6 Filthy Facts About the Rich Photo Credit: Shutterstock.com/katalinks August 25, 2013 | Like this article? Join our email list: Stay up to date with the latest headlines via email. First of all, who are they? 1. As evidence of the extremes between the very rich and the rest of us, the average household net worth for the top 1% in 2009 was almost $14 million, while the average household net worth for the bottom 47% was almost ZERO. The extremes are just as filthy at the global level. 2. In another alarming testament to wealth at the top, the richest 10% own almost 90 percent of stocks excluding pensions. Many stock owners see a couple thousand dollars added to their fortunes every time they go online. But that's not enough for the very rich. 3. If the richest 1% had taken the same percentage of total U.S. income in 2006 as they did in 1980, they would have taken a trillion dollars less out of the economy. 4. Two dependable sources provide pretty much the same information. 5. Here's more to provoke outrage. 6.
Study guide First Partial exam The Iron Fist Behind the Invisible Hand INTRODUCTION. Manorialism, commonly, is recognized to have been founded by robbery and usurpation; a ruling class established itself by force, and then compelled the peasantry to work for the profit of their lords. But no system of exploitation,including capitalism, has ever been created by the action of a free market. Capitalism was founded on an act of robbery as massive as feudalism. The current structure of capital ownership and organization of production in our so-called "market" economy, reflects coercive state intervention prior to and extraneous to the market. Most such intervention is tacitly assumed by mainstream right-libertarians as part of a "market" system. But genuine markets have a value for the libertarian left, and we shouldn't concede the term to our enemies. It is beyond my ability or purpose here to describe a world where a true market system could have developed without such state intervention. THE SUBSIDY OF HISTORY. J.
None of the world’s top industries would be profitable if they paid for the natural capital they use The notion of “externalities” has become familiar in environmental circles. It refers to costs imposed by businesses that are not paid for by those businesses. For instance, industrial processes can put pollutants in the air that increase public health costs, but the public, not the polluting businesses, picks up the tab. In this way, businesses privatize profits and publicize costs. While the notion is incredibly useful, especially in folding ecological concerns into economics, I’ve always had my reservations about it. Environmentalists these days love speaking in the language of economics — it makes them sound Serious — but I worry that wrapping this notion in a bloodless technical term tends to have a narcotizing effect. To see what I mean, check out a recent report [PDF] done by environmental consultancy Trucost on behalf of The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB) program sponsored by United Nations Environmental Program. Here’s how those costs break down:
Planet Ponzi - Planet Ponzi Your Brain on Poverty: Why Poor People Seem to Make Bad Decisions - Derek Thompson In August, Science published a landmark study concluding that poverty, itself, hurts our ability to make decisions about school, finances, and life, imposing a mental burden similar to losing 13 IQ points. It was widely seen as a counter-argument to claims that poor people are "to blame" for bad decisions and a rebuke to policies that withhold money from the poorest families unless they behave in a certain way. After all, if being poor leads to bad decision-making (as opposed to the other way around), then giving cash should alleviate the cognitive burdens of poverty, all on its own. Sometimes, science doesn't stick without a proper anecdote, and "Why I Make Terrible Decisions," a comment published on Gawker's Kinja platform by a person in poverty, is a devastating illustration of the Science study. I've bolded what I found the most moving, insightful portions, but it's a moving and insightful testimony all the way through. I make a lot of poor financial decisions.
L'obsolescence programmée, bientôt interdite ? Le groupe écologiste du Sénat a déposé, le 18 mars, une proposition de loi pour lutter contre l'obsolescence programmée et faciliter la réparabilité des produits. Elle pourrait être intégrée à la loi de consommation, prévue avant l'été. Alors que les associations de défense de l'environnement et des consommateurs dénoncent l'obsolescence programmée depuis des années, une proposition de loi, déposée le 18 mars par le groupe écologiste du Sénat, vise à lutter contre ce phénomène et à organiser une économie de la réparation. Les sénateurs souhaitent également lancer une réflexion sur l'économie de fonctionnalité, en demandant au gouvernement un rapport sur ce sujet. Le texte vise d'abord à donner une définition à l'obsolescence programmée, la plus large possible pour englober les différents types d'obsolescence (matérielle, logicielle…) des produits. Durées légales de garantie et de conformité Explications de Jean-Vincent Placé, auteur de la proposition de loiMarie Jo Sader
Poverty Impedes Cognitive Function The poor often behave in less capable ways, which can further perpetuate poverty. We hypothesize that poverty directly impedes cognitive function and present two studies that test this hypothesis. First, we experimentally induced thoughts about finances and found that this reduces cognitive performance among poor but not in well-off participants. Second, we examined the cognitive function of farmers over the planting cycle. Lacking money or time can lead one to make poorer decisions, possibly because poverty imposes a cognitive load that saps attention and reduces effort. Psychopaths in Power and the Imminent Collapse of Global Society (It's all your fault!) I can't really comment in any informed way on societies in the East, except to point to the Chinese slave workers who produce mountains of plastic crap for Western nations to use and then dump in the ground and oceans; the Middle East's role as a bombing target, 'terrorist' recruiting ground and civil war factory for Western warmongers, and South East Asia and Africa as a block of new 'nations' born out of the 'white man's burden' to civilize their people via brutal colonization and then grant them 'independence' in the form of never-ending debt to Western banks. In the West, on the other hand, where I live, I can say with confidence that our modern society, its political and social conventions, customs and morality, has passed its expiry date and is well and truly moribund. Leading the cast in this tragicomedy (heavy on the tragi) we find our psychopathic leaders and their media whores trying extra hard to convince us that everything is just fine. Consider that: Domestic drones. See?
The Rich and Their Robots Are About to Make Half the World's Jobs Disappear Two hugely important statistics concerning the future of employment as we know it made waves recently: 1. 85 people alone command as much wealth as the poorest half of the world. 2. 47 percent of the world's currently existing jobs are likely to be automated over the next two decades. Combined, those two stats portend a quickly-exacerbating dystopia. That's according to a 2013 Oxford study, which was highlighted in this week's Economist cover story. And, as is historically the case, the capitalists eat the benefits. The prosperity unleashed by the digital revolution has gone overwhelmingly to the owners of capital and the highest-skilled workers. Those trends aren't just occurring in the US, either. The trend extends beyond a few handfuls of the planet's most mega-tycoons, of course: "The wealth of the 1% richest people in the world amounts to $110tn (£60.88tn), or 65 times as much as the poorest half of the world."