Think of a Nation like a Family. If you had a Family, and the Father ate an entire fowl, and a 1/2 pound of fried potatoes and two pints of Ale for dinner and the smallest, sickliest child went to bed hungry, with one dry biscuit and a small glass of water for his dinner, wouldn't we charge the well sated Father with Abuse and Misuse of his station in Life?? Our "Family" is highly dysfunctional. When you live in a 'Dog Eat Dog' society let us not forget the Dogs that were 'eaten'...
“Mine” “Owe” “Labour” Anyone who labours for themselves labours for love, and anyone who loves what they do - living a life - owes love ‘everything’… …if your labour of love bares no fruit, you live no life, you have nothing: you are ‘poor’. Stuff vs the stuff of life: true wealth
Too little competition makes people lazy. Too much makes them desperate. Enough money is good. More money is better. But too much money is pure poison for the soul. It brings about dangerous sense of entitlement along with a grotesque over estimation of one's true accomplishments.
I think their attitudes towards the other and taxation is disgusting. So you want to pay zero tax, and it’s justifiable because you’ll give money to your favourite museum or pet project? How does that in anyway help the people below you? They’re so disconnected from reality, isolated and insulated in their solid gold castles.
I came to this video because of the now famous ‘middle class should take a pay cut clip’ but MY WORD… this is full of insane quotes. You are right she is so far out of touch with reality it’s ridiculous. Im still listening but she just said that Bill Gates told her daughter it’s not about the money he hasn’t found a better burger than McDonald’s. So McD is the peak of quality no matter how much you spend. Then proceeded to say once you have a few million it’s all the same being a billionaire is NBD.
I’m actually speechless. The WEF is outrageous & needs to be stopped ‘The low skilled American worker is the most overpaid worker in the entire world’ She’s so far out of touch she might as well live at the North Pole. I can’t even believe this is real
She's too kind to the 1%. None of them merit their billions even if some them are brilliant. I think the real problem is that so many of us simply can't imagine a kinder, gentler, fairer, more honest world. It's possible. It already happens in small patches around the world. When we collectively decide that we've had enough we can reboot the system. Imagine, people...imagine a better world.
I'm considering going state to state and try to get it into people's minds that it's a class struggle. Something we can all, no matter political alignment, unite on. We are divided in so many ways. Menticide has already been committed. We should be within whats previously been called "the awakening" in our society. But nobody acts as far as I've seen.
You forget that man is an animal , you can take the lion out of the jungle but you cannot take the jungle out of a lion. Yours , is a communist dream , always winds up bad . Look for the happy medium as its the best ya can do .
John Kantor I'm sure you get this already by your comment but some people (maybe most) need spelled out... There are two kinds of globalization. Free Trade & Fair Trade. Fair Trade regulates against slave wages, child labor, fire trap factories, sweat shops, raping the land (clear-cutting forests, even old growth) and unfettered pollution virtually everywhere, on & on...... Free Trade allows for all those (that is unregulated) atrocities. I am assuming the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) is the Free Trade variety. That would explain the campaign to Rush it though Legislation without a chance for congress, the public or the press to examine or debate & also why it was negotiated in Private (secret). This is not wealth envy I'm pointing to... but for the well being of EVERYONE on this planet long term. Before it's too late, I hope people soon start to pay attention to this & vote & consume accordingly. Where you shop & spend your $, & also where you work is far more relative & effective in stopping this kind of abuse rather than who we vote for since most all Politicians are very beholden to their financial sponsors.
+John Kantor The little understood phenomenon that accompanies free trade is that land values are increased everywhere and since land and natural resources are highly concentrated in ownership historically the wealthy are further enriched at the expense of everyone else. The irony of this two fold: first because income from ownership of land and natural resources is unearned and second although everyone is benefitted by cheaper goods provided by free trade the benefit is sucked up in rising cost of access to land which is involved in everything and especially the cost of housing. Henry George pointed this out in the 19th century suggesting that free trade only benefitted everyone when taxation was shifted off of earned incomes from labor and capital onto land values. Unearned income from assets that give rise to it is estimated to be 40+% of GNP mostly owned by the wealthy. A shift in tax policy that would bring not only economic justice but a new land ethic honoring the earth rather than speculating with it is in order.
What do you think happens when you print the money into worthlessness? The rich aren't paid in dollars. They're paid in appreciating assets. You're paid in deprecating dollars.
I find it striking that a Canadian who comes to the U.S. boasts in the open of her speech that Canadian income is slightly hirer then the U.S. for the first time then finishes her speech by proposing for the sake of global equity that the U.S. middle class should be willing to make due with less.
So much history that Ms. Freeland omits in her summary at the end. Not only a Great Depression and 2 world wars; but also, a century of struggle between labor and capital. Such horrific events as the Ludlow Massacre, the Johnstown Flood, the Homestead Strike, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire, etc., etc., etc. We decided nearly 100 years ago in Western Society that allowing anticompetitive practices by powerful corporate interests (or trusts) was a bad idea and passed laws to limit those abuses of power. We also decided that labor standards which treated people as individual human beings rather than chattel were a good thing. It required a colossal struggle on the part of the working class, assassination attempts on wealthy / powerful capitalists like Henry Clay Frick, the assassination of William Mckinley, and countless other pivotal events to create a peaceful and prosperous society that benefited most many so than the few. Through globalization, nearly all of that work and sacrifice has been lost by giving monumental economic power to an elite who are not so nearly educated (nor intelligent) as they believe themselves to be. Less than a decade ago we saw workers in China (where the totalitarian hand of the state can be used to enforce labor policy) commit suicide en masse rather than suffer the conditions to which Western Capital, either directly or indirectly, subjected them. Overnight, individuals in China with authority over others (i.e. members of the CCP) became billionaire partners with Western Capitalists who had the connections to exploit low cost labor in China. It is complete and utter BS that automation is the cause of the great economic divide in the West. As Tesla discovered with their highly roboticized factory when they could not meet production goals, humans (and human intelligence) are not so easily replaced as those who are smitten with technology would like to believe. In many measurable ways, globalization has been a step backwards into the mistakes of the past with exploitative labor practices, environmental pollution, etc. Sure, when Western “Captains of Industry” such as George Eastman, Andrew Carnegie, Nelson Rockefeller, Howard Hughes, et. al., matured, discovered their mortality and began to realize that they couldn’t take their wealth with them ... they indulged their consciences with humanitarian projects like building hospitals or libraries or creating foundations for medical research (although, I’m not sure Rockefeller ever developed any altruistic tendencies). How much more stable (i.e. better) would human society be if we just simply did not allow individuals to accumulate so much wealth? Bill Gates only decided to commit a portion of his wealth to humanitarian endeavors after an ugly anti-trust investigation and having been deposed by the US Dept. of Justice. This problem with human nature isn’t new. It was expressed by Jesus in his answer when asked whether or not it was possible for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. And also, by Lord Baron Acton in the expression, “Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Should we not structure our economy, laws and society such that it prevents the accumulation of so much wealth and power into so few hands that will ultimately succumb to temptation and be corrupted?
I agree with your solution but not the reason for it. I do not blame the very rich. However I do believe that their income taxes should be raised and also a tax on net worth above a certain amount. But don’t prevent them from building businesses or accumulating assets. I can remember when the marginal rate was 92%. And the inheritance tax needs to be reinstated, family farm or not. Unfortunately the republicans have blocked both.
Exactly. The people stuck cleaning the toilets and raising the kids of the Plutocrats work just as hard. They deserve the same compensation, yet they are paid minimum wage and often live in the projects. How is that an equitable distribution?
Xena Zon The value of labor is not -- contra Marx -- determined by how long and how hard one works. If we rewarded the toilet scrubber as well as the heart surgeon there might not be a very good heart surgeon available when the toilet scrubber has a heart attack. Don't be envious of others. But do insist that people come by their wealth honestly and set money aside to help the needy or unlucky.
indrinita This is the problem with the word "value." Capitalism rewards people through marginal value, i.e. the addition to value already present. Marginal Value is the reason a liter of diamonds is worth more than a liter of water, even if diamonds contribute nothing to human survival. This makes it so all pre-existing value is taken completely for granted. We now have massive water crises because most of our society is busy chasing diamonds and not paying attention to the water supply. That same ignorance is going to lead to the destruction of the rest of our society if we let it.
They do contribute 400x the value as judged by the market, else the shareholders would vote to pay them less. The superior productivity of capitalism is undisputed and it does trickle down, or gush down. Cronyism and oligopoly is the main problem. Where water is concerned, the problem is that it is free or underpriced by the government. Privatize the water works and the price would go up and people would use less of it.
DucksDeLucks You are the most ridiculous brain washed moron. Regan's Trickle Down Economics is a farce. If it worked we would all be well off financially. Its been since 1980! that this insane premise by the idiot Melton Friedman was adopted by the political and economic maniacs in America. The entire world is poised on the brink of mass revolution and the we people who are the real power will cause the super rich to crumble. You live your life as if its real. Wake up. The pitchforks are coming.
I'm still trying to figure out why the "wealth gap" has any relevance to me. How does it impact me if the richest people are 500 times wealthier than I am or 5,000 times wealthier than I am? I'm still in the same place in relation to starvation and poverty which is of much more importance and interest to me. Besides, at what point is enough, enough? I can walk into a hospital and get routine medical procedures that even President Reagan couldn't get when he was in the oval office. Basic food and clothing is really cheap, (in the US) cars frequently last for 200,000 miles, for a few pennies worth of electricity I can get my cloths washed, run power tools, light my house. The list of things even the very poor enjoy in this country is endless. The poor in the US are probably better off than than the middle or upper middle class in most of the rest of the world. Why are they complaining just because some one else has more, even if it's a lot more? World wide the poor of the US are in the 1%. Should we tax them and give it to the poor in other countries? It would only be fair!! It typically takes a large aggregation of capital(and risk) to take the technological leaps forward that benefit us all and it takes large businesses to produce an economy of scale that makes all our products cheaper. I'm ok with the super rich getting richer. What I'm not ok with is their too sharp business practices and manipulation of the government that negatively impacts the rest of us. This is a problem with all people in any position of power, no matter what their wealth, they use that power to secure and defend their holding of that position. (Like a company selling a product with a high profit margin. They will use that profit to protect their turf and keep others out of the market. The higher the profit margin, the greater their ability and motivation to squash the competition) I would like to see all companies that produce pollution pay the cost of remediating the damage to the environment (partly as an incentive for them to find a cleaner way to do what they do) and I do think management's compensation shouldn't be so out of proportion to the worker's pay (if a company makes a good profit, give the employees a small share of that profit in the form of stock?) the gate keepers, the CEO's and such, shouldn't be allowed to use their position of control to enrich only themselves if their company is doing well but I am very opposed to much of an increase in the minimum wage. That will only hurt the people in poverty. (most of whom would very shortly be poor again even if they won the lottery. The issue isn't usually with how much money they make, it's the poor life decisions they make that keeps them in poverty) Anyone with a reason why I should care about the wealth gap, please drop me a line.
+Matt Obermiller Because pretty soon you and the group they see you in get in their way. I can only think the solution is a minimum wage and a maximum wage, and all compensation is mediated through some kind of algorthmic accounting AI machine bounded by people's basic needs on the low end, and the point where people become dangerous on the high end.
justgivemethetruth Interesting and plausible distopic wage scale. I would like like to see the people in control of a business not abuse their control of the purse strings by maximizing their own pay at the expense of the employees but I'm very against unions. Not sure what the solution is. I do know that ambition is one of the main driving forces of our economy and we mess with the harnessing of it at our peril. It just occured to me that if a CEO gets paid $50 million for a years work, how much of that will they keep, how much will go to taxes? Maybe the government likes big CEO paychecks because of the ultra high taxes they get off of them. Taxes that would be lower if some of that money went to the workers. I know the ultra rich are able to pay little or no tax, but maybe if it's from a paycheck or windfall from stock options, they can't avoid them very well.
+Matt Obermiller - What kind of question is that. If you pay bills and you are not well off, then it definitely has to do with you. It is a part a matter of what they see you are worth. You work, put in your hours, you help the company turn a profit. Then the CEO and board of directors take the lions share of it, take hidden bonuses and stock options, and low ball you as much as possible, even though you PHYSICALLY and DIRECTLY created the product or assisted the client. They make you "grateful" to just have a job make as little as you do, instead of the company being grateful of your hard work and going to bat for them and making their rich. So while you are struggling to make ends meet and they are increasing the percentage of their wealth off of your back, off of your sweat, this doesn't make you a little angry? What about when the company has a bad quarter and you get laid off while the person making $10 million keep their salary, making 500 times more than you did.
@@shadow3brigade3SBX3 Riding a moose probably is illegal in Canada, but if you've ever seen one up close, you would probably think twice before trying it. They stand about Six Feet at the shoulder, and they are not particularly friendly. I was chased by one a few years ago, trying to get a close up shot without a telephoto lens. - I didn't know I could run that fast ...
As she said, American workers are already paid least of the G7 yet all the CEOs can talk about is how overpaid they are as CEO pay has risen nearly 1000%
*What we fail to understand is that this is a system “by design”. It’s no mistake you have high levels of income inequality. It’s a global corporate elite beast system. There will be little difference between middle class & a peasant by 2030.
Survival of the fittest monopolies and the leverage applied by them is the reason why the gap has grown so much.The American people are not supporting working class America anymore.That needs to change
The comments that she agrees with from Glen at around the 12:30 mark discusts me. She is saying that the world should be divided by economic class rather than geographical. Sort of a great reset isn't it Chrysta?
It is remarkable that among all the preachers there are so few moral teachers. The prophets are employed in excusing the ways of men ~Henry David Thoreau I think what Thoreau said above applies in the case of Chrystia Freeland. She decries the injustices and deprivations that are the manifestations of globalism and crony capitalism while at the same time seems to excuse the ways of these men. In short, I see her as more of a prophet rather than a moral crusader. I say either preach or get off the pulpit. She’s only interpreted the coming world, the point, however, is to change it The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it. ― Karl Marx, Eleven Theses on Feuerbach
Eckhart Tolle said that “the greatest achievement of humanity is not its works of art, science or technology but the recognition of its own dysfunction, its own madness.” It's our failure to recognise our failure as human beings that's taking us back (as Charles Handy says) to medieval times.
Compound interest is probably enough to explain the phenomena. The macro pattern is we allowed money to rule the world and not surprisingly it has done just that.
Mmmmm.... just a tiny bit one-sided... She thinks that it's unfair that those damn, poor people just refuse to employ people, while the rich are just soooo generous..... Sort of reminds me of Marie Antoinette saying "Go and eat cake", to the revolting peasants in France. Marie Antoinette was one of the first for the guillotine Ms Freeland. Did you really study history?
+Lucia Tilyard You might need to brush up on your history yourself there Lucia. Marie Antoinette never said anything of the sort, although the phrase is often attributed to her. Rousseau is the source of the quote, when describing the ignorance of a 'great princess' to the suffering of the peasantry (his own suffering in particular). When informed that the peasants had no bread, the princess said words to the effect of, "well, if they have no bread, let them eat cake." The point being that the princess is so ignorant of the people's suffering that she thinks they have as much and as easy access to cake, as she does. She has no idea that cake is a luxury since she is so disconnected from the people.
Lucia Tilyard I really, honestly don't mean to be contentious - there's enough of that on RU-vid as it is - but think the point of the "then let them eat cake" quote is more to highlight the rich's IGNORANCE of the suffering of the poor. So the idea is that the fabulously wealthy, who eat cake all the time, are sort of befuddled by this idea that the poor are starving because they have no bread. Okay, the rich person thinks, so they don't have bread - why don't they just eat cake ? That's what I would do, the rich person thinks, if I didn't have any bread ! I would go and eat cake. They just cannot conceive that cake is a luxury, not available to the poor. So the quote demonstrates the rich person's utter ignorance of the poor, rather than their malevolence. They're not saying, "fuck the poor", they're exhibiting a total lack of empathy and understanding as to what it even means to live a lifestyle that is defined and ravaged by poverty. Anyway, blah blah blah, I am sure you understand what I am saying. I understand what you're saying. So, at this point, all I can really say is thanks for reading :)
+Lucia Tilyard That was a face-palm moment for me, too. My view is: A ditch-digger gets $50 for digging a ditch. The rich guy who hired him to dig it profits from that ditch for the rest of his life. Minus a little for maintenance, of course. Creating something through your labor creates wealth. Moving numbers around does not.
31:10 " If you're born at the bottom, you have a better chance in a place like Denmark or Sweden or Canada than the United States. That's pretty terrifying.
@Ivan Oriono I'd like to know how you think a writer and journalist is part of the 1%... You do realize these professions are some of the least profitable endeavours for the amount of education and work you need to be good at them right?
Ivan Oriono: First of all, she's not American. She's Canadian. For the first time in memory, the wealth of the average Canadian is actually higher than the wealth of the average American. Either you didn't bother to watch the video or you completely missed her point.... Either way, typical behavior by someone who doesn't get the problem with such a wide income gap.
She's a cheerleader, the plebs assume she must be talking about this in a pejorative way, but the elites know she's singing their praises. She comes from literal nazis.
The richest 1%, or 10% for have become richer was because the crash scared them like a lot of other people, but the had and used their power and leverage to control their overall outcome. Then did whatever it took to hoard more money than before. That is why more companies are sitting on a greater amount of cash than ever before, while not hiring or raising wages. That is also why some companies have been the most profitable than they have ever been. But at some point, you have to think it is unsustainable, as they eventually need customers with money to spend. That will only happen if more workers are paid more, which means the richest will have to take paycuts. But being less rich shouldn't be an issue, as much of the money will come back from the new customers with money to spend. But there seems to be a lot of resistance to such and economic model, of paying more and getting it back.
Oh dear it's such a 'really really hard problem'; a lot of things left out it seems to me, like, oh, privately owned central banking, debt slavery, too big to fail banks, multi-trillion debt bubbles; the fact that those being squeezed in the middle and lower down are not totally stupid and will inevitably push back...….
@@manufacturedreality8706 late comment, but any revolution has been bloody and violent. take a look at the anti-communist revolutions of the late 80's in Europe for example
This makes the tesla gigafactory in Shanghai and their 996 movement sound like it's okay, long as it provides new toys for consumers to further fuel consumption
There is a problem that I rarely see addressed. I have to reference a comment in NYT by Jack Walsh of Lexington who wrote that "he would ask his economist friends to consider what an economy where one person could produce all the goods for that economy would look like". In an economy we have sellers (makers) and buyers (consumers). In order for this to work the sellers have to have something that the buyers could buy which means that buyers need to have money. Most consumers earn their money through labor (W2 money in the U.S.). When companies press to minimize expenses on labor, they are also reducing the amount of money in the economy used to purchase goods. With concentration of money, less money is available for purchasing. The upper 0.1 percent may have many times the money of the rest of society and may buy more expensive cars, etc but they only eat three meals a day and do not buy as many cars as in proportion to their wealth to the median person. The result can be seen in the current economy. Wages are stagnate and companies are not hiring many people because of lack of demand. As was asked in one anecdote "How many Chevys do the robots buy?".
July 2013: says Carlos Slim is the richest man in history (net worth of $50 billion+ with family) August 2020: Jeff Bezos estimated net worth over $200 billion
Corporate Socialism vs Democratic Socialism: a primer We are all socialists. Humans require society for survival. Socialism is all governance. Governance is the type of gov. tax appropriations, gov. regulations and the direction of gov. agencies. It is a spectrum. It goes from democratic socialism which is spending tax monies and having policies for the benefit of all those who actually contribute to the tax pool and represent the vast majority of the population, to corporate socialism which is spending tax monies and making gov. policies for the benefit of the corporate interests of the 2%, all while they pay as little in taxes as they can. Biden is a corporate socialist as is Rump who is even more corporate being a Repugnican. The lobbyists for the 2% have control of both parties now. People know there is something wrong but don't understand this and voted for the Rumpster because they knew he would be a radical change and because they knew radical change is needed, and he was their only option. Sanders and Warren as his VP would have won 2016 because they are democratic socialists, and would have offered the positive change needed, but the DNC is controlled by the interests of the corporate socialists and so they refused to have democratic socialists as their candidates. The democratic socialists in 2016 would have given the positive change that our sick political system needed. Sadly our sickness is now manifested worse after 4 years of Rump. He is the symptom, the pustule if you will, not the cause. He is the logical conclusion as our community deteriorates under the insatiable greed machine of the 2% as they dominate our political system. Ladies and Gentlemen we are screwed. Our country is becoming like the socioeconomic structure of Brazil. With an ever shrinking middle class and a swelling class of working poor, all dominated by the exponential growth of the money and control of society by the corporate socialist top 2%. Gated communities here we come.
On the percentage of “self made”, what percentage of them came from a start with many opportunities like a well off family elite education and elite family background whom will only attain a business loan to start, if needed, because most had started with money given or loaned by family whom many don’t have those opportunities to start with and today can’t attain with all the hard work and saving in the world. Banks don’t do that anymore. Also many people that came up through the 50’s & 60’s had free & cheap college many well paying jobs with benefits and retirement, affordable housing and medical care. They thrived and their offspring got a decent start. That’s long gone for a regular person. And if people continue to want their bathrooms cleaned or eat fast food, those jobs to keep these companies and services are important and should not be treated subhuman and not get paid enough for minimum needs or ability to spend in the economy. All productive jobs should be respected, not just jobs that are not productive & only make a few $ in the financial markets. Even in Denmark a McDonalds worker makes $20/hr. We should live in a society where you can make a living doing what you want to, or have to, being able to realistically reaching a modest goal and not be squashed and eaten - &/ or enslaved.
I am puzzled, fail to make a connection with some ones wealth and my living standard. Would we not be better off with far more wealthy Americans? I do NOT see it as a zero sum game. I w2as a manufacturing engineer in my youth, watched millions of good jobs FORCED off shore. The playing field is NOT level and I see our bureaucrats and exchange rate as central to middle America's strife.
I was self employed for 20 yrs., now "retired" excluding managing and maintaining a few rental property investments. IMHO: Our youth though better educated are working longer and harder for less, situation will only get worse. Far to many seniors are forced to compete for entry level jobs with their grand children. A legacy I am not proud of, this not the land of opportunity I knew 50 yrs. ago. Our economic strife does not end at Detroit's city limits. Regards
1Skeptik1 Thanks for the reply and the info. x2 I agree and am/have seen what you have just described. It's pretty awful to go into a corner store and see a 60+ woman working by herself and you can see she is struggling.
We need to bring back the middle class, families. Pay better wages so my family can on a home, Car, put their kids through college, savings. They just give enough for you to get bye. And with that you are far more likely to become ill And lose the rest to doctors bills. American dream is dead!
There are superstar lawyers, there are superstar bankers, there are superstar cooks, there are superstar farmers, there are even superstar dentists. Help! I'm drowning! I'm totally lost in her logic as it meanders through the meadows of the confused human brain. If you listen long enough, however, you'll find she figured out the inner workings of Russian oligarchs! I spent years trying to understand how the Russian economy works.
Is it not the case that the great disparity of wealth is due to private collection of what economists call "economic rent" which is their polite way of saying "unearned income". Economic rent/unearned income is estimated at 40+% of GNP and ownership of assets land land, natural resources, patents, copyrights and the right to create money out of thin air and charge interest for borrowing it residing with banks, subsidies and much more is concentrated over the centuries in the hands of the top 10% and increasingly the top 1%. Taxing it and untaxing earned income from labor called wages and the earned income from investment of unmobopolized capital in the real capital would change everything for the good. Klein does mention the term rentier rich which is the term given to those who own and pursue economic rent but she does not specifically speak the distinction between earned and unearned income and the focused tax option.
But the rich that added value to society, also often started with an ill gotten head start, a built-in privileged advantage, provided by an unfair system that became more unfair as time went on, and the rich fortified their privileged position. The winner writes the history.
None of this should surprise to anyone. The system is structured in their (the rich) favor, and when it needs to be further tweaked in their favor, they simply pay off the people needed to do it. When things go wrong its always a matter of privatize the profits and socialize the losses. This is not a conspiracy, but a "convergence of interest" that allows this to go on. Always keep the masses arguing with themselves while the rich run off with the money. While the rest of you get into heated emotional debates over really pointless and stupid things, the rich are still playing the game and getting everything. This is why we now have the sports fan mentality in our politics. Us vs. Them. Remember something, the rich feel that they should not pay any taxes because they are not part of the society which they rule over. They don't need them, nor do they use them, so why should they pay them? Wake up people, you are all fighting the wrong enemy.
Brought to you by Democrats 1. Make it a law that you must have health insurance. 2. The money goes to insurance companies that are owned by the super rich. 3. When a person files an insurance claim, the insurance company (that is owned by the super rich) pays the hospitals (that are owned by the super rich). And while you are in the hospital, you get drugs and when you get out of the hospital you may get a prescription. Warren Buffet has stock in many insurance companies AND many hospital corporations AND many pharmaceutical companies. See how that works? So who is the primary owners of such companies? Warren Buffet - Democrat. Bill Gates - Democrat. Who owns the media that doesn't tell you such things? George Soros - Democrat. Ted Turner - Democrat.....and so on…. Like GMO's in your food? - Bill Gates (democrat) has stock in Monsanto. Who drafted the Monsanto Protection Act? Democrats. Why did the Keystone pipeline get shot down? Warren Buffet owns Norfolk Southern, Burlington Northern and Santa Fe railroads that transports most of the oil in the US. Cant have a pipeline cutting into a democrat's profits now can we. I thought democrat loved the environment. Locomotives use millions of gallons of diesel fuel every year - a pipeline uses no fuel.
How do we know whether the plutocrats can fund the right things better than the government? it's not just making money it's how you spend it too. After all they get so much money they can't even spend it all in their lifetime. They must have to have a lot of help, so who helps and who helps themselves. All the money just piles up and isn't really used any more. So many people just get more desperate.
Thomas Piketty recently showed this 1% is not meritocratic and has by and large inherited their wealth. Wonder whether this girl has meanwhile adjusted her view to take the latest scientific research into account or whether she is still arguing the 1% own their wealth to hard work in which case her views are to be taken as seriously as people who deny the earth is round as that accords with their faith or hopes.
23:21 What's not to like about globalisation? (1) Try asking the people whose jobs have been outsourced to China and (2) what happens when you realise you have made a gigantic strategic blunder by outsourcing your economy to your biggest enemy? Come, come now people, you are supposed to be deep thinkers, but it seems that the pursuit of quick and easy money dulls the mind to quite an extreme extent. FYI She is now deputy prime minister of Canada.
So true! Few years ago while many construction's company had to close business, one grabbed all serious clients in my country. Just because they have really good marketing managers, who made fantastic deals with government to build new highways. The company is so popular that opened businesses around all the EU. The same is in every field: even writers these days can make good money. But they must be really the best.
Wealthy people are not just a person, but a result. You could say poster childs. A network of bankers' lawyers' investors and so on. The old money just changes hands and names and gets richer.
So, is she now working as the finance Minister to increase the divide? Before she was finance Minister the average Canadian could save and earned enough to get a mortgage for a home. After a few years with her as finance Minister the housing market has increased over 200% and the average Canadian can't buy a house any longer. The median income can't get a mortgage high enough anymore. . Housing costs increased over 200% while she's been finance Minister. The minimum wage (Federal minimum wage) did not increase.
the transfer of wealth from 80% to 1% is the biggest issue in western world today.... start with taxation.. wealthy are mostly inherited and invest mainly in property/major stocks... this cohort has a corner but not entitled to privelages of socialism, cosy trade practices, tax breaks, loopholes and lack of audits.................. innovative smaller business drives most of the progress......
'There is a Chinese proverb that if one man lives in laziness another will die of hunger; and Montesquieu has said, "The fact that many men are occupied in making clothes for one individual is the cause of there being many people without clothes." So one explains the other.' From "People of the Abyss" by Jack London (1902)
I know I'm late to the game here, as this was posted in 2013, but I must say this is a pretty good piece. I like how she presents both sides of the issue, and has no qualms with ceding strong points on either side whilst trying to lead us to some form of possible progressive conclusion. It is her conclusion that I must disagree with however. I can at most agree that we need proper capitalist reforms at the same scale enterprise has grown to (global rather than national), but I do not think any amount of reform can legitimately fix a system that is flawed at its core. It is merely a bandage to help stop the bleeding while we build a better system. Perhaps this is where we differ, she seems to think capitalism is still a good system, and while it has its merits I do not share this perspective. In a different direction, I think people who make ridiculous claims about elites leading the populace as if they are some how carrying the weight and being rewarded properly for it is just a completely absurd to nearly psychopathic perspective. A simple proof for you is science. There have been incredible leaps and gains for everyone in the form of knowledge from various scientists, many of which do not see a dime of their knowledge coming back to them. There is no way to properly reward information, there never will be. Science leads us forward, engineers find practical uses for our knowledge and _neither_ of these groups of people make the Forbes top 100 list. Figure out what that means to the capitalist ideology. .. And what about artists? What about all of the best poets, writers and musicians in our era that are pushing the envelope of what we find socially acceptable? Where is their rewards? Instead of so many quality underground bands getting the rewards they deserve, we see people like Justin Bieber making all the money. Let's just think about what THAT is doing to our collective unconscious....
She is completely wrong about the self made people. Most of the "self made" billionaires (like Trump) came from the upper few percent of their country.
For 2014, Facebook paid corporation tax of £4,327 or $6,643 (six thousand six hundred and forty three dollars) less than one single individual typically pays in tax when they have an average wage of around £25K but _"the firm also paid its 362 UK staff a total of £35.4m in share bonuses."_ (www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-34510263)
If income inequality is an injustice that needs to be corrected rather than a fact of life then we should ask ourselves as finance minister what has she done to correct this trend? Nothing. Plus, her measures to abate high mortgage rates and the cost of living crisis are meager at best which begs another question, why bother writing any books?
Update: From speeches like this, to voting against the NDP and Green's motion to add a 1% tax on fortunes over 1 billion, which she and the rest of the Liberals, Conservatives, and Bloc voted against.
I don't think this is accurate. Wealth is not income. Income is a specific tax term. If I bought a million shares of Apply 20 years ago and never sold them, the increase in share price is NOT income and should not be taxed until the gain is realized.
Focus on the real wages, worker wages relative to inflation on a historical basis, then add in the increased standard of living given lowered cost of the average basket of goods. IGNORE the income of business owners, it is irrelevant because it's wealth creation above and beyond the wealth business distributes to all workers.
Asifk88 Sadly, Asif, yes the economy is going to change, actually is changing, but the wealthy will be the ones driving the change, and they WILL be the one's to benefit from it. Not us. This is happening everywhere, not just the US. As long as the hedge fund scum and the Wall street sewage keep being allowed to mandate governmental policy (not just financial, btw), things are NOT going to be better for the U.S. public.
And yet cororations pay little taxes. The people pay tax on everything. The housing market has gone wild.is criminal cost. The governments need oversight.the books need review.
Dear...gawd....will this lady ever....get....to....the....point? 28 minutes in and I still have no idea where she is headed. Before I die of boredom let me just say the "self made" is always bullshit. Sure there are really talented and smart people out there but they are NOTHING without other people's money and more importantly....other people's LABOR. I love Steve Jobs....he was brilliant.....but he needed TONS of help and probably millions of Chinese laborers to get his schemes off the ground. He never ONCE handed me an Apple product. Not once. Great things are ALWAYS a group effort. We love the throw money at the top, though, don't we? What a sad heard of sheeple we are. If you live a society of ANY sort then you are ALWAYS in-debted to your society for your financial success. The fact that you may lack the intelligence to give back to your society is a whole other dilemma that has more to do with ego than anything. There is no merit based plutocracy. There are just wolves who are smarter and richer than other wolves. You don't need a rich parent, a brilliant parent, an amazing teacher, or a magical brain to understand that POWER CORRUPTS. We just need more of us to collectively see that GREED is our biggest hurdle and it ALWAYS has been. Let's put it in check together....and save our beautiful and bountiful planet. Let's learn to share it. FYI....food grows on trees...and in dirt, too, with very little work required. We can feed the masses anytime we decide it's a priority.
+John Brooke ...I basically agree; I too found her dulaboring. There are too many journalists who count themselves as 'experts' on their chosen subject-matter. They are usually erudite and fluent, but prone to sweeping, populist generalisations using well worn concepts and perspectives which cannot help but miss the mark when truly novel approaches are needed. Freeland brought nothing useful to the table.
