Envy is basic to all Left-wing politics. The desire is to tear down the rich.
Let me give a recent example. The headline announced: The World’s Top 1% has 50% of the Wealth.
Shocking! Incredible! A sign of serious social inequity! Something must be done!
Here is reality. You may have heard of Pareto’s law. It is also known as the 20-80 law and the 80-20 law. It operates in almost every area of life. Read about it here. There is nothing controversial about it. There is also nothing new about it.
It was first discovered by economist Vilfredo Pareto in 1897. It has been studied for decades. No one knows why it operates, but it does.
The 20-80 distribution is scaled upward. Therefore:
Level 1. 20-80Level 2. 4-64 (.2 x 20% = 4; .8 x 80% = 64%)Level 3. 0.8-51 (.2 x 4% = .8%; .8 x 64% = 51%)
So, Pareto’s law tells us that about .8% of the population should own about 51% of the wealth. But we are told by the headline that the actual distribution is slightly more equal than what Pareto’s law would indicate. A larger percentage, 1%, owns less than 51%.
The haters of the free market never tell their readers about Pareto’s law, and how it has operated as far back as any economic historian has been able to trace capital ownership and income distribution[...]
Fact: The welfare state has not changed wealth redistribution. It has only changed who has gotten to the top, and by what rules. The defenders of the welfare state never admit this. The outcomes of their reform programs have conformed to Pareto’s law.
One of the biggest holes in their policies to deal with inequality - taxes and redistribution - is that the states with the highest taxes and most generous welfare have the highest Gini coefficients. The left never seems to question this and the media never seems to raise it. I think the reason it goes unquestioned is that it the left is not really concerned with inequality but obsessed with envy of those that have a lot more than them. BTW, the state that is most equal in terms of wealth distribution is good ol' Mississippi-- a state that is usually disparaged as part of the "ignorant South" by your typical envy driven lefty.
ReplyDeleteThe cruelties of property and privilege are always more ferocious
ReplyDeletethan the revenges of poverty and oppression. For the one aims at perpetuating resented injustice, the other is merely a momentary
passion soon appeased. C. L. R. James
The Mobsters of Wall Street by Jim Hightower
You would think that after racking up a record level of regulatory fines for the recidivist criminal operation overseen by the boss, a little self-reproachment might have done Dimon some good. But he chose a funny way (again meaning bizarre) to express remorse: He's been running a feel-sorry-for-me campaign, claiming that he's the victim of this sordid story!
Never mind his long rap sheet of malfeasance and incompetence, which cost so many so much, Jamie wails that everything from Wall Street's bailout to the pay of top bank executives have made people envious of bankers' success. Thus, he moans, an anti-Wall Street sentiment has spread through the public, prompting politicians and regulators to pander to this populist anger by persecuting enterprising bankers like him. He called the whole thing "unfair."
Good grief.
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2014/02/12
The Vampire Squid Strikes Again: The Mega Banks' Most Devious Scam Yet Banks are no longer just financing heavy industry. They are actually buying it up and inventing bigger, bolder and scarier scams than ever
Loosely translated, Masters was saying that there was a limited amount of money to be made simply trading commodities in the traditional legal manner. The solution? "We need to be active in the underlying physical commodity markets," she said, "in order to understand and make prices."
We need to make prices. The head of Chase's commodities division actually said this, out loud, and it speaks to both the general unlikelihood of God's existence and the consistently low level of competence of America's regulators that she was not immediately zapped between the eyebrows with a thunderbolt upon doing so. Instead, the government sat by and watched as a curious phenomenon developed at all of these new bank-owned warehouses, in the aluminum markets in particular.
The irony was incredible. After fucking up so badly that the government had to give them federal bank charters and bottomless wells of free cash to save their necks, the feds gave Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley hall passes to become cross-species monopolistic powers with almost limitless reach into any sectors of the economy.
Goldman and Chase – along with Glencore and Trafigura, a pair of giant Swiss-based conglomerates that were offshoots of a firm founded by notorious deceased commodities trader and known market manipulator Marc Rich – all made notably coincidental purchases of metals-warehousing companies in 2010.
The presence of these Marc Rich entities is particularly noteworthy. According to famed Forbes reporter Paul Klebnikov, who was assassinated in 2004 after years of reports on Russian corruption, Rich made a fortune in the early Nineties striking crooked deals with the Soviet bosses who controlled the U.S.S.R.'s supplies of raw materials – in particular commodities like zinc and aluminum. These deals helped create a fledgling class of profiteers among the bosses of the crumbling Soviet empire, a class that would go on years later to help push Russia out of its communist past into its kleptocratic present.
"He'd strike a deal with the local party boss, or the director of a state-owned company," Klebnikov said back in 2001. "He'd say, 'OK, you will sell me the [commodity] at five to 10 percent of the world-market price . . . and in return, I will deposit some of the profit I make by reselling it 10 times higher on the world market, and put the kickback in a Swiss bank account.'"
Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-vampire-squid-strikes-again-the-mega-banks-most-devious-scam-yet-20140212page=3#ixzz2t95YTc25
YES..I GUESS EVERYONE'S JUST JEALOUS???????????
You seem to be incapable of making the distinction between wealth obtained via crony capitalism and dishonesty vs wealth that was obtained by most through hard work and huge risk taking. Maybe this will help you see the light. Let's apply your line of thinking about the rich to the poor. Statistics show that a majority of the people that commit crimes come from poor families and are poor themselves. In order to prevent crime, the government should treat all poor people as possible criminals. This is essentially your line of thinking.
DeleteAnd by the way, I do think you are very, very jealous. Inferring that anyone that is rich is an evil tightfisted megalomaniac or worse a possible criminal, is your way of dealing with your jealousy.
Wednesday Night Special
ReplyDeleteWilliam White:
Ultra Easy Monetary Policy &
The Law Of Unintended Consequences
"Debtors Are Doing Well At Expense Of Creditors"
Interview with former deputy governor of the Bank of Canada William White, also a former head of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) .. discussion on the worrying levels of debt globally - is debt now higher than just before the financial crisis? .. White sees a lot of similarities today to just prior to the financial crisis .. discusses the potential for inflation to roar if the economy improves .. he wrote a paper entitled Ultra Easy Monetary Policy and the Law of Unintended Consequences .. worries if the Federal Reserve increases interest rates, it will create a burdening debt servicing cost on the massive U.S. national debt to the point that people start to worry about U.S. government deficits getting bigger very fast - as soon as people see that, "they will head for the hills because they will think financial repression will be the order of the day."
http://youtu.be/tCx-lKdRrPs
the financial side is winning out over real economy therefore inequality will persist.
I think part of the problem with this focus on wealth distribution by the Left has to do with the fact they consider "wealth" to be a global constant. They never reflect on the fact that more wealth is created every day, facilitated by those with capital(known as the wealthy!).
ReplyDeleteWealth is considered as a zero same game for the Left, they consider wealth as inert/fixed, in stasis.
edit "zero SUM game"
Delete