Imagine winning a 20 million dollar lottery. Pretty sweet, right? Enough cash to live in the lap of luxury for generations.
Now times that by a thousand. This is what the world’s billionaires contend with – a net worth thousands of times bigger than what most humans would consider a fortune.
Unbelievable, isn’t it? Despite being the richest humans on the planet, they still want more for themselves. Billions of dollars just isn’t enough. It’s like they have the same fear we all share, and all the money in the world won’t get rid of it.
Still, as nice as it would be to temper the growing gap between the super-rich and the rest of us, it seems there aren’t enough elites, like Buffet and Gates, willing to fetter their own expanding wallets for the sake of the planet.
This puts the onus on the rest of us – those of us who aren’t the 1% of the 1% – to stand up and say NO! This economic model simply will not suffice! We want a more just world for everybody, and if you aren’t going to make it happen we will do it ourselves!
So what are they up to, you ask? Why, creating a caste system for airport security! Now CEOs, celebrities, politicians and other mucky-mucks won’t have to settle for simple first class seating. Instead, they can also snub their noses at the masses while cruising past screening lines with their first class security clearance. (more…)
Navigating between extinction and enslavement, brave humankind could very well avoid both to reach compelling new heights.
Neils Bohr once said that prediction is very difficult, especially if it’s about the future. Despite the words of caution from the pioneering quantum physicist, I’d like to offer you my take on the three potential futures that we, as a species, are facing.
The first is extinction. This is where the human race is no more because we’ve wiped ourselves out in some foolish conflict or scientific mishap. Either that, or the universe conspires to eliminate us using it’s vast arsenal. There’s not a lot we can do to avoid this, apart from building peace instead of war.
The good news, despite what the mainstream media may want us to believe, is that humankind is actually the most peaceful we’ve ever been. (more…)
There is a circle of about 70000 people, far less than 1% of the world’s population, who are considered ultra high net worth individuals, meaning they personally control over 30 million in US dollars. Like modern day royalty, these privileged few sit atop the world’s power structures, and have tremendous ability to dictate how the world works.
As top dogs of earth’s largest corporations and overseers of all the major industries, these select few get to expand their already massive fortunes off the backs of everyone else, many of whom are starving.
Yet we rarely hear about this because earth’s financial frontrunners also control the planet’s mainstream media companies, of which there are now 6 – down from 50 just a few decades ago. This big 6 monopoly provides well over 90% of what the world reads and hears as news and information. And every one of these 6 companies share the same general agenda for profits, along with a broader theme of keeping the public uninformed, fearful and distracted, all of which makes the population easier to govern.
Speaking of government, the top 70000 also have incredible sway when it comes to politics. It takes huge sums of money to run for high office, and even more to win. This means politicians are most often indebted to the people and businesses who’ve paid for their election victory. Once in office, they will repay the favor by bending the system towards their benefactors – undermining democracy and corrupting the political landscape.
Over time, as the system keeps catering towards to business interests, the whole world starts to functions like a giant corporation, where everything – people, life, and even the air we breathe – all get turned into commodities from which to extract maximum profits.
So, with that said, it may seem like this super rich circle are the most powerful group on earth, but there is a group with even more influence. It’s an ancient international organization with enough power to completely crush the top tiny percent if they were so inclined. This supremely powerful group is…. the entire human race. Its The 7 billion humans hold the true power, not the super-rich 70000.
But only by working together can we unleash this limitless force. The stronger we make our global community of people, the more we can seize the reigns that control the planet, and help steer humanity towards a brighter future for everybody.
The Grinch is alive and well in America. Only instead of stealing presents from under the tree, modern day Scrooges have been pilfering the pockets of entire populations.
In his latest article, Les Leopold unveils 6 sneaky ways corporate elites function as reverse Robin Hoods, stealing from the poor to give to the rich:
1 in 2, have fallen into poverty or are scraping by on earnings that classify them as low income. 1 in 5 American children live in poverty. What’s going on here? You would think we were a poor country. But we’re not. We’re filthy rich, but the money is hidden away by the 1 percent while poverty rises all around.
Just how are the richest of the rich getting away with the greatest robbery of all time? Leopold breaks it down for us:
1. Productivity continues to rise but the 99 percent doesn’t share in the benefits. The productivity lines and wage lines have pulled apart so that trillions of dollars that once went to the average American are now going almost entirely to the super-rich.
2. Large corporations pay next to nothing in state and local taxes. A recent joint report reveals that 265 large corporations avoided $42.7 billion in taxes from 2008 to 2010.
3. Money that should go toward the common good pours into the pockets of the 1 percent. The overall tax rate for the super-rich has plummeted from 70% to less than what the average secretary pays.
4. The biggest corporations are sitting on a mountain of cash, yet they refuse to invest more than $1 trillion in cash because of the lack of consumer demand.
5. Hedge funds have over $1.917 trillionin misused investment capital. Most of this speculative capital serves no broader economic or social purpose, jumping in and out of the markets in nanoseconds using high-speed automatic trading techniques that extract hidden taxes from the rest of us.
6. Many of the 1 percent cheat on their taxes. The tax revenues lost in the U.S. are estimated to be $337 billion a year according to a November report by the Tax Justice Network.
So there you have it. While the rest of us are sipping our egg nog and enjoying the company of our friends and family, behemoth businesses are tirelessly enriching the wealthy few while systematically crushing the middle and lower classes.
Santa might be tempted to give these corporate fatcats a well-deserved lump of coal in their stockings, but they’d probably just use it as a tax write off.
So here comes Batman – much like the Arab spring, the riots in Europe, and the Occupy Movement – rising to the occasion and taking out the trash. Not necessarily because he wants to, but because it has to be done.
Take heed, super-rich people. Your days of exploitation and oligarchy are coming to an end. Be like Bill Gates and Warren Buffet before it’s too late!
If you aren’t outraged at the current state of the world today, it’s probably because you aren’t paying attention.
Check out this graph, showing how everybody has been losing wealth, except the extremely rich who’ve been making record earnings.
If everyone were growing richer, there wouldn’t be such an outpouring of discontent. But that is clearly not what’s been happening. Instead, the 1% have been gaining their wealth by systematically stripping it off everyone else.
There’s a whole host of infographics supporting this notion, in case you need to see more. But, simply put, mega-banks, corporations and CEOs are looting the public coffers with the help of their hired politicians and lawmakers. This is what has been allowing the world’s wealthiest to run away with all the chips.
But that’s not all, we have a trillion dollar military industrial complex, harvesting wars to secure corporate interests and rob entire populations of desperately needed infrastructure, all the while murdering millions of innocent lives.
As well, nearly a fifth of the human race is starving to death. Humankind already has the means to alleviate much of this suffering, but the powers that be seem more concerned with cementing their positions rather than improving the world in which we live.
Such pressing issues are not just going to simply go away. And neither is the discontent they provoke. In fact, these are the very woes which are fueling the great social awakening.
We’ve been discussing the problems, and we’ve discovered practical solutions. Now, finally, we are coming together to really do something about it.
A great uprising approaches. The world’s poor and middle class are set to gang up and overthrow the wealthiest in a sort of peasant revolution that spans the globe.
The income gap between the rich and the poor is now the widest ever in modern history, meaning the cause for dissent is greater than it has ever been before.
This notion was echoed by the president of the European Central Bank, Jean-Claude Trichet, who says an unjust distribution of wealth is a threat to the stability of societies.
“Extremes of income inequality and restricted opportunity challenge our values and strain the fabric of our societies,” Mr. Trichet said at a Central Bankers Conference in Wyoming, “Growth skewed towards the few (or absent for a large minority) risks social tensions, undermines institutions and encourages policy failures of one kind or another.”
So as long as the income gap keeps growing, earth’s societies will continue to destabilize. As people everywhere continue to smarten up about the world’s horribly distorted economic system, eventually the dam will burst and something will be done. United behind common goals, humankind will rise up together, making the necessary changes to ensure these injustices can no longer persist.
An amazing side effect from this great upheaval will be the dismantling of any entities responsible for dividing the human race, namely, the military industrial complex. That’s right – war is going to be phased out as we systematically recognize how the real enemies aren’t people from other countries or religious groups, but rather, those who seek to exploit billions of people to generate billions in net worth for themselves.
Sweet! Peace and prosperity. What are we waiting for?
Buffett starts off his diatribe by highlighting the hypocrisy of the struggling US economy:
OUR leaders have asked for “shared sacrifice.” But when they did the asking, they spared me. I checked with my mega-rich friends to learn what pain they were expecting. They, too, were left untouched.
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[Preferential tax breaks] and other blessings are showered upon us by legislators in Washington who feel compelled to protect us, much as if we were spotted owls or some other endangered species. It’s nice to have friends in high places.
Buffett goes on to note how, despite the what the republican noise chamber may echo, higher taxes don’t necessarily scare away investment:
I have worked with investors for 60 years and I have yet to see anyone — not even when capital gains rates were 39.9 percent in 1976-77 — shy away from a sensible investment because of the tax rate on the potential gain.
People invest to make money, and potential taxes have never scared them off. And to those who argue that higher rates hurt job creation, I would note that a net of nearly 40 million jobs were added between 1980 and 2000. You know what’s happened since then: lower tax rates and far lower job creation.
To finish off his thesis, the billionaire Buffett laid out his plan:
[F]or those making more than $1 million — there were 236,883 such households in 2009 — I would raise rates immediately on taxable income in excess of $1 million, including, of course, dividends and capital gains. And for those who make $10 million or more — there were 8,274 in 2009 — I would suggest an additional increase in rate.
My friends and I have been coddled long enough by a billionaire-friendly Congress. It’s time for our government to get serious about shared sacrifice.
Wow! How stunningly refreshing. If more people ended up like Bill Gates or Warren Buffett after amassing such huge fortunes, our world would likely be a more peaceful, prosperous and just place to live.
Robert Reich, political economist and Secretary of Labor for the Clinton administration, enlightens us with two concise and compelling videos.
In the first, Reich describes the intricate collusion between the government and the defense industry, and how taxpayer money is being used by the war industry to secure even larger government contracts:
And for this video, Reich analyzes in detail how the super-rich have been running away with the economy, and in turn, the political system:
Two well-delivered and professionally produced clips, giving myself (along with many other film-makers) something to aspire to.
