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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.
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.
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.
The greatest income inequality in the developed world can be found in probably the least statist country, the US.
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
How do you possess these completely opposing thoughts at the same time?
I swear you are a textbook example of doublethink.
You start off good, then you say things like "the more "statist" and regulatory governments have been, the less well economies have done and the more income inequality we've seen" or " if they don't start lightening up on Federal regulation, they're going to see far worse problems and more unrest than they have so far".
The sheer idiocy and blindness required to actually believe this things while at the same time acknowledging that inequality is a problem and talk about holding the rich responsible for rigging the system is staggering.
You are seriously blaming the government and regulation for the inequality we see, and suggesting we do LESS of it?
You are a moron.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
Oh BS.
No, not all tech companies are from the US or originated here. Not even close.
Middle class incomes are higher in Canada.
Purchasing power parity is higher in Europe.
Standards of living are higher as well.
Health standards are higher.
And inequality is lower.
People are happier, work less, earn as much, and yet as just as productive as US workers.
And then you even make the "well the poor have microwaves, so therefore they aren't poor" argument.
Sheer idiocy.
Essentially, you don't know what F you're talking about.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
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.
You fool.
That chart disproves your entire stance.
You may be technically correct that the US is "not #1".
But if you actually looked at, and understood that chart,
you'd have noticed that the only country with more inequality than the US is Chile.
The US is #2 on that chart.
The chart is sorted according to the pre-tax numbers, but its the after tax numbers that matter.
Inequality may start out higher in other countries thanks to old (seriously old) money, but thanks to their redistributionist policies, actual inequality is lower, and everyone lives more equality, with better healthcare, working conditions, benefits, standard/quality of living, and overall better access to and representation in the market.
So the point that the chart then makes is that redistribution works.
The chart you provided therefore undercuts your own argument and disproves your point.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
and if you'd have bothered to read the article, the author even makes that point:
the U.S. had the second-highest level of inequality, behind only Chile.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
Is this a standard Fox/Rand template? Every place with more government has more of this problem (easily proved to be not true in 5 minutes), so the obvious solution is to have less government (also easily proved in about 3 minutes). Are you all utterly impervious to reality?
This is insightful? I suppose, if you're a libertarian.
Reality check: in the US, Congress almost *never*, sitting around in the room, decides, "hey, let's make a new regulation, we ain't doin' anything else anyway, and we need to look like we're working." This seems to be what the poster I'm replying to thinks.
Let's see: St. Ronnie and the Republicans push through banking and s&l "reform", and cut the budget for the regulators. Several years later, the S&L disaster, of which, according to the papers at the time, 30% was internal, white collar crime.
Deregulate telecoms*, and several years later, the tech bubble bursts, wiping out many retirement investments, and causing a recession.
Bush & co cut regulation of banking and stocks; and we get the current Lesser Depression.
Anyone else notice a pattern here? Sort of like less regulation and regulators, and the majority of us get screwed, and loose money, while the top 1% keep going up?
And I *do* have something against "people being rich". How 'bout we just have a 100% tax on all wealth above $1G? Or maybe above $500M? What', a hundred million dollars isn't enough incentive, people will just fraudulently get themselves on welfare, and sit back and drink light beer and watch tv? Don't bother talking about job creators, either: they've been getting richer and richer... WHERE ARE THE JOBS? (Other than the ones in Pakistan, and China, and India, and ....).
*And as for "coercion", is that like, oh, in the mid-nineties, when I worked for Ameritech, and we were ORDERED by our division president to write our Congresscritter and Senators to tell them to support deregulation, *and* he wanted copies of our letters (nice job you got dere, be a shame if somet'in' were to happen' to it)?
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