Forum Post: Would the world end if all the wealth at the top 20% is spread evenly among every citizen without us converting to communism?
Posted 10 years ago on Oct. 2, 2014, 3:56 a.m. EST by IndigoRed
(87)
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Are there any historians who can help me with this and confirm that such a spread of wealth without changing the form of economy to communism has never been done before? I just cant help but think that we need not wait for a point in the time in the distant future where we can safely convert our economic and governing system to a more equal one.
The world will NOT end. It will be better positioned for sustainable prosperity for all. Highly unequal societies fragment into enclaves of the have's and the have not's. The shared commons such as air, water, wildlife, etc. tend to become polluted or depleted and the diseases brewed up will spread around regardless of the wealth status.
More equal societies fare better in the long run. Dig into the histories of Haiti and contrast it with the Dominican Republic on the same island. It seems that backwoods and more equal countries left alone for a long time fare better.
We should not target wealth created anew in one generation because it can be due to effort. However, inherited wealth needs to be curtailed. If we had this in place, we would not have the David and Charles Koch brothers messing with our politics as much.
In spite of our total contrast on the hype and fear of Ebola, I actually agree with all of the above except for one line. It's the line regarding wealth and 'effort'. The problem I have with it is this. Aside from the instability caused by wealth concentration REGARDLESS of the 'effort' involved, there is an element of morality to consider.
One can not rightfully earn 500 or even 20 times the pay of a firefighter. Those who do reap such incomes do not work 500 or even 20 times harder. Their individual efforts are not 500 or even 20 times greater. That is physically impossible with only 24 hours in a day. They simply take advantage of a corrupt system. One which often rewards certain individuals per unit for electronic or otherwise easily made reproductions of their product, service, or likeness. There are many efforts vital to society which simply can not be reproduced so easily.
Example: A firefighter gets paid 5 figures per year. An actor pretending to be a firefighter gets paid 7 or 8 figures for a few months of 'effort'.
Don't even get me started on CEOS or Wall Street investors.
Somewhere I heard/read a remark that the highest wages go with the least necessary jobs. That is, entertainment figures, sports figures, really not imperative to our lives are ridiculously overpaid; 'common' services like food and retail for purveying our basic needs, get basic wages; jobs to maintain a healthy environment and even jobs to directly save lives like fire responders are woefully underpaid. CEOs being talking suits that essentially promote themselves and delegate real work deserve nothing. There is no actual worth that they have above any other human, and many, less. I am so against the caste system. It's tiring, immature and destructive.
Twinkle - A LOT - Kind of - especially = CEOs being talking suits that essentially promote themselves and delegate real work deserve nothing.
There was a "derivation" of why CEOs who do positive amount of work deserve to be paid the highest wages in our fair and knowledge-based economy.
In a knowledge-based economy, knowledge is power. Physics defines power as work done divided by the time worked. In a fair economy, the wages paid is proportional to the time worked so power is proportional to work done divided by the wages paid. From that, work done divided by the wages paid is proportional to knowledge, then the wages paid is proportional to work done divided by knowledge. CEOs who do positive amount of work and have the least knowledge get the highest wages paid in our fair knowledge-based economy.
The lesser one knows and still does a positive amount of work, the higher paid one gets.
In other words - It's not what you know - But it is who you know ( or are related to ) - worthless garbage get in positions of power through relations and/or blackmail. Because shit only rises in a toilet because it contains fat - shit rises in business because it was born fat or is related to fat or has something on fat.
Did you find any flaw in the "derivation"? I think jart might not have been so ticked off if she had understood what this "derivation" means and accepted it as a law of our fair knowledge-based economy.
It is not as corrupt as it seems. If a CEO truly does zero work, there will be zero pay unless the CEO knows nothing. The banksters know this law so their CEOs know "nothing" and still get paid multi-million dollar bonuses. I did learn the importance of deniability - knowing "nothing" - from Reagan, the CIA, and the Mossad.
As you seem to have a point to make - why don't you follow up on it.
I could not find any flaw to the "derivation." As I am rational, I accept our status quo if we must have know-little or know-nothing CEOs. However, we do NOT have to have CEOs. They did not always exist when the economy was structured differently.
A different world IS possible but only if we are willing to exit our current world.
CEO = the position has not changed. No just the name/designation. As there has always been the top individuals in business ( whether they deserved those positions or not ).
What this has to do with you and jart - I do not know.
Do we need these executives ( by that name or any other ) - "I" do not think so. What a business needs is a purpose - and employees working to meet that purpose. What society needs - is to decide if the business/purpose should be done and if it should be done or no reason is seen why it should not be done - then society should say go ahead - as long as the operations are clean. Operation can not be clean? Operation can not be done. How's That?
There was an old saying, "The Bengal tiger is a man-eater. The Siberian tiger is a man-eater. It is in the nature of the beast."
A modernized political version would be about our two political parties or the Left or the Right.
It should be possible to rise above "the nature of the beast."
This may have any arbitrary amount to do with me, or jart, or anyone else. Jart was jerked around by the Left(TM) and detested it. Philosophy does not necessarily ameliorate pain but its affecting our minds can indirectly alleviate pain. Nothing else may have changed but if our minds have changed, something very significant HAS changed. Our minds are physical and can have real effects if actuated.
"Top" is a relative concept originating from our living near the bottom of a gravitational well. For the ones who have originated from outerspace, traveled there physically or mentally, "top" is meaningless.
We must free our minds of the Earth-bound concept of "top" before we can free ourselves to truly become (or be [for those who understand])the children of the stars.
I agree that the ratios are outrageous but our system condones them. The (Non-)Federal (No-)Reserve bailed out the collapse of Long Term Capital Management which was too profitable to fail. Then the big banks such as JP Morgan Chase caught wind of how profitable Wall Street trading was, got greedy, lobbied to be freed of the hard-learned Depression firewall of Glass-Steagall and succeeded with the approval of the white-Negro carpetbagger in Chief. JP Morgan Chase invented credit default swaps. All the other major banks got onto this money printing business. They inflated the real-estate bubble with the collusion of CountryWide which badgered Joe-6-pack to join the "Ownership Society" espoused by the see-no-evil, hear-no-evil, speak-no-evil Texass fastest gun in the West cowboy in Chief. Get S&P Ratings Agency to bless the rotten mortgage loans chopped, diced, and packaged into E. coli-laced salad and feed it to Germany, China, Japan, with the seal of approval "Made by the one and only superpower, U.S.A."
Sure enough, a white swan turned black and there was global diarrhea. Fortunately, the swan did not complete its metamorphosis because it swallowed the Gold from the MAN. It turned out to be a mulatto swan. Everybody on Wall Street clapped in praise of "The Land of the Free" and asked politely, "What were Ben Bernanke and Hank Paulson talking about, all of that market discipline and moral hazard? Hahaha!" Morality became a Hazard to careers on Wall Street (unless you are Brown, Green, or Black).
Those factors are all legit and profound except for three which aren't so profound in my opinion. Glass-Steagall was more of a sandbag than a firewall. Joe-6-pack would have had no use for sub-prime if it weren't for the concentration of wealth already well underway by 94 when the first sub-prime loans were made. The housing market would have crashed with or without sub-prime. The printing of money is necessary as economies grow. I'm sure we can agree on that but it also becomes necessary as more wealth becomes concentrated.
I don't care if the wealth is concentrated with a big fat smile, a firm handshake, or a punch to the face. Too much concentration is illogical, immoral, and inexcusable regardless. It is a horrible and rotten trick to play on society. Nothing but black-hearted evil.
Glass-Steagall being a sandbag was still better than nothing because it embodied a lesson we had learnt dearly from the Great Depression.
Compound interests concentrate wealth so we need to get rid of that because we no longer need the concentration of wealth to undertake capitalistic expansions which can cause more troubles. The corporations with trillions of dollars of retained earnings did not do much with that capital for years. It is obviously unneeded.
The printing of money was a narcotic addiction. It numbed the pains of the Joe-6-pack's so they would not rise up against the eelites who had created the abject conditions. The truth is that trillions of dollars of wealth can relieve the distress of the Joe-6-pack's greatly without much economic consequence. Keeping on printing money obscured the real numbers and delayed necessary course corrections. The imbalance between greatly reduced demand for labor due to automated mass production and capital on the one hand, and greatly increased supply of labor due to net population growth and the glut of the supply of capital on the other hand, must sooner or later be resolved by the destruction of excess capital and labor, or the destruction of production. These are usually accomplished naturally through the four biblical horsemen: wars, pestilence, famines, and death.
I certainly believe society is capable of change today
I'm sorry I missed out on the demonstrations, I was in school.. I have more time now though but still unemployed to help the OWS cause. Certainly I believe every single citizen must be actively involved in political movements of their time if real change is to occur - that includes doctoral students, professionals and low income individuals
I'm unemployed because I can't get a job
Well I'm self employed to be more specific. I dont need a job taking time away from what I want to build