Slashdot Mirror
Davos 2015: Less Innovation, More Regulation, More Unrest. Run Away!
Freshly Exhumed writes: Growing income inequality was one of the top four issues at the 2015 World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Switzerland, ranking alongside European adoption of quantitative easing and geopolitical concerns. Felix Salmon, senior editor at Fusion, said there was a consensus that global inequality is getting worse, fueling overriding pessimism at the gathering. The result, he said, could be that the next big revolution will be in regulation rather than innovation. With growing inequality and the civil unrest from Ferguson and the Occupy protests fresh in people's mind, the world's super rich are already preparing for the consequences. At a packed session, former hedge fund director Robert Johnson revealed that worried hedge fund managers were already planning their escapes. "I know hedge fund managers all over the world who are buying airstrips and farms in places like New Zealand because they think they need a getaway," he said. Looking at studies like NASA's HANDY and by KPMG, the UK Government Office of Science, and others, Dr Nafeez Ahmed, executive director of the Institute for Policy Research & Development, warns that the convergence of food, water and energy crises could create a "perfect storm" within about fifteen years.
Now that they've got theirs, it's fine if regulations hold back everyone else.
A bunch of rich people with no real military protecting them will be like ripe fruit for the picking (as they have been over and over and over for centuries).
They would really be much better served by being in a functioning healthy country. Give up 10% of their money to taxes and spread it around the population and they will be immeasurably safer.
But I think their greed just gets the better of them. As it has over and over and over for centuries.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Time to put the cool-aid down. You are told that so you don't pick the pitchfork up.
You are NOT a temporarily embarrassed millionaire. You are working class and will always be working class.
Heh, that's right, throw in whone countries, that are poorer than an average US citizen to dilute the statistics. When people talk about 1% they talk about 1% in their country. That's where the inequality strikes, because governance is done within that country and ability to influence the outcomes of political struggles is dependent on the resources one has.
You do realise that there is nothing wrong with being a 'working class'? There is also nothing wrong with being a billionaire.
If your first reaction to somebody who is wealthier than you is a 'pitchfork', then maybe the problem is you.
You can't handle the truth.
The only problem is when working class delude themselves into thinking they are not working class and vote for people who piss on the working class from great height.
For the Billionaire, it depends on how you got there. By itself it means nothing, but if you got it over the backs of others, then yes, that is a problem.
If you scam people and then get money from the government if your scam fails, you are a problem. If you buy out the government and get laws that favor you, but hurt all the rest, then you are a problem. If you are a shareholder in a company and you have millions your staff needs food coupons to survive, you are a problem.
Everybody knows that by just working hard, you won't become a billionaire. Perhaps a millionaire, but not a billionaire.
And sure, what they did might all be legal. But morality has nothing to do with legality.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
A wealth manager for very wealthy makes a distinction between top 1% and top 0.5% (8 million according to IRS and 15 million according to the Feds). The top 0.5% is reached only by people with inherited wealth, or very lucky people who get to top 5% by smartness and hardwork, and end up in 0.5% due to good fortune, or stock options. Professionals, doctors, lawyers, accountants are very unlikely to reach top 0.5%, and increasing not even likely to reach top 1%. He used to see very successful professionals retiring in top 1%. But no longer.
He calculates that a person starting at low end of 1% by income for that age group, and staying at the same band (99% dividing line by income) all his/her working life will NOT end up in top 1% by financial wealth. A persons starting in the low end of 1% by wealth, will stay there if he/she draws the same amount of money our 1% by income professional, and might go up in scale.
In USA money earned by blood, sweat, tears and brains (wages, earned income) is taxed at much higher rate than money earned by money (capital gains, carried interest, qualified dividends, etc). This is the root cause of the inequality. For 30 years, since Reagan, the US Govt has been coddling the super rich by funneling all tax relief to them. They turned their back to the USA, invested all the savings in low wage countries to maximize their profits.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
I think the problem is you can't pack up a whole economy and move it.
If your wealth is dependent on the US domestic economy and it tanks because of civil unrest, a lot of wealthy people will be unwealthy before they can even reconsider relocating.
There's also the question of "what is money?" and are you really rich still if you have to convert your money to another currency with a different local buying power, especially if your native currency dives or is sinking when you try to convert it.
There's also the question of competition for safe overseas havens; if the availability is limited, you're now competing with just the rich, so unless you're elite rich, you may lose out altogether.
And what kind of haven are you expecting? A self-sustaining kind of pre-20th century British estate of farms and light industry? At the end of the day it sounds like a mash-up of a Ralph Lauren ad with survivalism.
So when the richest 0.1% control fully half of the worlds entire wealth, you don't think have any power, let alone more power than the rest of us?
Heck, you even think its a free market.
Hint: it's not; not at their stage of the game.
You are a fool.
They crashed the WORLD'S economy.
Possibly intentionally, as they profited off of the entire ordeal.
They profited off the toxic loans that drove the housing bubble.
They profited off the crash.
They profited off the bailout.
And then they captured nearly the entire recovery, 95% worth.
That's why the economy still stinks for most people. It's like if you shove 100 people in a room, and take 100$ from each of them, then give one guy 9500$, and everyone else 5$. That's our crash and recovery in a nutshell.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.