What the 1% don’t want you to know

odon

Have you read any of the reviews of the book? I can post some if you wish?
I was generalising what seems to be the main thrush of Piketty’s argument (I have not yet read the book).

I’m told the book is full of graphs and charts showing the accumulation of wealth and the wealth inequality.

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blog...ix-charts.html

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/arch...ew-gilded-age/

 

'If allowed to do so wealth accumulates around wealth to the point where wealth’s power and influence becomes dominant and society is manipulated to serve its interests to the detriment of all others.'

'I’m told the book is full of graphs and charts showing the accumulation of wealth and the wealth inequality.'

I just need some e.g's - that's all.

You obviously think: If allowed to do so wealth accumulates around wealth to the point where wealth’s power and influence becomes dominant and society is manipulated to serve its interests to the detriment of all others

So why not post some e.g's?

 

You are ALWAYS saying stand by/defend your arguments. Well...try it

 

Ok first have you read

http://www.hipforums.com/newforums/s...?t=353336&f=36

http://www.hipforums.com/newforums/s...d.php?t=314393

http://www.hipforums.com/newforums/s...d.php?t=353922

http://www.hipforums.com/newforums/s...77&postcount=7

 

oh and did you read



http://www.newyorker.com/online/blog...ix-charts.html

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/arch...ew-gilded-age/

 

No. This is supposed to be a NEW thread.

 

Some people earn more money than others. And? You probably earn/have more money than I do. And?

 

There is an argument that has been set out here several times that corporatism comes about because the market isn’t free enough.

I’d say, don’t get fooled again.

The reality is that any move toward free market principles strengthens the hands of wealth and it that route continues to be taken wealth gets strong enough to corrupt the system to its own wishes.

To me the ‘free market’ model always seemed like a lie, a con game meant to fool the gullible. This was because it proponents seem to be claiming that they were a complete model that could deal with boom or bust, when in fact it wasn’t anything of the sort, it was in fact not even half a model, it wasn’t very good in boom times (except for wealth) and didn’t have anyway of dealing with busts.

That is why when the neo-liberal model inevitably fails Keynesian ideas are brushed off and used. All the supposed supporters of neo-liberal ideas like Nixon, Reagan, Bush and many others all turned to Keynesian ideas when the free market ones failed.

So you end up with the untenable – Keynesian ideas in the low periods meaning the general population pays for the recovery and neo-liberal ideas in the up time which not only create the conditions for a down turn to happen but also means that wealth gains the profits and the general population gain little.

So why did such a bad model gain prominence?

It was funded and promoted. It opponents failures were screamed loudly its own failures were white washed over or spined to look like others failures (the old chestnut being that failure was due to the system not being ‘free’ enough) while even the tiniest success on its part were trumpeted as a triumphs.

(see ‘A brief history of neoliberalism’ or ‘The shock doctrine’ for more details)

Now some argue that some strands of ‘free market’ thinking were always about creating a corporatist system but others are pure but that doesn’t seem to fit in with the history and it certainly doesn’t explain why there are still many on the right who cling passionately to free market ideas.

I think many people became corrupted along the way just as the system was, but the problem wasn’t the type of ‘free market’ solution; it was the free market solution.

Because all free market systems favour wealth, the freer a ‘market system’ becomes the more wealth takes over power until a tipping point is reached and that’s when wealth re-orders things to its own interests and if left unchecked forms a tyranny of the wealthy.

So in fact there never has been a totally and completely ‘free market’ because long before that could be achieved wealth has taken over and taken control, subverting the levers of government to do its bidding.

As observed in ‘The Predator State’ by James K. Galbraith about wealth’s recent behaviour

Quote:
What did the new class - endowed with vast personal income, freed from the corporation, and otherwise left to the pursuit of its own social position - set out to do in political terms? The experience of the past decade permits a very simple summary explanation: they set out to take over the state and to run it - not for any ideological project but simply in the way that would bring them, individually and as a group, the most money, the least disturbed power, and the greatest chance of rescue should something go wrong. That is, they set out to prey on the existing institutions of the American regulatory and welfare system.
Oh wealth and it’s cronies still claim that a ‘free market’ is what they want and what would ‘really make things work’ properly. You only have to look at all those well financed free market think tanks and well paid lobbyists still out there and unbelievably still being listened to and taken seriously even when what they have been claiming for has only ever resulted in wealth becoming more wealthy and powerful and the supposed ‘freer’ system coming more under there control and corrupted to their interests.

The mirage of a real ‘free market’ is a trap set up by wealth to ensnare the gullible.

Because take that road and long before the destination is ever reached the real drivers take a fork to somewhere completely different.

 

The thing is, are a group of wealthy individuals that set up lobby groups to promote tax cuts that will benefit them more than the rest of society, getting involved in a conspiracy or just natural self interest?

If some corporations that manufacture weapons systems sponsor lobby groups that highlight possible threats and promote defence spending, is it a conspiracy or prudent business practice?

If people of a certain political viewpoint get the financial backing to set up a lobby group to promote those views from like minded individuals or institutions is that conspiracy or legitimate political action?

If politically biased media outlets use ‘experts’ from these lobbying groups to promote particular political policies and agendas, are they being conspiratorial or genuinely trying to ‘educate’ and ‘inform’ the public?

But what if a political movement targets a group to attack through the lobby system and it result in political policies that lead to suppression and repression? Is that a conspiracy not in the sense of secret cables but of a ‘conspiracy of the like minded’?

 

The wealth sponsored ideas otherwise know as the ‘free market’ or ‘laissez faire’ doctrine, dictate that wages are a matter of supply and demand, so high wages are in less demand than low wages.

And in a financially globalised world we are told a worker in the US or Europe is in compete with the lowest paid worker on the planet.

The threat being that if ‘expensive’ western workers did not cut their wages then the ‘free market’ dictated that companies and the work would go elsewhere.

At the same time right wing politicians of the free market attacked other ‘handicaps’ on western economies in the same way, healthcare systems, welfare systems, social programmes even education systems we’ve been told have to be ‘competitive’ in a global economy.

Hinting that our societies would have to be able to ‘compete’ with places employees threaten to move to that had very rudimentary systems or none at all.

*

The thing is that people and workers fought for their wages and social benefits in a long, bitter and often dangerous struggle.

(For an American perspective on that struggle try – Who built America (two volumes) by the American Social History Project)

Wage rates and social programmes are part economic but they are also political, the actions of workers and people have forced systems to be more distributive and equal. Made them tax the rich, pay decent wages and protect people from exploitation.

We have laws against child labour but they make no sense from a purely economic viewpoint, why not exploit a labour force that might make up a third or more of a country’s population.

The thing is many of the places that wealth claims we should compete with have been denied those wage levels and social benefits (so in many child labour is exploited because it can be).

What is worse is that in many cases that situation is the direct result of the actions of US and western foreign and economic policies imposed on them by the same plutocratic forces that have wrecked havoc recently in the US and around the world.

For example communist ideas have always been strongly opposed by US and European wealth but in the US it was able to get a lot more government backing for the position especially after WWII when a sham-communist Russia was the US’s main opponent to global hegemony sparking the Cold War.

As in most wars the first casualty was truth and many times things that were only slightly left of centre reforms were portrayed as acts of Stalinists. In that way popular movements that wanted to go someway toward gaining the social and economic benefits fought for by Europeans and Americans workers and people, were simply painted as communists and overthrown. And these actions also seemed to help US business.

For example the overthrow of the democratic governments of Arbenz in Guatemala (helping US fruit companies), Mossadegh in Iran (assisting US oil concerns) and Allende in Chile (to the advantage of US mining operations)

Later when neo-liberal doctrine became established in America the world received the ‘Washington consensus’ that imposed right wing free market ideas, forcing ‘economic shock treatment’ on a large number of countries around the world with usually disastrous results (at least for the middle class and below).

(Try reading ‘Globalisation and its discontents’ by Joseph Stiglitz, ‘The shock Doctrine’ by Naomi Klein)

All this has brought about a deeply divided and unequal world, a hierarch of worth that always gives the advantage to the wealthiest.

To me this all seems backwards and ultimately disastrous why should things be ordered so as to maximise the profits of a few rather than the many and taken to its logical conclusion if their ideas were followed no-one but a few would ultimately be able to afford anything.

 

Here is the case of James (Jimmy) Cayne, who seemed to prefer playing bridge and golf to running Bears Stearns although he got a salary of $200,000 dollars to supposedly do it along with huge bonuses.

Well on paper he was worth in the region of 900 million and I believe he was 384th in the Forbes list of rich Americans.

But then Bears needed Fed help and JPMorgan Chase was found to snap it up and Cayne cashed in his Bears stock at a rather low price and supposedly only made 60 million or so. But as the New York Times noted even with the ‘loss’ he wasn’t liable to go hungry, in fact “he has certainly accumulated enough to live out his retirement years in comfort”. There is the other investments such as the Plaza hotel apartments he brought for $28 million.


So lets see - According to US social security the average wage for Americans in 2006 was around 38,651, and remember there are a hell of a lot of people on lower, but lets round it up to 40,000 for convenience.

So if someone didn’t spend any of their wages and lived off air then it would take them a hundred years, 100 years, to make just 4,million, so it would take them just seven hundred years 700, to raise the 28 million Jimmy paid for his flats and only 1500 years to raise the 60 million he got for his shares.

So an average American would have had to have begun working in the reign of the dark age Frankish king Clovis, well over 1000 years before America was even discovered to reach the amount that Jimmy made in one day.

To save up 4 billion, which only gets you to 268th place in the Forbes rich list (With a billion being I believe in money terms 100,000,000) the average worker would only take 10,000 years, about from the end of the last ice age.

My point is that while neoliberal advocates sold their brands of economics to the general population as a panacea, some type of elixir of eternal wealth, many actually knew of the risks.

But it is very possible that if those risks had been explained then many of things that were so very beneficial to the economic elites would not have taken place or been allowed (such as the huge hikes in top executive pay the bonus culture and the lowering of the top band tax rates).

I mean there was meant to be a trickle down that never came and there was meant to be a economic stability that just evaporated. Both of these things were the shortcomings and risks within the neoliberal ideology but the criticisms were dismissed by the advocates.

 

http://www.demos.org/stacked-deck-h...business-undermines-economic-mobility-america

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blog...ix-charts.html

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/arch...ew-gilded-age/ __________________

 

copy/paste posts from other threads are not really good enough. I don't really see them in the same context.

'If allowed to do so wealth accumulates around wealth to the point where wealth’s power and influence becomes dominant and society is manipulated to serve its interests to the detriment of all others.'

What detriment is there to me if Bill gates earns 6 billion a year and I earn 30 thousand a year or you earn 50 thousand and I earn 15 thousand?

 

odon

Can you explain why not?

So you see things only in individual terms? You and Bill, not in the wider context of general influence on the system by wealth – are you saying wealth does not have influence?

 

Because they are about neo- liberalism (your favourite topic) Keynesian ideals and 'free-markets' - it does not seem a fair basis to start a NEW debate. You have posted: 'If allowed to do so wealth accumulates around wealth to the point where wealth’s power and influence becomes dominant and society is manipulated to serve its interests to the detriment of all others.'

So bring forth some NEW arguments. Make this (thread) make sense and have a voice all of it's own.

http://www.hipforums.com/newforums/showpost.php?p=8002178&postcount=18

Bill can pay for a few million vaccines while I can't.

 

Maybe a little more difficult than it seems?

 

But the promotion of free market/neo-liberalist ideas is the method by which wealth accumulates around wealth.

The wealth of wealth has increased hugely since the 1970’s did you look at the charts did you read the reviews?

And you agree that wealth brings influence As observed in ‘The Predator State’ by James K. Galbraith about wealth’s recent behaviour

What did the new class - endowed with vast personal income, freed from the corporation, and otherwise left to the pursuit of its own social position - set out to do in political terms? The experience of the past decade permits a very simple summary explanation: they set out to take over the state and to run it - not for any ideological project but simply in the way that would bring them, individually and as a group, the most money, the least disturbed power, and the greatest chance of rescue should something go wrong. That is, they set out to prey on the existing institutions of the American regulatory and welfare system.
Oh wealth and it’s cronies still claim that a ‘free market’ is what they want and what would ‘really make things work’ properly. You only have to look at all those well financed free market think tanks and well paid lobbyists still out there and unbelievably still being listened to and taken seriously even when what they have been claiming for has only ever resulted in wealth becoming more wealthy and powerful and the supposed ‘freer’ system coming more under there control and corrupted to their interests.

 

odon

What you seem to be saying here is that you believe the argument is BS and I should prove it isn’t - BUT you are not going to read anything I post or suggest you look at.

 

Meagain



OK but I’d say I see wealth as more of a grouping (corporations, individuals, institutions) and as a class (families and individuals)