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The top 26 richest billionaries own half the money of the whole world

Xzi

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fun fact: the united states has way way more trees now than when Europeans discovered North America existed.
It makes sense, the Native American population was far more in touch with nature and much better at managing forests than we are. By allowing everything to grow unchecked and so close together, we invite large-scale wildfires.
 
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Taleweaver

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I’m surprised it’s not more than that, honestly.
That is indeed a very remarkable thing. This number (26 people = half the world in income) is just about halved since a year ago (at the end of 2017, it took 43 people's combined value to equal the lower half of the world).
There isn't enough food in the world for everyone to be well fed, and creating more farmland requires destroying more nature which has its own problems.
Sorry...this is simply not true. I've read from multiple sources that food production has long since become so efficient that it can easily provide the entire earth's population (and even two or three times that amount...and yes, on a daily basis). The reason famine still exists is purely a matter of food distribution. It is simply not economically feasible to feed the poor half of the world, so little is done in that aspect. Or have you never noticed the irony of the fact that both famine and obesity are plagues in this world?

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fun fact: the united states has way way more trees now than when Europeans discovered North America existed.
Okay...this is indeed a fun fact. From what I quickly googled, there is at least some truth in this. Of course the entire situation is more complex than this*, but it's certainly interesting. By any chance, do you have a source on this? :)


*one of the weirdest things I've read is the development of what I would call "suicide trees": trees that grow so fast that at one point they literally break under their own weight. Obviously very good for wood processing industry, but in ecological terms, a normal tree is easily worth 3 or 4 of such trees.
 
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The Real Jdbye

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The real problem in Africa is that lot of land aren't harverstable
They can't grow anything in a desert
They'll first need to irrigate the whole land to make grass grow on it first...
That's a problem too, but solving the money issue would solve that since they could import food.
Sorry...this is simply not true. I've read from multiple sources that food production has long since become so efficient that it can easily provide the entire earth's population (and even two or three times that amount...and yes, on a daily basis). The reason famine still exists is purely a matter of food distribution. It is simply not economically feasible to feed the poor half of the world, so little is done in that aspect. Or have you never noticed the irony of the fact that both famine and obesity are plagues in this world?
That's not what I heard. But I don't actually have a source so it could be wrong.
 

CallmeBerto

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@kuwanger - Well yes on usury you are correct(I didn't really explain it as well as I should have). Usury is used to both to pay for any inflation and compensate the other party for their services. An example you loan someone 1000 USD. They promise to pay you back in 1 year. Well, what if inflation goes up by 10% they have in a sense given you less money due to the fact that now that money can buy 10% fewer goods and services. Another thing to note is that person has 1000 less money to do without. You must pay them extra for this.

Banks don't print money governments do which is why inflation is a thing. inflation is taxation without legislation - Milton Friedman

Another thing to note is that as long as that there is economic mobility then it doesn't matter how rich the rich are. If with hard work, dumb luck etc a poor person can become the 1% then it is fine. While I don't have any data to back me up, I think most people know this so I don't see any revolution coming against the rich.
 

kuwanger

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Well, what if inflation goes up by 10% they have in a sense given you less money due to the fact that now that money can buy 10% fewer goods and services.

The thing as you state it is really only an approximation, but having said that without government intervention deflation would be a thing too and people would have reason to hold on to money purely as a means to gain value. My point is, as your final quote states, that the order of cause and effect is a lot less clear.

Another thing to note is that person has 1000 less money to do without. You must pay them extra for this.

That's what investments are for. Investments, though, don't always pan out. One could say the same about loans--as people can default--but there's a lot less risk of that meaningfully happening in aggregate unless banks do something stupid like make a lot of high risk loans and misrepresent the risk of those loans. Diversified enough investments then functionally behave almost like usury but without necessarily interest by relying upon aggregate value/wealth creation.

Banks don't print money governments do which is why inflation is a thing. inflation is taxation without legislation - Milton Friedman

Banks don't print money, but the Federal Reserve does create credit and stipulate the reserve holding rules and base interest rate that banks must abide by. This includes things like quantitative easing. As much as the Federal Reserve is part of the government, it's also a substantially independent agency. It has substantial say in the printed money supply even though the Treasury prints the money. It also buys Treasury Notes as a means to limit their supply and hence inflate their value.

My point is, it's a complicated system of multiple parts designed to discourage rampant debt creation, rampant inflation, etc. People in the right position to game it--banks--can create horrible economic circumstances and then be bailed out for fear of market corrections poisoning the money supply leading to massive, long-term economic ruin. When you can directly or indirectly funnel money through the stock market or other investment instruments, which offers much higher average returns than standard bank loans with fixed sub-usury* rates, you encourage that sort of abuse without regulation and enforcement.

Anyways, that's how I see/understand it. I'm done rambling for now.

* Going back to your first point, if inflation was not merely 10% but 25% then you'd always lose money in most places because today the term usury has come to mean illegally high interest rates--you'd have to come up with some other mechanism to get that sort of money. For banks, when you start looking at investments you can see how it'd be very tempting to take $1000 meant for a savings account, spin it into an instrument that could be sold, and then pocket the sale price difference getting closer to a 10% rate rather than the amount they're likely to receive from standard loans. This is especially true because one can keep reinvesting nearly all the money as virtually none of it has to be reserved and each sale allows for compounding growth at the rate of sales.
 

Taleweaver

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@kuwanger
Banks don't print money governments do which is why inflation is a thing. inflation is taxation without legislation - Milton Friedman

Milton Friedman isn't the best source to quote when it comes to economics. If you read Naomi Klein or even Joseph Stiglitz, you'll quickly learn that Friedman and his school of Chicago boys are one of the driving sources of the increased inequality in the world. He also died in 2006, so he never witnessed the backlash that it caused with the 2008 crisis.

Kuwanger is spot in in saying that banks print virtual money. It's not the same as actual money, but in the long run it comes down to the same thing. Lemme explain...say I own a bank with MORE THAN 1000 bucks on it. I then loan 1000 bucks to someone who'll pay me back within a year, along with interest. I'm not sure if you've ever went to a bank for a loan, but as someone who did it twice, I can tell you this: they do not give you the actual money. They don't give me stacks of paper. Heck...my girlfriend and me have recently loaned over 220'000 euro's, and literally speaking, we haven't seen a cent from the bank. What we instead got was a very expensive paper saying that we've gotten the loan, and some phone calls to our notary promising it'll be transferred to the people we'd buy a house from. Of course they never actually SEE the money either, but use it to buy a house with themselves.

This isn't a coincidence. To get back to that earlier example: banks don't really loan money...they loan IOU's. They hand out pamflets saying that whomever gets it, can trade it back for 1000 bucks.
Thus far, it's a "same difference" situation. But what banks then do, is simply allow the next person to loan 1000 bucks as well. This one also gets an IOU worth 1000 dollars. And that's the thing: banks don't even really hide the truth anymore...they call it "leverage". As long as they can pay back some clients who want actual money for their loan, they don't consider themselves to be in problem. More so: because they charge pretty hefty on the interest rates* they can often cover any real money they need to pay on that alone.


Another thing to note is that as long as that there is economic mobility then it doesn't matter how rich the rich are. If with hard work, dumb luck etc a poor person can become the 1% then it is fine. While I don't have any data to back me up, I think most people know this so I don't see any revolution coming against the rich.
I've heard that one before. And I admit, there is certainly something to be said about it. I mean...does it really matter that the rich get (super super SUPER) rich when the poor have seen their standards raised as well? I mean...I admit I don't know whether the last year was still a net gain for the poor, but earlier on I've read on the paradox that the poor see their net worth lower (without proper education, your chances for a job are lower than ever)and yet at the same time things like mortality rates and life expectancy are going the right way.

The problems are a bit deeper. I know at least two.

For one: "economic mobility" is a pipedream. If you work hard and smart and aren't struck with serious misfortune, then you might get rich. You might. And 'rich' meaning: 'having more than the people directly around you'. You might become the richest person in the street, your neighborhood or even your local village. Richer than that becomes harder once you get in a territory where competition is involved. You see, modern capitalism is a long stretch from how I would assume it is handed out on flyers that is given out to former communists or socialists. Modern capitalism gives the already wealthy all the tools to prey and feed on the 'slightly less rich'. Through market manipulation, tax evasion, politics intermingling, patent wars and all that jazz, the extremely wealthy have an army at their disposal to make sure that they remain on top. Not so much by being the best at something (though of course: if you can hinder your opponents out of the market, you are the best by default) but by praying upon others. So no...a poor person cannot become the 1%. I'm willing to concede that most people still believe that lie, but that's changing. More and more understand that they aren't fed the rule but the exception. And that they are the suckers for believing in it.

The second problem is on the social aspect of it. While there are quite some rich heirs on the world, the TRULY rich all own multinational companies. And these go beyond merely feeding upon the lesser rich to feeding upon governments. All the benefits are internalized while all (or as much as possible of) the costs are externalized. If you break down an apple product down to its core features, then you'd be amazed how much parts of it were originally created or funded by the government or state-driven colleges or universities.
On the flip side: they play out states or even countries, hoping to get the best deal FOR THEM when it comes to labour costs. This also funnels the wealth in the world towards the leaders of these organisations.

This all is getting to a boiling point. From what I can see, the only thin thread that is holding back a second french revolution is that very idea that "if you work long and hard enough, maybe there's a place for you on the hill". And when I look at those yellow vests, students going on strike because of the climate or even things like the brexit and that moron in the oval office, I see it as signs that that thread is getting REALLY thin.

Heh...I hope I'm wrong, obviously. But with this sort of news, I doubt it. Or do you think that anyone can work hard and long enough so that in the end, they can earn as much wealth as HALF THE WORLD COMBINED? :unsure:

* honestly: please don't pretend that banks just charge interest to cover inflation costs. The interest rates and calculations are set as such that dumb people don't understand how much they pay for the privilege and smart people realise that they don't have other options. Meanwhile, rich people don't take loans. They give them at others to get even more rich.
That's not what I heard. But I don't actually have a source so it could be wrong.
Hmm...it can also be that your source (or you) misinterpret what was originally said. You said that there isn't enough food, nor enough possible farmland available to feed the entire world. Again: that is untrue. However: it is not "simply" a matter of being less greedy. It is also true that the diet of the average Western man (US, Europe) isn't sustainable if everyone adopts it. The obvious example is meat: if everyone should start eating meat every day, then either the production cannot follow (even with perfect distribution), or it would lead to an ecological disaster. So in that aspect, it isn't exactly wrong to say that there isn't enough food for everyone. It's just that we're pretty spoiled in terms of what "food" really means.
 

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Kuwanger is spot in in saying that banks print virtual money. It's not the same as actual money, but in the long run it comes down to the same thing.

Which reminds me of a funny statistic. There was approximately $1.72 trillion in circulation as of December 26, 2018, of which $1.67 trillion was in Federal Reserve notes. Put another way, there was 2.12x as much government revenue, 2.38x as much government spending, and ~11.6x as much US GDP as total money in circulation.

Given those numbers, consider that the foreign-exchange reserve of China is ~US$3.51 trillion and of which it is estimated 2/3rds is in US currency; ie, China has in reserve ~1.36x total US currency circulation*. When people talk about the risk of China owning US debt, they're missing the forest for the trees on the sort of devastation China could bring if it had reason to devalue the US dollar simply by releasing that currency in the US. A switch from US to Euro as main currency reserve would also be potentially very damaging, although I imagine most countries would slowly do the change over to avoid the economic peril.

So, uh, yea. Scary thought for the day.

* Presumable some percentage of that $1.67 trillion is yearly flowing out of country and/or into holdings in country as cash, but overall it looks like China's reserve is shrinking so it's really unclear how the ratio of currency is changing. Also, obviously circulation != total printed money supply or it'd include estimates of China's and other countries' US dollar reserve.
 

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I also heard yeads ago that the 1% richest people in the world owned almost the same amojnt of money as the other 99%
Idk if it changed since then though
Sorry, but just because you heard it doesn't mean it's true. There is a huge inequality, but it was never THIS huge (yet). You sure it wasn't 50%? :unsure: Because that was true a couple years ago (source 1, source 2).
 

Noctosphere

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Sorry, but just because you heard it doesn't mean it's true. There is a huge inequality, but it was never THIS huge (yet). You sure it wasn't 50%? :unsure: Because that was true a couple years ago (source 1, source 2).
well, thats pretty much what i said
if the 1% owns as much as the other 99%
it's pretty much 50/50, right? ^_^
 

kumikochan

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Surely you don't mean to tell me that income inequality is a massive problem worldwide! Le gasp!

Seriously though, yeah it's out of fucking control. If all of them donated 1% of their wealth, world hunger would no longer be an issue. We could probably fund universal healthcare and tuition-free college too. The problem is that the entire world bought into the "greed is good" garbage philosophy that spewed forth from the USA in the 80s. Now nearly forty years later we continue to have an almost-farcical reverence for wealthy individuals, even if their wealth was handed to them or it's mostly dark/blood money.

Eventually there's going to be a breaking point because the gap is simply unsustainable. At that point we have to decide if we want to go out like bitches and have a worldwide economic collapse imposed on us by billionaires who believe themselves isolated from it, or sack up and start rolling out the guillotines.
The entire world ? Europe is mostly middle class and doesn't have the huge gap between rich and poor like America has. Also the things you're talking about ain't a problem in europe since we have a safety net for people with problems being unemployment money, multiple food banks, goverments partly funding house rent and so forth.
 

Taleweaver

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well, thats pretty much what i said
if the 1% owns as much as the other 99%
it's pretty much 50/50, right? ^_^
Oh, CRAP! :O

Sorry...it was me who had misread things entirely (including my own sources, no less). I had assumed that the one percent owned as much wealth as the bottom 50% of the population. But like you correctly said: they owned 50% of the wealth, so they own (indeed) as much as the remaining 99%.

...and that was two years ago. Now the richest of the richest have seen their wealth increase so much that just 26 of 'em own as much as everyone else (yes...up and including everyone else in that top one percentage). That's...okay, it was already insane the way I read it earlier. Now it is even more mind boggling*.


*so basically: if those 26 people decide to give their fortunes away, it would mean EVERYONE IN THE WORLD WOULD SEE THEIR AMOUNT OF MONEY DOUBLED.

In all seriousness stealing money (Cause that's essentially what you're proposing) won't improve the world situation for long. Poor people are poor mostly because they don't know how to or are motivated to create wealth. If you start handing out money to people who don't know to handle it they'll just be poor again in a short while.
I've read about that argument, and there's something to be said about it. There is just one problem: how intuitive that outcome might sound, it is also totally wrong. Nearly all experiments with basic income have yielded healthier and more motivated workers, not less. The people that quit their jobs didn't do so to sit on their ass all day but did it to follow their dreams. Meaning: they basically traded the job they hated (but were forced to keep because they needed the money) for a job they wanted or deemed necessary (thus: stronger motivation).

There is also something to be said about giving an individual money versus giving entire groups more money. Dimmidice certainly put it too blunt, but it's true that the republicans assume the so-called "tragedy of the commons" is a given factor. They assume that if you give something for everyone to share (classic example: an open grass land for all the farmers), that there'll always be one bastard who takes it all without giving anything back. Or similar: that the participants assume OTHERS are such bastards, and therefore start acting that same way as to not be at a disadvantage. This too is a myth.

coolfuze said:
Even I would love to get money without doing anything to earn it, but I realise that chances of me falling on my backside into a pile of cash is slim to none.
There's another way of looking at this: do you truly believe that these 26 richest workers worked as hard as everyone else in the world combined? Because that's what's at stake here. The idea isn't so much on whether or not you get money for nothing, but rather whether if the amount of money that gets deposited on your bank account is truly, genuinely earned?

coolfuze said:
My time would be better spent becoming more educated, working on my mental and physical health problems and just living a life where I can look back at yesterday and say "I love myself and the people in my life"
I absolutely believe that. More so: I believe that the far majority of the world would have similar goals in life, if given the chance.

So then my question becomes: why shouldn't we give everyone that chance?

Now...to come back to that Poor people are poor mostly because they don't know how to or are motivated to create wealth. line that gave you some flak...it isn't wrong. But it isn't their choice either. A factor that is grossly overlooked in comparing rich vs poor is "shortage". There's a fascinating field of psychology that indirectly illustrates why this 'tragedy of the commons' is a myth: it's because poor people have less than they need. In fact: in a non-monetary way, I can even argue that poor people are poor BECAUSE they have less than they need.

Lemme explain that: a lot of vaccins are pretty cheap. Compared to the diseases they can prevent, you'd be almost stupid not to have them. Not only would these diseases make you ill, the cost of recovery is far greater than getting that vaccine. But this is all assuming you can purchase the vaccine. It's not that poor people are stupid by themselves...it's that what is a no-brainer for us ("should we get the vaccine or not? Meeh...we'll see. If I get ill, I can afford it") takes a lot more brain power for a poor person because he has to make a choice between that vaccine and food.

So yeah: they ARE less motivated to create wealth. Not by choice, but because they're already so tangled up with similar "more important" choices that they just can't get to this. It's too much of a long term goal ("creating wealth? Good idea...I'll get to that when I can make a way to heat my house first"). It's in that field that basic income helps tremendously: it gives people a perspective for the long term.
 

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razhgI6.png


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notimp

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When you can directly or indirectly funnel money through the stock market or other investment instruments, which offers much higher average returns than standard bank loans with fixed sub-usury* rates, you encourage that sort of abuse without regulation and enforcement.
Thats correct and the important part.

Now in the neocapitalist opinion, the way you combat that sort of inequality creation, is to get more people as players into the stockmarket. The thing is just, that they arent doing it. And so - over the last two decades people in the stock market on average have seen inproportionally large growths, while average folks were faced with 0% interest rates on saving accounts, to pay off all the risk that made the stock bubble essentially burst in 2011.

Its fun. :)

People even have asked, if you can take cummulative interest growth from an entire generation of folks, without them doing anything than basically a 3 months sit in in a park or something - what else do you expect will be enough to shake this? And the answers then either are "nothing", or "the next crash - because we havent fixed anything substantially". (Even if we tried to implement Basel 3 in the EU... ;) )

But this is exactly the issue.

Money accumulation ("wealth gain") from financial transactions, based on structured investment packages, to spread risk - is giving higher returns on investment, than the classical bank loans business to SMEs.

At no risk, because if their risk management turns out to have been BS, states will jump in and pay that out with their citizens savings.

Great system. :)

--------------------- MERGED ---------------------------

@Hanafuda: The Venezuela example is BS - that was politically motivated.

The rest has something to it. Except, that billionaires arent so much financing moonshot projects - like at all.

That always ought to have been a state that invests billions over years with an uncertain outcome. So tax progressively, then lets all have moonshot projects again.

And Tesla BTW isnt one. Thats just a spoiled kids project to make automated mixers at scale, with existing battery tech. Without learning manufacturing from the germans. ;)

Nothing revolutionary about it.

Then the state should prop up the entire infrastructure for those cars to be viable to drive around in your country. For free. Because thats the costly part.

Also the US gave Tesla a substantial loan to even exist today. Where were the billionairs there. They would have even let it go bankrupt at the early stages. Wonderful example actually. Thanks for bringing it up.

--------------------- MERGED ---------------------------

Next question - If I'm fine with wealth concentration. And also with "random luck" and "certain personality taits" playing an essential role in accumulating it (despite there being an economic shift thats necessary for an opportunity to arise for really big private wealth generation - essentially, because all the usual sectors already have been "staffed").

Why dont we just vote for 80+% progressive inheretance tax?

The answer given to that question is always "because the state wouldnt know what to do with that money"....

Long story short...

https://qz.com/694340/the-richest-f...7-are-still-the-richest-families-in-florence/
 
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notimp

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Neh, that part of a complex argument is actually correct. The NYT, basically was just saved as part of "jump change" on somones personal ego project. Its the rest of the argument, thats BS. ;)
 

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Milton Friedman isn't the best source to quote when it comes to economics. If you read Naomi Klein or even Joseph Stiglitz, you'll quickly learn that Friedman and his school of Chicago boys are one of the driving sources of the increased inequality in the world. He also died in 2006, so he never witnessed the backlash that it caused with the 2008 crisis.

Kuwanger is spot in in saying that banks print virtual money. It's not the same as actual money, but in the long run it comes down to the same thing. Lemme explain...say I own a bank with MORE THAN 1000 bucks on it. I then loan 1000 bucks to someone who'll pay me back within a year, along with interest. I'm not sure if you've ever went to a bank for a loan, but as someone who did it twice, I can tell you this: they do not give you the actual money. They don't give me stacks of paper. Heck...my girlfriend and me have recently loaned over 220'000 euro's, and literally speaking, we haven't seen a cent from the bank. What we instead got was a very expensive paper saying that we've gotten the loan, and some phone calls to our notary promising it'll be transferred to the people we'd buy a house from. Of course they never actually SEE the money either, but use it to buy a house with themselves.

This isn't a coincidence. To get back to that earlier example: banks don't really loan money...they loan IOU's. They hand out pamflets saying that whomever gets it, can trade it back for 1000 bucks.
Thus far, it's a "same difference" situation. But what banks then do, is simply allow the next person to loan 1000 bucks as well. This one also gets an IOU worth 1000 dollars. And that's the thing: banks don't even really hide the truth anymore...they call it "leverage". As long as they can pay back some clients who want actual money for their loan, they don't consider themselves to be in problem. More so: because they charge pretty hefty on the interest rates* they can often cover any real money they need to pay on that alone.



I've heard that one before. And I admit, there is certainly something to be said about it. I mean...does it really matter that the rich get (super super SUPER) rich when the poor have seen their standards raised as well? I mean...I admit I don't know whether the last year was still a net gain for the poor, but earlier on I've read on the paradox that the poor see their net worth lower (without proper education, your chances for a job are lower than ever)and yet at the same time things like mortality rates and life expectancy are going the right way.

The problems are a bit deeper. I know at least two.

For one: "economic mobility" is a pipedream. If you work hard and smart and aren't struck with serious misfortune, then you might get rich. You might. And 'rich' meaning: 'having more than the people directly around you'. You might become the richest person in the street, your neighborhood or even your local village. Richer than that becomes harder once you get in a territory where competition is involved. You see, modern capitalism is a long stretch from how I would assume it is handed out on flyers that is given out to former communists or socialists. Modern capitalism gives the already wealthy all the tools to prey and feed on the 'slightly less rich'. Through market manipulation, tax evasion, politics intermingling, patent wars and all that jazz, the extremely wealthy have an army at their disposal to make sure that they remain on top. Not so much by being the best at something (though of course: if you can hinder your opponents out of the market, you are the best by default) but by praying upon others. So no...a poor person cannot become the 1%. I'm willing to concede that most people still believe that lie, but that's changing. More and more understand that they aren't fed the rule but the exception. And that they are the suckers for believing in it.

The second problem is on the social aspect of it. While there are quite some rich heirs on the world, the TRULY rich all own multinational companies. And these go beyond merely feeding upon the lesser rich to feeding upon governments. All the benefits are internalized while all (or as much as possible of) the costs are externalized. If you break down an apple product down to its core features, then you'd be amazed how much parts of it were originally created or funded by the government or state-driven colleges or universities.
On the flip side: they play out states or even countries, hoping to get the best deal FOR THEM when it comes to labour costs. This also funnels the wealth in the world towards the leaders of these organisations.

This all is getting to a boiling point. From what I can see, the only thin thread that is holding back a second french revolution is that very idea that "if you work long and hard enough, maybe there's a place for you on the hill". And when I look at those yellow vests, students going on strike because of the climate or even things like the brexit and that moron in the oval office, I see it as signs that that thread is getting REALLY thin.

Heh...I hope I'm wrong, obviously. But with this sort of news, I doubt it. Or do you think that anyone can work hard and long enough so that in the end, they can earn as much wealth as HALF THE WORLD COMBINED? :unsure:

* honestly: please don't pretend that banks just charge interest to cover inflation costs. The interest rates and calculations are set as such that dumb people don't understand how much they pay for the privilege and smart people realise that they don't have other options. Meanwhile, rich people don't take loans. They give them at others to get even more rich.

Hmm...it can also be that your source (or you) misinterpret what was originally said. You said that there isn't enough food, nor enough possible farmland available to feed the entire world. Again: that is untrue. However: it is not "simply" a matter of being less greedy. It is also true that the diet of the average Western man (US, Europe) isn't sustainable if everyone adopts it. The obvious example is meat: if everyone should start eating meat every day, then either the production cannot follow (even with perfect distribution), or it would lead to an ecological disaster. So in that aspect, it isn't exactly wrong to say that there isn't enough food for everyone. It's just that we're pretty spoiled in terms of what "food" really means.
Did you bother reading anything Milton Friedman has said? Or did you just read criticisms of what other people wrote about him, and ignoring his work since he doesn’t fit what you want to believe about economics, especially since he is a conservative, and just that word alone makes you ignore him. If you did read his stuff or at least try to look up his thoughts on the Chicago boys, which I thought you would since it’s a criticism of him, then you would’ve right away picked up stuff Naomi Klein said about him is wrong.

Someone as popular and influential in economics as Milton Friedman you would think to have actually read about stuff he wrote. Especially since his contributions to the field of Economics of consumption analysis, and monetary history and theory that he won a Nobel prize for which is taught in college classes. So your advice to basically ignore him when it comes to economics is really dumb, especially since he is taught in classes and is a huge influence on U.S. government economics today. And I would advice people to not take what you say about ignoring him seriously. You don’t have to agree everything he says but completely ignoring is just dumb.

Milton Friedman did not support the dictatorship of Chile to impose his policies, you can find YouTube videos of him talking about this. He did not support the Iraq war, he was against it from day 1. Another thing Naomi implied about him which is wrong. He doesn’t support corporate welfare, and he warns against corporations getting to much power, and using that power to create tariffs or long lasting patents that benefits them. Another point Naomi made that is wrong. She basically takes things out of context, says points he never says, uses straw mans, and doesn’t understand anything about Milton Friedman. She even tries to make a rebuttals to critics of her book, and again they make a rebuttal of her rebuttals saying she is strawmanning again.

This debunks her criticism of him.
https://object.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/pubs/pdf/bp102.pdf

Another point people make which I see a lot of is, his policies creates huge inequality. And that’s the only point they have. Ya, compared to what though. Chile became one of the richest places in South America. Compared to what they had in the past they are better off, more people are lifted out of poverty, and their standard of living rose. Many people in Chile are happy to have his policies and even the poor are living better then parents did just a few decades ago when poverty was rampant and they were starving.

The inequality is was a consequence of better living for everyone. Would you rather go back the old system if not for his policies, and have rampant absolute poverty? Yet people still manage to criticize him as if his policies are extremely horrible, because inequality, even though they are living better. Not only that they are happier, political corruption is lower compared to other South American countries, and their index standard of living went up, yet inequality, so bad policies. They are looking at this one sided to support their pre conceived beliefs of what they want to believe.

No economic system is perfect you can find criticisms I just about anything. But that’s not the point since you can find criticism in anything. It’s not about getting everything perfect because that is impossible. It’s about choosing the system that most benifits and has the best trade offs.
 
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Xzi

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The inequality is was a consequence of better living for everyone. Would you rather go back the old system if not for his policies, and have rampant absolute poverty? Yet people still manage to criticize him as if his policies are extremely horrible, because inequality, even though they are living better. Not only that they are happier, political corruption is lower compared to other South American countries, and their index standard of living went up, yet inequality, so bad policies. They are looking at this one sided to support their pre conceived beliefs of what they want to believe.
This is gonna come down to personal opinion, but I don't think short-term prosperity is worth long-term inequality and economic collapse. Especially since the US is well past the 'prosperity' stage by now, when one income could buy you a house and support a whole family. We're never gonna see those days again as long as we hold such a nonchalant attitude toward worsening inequality. Power needs to be shifted back to the workers, as it was with the New Deal.
 
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Now in the neocapitalist opinion, the way you combat that sort of inequality creation, is to get more people as players into the stockmarket. The thing is just, that they arent doing it. And so - over the last two decades people in the stock market on average have seen inproportionally large growths, while average folks were faced with 0% interest rates on saving accounts, to pay off all the risk that made the stock bubble essentially burst in 2011.

Yes, and in this regard 401k plans ended up being about the only way middle class Americans could or would invest in the stock market. The problem of course is the poor aren't investing in retirement because they don't have a consistent amount of money they can spare and the amount of people who meet the classification of poor are substantial. Since wage stagnation is a thing, the only realistic approach for the neocapitalist opinion to work would be if those who retired were to seed substantial parts of their own retirement funds to their child for generations--ie, middle class or poor financial dynasties. It's not enough to argue it's merely risk aversion to the repeatedly stock bubble busts.

At no risk, because if their risk management turns out to have been BS, states will jump in and pay that out with their citizens savings.

Except the money was borrowed to pay for the bailout, and everyone who kept their stock in the market through the whole recession saw near a complete rebound (minus growth) of the value of their stock. Of course, that's the rub: a lot of people couldn't hold off the whole recession because that was their retirement money. Others may have had catastrophic emergencies. Meanwhile, those who had a lot of money could buy tons of stock while it was cheap and see an even larger rebound.

Basically, there's too many steady-state presumptions from base income to consistent growth built into the idea of using the stock market as some sort of great equalizer.
 

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