What the 1% don't want you to know
 

From the Bill Moyers Journal.

One of the last bastions of real journalism the way it's supposed to be.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QzQYA9Qjsi0

http://foreseeblog.com/wp-content/up...012/07/bam.png



The video linked to above is dynamite. Watch it.

Anyone remember the "figure demonstration" I did a few days ago, that illustrates how income and wealth concentrate ridicuously over time, when the growth rate at the top exceeds that of everyone else? There's a 700-page book that does it with real data. It's happening. Right now.

I am going to get and read Capital in the 21st Century, by Thomas Piketty.

(link is to Amazon.com, where it is out-of-stock! Try your local independent bookseller.)

Thanks Don.

Bill Moyers is really great IMO.

It distresses me to see how old he looks.

He's going to be 80 in June.

Who will replace him when he's gone?

It's going to be hard to fill his shoes.

There I fixed it.

Justice Brandies warned us years ago whe he wrote;

"We have a choice to make; we may have democracy or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we cannot have both"

Facts and logic. Get the book. Read. Think.

Then do not fear to strike at the root of the problem. Wealth cannot be allowed grow faster than the economy as a whole, over the long term. Otherwise, you get serfdom, sooner or later. Power is used to gather more power.

'Redistribution' has been made a dirty word, but it always was the wrong word. The idea isn't to redistribute, it's to distribute right the first time.

What? Punctuation please, stop being so lazy in your writing.

When are you going to mention we need a cap on the maximum one can earn?

Wait for it......wait!

Actually redistribution is what has been going on for quite sometime, wealth has been redistributed out of the hands of the peaple whose work created it into the hands of a few privledged thieves.

There it is.

One thing I have learned from watching this video is that we really need the government to have wealth redistribution policies in place and that while a progressive taxation system is part of the solution it is not all of it.

The idea isn't to redistribute, it's to distribute right the first time.

Good point.

That would be ideal.

We have many people that aren't getting a days pay for a days work, while on the other hand our corporate boardrooms are full of people that get 100 or so years pay for a day of what they call "work".

Love some Moyer's. It's in the DVR.

Who's job is it to determine the "right" distribution amount the first time? Who determines who gets what, and how much the first time? When does the "first time" occur?

The IRS Whellie.:D Jack the top rate back up to 50% immediately with a phased in 5% increase annually until we're back to level last seen under Ike. ;)

I'll volunteer.

I would use the US Military as a model.

Where the highest ranking general makes something like 14 times what the lowest ranking private does and everybody has healthcare coverage for themselves and their families.

But how do we know, when an individual is born, or even when they're young men/women, whether they'll even rise through the ranks to become a high ranking general? Or are you favoring something like a "caste system" where an individual's station in life is pre-determined?

This should burst that pimple between your shoulders!

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/...9930O620131004

John

Fondue for all! :D

To irritate the hemorrhoid between your shoulders, I can confirm I don't care. But I can confirm your attempt to dodge my question.

This sounds good.

I might change my plan to something like it. :D

Your lack of interest in engaging in anything close to intellectual honesty is, to some, inspiring I'm sure.

And I am quite comfortable with my lack of interest in your lame assed attempts at Obfuscation.

When workers had strong unions giving them the same negotiating power as management. Just now unless a worker is lucky enough to work for a company with enlightened management he/she has the short end of the stick

We don't know when someone goes into the services where they will end up either. Try again your arguments get sillier and weaker with each post -bad day?

Actually, I'm just asking questions. I suspect you might direct your comments about "silly" and "weak" to the post about "right redistribution".

So, you just lose interest when someone starts asking questions you can't answer? Cool strategy. Seems to fit you pretty well.

There is some good discussion here. What I meant by 'right distribution first time,' of course, is not some 'absolutely accurately correct' distribution, since there are no stone tablets or anything containing rules on how to calculate that. I just mean something more approximately good than the way things are trending now.

People claim 'the market' should decide all this, but the market is not some neutral force of nature. It exists in a legal and cultural framework, made by humans, and alterable if we have the will to do it. For example, corporations normally are set up so workers get a defined return (wages) and the owners get a variable return (profits). We might do it the opposite way if we wanted. We might invent a scheme that blends these two approaches.

What is the right way? The way that most avoids human misery and most promotes the most people feeling like they have a good life. The one where we most often do justly, and love mercy. The one where people love their neighbors as themselves, do unto others as they think is right when others are doing unto them, and return blessings for hate. (Everyone knows this stuff, even those who reject it.)

The idea is certainly to put more money into the hands of the many, and less into the hands of the few. And not by giving it to the few, and then taxing it away from them. That irritates their sense of entitlement. (That sense is an irrational thing that most people have, but the .01% are currently in a position to be really obnoxious about it.) Anyway, I'm saying more pie, up front, to the many. Alter the distribution.

How? Altering the profit entitlement, as I alluded to above, would be one way. Working with minimum and maximum wage laws would be a way. Returning negotiating power to organized labor would be a way. I fully expect there are other ways. All the ways will have good and bad aspects.

Whatever ways we go with should be considered deeply, as to their long and varied effects, against the basic ideas of goodness I mentioned in the 'What is right' paragraph. I'm not saying I know exactly what the best solution. But I'm pretty sure that 'whatever the greediest of the .01% want' is not the way. Instead I see the power this group wields as being likely to just lead to more and more suffering for everybody. We are now in a headlong rush to 'a few own EVERYTHING,' and that needs to change, and quickly.

Perhaps this?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondragon_Corporation

John

Co-ops? :cool: That'll get that pimple oozing.;)

Oh I believe that I was on target the first time.:p

Sounds nice, but at some point if a society is going to do this an actual process will need to be established to carry out the objective. We've had and currently have some examples of how this approach has NOT worked. We also have an example of an approach that, warts and all, seems to work pretty well.

Also, all of the hand-wringing in this forum recently about the so called "death of the middle - class, there's plenty of to the contrary about income mobility in this country.

http://www.npr.org/2014/01/23/265356...wo-decades-ago

Also, the constant bleating about income inequality ignores the reality that the top rungs of income earners in this country are not a static and unchanging group of individuals. Its really more like a revolving door:

".... Thomas A. Hirschl of Cornell and I looked at 44 years of longitudinal data regarding individuals from ages 25 to 60 to see what percentage of the American population would experience these different levels of affluence during their lives. The results were striking.

It turns out that 12 percent of the population will find themselves in the top 1 percent of the income distribution for at least one year. What’s more, 39 percent of Americans will spend a year in the top 5 percent of the income distribution, 56 percent will find themselves in the top 10 percent, and a whopping 73 percent will spend a year in the top 20 percent of the income distribution."

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/20/op...rags.html?_r=1

Frankly, if given a choice, I'd vastly prefer a system that allows greater individual economic freedom and mobility, and the opportunity to succeed - or fail - based on what I contribute.

There will always be ass holes, as history shows, that will try to rig the game in their own favor, and some of them will succeed while others end up behind bars. No matter what economic system you deploy, you'll always have ass holes. I'd offer that our efforts at "leveling the playing field" by changing how our current system operates does more damage than the few ass holes who try to rig the game.

There is the rub DQ, most people rather obviously do not love themselves and thus find it impossible to 'love thy neighbour'.:rolleyes:

Awesome that was very good.

Pretty sure I seen your property in a photo great place can I have half of it? Well even an 1/8 would be fine and more than I have. You always talk a game all the while living fat collecting what ever you can get.

So, the best way isn't just; "Whatever costs business less."?

Wow. What a concept.

Dave

No, but I've got a lower intestine full of something you can have.

Dave