n
probably. I'd just like to have our metrics measured before we begin and explicitly detailed so that I will know when we have succeeded.
How can we take it back?
- Thread starter Skarekrow
- Start date
probably. I'd just like to have our metrics measured before we begin and explicitly detailed so that I will know when we have succeeded.
Just 90 companies caused two-thirds of man-made global warming emissions
http://www.theguardian.com/environm...-made-global-warming-emissions-climate-change
Chevron, Exxon and BP among companies most responsible for climate change since dawn of industrial age, figures show
http://www.theguardian.com/environm...-made-global-warming-emissions-climate-change
Chevron, Exxon and BP among companies most responsible for climate change since dawn of industrial age, figures show
The climate crisis of the 21st century has been caused largely by just 90 companies, which between them produced nearly two-thirds of the greenhouse gas emissions generated since the dawning of the industrial age, new research suggests.
The companies range from investor-owned firms – household names such as Chevron, Exxon and BP – to state-owned and government-run firms.
The analysis, which was welcomed by the former vice-president Al Gore as a "crucial step forward" found that the vast majority of the firms were in the business of producing oil, gas or coal, found the analysis, which has been published in the journal Climatic Change.
"There are thousands of oil, gas and coal producers in the world," climate researcher and author Richard Heede at the Climate Accountability Institute in Colorado said. "But the decision makers, the CEOs, or the ministers of coal and oil if you narrow it down to just one person, they could all fit on a Greyhound bus or two."
Half of the estimated emissions were produced just in the past 25 years – well past the date when governments and corporations became aware that rising greenhouse gas emissions from the burning of coal and oil were causing dangerous climate change.
Many of the same companies are also sitting on substantial reserves of fossil fuel which – if they are burned – puts the world at even greater risk of dangerous climate change.
Climate change experts said the data set was the most ambitious effort so far to hold individual carbon producers, rather than governments, to account.
The United Nations climate change panel, the IPCC, warned in September that at current rates the world stood within 30 years of exhausting its "carbon budget" – the amount of carbon dioxide it could emit without going into the danger zone above 2C warming.
The former US vice-president and environmental champion, Al Gore, said the new carbon accounting could re-set the debate about allocating blame for the climate crisis.
Gore in his comments said the analysis underlined that it should not fall to governments alone to act on climate change.
"This study is a crucial step forward in our understanding of the evolution of the climate crisis.
The public and private sectors alike must do what is necessary to stop global warming," Gore told the Guardian. "Those who are historically responsible for polluting our atmosphere have a clear obligation to be part of the solution."
Between them, the 90 companies on the list of top emitters produced 63% of the cumulative global emissions of industrial carbon dioxide and methane between 1751 to 2010, amounting to about 914 gigatonne CO2 emissions, according to the research.
All but seven of the 90 were energy companies producing oil, gas and coal.
The remaining seven were cement manufacturers.
The list of 90 companies included 50 investor-owned firms – mainly oil companies with widely recognised names such as Chevron, Exxon, BP , and Royal Dutch Shell and coal producers such as British Coal Corp, Peabody Energy and BHP Billiton.
Some 31 of the companies that made the list were state-owned companies such as Saudi Arabia's Saudi Aramco, Russia's Gazprom and Norway's Statoil.
Nine were government run industries, producing mainly coal in countries such as China, the former Soviet Union, North Korea and Poland, the host of this week's talks.
Experts familiar with Heede's research and the politics of climate change said they hoped the analysis could help break the deadlock in international climate talks.
"It seemed like maybe this could break the logjam," said Naomi Oreskes, professor of the history of science at Harvard. "There are all kinds of countries that have produced a tremendous amount of historical emissions that we do not normally talk about. We do not normally talk about Mexico or Poland or Venezuela. So then it's not just rich v poor, it is also producers v consumers, and resource rich v resource poor."
Michael Mann, the climate scientist, said he hoped the list would bring greater scrutiny to oil and coal companies' deployment of their remaining reserves. "What I think could be a game changer here is the potential for clearly fingerprinting the sources of those future emissions," he said. "It increases the accountability for fossil fuel burning. You can't burn fossil fuels without the rest of the world knowing about it."
Others were less optimistic that a more comprehensive accounting of the sources of greenhouse gas emissions would make it easier to achieve the emissions reductions needed to avoid catastrophic climate change.
John Ashton, who served as UK's chief climate change negotiator for six years, suggested that the findings reaffirmed the central role of fossil fuel producing entities in the economy.
"The challenge we face is to move in the space of not much more than a generation from a carbon-intensive energy system to a carbonneutral energy system. If we don't do that we stand no chance of keeping climate change within the 2C threshold," Ashton said.
"By highlighting the way in which a relatively small number of large companies are at the heart of the current carbon-intensive growth model, this report highlights that fundamental challenge."
Meanwhile, Oreskes, who has written extensively about corporate-funded climate denial, noted that several of the top companies on the list had funded the climate denial movement.
"For me one of the most interesting things to think about was the overlap of large scale producers and the funding of disinformation campaigns, and how that has delayed action," she said.
The data represents eight years of exhaustive research into carbon emissions over time, as well as the ownership history of the major emitters.
The companies' operations spanned the globe, with company headquarters in 43 different countries. "These entities extract resources from every oil, natural gas and coal province in the world, and process the fuels into marketable products that are sold to consumers on every nation on Earth," Heede writes in the paper.
The largest of the investor-owned companies were responsible for an outsized share of emissions.
Nearly 30% of emissions were produced just by the top 20 companies, the research found.
By Heede's calculation, government-run oil and coal companies in the former Soviet Union produced more greenhouse gas emissions than any other entity – just under 8.9% of the total produced over time.
China came a close second with its government-run entities accounting for 8.6% of total global emissions.
ChevronTexaco was the leading emitter among investor-owned companies, causing 3.5% of greenhouse gas emissions to date, with Exxon not far behind at 3.2%. In third place, BP caused 2.5% of global emissions to date.
The historic emissions record was constructed using public records and data from the US department of energy's Carbon Dioxide Information and Analysis Centre, and took account of emissions all along the supply chain.
The centre put global industrial emissions since 1751 at 1,450 gigatonnes.
The Great Wage Slowdown of the 21st Century
American workers have been receiving meager pay increases for so long now that it’s reasonable to talk in sweeping terms about the trend.
It is the great wage slowdown of the 21st century.
The typical American family makes less than the typical family did 15 years ago, a statement that hadn’t previously been true since the Great Depression.
Even as the unemployment rate has fallen in the last few years, wage growth has remained mediocre.
Last week’s jobs report offered the latest evidence: The jobless rate fell below 6 percent, yet hourly pay has risen just 2 percent over the last year, not much faster than inflation. The combination has puzzled economists and frustrated workers.
Of course, there is a long history of pessimistic predictions about dark new economic eras, and those predictions are generally wrong.
But things have been disappointing for long enough now that we should take the pessimistic case seriously.
In some fundamental way, the economy seems broken.
I probably don’t need to persuade most readers of this view, so the better way to think about the issue may be to consider the optimistic case.
And last week, in his most substantive speech on domestic policy in months, President Obama laid out that case.
It included the usual set of glass-half-full statistics and wishful-thinking proposals that officeholders talk about during political campaigns. More notable, though, was that Mr. Obama — speaking at Northwestern University — explained why he thought wage growth was likely to pick up.
“If we take the necessary steps to build on the foundation,” he said, after a litany of the good news, “I promise you, over the next 10 years we’ll build an economy where wage growth is stronger than it was in the past three decades.”
He may or may not be right about that.
But the speech laid out the issues in unusually clear terms.
And by any definition, the great wage slowdown — or its end — is one of the most important subjects in the country today.
You can think of Mr. Obama’s argument as falling into two categories (even if he didn’t say so): the reasons that overall economic growth may accelerate, and the reasons that middle- and low-income workers may benefit more from that growth than they have lately.
Both factors have contributed to the wage slowdown.
The size of the pie hasn’t been growing very fast, and most of the increases have gone to a small share of already well-fed families.
The Great Wage Slowdown
Since 2000, weekly earnings for low- and middle-income workers are nearly unchanged, after adjusting for inflation. Earnings for workers at the 90th percentile have risen.
Cumulative percent change since 2000.
(Please see the article for certain graphs that would not copy over to the forum - http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/07/upshot/the-great-wage-slowdown-of-the-21st-century.html?_r=0&abt=0002&abg=1
As for the other entry in the ledger, the biggest reason to think economic growth may translate more directly into wage gains is the turnabout in health costs.
After years of rapid increases, they have slowed sharply in the last three years. Mr. Obama likes to give more credit to the 2010 health care law than most observers do, but he’s not wrong about the trend’s significance.
Health costs take a direct bite out of paychecks.
Employers don’t have some secret stash of money to pay for health insurance; when it becomes more expensive, there is less money left for salaries.
It’s no accident that the best period of wage growth in the last 40 years — the late 1990s — was also a period of quiescent health inflation.
If you’re skeptical that these trends are actually encouraging, take a minute to play an alternate-history game.
Imagine someone had come to you a few years ago and predicted that health inflation would slow sharply, that the cost of oil would be flat, that the United States would soon produce more oil than it imports and that both the high-school and college graduation rates would rise.
Most of us would not have replied: Yeah, that all sounds right.
But here’s where I become less optimistic than the president.
Imagine that same prognosticator had added one more bit of clairvoyance: Despite all those positive trends, the real median weekly pay of full-time workers in mid-2014 would be slightly lower than it was in mid-2011.
Or than it was in mid-2008, the year before Mr. Obama took office.
Or in mid-2000.
It’s certainly possible that we’re on the verge of a pay surge, much as we were in the mid-1990s, when the situation also seemed bleak.
It’s also possible that the forces behind the great wage slowdown — from globalization to our often-sclerotic government to (at least for many workers) technological change — are still more powerful than the positive forces.
In that case, the wage slowdown won’t end until the country makes much more progress in improving education, cutting medical waste and energy costs and creating a more responsive, nimble government.
Either way, the great wage slowdown, or the end of it, will help set the tone for American life in the coming decade.
It has already done so in the century’s first 15 years, causing widespread unhappiness with the country’s direction and leading voters to shift partisan directions multiple times.
The political turmoil isn’t likely to end until the economic reality changes.
American workers have been receiving meager pay increases for so long now that it’s reasonable to talk in sweeping terms about the trend.
It is the great wage slowdown of the 21st century.
The typical American family makes less than the typical family did 15 years ago, a statement that hadn’t previously been true since the Great Depression.
Even as the unemployment rate has fallen in the last few years, wage growth has remained mediocre.
Last week’s jobs report offered the latest evidence: The jobless rate fell below 6 percent, yet hourly pay has risen just 2 percent over the last year, not much faster than inflation. The combination has puzzled economists and frustrated workers.
Of course, there is a long history of pessimistic predictions about dark new economic eras, and those predictions are generally wrong.
But things have been disappointing for long enough now that we should take the pessimistic case seriously.
In some fundamental way, the economy seems broken.
I probably don’t need to persuade most readers of this view, so the better way to think about the issue may be to consider the optimistic case.
And last week, in his most substantive speech on domestic policy in months, President Obama laid out that case.
It included the usual set of glass-half-full statistics and wishful-thinking proposals that officeholders talk about during political campaigns. More notable, though, was that Mr. Obama — speaking at Northwestern University — explained why he thought wage growth was likely to pick up.
“If we take the necessary steps to build on the foundation,” he said, after a litany of the good news, “I promise you, over the next 10 years we’ll build an economy where wage growth is stronger than it was in the past three decades.”
He may or may not be right about that.
But the speech laid out the issues in unusually clear terms.
And by any definition, the great wage slowdown — or its end — is one of the most important subjects in the country today.
You can think of Mr. Obama’s argument as falling into two categories (even if he didn’t say so): the reasons that overall economic growth may accelerate, and the reasons that middle- and low-income workers may benefit more from that growth than they have lately.
Both factors have contributed to the wage slowdown.
The size of the pie hasn’t been growing very fast, and most of the increases have gone to a small share of already well-fed families.
The Great Wage Slowdown
Since 2000, weekly earnings for low- and middle-income workers are nearly unchanged, after adjusting for inflation. Earnings for workers at the 90th percentile have risen.
Cumulative percent change since 2000.
(Please see the article for certain graphs that would not copy over to the forum - http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/07/upshot/the-great-wage-slowdown-of-the-21st-century.html?_r=0&abt=0002&abg=1
As for the other entry in the ledger, the biggest reason to think economic growth may translate more directly into wage gains is the turnabout in health costs.
After years of rapid increases, they have slowed sharply in the last three years. Mr. Obama likes to give more credit to the 2010 health care law than most observers do, but he’s not wrong about the trend’s significance.
Health costs take a direct bite out of paychecks.
Employers don’t have some secret stash of money to pay for health insurance; when it becomes more expensive, there is less money left for salaries.
It’s no accident that the best period of wage growth in the last 40 years — the late 1990s — was also a period of quiescent health inflation.
If you’re skeptical that these trends are actually encouraging, take a minute to play an alternate-history game.
Imagine someone had come to you a few years ago and predicted that health inflation would slow sharply, that the cost of oil would be flat, that the United States would soon produce more oil than it imports and that both the high-school and college graduation rates would rise.
Most of us would not have replied: Yeah, that all sounds right.
But here’s where I become less optimistic than the president.
Imagine that same prognosticator had added one more bit of clairvoyance: Despite all those positive trends, the real median weekly pay of full-time workers in mid-2014 would be slightly lower than it was in mid-2011.
Or than it was in mid-2008, the year before Mr. Obama took office.
Or in mid-2000.
It’s certainly possible that we’re on the verge of a pay surge, much as we were in the mid-1990s, when the situation also seemed bleak.
It’s also possible that the forces behind the great wage slowdown — from globalization to our often-sclerotic government to (at least for many workers) technological change — are still more powerful than the positive forces.
In that case, the wage slowdown won’t end until the country makes much more progress in improving education, cutting medical waste and energy costs and creating a more responsive, nimble government.
Either way, the great wage slowdown, or the end of it, will help set the tone for American life in the coming decade.
It has already done so in the century’s first 15 years, causing widespread unhappiness with the country’s direction and leading voters to shift partisan directions multiple times.
The political turmoil isn’t likely to end until the economic reality changes.
90-year-old Fort Lauderdale man Arnold Abbott made national headlines this week after he was cited twice for feeding the homeless,
which is illegal in 33 cities across the US.
Meanwhile, it's perfectly legal for corporations and the 1% to buy Congress.
Consultant On Homelessness: Cities Enable The Poor : NPR
http://www.npr.org/2014/11/09/362737965/consultant-on-homelessness-cities-enable-the-poor
I like how he (Marbut) took to the streets to get a better understanding of the problem. That's someone looking for a solution.
I totally agree that economic structures cause poverty, although people think that whatever the cause they would like to relieve the suffering and there's often positive feedback from acting compassionately, whatever your ideological persuasion, but it is enabling, I totally agree with that.
If you give money or food to someone you are not fighting poverty or striking back at capitalism or anything like that you're just literally giving money or food to someone, if you'd not give out free money or food to your peers at work, in university or where ever then why would you do it to a stranger whose very possibly coasting along on a hard luck story?
All the traditions or encouragement handed down from past generations to be generous, to give and not to count the cost etc. assume levels of honesty and reciprocity which have disappeared, they're also about people being detached from their wealth, making it a good servant rather than a bad master, opposed to materialism etc.
They arent practical remedies for poverty, certainly not poverty today.
Feeding someone enables them to continue to live in homelessness? As opposed to what? Not feeding them because we pretend like we don’t have enough money and liquidating the bodies when they turn up dead?
Mentally right people don’t want to be homeless.
We don’t cry foul and cut corporate welfare programs, but you can think of reasons not to feed someone who is perpetually hungry by their state of existence at that time?
Yes, I can think of reasons too…and they all involve selfishness, greed, hate, and mistrust.
Honestly?
You see…it’s statements like this that make it really hard for me not to call someone who proclaims to be “Christian” out. And you can roll your eyes all you want because I know you are, but how does that jive with what Jesus taught?
Would he not find that statement all kinds of wrong?
OK, I'll try and sort out this mess.
Provide them with opportunities out of poverty as opposed to means of carrying on in poverty. Eliminating poverty traps and being critically aware that individuals and systems prefer a familiar bad situation to the promise of a better one but requiring change.
OK, who is saying this? I certainly am not saying that, do you want people to depend on you to be fed? Do you like feeding people? (That's just an example of the sort of dicussion tactics you just used, a much less severe or extreme example but it should make the point).
We're discussing mental health now? Well, enabling does feature in some psychologically disordered scenarios, like co-dependency.
We? Who is we? The topic is corporate welfare now? OK, well, it is another, seperate topic but I'll try and keep a pace with all this jumping around, I dont believe that corporate welfare programs are a good idea. Yes I can think of reasons not to feed someone yes, I sort of think its weird that we are having this conversation about people in a first world country in which obescity is a greater problem than famine to be honest but anyway.
I think you are emoting now. I think you were to begin with too but its reaching the outburst point. Emoting responses to problems will not solve them, even with infinite personal resources they wont go away with that response, in fact, it will make it increasing hard to think about problems, talk about problems and consider solutions at all.
We're discussing religion now? Oh, alright, you're sure you want to go there because I highly suspect religion isnt your strong suit and I may be more learned in this matter than you and may just prove to be another embarrassment?
How could you possibly know that?
And what did Jesus teach?
Are you talking about the good samaritan? Who was not destitute but had money in his pocket?
Maybe its the miracle of the loaves and fishes, were Jesus did not bring the loaves and fishes but responded to the sharing of another by making it go further, one miracle amongst many others and certainly not the whole of his ministry.
Maybe its the do unto others as you would have them do unto you, well, I'm pretty sure that message was not meant to a ringing endorsement of co-dependency or enabling someone to remain trapped in poverty.
Given that it was just consistent teaching of earlier Jewish beliefs that you must Love others and you love yourself, it would mean that its necessary to take care of yourself first and I'm pretty sure that would involve avoiding co-dependency and entering into enabling relationships with others.
Did you mean the parable of the talents? In which the landlord distributes wealth but then becomes enraged at the individual who failed to invest it wisely and add to his fortune?
The parable that it is harder for a camel to pass through the eye of the needle than a rich man enter heaven? Well the eye of a needle was an archway and camels without burdens, ie material goods, could clear it, camels loaded up with material goods could not, the parable is about materialism and how it burdens individuals rather than sets them free.
That's just a cursory breeze over a couple of topics but like I say I dont really know what teaching you are referring to.
I think I could talk about it with him.
Provide them with opportunities out of poverty as opposed to means of carrying on in poverty. Eliminating poverty traps and being critically aware that individuals and systems prefer a familiar bad situation to the promise of a better one but requiring change.
OK, who is saying this? I certainly am not saying that, do you want people to depend on you to be fed? Do you like feeding people? (That's just an example of the sort of dicussion tactics you just used, a much less severe or extreme example but it should make the point).
We're discussing mental health now? Well, enabling does feature in some psychologically disordered scenarios, like co-dependency.
We? Who is we? The topic is corporate welfare now? OK, well, it is another, seperate topic but I'll try and keep a pace with all this jumping around, I dont believe that corporate welfare programs are a good idea. Yes I can think of reasons not to feed someone yes, I sort of think its weird that we are having this conversation about people in a first world country in which obescity is a greater problem than famine to be honest but anyway.
I think you are emoting now. I think you were to begin with too but its reaching the outburst point. Emoting responses to problems will not solve them, even with infinite personal resources they wont go away with that response, in fact, it will make it increasing hard to think about problems, talk about problems and consider solutions at all.
We're discussing religion now? Oh, alright, you're sure you want to go there because I highly suspect religion isnt your strong suit and I may be more learned in this matter than you and may just prove to be another embarrassment?
How could you possibly know that?
And what did Jesus teach?
Are you talking about the good samaritan? Who was not destitute but had money in his pocket?
Maybe its the miracle of the loaves and fishes, were Jesus did not bring the loaves and fishes but responded to the sharing of another by making it go further, one miracle amongst many others and certainly not the whole of his ministry.
Maybe its the do unto others as you would have them do unto you, well, I'm pretty sure that message was not meant to a ringing endorsement of co-dependency or enabling someone to remain trapped in poverty.
Given that it was just consistent teaching of earlier Jewish beliefs that you must Love others and you love yourself, it would mean that its necessary to take care of yourself first and I'm pretty sure that would involve avoiding co-dependency and entering into enabling relationships with others.
Did you mean the parable of the talents? In which the landlord distributes wealth but then becomes enraged at the individual who failed to invest it wisely and add to his fortune?
The parable that it is harder for a camel to pass through the eye of the needle than a rich man enter heaven? Well the eye of a needle was an archway and camels without burdens, ie material goods, could clear it, camels loaded up with material goods could not, the parable is about materialism and how it burdens individuals rather than sets them free.
That's just a cursory breeze over a couple of topics but like I say I dont really know what teaching you are referring to.
I think I could talk about it with him.
I’m sorry, but how have we let those in power twist people’s perception into demonizing the poor themselves instead of demonizing poverty?
Time and time again, we let those who’s profit off of such economic models try to get us to hate the poor…to look a them as lazy. I have been well off myself, and I have also been on food stamps when I had no other choice…I’ll tell you what, I was so incredibly grateful to have that social safety net…that is the reason we all pay for such things with our taxes…this is also why is is cut first by the wealthy…because it will never ever pay out to them. Once you reach a certain level of wealth, you can pretty much guarantee (unless you do something incredibly dumb) that you won’t ever have to worry about being homeless, or your children, or their’s after that.
At least infrastructure gives them usable roads to drive their Bentleys’ on…taxes to feed the poor seemingly have no benefit to them whatsoever.
That would be where they are dead wrong…and I mean DEAD.
IMO, those who are having a free for all at the top…who are raping the middle class by not paying them living wages, or any benefits, who are stealing from retirement accounts, who are handing out bonuses with taxpayer bailout money, who continuously look for any way they can pillage the middle class and grab more and more of the wealth available…they are going to have a rude awakening…possibly in the form of rioters kicking in their doors.
It’s insanity.
This should really be read -
Infuriating Facts About Our Disappearing Middle-Class Wealth
November 4, 2014
by Paul Buchheit
People in the US and around the world are being rapidly divided into two classes, the well-to-do and the lower-income majority. (Photo: mSeattle/flickr CC 2.0)
A recent posting detailed how upper middle class Americans are rapidly losing ground to the one-percenters who averaged $5 million in wealth gains over just three years.
It also noted that the global 1 percent has increased their wealth from $100 trillion to $127 trillion in just three years.
The information came from the Credit Suisse 2014 Global Wealth Databook (GWD), which goes on to reveal much more about the disappearing middle class.
1. Each Year Since the Recession, America’s Richest 1 percent Have Made More Than the Cost of All US Social Programs
In effect, a reverse transfer from the poor to the rich. Even as conservatives blame Social Security for being too costly.
Much of the 1 percent wealth just sits there, accumulating more wealth.
The numbers are nearly unfathomable.
Depending on the estimate, the 1 percent took in anywhere from $2.3 trillion to $5.7 trillion per year. (All numeric analysis is detailed here.)
Even the smaller estimate of $2.3 trillion per year is more than the budget for Social Security ($860 billion), Medicare ($524 billion), Medicaid ($304 billion), and the entire safety net ($286 billion for SNAP, WIC [Women, Infants, Children], Child Nutrition, Earned Income Tax Credit, Supplemental Security Income, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families and Housing).
2. Almost None of the New 1 percent Wealth Led To Innovation and Jobs
In 2005, for every $1 of financial wealth there was 66 cents of non-financial (home) wealth.
Ten years later, for every $1 of financial wealth there was just 43 cents of non-financial (home) wealth.
What happens to all this financial wealth?
Over 90 percent of the assets owned by millionaires are held in low-risk investments (bonds and cash), the stock market and real estate.
Business startup costs made up less than 1 percent of the investments of high net worth individuals in North America in 2011.
A recent study found that less than 1 percent of all entrepreneurs came from very rich or very poor backgrounds.
They come from the middle class.
On the corporate side, stock buybacks are employed to enrich executives rather than to invest in new technologies.
In 1981, major corporations were spending less than 3 percent of their combined net income on buybacks, but in recent years they’ve been spending up to 95 percent of their profits on buybacks and dividends.
3. Just 47 Wealthy Americans Own More Than Half of the US Population
Oxfam reported that just 85 people own as much as half the world.
Here in the US, with nearly a third of the world’s wealth, just 47 individuals own more than all 160 million people (about 60 million households) below the median wealth level of about $53,000.
4. The Upper Middle Class of America Owns a Smaller Percentage of Wealth Than the Corresponding Groups in All Major Nations Except Russia and Indonesia
The upper middle class in the US, defined as everyone in the top half below the richest 20 percent, owns 11.9 percent of the wealth.
Indonesia at 10.5 percent and Russia at 7.5 percent are worse off, but in all other nations the corresponding upper middle classes own 12 to 27 percent of the wealth.
America’s bottom half compares even less favorably to the world: dead last, with just 1.3 percent of national wealth.
Only Russia comes close to that dismal share, at 1.9 percent.
The bottom half in all other nations own 2.6 to 10.2 percent of the wealth.
5. Ten Percent of the World’s Total Wealth Was Taken by the Global 1 percent in the Past Three Years
As in the US, the middle class is disappearing at the global level.
An incredible one of every ten dollars of global wealth was transferred to the elite 1 percent in just three years.
A level of inequality deemed unsustainable three years ago has gotten even worse.
Solution: A Financial Transaction Tax (FTT)
More appropriately called a Financial Speculation Tax, it would help to limit the speculative trading that contributed to the financial meltdown in 2008.
The FTT has extraordinary revenue-generating potential, on a global scale.
The Bank for International Settlements reported in 2008 that annual trading in derivatives had surpassed $1.14 quadrillion.
Just one-tenth of 1 percent of that is a trillion dollars.
It’s also a fair tax. While average Americans pay up to a 10 percent sales tax on shoes for the kids, millionaire investors pay a zero sales tax on financial purchases.
They pay just a .00002 percent SEC fee (2 cents for every thousand dollars) for a financial instrument.
In addition, the FTT is easy to administer and difficult to evade.
Clearing houses already review all trades, and serve as collection agencies for transaction fees.
And as evidence of its suitability, three of the top five countries on the Heritage Foundation’s Index of Economic Freedom are Singapore, Hong Kong and Switzerland, all of whom have FTTs.
People in the US and around the world are being rapidly divided into two classes, the well-to-do and the lower-income majority.
This severing of society will change only when progressive thinkers (and doers) agree on a single, manageable solution that will stop the easy flow of wealth to the privileged few.
[FONT=arial !important]
Paul Buchheit is a college teacher, an active member of US Uncut Chicago, founder and developer of social justice and educational websites (UsAgainstGreed.org, PayUpNow.org, RappingHistory.org), and the editor and main author of “American Wars: Illusions and Realities”(Clarity Press).
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Read the above post about what is happening here in the US…it’s insane.
The problem with creating programs to help the poor, especially here in the US…irregardless of if it is enabling them or giving them a helping hand, the monies are being cut because those who control such monies are corrupt and could generally give a flying fuck what their constituents want…here in the US votes don’t matter anymore don’t you know…money talks and bullshit walks.
Do I like feeding people…I have volunteered for many programs throughout my life that had to do with helping the homeless or those in poverty…yes, I like feeding people. Because we are all human beings and we live in an extremely wealthy and well to do country in the world and should not have such a problem as we have now.
The fact of the matter is that if all funding to poverty programs were cut, people would die…they cannot run strictly on the good will of donations…donations that the majority of which come from the middle class…unless it directly benefits the rich like a University wing with their inbred name on it…the middle class are the ones’ who have been burdened the greatest amount.
So yes…bodies in the streets.
Yes, we should discuss mental health because that is an underdressed issue in the US…it carries all sorts of stigmas that I doubt you would find elsewhere.
Up until recently, you had to have very expensive health insurance to have mental health also covered…this lack of care and of the issue being kicked down the road has for sure contributed to the homeless population currently.
Finally, with the ACA it is mandated that it MUST be covered by all basic health insurance plans…you see some of the bullshit that must be picked through?
I don’t think I’m emoting…I think that your idea of not feeding the homeless because you feel it to be enabling is wrong…if you think I’m emoting too much for you, you are welcome to not belong to a forum full of emoters. I am always amazed when you inevitably bring this up…lolololol.
Tell me…would Jesus pass bill A: (which reads) we plan to cut the 2 billion dollar deficit from programs like our inflated military, and tax loopholes that the rich have been exploiting for decades now.
Or
Bill B: We plan to cut the 2 billion dollar deficit from social security, from food stamps, from medical care.
????
It actually is that simple.
Those who are profiting by gouging the middle class can only gouge so deep before irreparable damage is done.
I think maybe you should talk to Jesus. I don’t think Jesus would agree with any non-humanist position.