforcement and a judicial system to deal with cheaters, and all of these hoards of people have to get their share and then ask themselves if the hard dangerous work is worth the pay. The answer to that is 'NO!', unless they to are siphoning off extra to benefit themselves/family.

I swear modern Marxists must have failed every math class they ever took, or somehow avoided taking any math classes at all!

[onlooker]

Okay Tanada, as much as I respect your general acumen on many things, our difference here is in principle rather than details. Your calculations are spot on. However, how people can stomach the tremendous inequality and injustice in this world is beyond me. When 8 people or so control as much wealth as half the world's population. So, if we could have remedied this situation, I am not sure how. But, this staggering divide is simply immoral, when you take into account that most every tangible need and want costs money. So, my difference with you and some others here is one of principle. I simply believe this situation has been and continues to be unacceptable. And that is admitting that Ibon, is correct when saying that a large middle class does more damage and depletion of and to the Biosphere than a relatively few amount of super wealthy.

[KaiserJeep]

There is NOTHING WHATSOEVER that is immoral about a wealth disparity. Especially when we continue to make progress eliminating extreme poverty (40% to 10%) and even American-style poverty (i.e. US welfare puts them in the wealthiest 10% world-wide). The tech fortunes are of what you speak - and you didn't have to give Gates or Jobs your money or use PCs or Apples - you chose to do so of your own free will. You could also refuse to shop online if Bezos and Amazon offends you.

If you believe it is IMMORAL for somebody to EARN more than you, you are a fool. I just ran down the Forbes list of the 20 richest billionaires, and I believe 18 earned their own money, plus two women who inherited money from spouses. (Make that 3 women if Bezos didn't have a pre-nup.)

Answer me this: As an American you are among the wealthiest 10% in the world. How much of your income are you OK with the Government siezing to benefit the poor? Because as Tanada pointed out, even if they took 90% of what you earn, it's not gonna be enough.

[vtsnowedin]

Let me be very politically incorrect here for a moment.
Consider two black African brothers living around the year 1700. One gets captured and sold into slavery and shipped to America while the brother escapes and stays in his African homeland. Fourteen generations later the descendant of the slave lives in America and has a median income above $36,000 a year While his long lost cousin still living in Africa gets by on less then $1,000 a year.
My question is even if we really owed the Africans reparations (We don't that bill has been paid in blood) which one do we owe the money to?

[Newfie]

Going back to Tanada’s post a bout the 16 trillion or so......I would like to add my bit.

1-That money does not really exist in any tangible, spendable format. It is derivatives and stock market valuations. If the global economy goes “poof” then this “wealth” goes “poof” with it. Once you say you are going to take this money the stock market will crash and the vast amount of the money will go with it.

2- That money exists in the same sense Monomply money exists, because the players abide by the rules of the game, it only has value within the rules of the game. Change the rules and the valuations change. And what that would do is to destroy the capitalization of the finances industries. I don’t care if Google and Yahoo and Disney go away, there is no real value there anyway. I do care if Apple and Microsoft and Ford go away, not to mention our power and water.

3- All the above aside, where it even possible to distribute that money the majority would be spent on short term enjoyments, like a world full of drunken sailors on port leave. It would be a consumptive being leaving the pimps rich, and we would be right back where we started with massive disparity.

As a species we traded happiness for population growth. And as a social species we are generally organized in a very hierarchical fashion. Yes there were more egalitarian cultures, I don’t think any of them rose to greatness in stature or culture or achievement. I don’t much blame anyone; rich, ooor, or me. It’s like blaming the queen ant for being fed by her slave ants. She is not unethical, it’s just what makes the colony work. Ditto humans.

I’m not at all fond of the way things are. I would like to see a world where all of humanity had enough to be happy, even if it didn’t make them happy. But that could only possibly happen with a far smaller population than we now have. And we would have to be a different species.

No clue how this pertains to Venezuela.

[onlooker]

True Newfie, overpopulation just makes all problems worse lol. Hope your seafaring is going splendid, you darn well deserve it, just like all of us over 50 haha

[Newfie]

Yup, going well. Finished up working on the boat at 11pm last night. Motor problem and bilge pump craped out. The good side is that I had to rent a car and drive across Martinique to get the parts, which took all day. It’s a beautiful island.

There is a huge difference between the French legacy where they kept their possessions and the English, where they gave them up to local control.

The whole Venezuela thing is troubling in a personal way. The most logical place for us to store our boat for hurricane season is Trinidad. We don’t because of proximity to Venezuela.

[Newfie]

100 Russian troops land in Venezuela

https://www.google.com/amp/s/mobile.reu ... SKCN1R50NB

[onlooker]

https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/ ... zuela.html
Russia gives US red line on Venezuela

[onlooker]

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-03- ... ops-arrive

Venezuela Plunged Into Darkness Hours After Russian Troops Arrive

[Cog]

Sometimes these thing just happen. LOL Maybe rats chewed on some wiring.

[onlooker]

Sometimes these thing just happen. LOL Maybe rats chewed on some wiring.

Yeah, just as the Russian troops landed

[Cog]

Rats got to eat, same as worms.

[onlooker]

Rats got to eat, same as worms.

[Zarquon]

The way to reduce inequality is to finance and support development in agriculture, education and industry. Which requires land reform and political reform, because the ubiquitous feudal landlords,the twenty families owning the banana republic, don't need or want either. And neither do the rich countries. That's why we support coffee plantations and copper mines, not self-sufficiency. That's why we support dictatorships.

After all, do we want Egyptians and Venezuelans and Kalahari bushmen to produce their own refrigerators? That's the thin end of the wedge! What's next - cars? Satellites? Look at the bloody Chinese: one senile apparatchik decides that "to get rich is glorious" and 30 years later they own a quarter of the damn planet, and that's only the beginning. No way to put the yellow hordes in their place again, and a constant hangover in DC.

Yes, the Chinese have lifted more people out of poverty than the West ever did. Out of pure self-interest, not the goodness of their hearts. And it's beginning to hurt us in a major way.

[Revi]

Here is the latest post by Gail Tverberg. It's very interesting as a metaphor for what's going on with our culture. Venezuela peaked around the same time as us and managed to hold up an unsustainable lifestyle for quite a while, but then it all fell apart. She thinks that their oil may be taken off the market in order to drive the price up worldwide. That benefits the other producers. Later we may invade in order to extract, but the lifestyle of the people who live there will never recover. Electricity goes soon after the peak, even if it's hydro due to an inability to maintain it.
Not a pretty picture, but one that we would do well to pay attention to!

https://ourfiniteworld.com/2019/03/20/a ... -problems/

[Revi]

Remember Los Guaragao? Here's their famous Casas De Carton. They are from Venezuela.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bE1QAFNO_8o

All it says is that people live in poverty and others are really rich. When I lived in Latin America it was considered a very dangerous song. It may have gotten the lead singer killed. (Or maybe it was a car accident)...

[Revi]

Here's Los Guaraguao's song about Venezuela. It says Venezuela isn't a swallow, it's a condor! They mention Bolivar a lot, and hope, etc. I don't know if they were still performing, but it's from the past 20 years or so.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yuoTDrJT-Rg

[Newfie]

The way to reduce inequality is to finance and support development in agriculture, education and industry. Which requires land reform and political reform, because the ubiquitous feudal landlords,the twenty families owning the banana republic, don't need or want either. And neither do the rich countries. That's why we support coffee plantations and copper mines, not self-sufficiency. That's why we support dictatorships.

After all, do we want Egyptians and Venezuelans and Kalahari bushmen to produce their own refrigerators? That's the thin end of the wedge! What's next - cars? Satellites? Look at the bloody Chinese: one senile apparatchik decides that "to get rich is glorious" and 30 years later they own a quarter of the damn planet, and that's only the beginning. No way to put the yellow hordes in their place again, and a constant hangover in DC.

Yes, the Chinese have lifted more people out of poverty than the West ever did. Out of pure self-interest, not the goodness of their hearts. And it's beginning to hurt us in a major way.

Great well written post.