America’s Oligarchs Will Control 70% Of National Wealth By 2021

Source: America’s Oligarchs Will Control 70% Of National Wealth By 2021

theantimedia.org

Reproduced with permission from

MintPress News

Written by Whitney Webb

June 20, 2017

(MPN) — America’s rich just won’t quit getting richer, according to a new study released in mid-June by the Boston Consulting Group (BCG), a global management consulting firm. The study, which seeks to analyze the global wealth management industry, as well as the evolution of private wealth, uncovered some startling statistics that suggest that global financial inequality will grow significantly by the year 2021.

 The firm found that the already massive gap between the world’s wealthy elite – the approximately 18 million households that hold at least more than $1 million in assets – and everyone else is continuing to widen at a remarkable rate. The estimated 70 million people who make up these households were found to control 45 percent of the world’s $166.5 trillion in wealth. And in just four more years, it is estimated that they will control more than half of the world’s wealth, despite representing less than 1 percent of the world’s current population.

However, while rising inequality is a global phenomenon, it is especially pronounced in the United States. While wealth inequality in the U.S. is by no means an unknown phenomenon, the U.S. is significantly more unequal than most other countries, with the nation’s elite currently holding 63 percent of the private wealth. The U.S. elite’s share of national wealth is also growing much faster than the global average, with millionaires and billionaires expected to control an estimated 70 percent of the nation’s wealth by 2021. 

The U.S.’ high wealth inequality largely owes to post-World War II government policies that have seen almost a quarter of all national income go to its wealthiest residents. Meanwhile, wages for the majority of Americans have remained stagnant for decades – in contrast to the richest Americans, their future economic outlook is incredibly bleak by comparison.

The U.S. is also home to more billionaires and millionaires than anywhere else in the world, which partly explains how U.S. policy has come to favor them over the years. According to Bloomberg, two out of five millionaires and billionaires live in the United States – and their ranks are growing.

While the world’s richest citizens may be pleased by the results of BCG’s recent study, there is plenty for them to be worried about if history is any indicator. Indeed, history shows that societies with drastic wealth inequality are much more unstable and more likely to experience drastic economic failure or outright societal collapse.

 For instance, a 2014 study conducted by the National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center noted that over-consumption and wealth inequality have occurred in the collapse of every civilization over the last 5,000 years. That same study also warned that rising inequality could easily lead to an unsustainable use of resources and the “irreversible collapse” of global industrial civilization.

This warning seems particularly prescient, given that wealth inequality in the U.S. is well above that of past civilizations that eventually collapsed as a result of these factors. For example, at the time of the collapse of the Roman Empire, the top 1 percent of the Roman elite controlled just 16 percent of the society’s wealth, a measly figure compared to the percentage commanded by the 1-percenters of the U.S.

While the BCG study paints a rosy picture for the world’s millionaires and billionaires, particularly in the United States, they should be gravely concerned that their growing accumulation of wealth could have drastic consequences – not just for those poorer than them, but for everyone.

 

Canada: CEOs at top charities earn top dollar

That’s it, no more money for charities. Never again. Charities were never meant to be businesses. Damn capitalism, it corrupts everything it touches.

Many of the biggest charitable organizations in Ontario pay their top executives more than $250,000 a year, according to data compiled by CBC News.

Source: CEOs at top charities earn top dollar – Toronto – CBC News

CBC News

By Mike Crawley

 May 21, 2017

Ontario’s Sunshine List reveals salaries at non-profit agencies that get provincial government funding

Piers Handling, Director and CEO of the Toronto International Film Festival, tops the list with an annual salary of $352,260. (Aaron Vincent Elkaim/Canadian Press)Many of the biggest charitable organizations headquartered in Ontario pay their top executives more than $250,000 a year, according to data compiled by CBC News.

 

Charitable agencies that receive more than $1 million in annual funding from the Ontario government are required to disclose top salaries on the province’s Sunshine List of public-sector earnings.

• Check charities before you give, says watchdog
• Thousands of charity workers earn big salaries: report 

This reveals the salaries paid by some of Canada’s most well-known charities, including the Canadian Red Cross, the Salvation Army and the Canadian National Institute for the Blind (CNIB).

The top-paid official at the Governing Council of the Salvation Army was paid $303,956 last year. The agency operates on an annual budget of $218 million. (CBC)

Research by CBC News found 20 senior executives earning more than $250,000 at registered charities based in Ontario.

Topping the list is Piers Handling, director and CEO of the Toronto International Film Festival, earning $352,260 in 2016.

Top salaries at charities on Ontario Sunshine List 2016:

• Piers Handling, $352,260, Toronto International Film Festival Inc., Director & CEO.
• George Habib, $342,831, Ontario Lung Association, President & CEO.
• John Rafferty, $326,300, The Canadian National Institute for the Blind, President & CEO.
• David Samuel Hillier, $322,877, Shepherd Village (seniors’ care), President & CEO.
• Conrad Sauve, $321,299, The Canadian Red Cross, President & CEO.
• Barry Bisson, $316,731, Shad Valley International (education), President.
• Medhat Mahdy, $305,303, YMCA of Greater Toronto, President & CEO.
• Paul Goodyear, $303,956, The Governing Council of the Salvation Army, Territorial financial secretary.
• Anthony Sargent, $299,999, Luminato (Toronto Festival of Arts), CEO.
• Myroslav Klymkiw, $297,440, Canadian Film Centre, CEO.
• Michele Maheux, $284,279, Toronto International Film Festival, Executive director and chief operating officer.
• Kevin Frey, $268,836, Right To Play International, CEO.
• Julia Dumanian, $268,749, Canadian Hearing Society, President & CEO.
• Catherine Macdonald, $264,953, Ontario Society For the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, CEO.
• Susanne Gillespie, $264,300, Pathways to Education Canada, President & CEO.
• Sharon Broughton, $258,411, Kids Help Phone, President & CEO.
• Geoff Cape, $255,329, Evergreen (urban sustainability), CEO.
• Deborah Sevenpifer, $253,784, YMCA of Greater Toronto, Chief financial officer.
• Andria Spindel, $252,709, March of Dimes Canada, President & CEO.

The salaries appear to be proportionate to the size of these organizations, according to the head of an agency that analyzes the value-for-money impact of Canadian non-profits.

Large operating budgets to manage

“These are large charities with large operating budgets and large staff requiring management,” said Kate Bahen, managing director of Charity Intelligence.

The largest charities on the list, and their annual operating budgets are:

• Canadian Red Cross: $313 million.
• Salvation Army: $218 million.
• YMCA of Greater Toronto: $213 million.

The two smallest charities on the list are arts-related. The Toronto Festival of Arts Culture and Creativity (Luminato) has an $11-million annual operating budget and 23 full-time staff, while the Canadian Film Centre has a budget of $11.2 million and 42 full-time staff.

Bahen and her staff at Charity Intelligence analyzed the salary data against the organizations’ budgets. She said the salaries are generally “in line with the size of the organization and the size of the staff that requires management.”

• When you donate at the checkout, where does your money go?

Rather than looking solely at salaries to determine whether a charity deserves support, Bahen said donors should consider such things as financial transparency, accountability and administrative efficiency.

“We’re not seeing excessive compensation” at charities in Canada, said Bahen. “Some Canadian donors believe that people who work for charities should not receive any salaries. That’s a little unrealistic in 2017.”

This list of top salaries from the Ontario Sunshine List 2016 focuses on donor-funded registered charities that operate outside the provincial public sector. That excludes some organizations (such as universities, hospitals and museums) that are themselves registered charities but operate with a specific mandate from the provincial government.

Some other registered charities based in Ontario may pay their top executives comparable or even larger salaries, but the pay is not disclosed on the Sunshine List because the agencies do not receive provincial government funding.

The Canada Revenue Agency requires all registered charities to disclose the range of salaries paid to their staff, but not the specific amounts. That data can be found on the CRA website.

High Pharmaceutical Prices Mean Sick People Are Trading Drugs on Facebook

“Magically, Trump stopped talking about pricey prescription drugs shortly after he was elected.”

Source: High Pharmaceutical Prices Mean Sick People Are Trading Drugs on Facebook – High Times

hightimes.com

Chris Roberts

May 15, 2017

There were a few Donald Trump promises even a self-respecting Democratic Socialist of America would have wanted to see fulfilled. Actually, most Americans would have liked to have seen one Trump guarantee come through. If it had, sick people wouldn’t have to resort to buying, selling and even swapping pricey pharmaceutical drugs with other sick people via Facebook.

There was a time that the high cost of prescription drugs was a big Donald Trump talking point.

Pharmaceutical companies are out of control, candidate Trump would say on the campaign trail. Their lobbyists have too much power. Senators and congressmen are in their pocket.

But not Trump! Trump would “give consumers more options” by allowing Americans to import cheap generic drugs from other countries. Yes—a fair trade deal! Draining of the swamp! Trump to the rescue!  

Magically, Trump stopped talking about pricey prescription drugs shortly after he was elected, as the LA Times observed late last year.

Around that time, he started giving the pharmaceutical lobby’s friends in Congress jobs in the administration. Trump’s Secretary of Health and Human Services, Tom Price, once helped kill a deal to bring in cheaper drugs for Medicaid patients—and on the same day, was rewarded with $90,000 in stock in six pharmaceutical companies, as ProPublica reported.

Whoa! Bad! Corrupt. The swamp, the undrained swamp, it drowns us!

But hey, look—we’re all Americans here. So Bernie Sanders tried to help Donald Trump out.

In February, Sanders and a few other Democrats in Congress introduced a plan that would allow Americans to buy from their local pharmacies generic drug manufacturers in Canada—rather than be forced to buy name-brand drugs from pharmaceutical companies with exclusive trademarks, and ergo the ability to price-fix like millennial comic-book villain Martin Shkreli.

This is why Americans spend more than $310 billion a year on prescription drugs—drugs made by companies in which Tom Price, Donald Trump’s health secretary, has bought stock. This is also why many Americans, including relatives of Sen. Tim Kaine, who a lifetime ago was going to be Hillary Clinton’s vice president, already buy drugs from other countries via online pharmacies.

And wouldn’t you know—Senate Republicans killed Bernie Sanders’s plan dead, deader than someone with a newfound pre-existing condition, deader than a sick person who was one of the 24 million Americans slated to lose health insurance under Paul Ryan’s health-care plan.

The excuse Republicans on a Senate committee gave, as the plan died on a 13-10 party-line vote, was that drugs bought from Canada are not safe. Bad, foreign drugs! Safety from counterfeit drugs! And stock, also stock options.

“What this debate is about is the power of the pharma industry, which next to Wall Street, is the most powerful entity in the United States,” said Sanders, according to the Washington Examiner. “Pharma has endless supplies of money in order to get their way in the Congress.”

It bears mentioning that none of this would be happening—drugs would be cheaper, Price would be investing in Waffle Houses and Shkreli would be torrenting rare Wu-Tang cuts—if we had single-payer healthcare.

Continue:

High Pharmaceutical Prices Mean Sick People Are Trading Drugs on Facebook – High Times

Financial Weapons Of Mass Destruction: The Top 25 U.S. Banks Have 222 Trillion Dollars Of Exposure To Derivatives

“In my view, derivatives are financial weapons of mass destruction, carrying dangers that, while now latent, are potentially lethal.”  Warren Buffett

Source: Financial Weapons Of Mass Destruction: The Top 25 U.S. Banks Have 222 Trillion Dollars Of Exposure To Derivatives

With permission from

theeconomiccollapseblog.com

By Michael Snyder

May 15th, 2017

The recklessness of the “too big to fail” banks almost doomed them the last time around, but apparently they still haven’t learned from their past mistakes.  Today, the top 25 U.S. banks have 222 trillion dollars of exposure to derivatives.  In other words, the exposure that these banks have to derivatives contracts is approximately equivalent to the gross domestic product of the United States times twelve.  As long as stock prices continue to rise and the U.S. economy stays fairly stable, these extremely risky financial weapons of mass destruction will probably not take down our entire financial system.  But someday another major crisis will inevitably happen, and when that day arrives the devastation that these financial instruments will cause will be absolutely unprecedented.

During the great financial crisis of 2008, derivatives played a starring role, and U.S. taxpayers were forced to step in and bail out companies such as AIG that were on the verge of collapse because the risks that they took were just too great.

But now it is happening again, and nobody is really talking very much about it.  In a desperate search for higher profits, all of the “too big to fail” banks are gambling like crazy, and at some point a lot of these bets are going to go really bad.  The following numbers regarding exposure to derivatives contracts come directly from the OCC’s most recent quarterly report (see Table 2), and as you can see the level of recklessness that we are currently witnessing is more than just a little bit alarming…

Citigroup

Total Assets: $1,792,077,000,000 (slightly less than 1.8 trillion dollars)

Total Exposure To Derivatives: $47,092,584,000,000 (more than 47 trillion dollars)

JPMorgan Chase

Total Assets: $2,490,972,000,000 (just under 2.5 trillion dollars)

Total Exposure To Derivatives: $46,992,293,000,000 (nearly 47 trillion dollars)

Goldman Sachs

Total Assets: $860,185,000,000 (less than a trillion dollars)

Total Exposure To Derivatives: $41,227,878,000,000 (more than 41 trillion dollars)

Bank Of America

Total Assets: $2,189,266,000,000 (a little bit more than 2.1 trillion dollars)

Total Exposure To Derivatives: $33,132,582,000,000 (more than 33 trillion dollars)

Morgan Stanley

Total Assets: $814,949,000,000 (less than a trillion dollars)

Total Exposure To Derivatives: $28,569,553,000,000 (more than 28 trillion dollars)

Wells Fargo

Total Assets: $1,930,115,000,000 (more than 1.9 trillion dollars)

Total Exposure To Derivatives: $7,098,952,000,000 (more than 7 trillion dollars)

Collectively, the top 25 banks have a total of 222 trillion dollars of exposure to derivatives.

If you are new to all of this, you might be wondering what a “derivative” actually is.

When you buy a stock you are purchasing an ownership interest in a company, and when you buy a bond you are purchasing the debt of a company.  But when you buy a derivative, you are not actually getting anything tangible.  Instead, you are simply making a side bet about whether something will or will not happen in the future.  These side bets can be extraordinarily complex, but at their core they are basically just wagers.  The following is a pretty good definition of derivatives that comes from Investopedia…

A derivative is a security with a price that is dependent upon or derived from one or more underlying assets. The derivative itself is a contract between two or more parties based upon the asset or assets. Its value is determined by fluctuations in the underlying asset. The most common underlying assets include stocks, bonds, commodities, currencies, interest rates and market indexes.

Those that trade derivatives are essentially engaged in a form of legalized gambling, and some of the brightest names in the financial world have been warning about the potentially destructive nature of these financial instruments for a very long time.

In a letter that he wrote to shareholders of Berkshire Hathaway in 2003, Warren Buffett actually referred to derivatives as “financial weapons of mass destruction”…

The derivatives genie is now well out of the bottle, and these instruments will almost certainly multiply in variety and number until some event makes their toxicity clear. Central banks and governments have so far found no effective way to control, or even monitor, the risks posed by these contracts. In my view, derivatives are financial weapons of mass destruction, carrying dangers that, while now latent, are potentially lethal.

Warren Buffett was right on the money when he made that statement, and of course the derivatives bubble is far larger today than it was back then.

In fact, the total notional value of derivatives contracts globally is in excess of 500 trillion dollars.

This is a disaster that is just waiting to happen, and investors such as Buffett are quietly positioning themselves to take advantage of the giant crash that is inevitably coming.

According to financial expert Jim Rickards, Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. is hoarding 86 billion dollars in cash because he is likely anticipating a major stock market downturn…

Far from a bullish sign, Buffett’s cash hoard could mean he’s preparing for a market crash. When the crash comes, Buffett can walk through the wreckage with his checkbook open and buy great companies for a fraction of their current value.

That’s the real Buffett style, but you won’t hear that from your broker or wealth manager. If Buffett has a huge cash allocation, shouldn’t you?

He knows what’s coming. Now you do too.

Warren Buffett didn’t become one of the wealthiest men in the entire world by being stupid.  He knows that stocks are ridiculously overvalued at this point, and he is poised to make his move after the pendulum swings in the other direction.

And he might not have too long to wait.  In recent weeks I have been writing about many of the signs that the U.S. economy is slowing down substantially, and today we received even more bad news…

Despite high levels of economic confidence expressed by business owners and consumers, one key indicator shows that it has not translated into much action yet.

Loan issuance declined in the first quarter from the previous three-month period, the first time that has happened in four years, according to an SNL Financial analysis of bank earnings reports filed for the period. The total of recorded loans and leases fell to $9.297 trillion from $9.305 trillion in the fourth quarter of 2016.

This is precisely what we would expect to see if a new economic downturn was beginning.  Our economy is very highly dependent on the flow of credit, and when that flow begins to diminish that is a very bad sign.

For the moment, financial markets continue to remain completely disconnected from the hard economic data, but as we saw in 2008 the markets can plunge very rapidly once they start catching up with the real economy.

Warren Buffett is clearly getting prepared for the crisis that is ahead.

Are you?

Stephen Hawking: Greed and Stupidity Will End Humanity Earlier than Expected

Stephen Hawking has said that greed and stupidity would end the human race

Source: Stephen Hawking: Greed and Stupidity Will End Humanity Earlier than Expected

anonhq.com

By Amando Flavio

March 7, 2017

 

Although theoretical physicist and cosmologist Stephen Hawking is not a soothsayer, he has in the past predicted the future of humanity. Hawking has warned us on countless occasions about how humans are actively pursuing Artificial Intelligence (AI) without caution; concerned it will spell the end of humanity in the future.

Mr Hawking believes the current AI race will eventually usher humans into a stage when machines will become more intelligent than humans. This is when the total annihilation of humans would begin, Hawking claims. Of course, the AI community prefers not to hear such a prominent and respected science proponent say such things. Hawking was heavily criticized within the AI community recently, facing accusations of being a pessimist, and should inculcate the spirit of positivism in the AI debate instead.

But despite the criticisms, Hawking is still expressing his views as an independent thinker in the arena of public discourse. Apart from the AI apocalypse, Hawking has summarized vices in humans that he thinks will destroy any progress made since the Stone Age period to current times.

In an interview with Larry King on the Larry King Now talk show last year, the distinguished physicist said although he has talked about AI in the past as a tool that could spell doom for humans, he believes strongly that such inventions are inspired by human vices.

Hawking stated that greediness and stupidity are the biggest threats to humanity. He said these two vices will eventually drive humans into extinction, and earlier than he previously expected. According to Hawking, humans are becoming increasingly stupid and greedy with each passing day. He noted that there has been a massive air pollution problem in the last six years, killing many around the world.  Hawking said the situation will continue to worsen, bringing along more deaths and strange diseases in the near future.

“We certainly have not become less greedy or less stupid. The population has grown by half a billion since our last meeting, with no end in sight. At this rate, it will be eleven billion by 2100. Air pollution has increased over the past five years. More than 80% of inhabitants of urban areas are exposed to unsafe levels of air pollution,” he said.

Hawking added that he is only reminding us of the things we are doing that will end up devouring us. Hawking’s warning is just like the hunter who finds a baby monster in the forest and brings it home. After nurturing the baby monster for it to grow into a giant beast, the monster eats the hunter one day.

If you look at what is currently happening across the world, people are increasingly being exposed to automated things. Smartphones, robots working amid humans, and unmanned vehicles to name a few.

These machines are increasingly becoming more intelligent. On the other hand, humans seem to be losing their senses. Due to proliferation of smartphones and other integrated cell-phones; some are literally dying or injuring themselves, just for a common selfie.

The United States Department of Transportation estimates that during 2014, in the so-called “year of the selfie,” 33,000 people were injured while driving and using a cell-phone in some fashion, which included talking, listening, and “manual button/control actuation” including taking, uploading, downloading, editing, or opening of selfies. Also, a 2015 survey by Erie Insurance Group found that 4% of all drivers admitted to taking selfies while driving.

Again, the Washington Post reported in January 2016 that about half of at least 27 selfie deaths in 2015 had occurred in India. No official data on the number of people who died taking selfies in India exists, but reports show from 2014 up to August 2016, there have been at least 54 deaths in India while taking selfies.

This has encouraged the Indian Tourism Ministry to ask states to identify and barricade ‘selfie danger’ areas. The goal of the sign is to try and stop or reduce selfie-related deaths in the country.

So, you see, this is one of the exact stupidities Hawking is warning us about. Humans are becoming increasingly stupid while the machines they have created are becoming increasingly intelligent. The mockery of humanity has started. The machines seem to be controlling humans, not the other way around.

Slavehood 2017: Social Chaos and Global Warfare. “Puppet Leaders’ Greed for Power and Money”

Source: Slavehood 2017: Social Chaos and Global Warfare. “Puppet Leaders’ Greed for Power and Money” | Global Research – Centre for Research on Globalization

http://www.globalresearch.ca

When in the 18^th and 19^th Century African slaves did not ‘behave’, they were cruelly beaten sometimes to death as a deterrent for others. They were deprived of food for their families. Their women were raped. They were traded to even harsher white masters. Their lives were worth only what their labor could produce. They were treated as subjects, devoid of human warmth.

Today we have become all slaves; slaves to the powers of mafia bankster of finance; slaves to the western lie-propaganda; to the lobbies and their giant all dominating corporations – to the war-industry, because we happily believe what we are told about ever-increasing terrorism that needs to be fought with eternal wars; slaves to the environment-destructive hydrocarbon industry; to the pharma-industry; to the Monsanto-ized agroindustry; to senseless consumerism – and foremost – and summing it all up: to greed, endless greed that drives endless growth, nurturing endless competition fomenting adversity, destroying solidarity, instead of amical cooperation for a harmonious human cohabitation.

As people of western nations, we are enslaved to an all-engulfing neoliberal fascism – to a predatory economy. Corporate lie propaganda drip-feds our brains. We haven’t even noticed it. We are enslaved to so-called ‘leaders’, put in office by obscure foreign masters of deceit – the ever-stronger corporate controlled propaganda machine – the six all controlling Zion-Anglo media, whom we believe whatever lie they vomit – because it is more comfortable to believe a lie than to confront the truth – that’s self-imposed slavehood.

That’s how far we have gone. Because we are clearly on an almost irreversible downward track – sliding and running towards our own demise – into darkness – the darkness of chaos and bloody wars, endless wars against self-invented terrorism; wars that keeps our western economy running – and our armchair politics alive. Wars that kill and slaughter millions and millions – but all in ‘far-away’ lands. We are told we are protected. Our police and military watch over us. The new gods – money and military.

To prevent this endless terror chaos happening in our western spheres, once ‘proudly’ called Europe or United States of America, Canada, Australia, Japan – and whatever other country has surmised to the western slaughter machine – we call for police and military protection in our own lands, we give them power to enslave us further to the Dark State – those  forces that slyly command a worldwide slave trade, called The Market – the all commandeering Market. We adore The Market. We want to be integrated into it. The Market lets us live and strive and eat and dream of more. It feeds our greed as if there was no end. Slavehood to Nirvana or Neverland.

Although ‘pride’ was never an appropriate term to integrate our soul and minds, as we the western powers – have for centuries enslaved, raped, exploited and slaughtered the indigenous people, those who have for millennia, for history of mankind survived and passed on our human genes from one murderous civilization to another, always in the hope that the new one would see the light.

We can only hope that the patience of these native people, the survivors, our saviors – will prevail, that before we disappear in darkness, in the void of a manmade blackhole, we will awake, open our eyes and seek the light – become finally human, the term we have fraudulently applied to ourselves – the western civilization.

Beware – anybody who contradicts this truth and course of events, is labeled a conspiracy theorist, defamed and out-laughed, stigmatized. We have to de-metricize. Abandon our western established parameters, they are made to enslave us -so that an ever-smaller elite satanic class that produces and manages the Clintons, Trumps, Obamas, Bushes, Blairs, Merkels, Abes, Hollandes – and soon probably Macrons – and many more of the same kind – may continue their feast.

We are called to vote for these abject people, called politicians, most of them brain-and mindless, who have been preselected by the Masters who control the globe, in the believe we are actually choosing people who represent our society, defend our needs, freedom, justice and equality. Every four or five years we fall for the same rituals and believe things will change. We never dig deep down to find the reasons why all stays the same -and gets worse, despite our unhappiness and despite our ‘democratic’ votes. We are blind. Slavehood makes blind. We are more comfortable as blind slaves than as seeing humans. So, we keep falling for illusions.

Our lives are grey-white like a foggy sky, no sun. The sun and its enchanting wonderful brightness has been eviscerated from our enslaved minds. We are living in an oppressive depressive western civilization which we still call ‘democracy’ – because our twisted, manipulated comfort-loving minds do not want to admit – that we are enslaved. That democracy has been a pipedream of some Greek Philosophers 2500 years ago. Nothing more. We stole the term from history as a pretext to wage wars, rape, exploit and – to enslave.

Slavehood of 2017 – and maybe many more years to come – if we do not wake up soon – has gone global, very global. It’s the epitome of globalization. We are being uniformed into colorless cubicles.

PNAC Neocons

Culture is massacred, language is synthesized into Anglo-Saxon slogans – we are all supposed to think in globally recognized clichés; clichés repeated and perpetuated at nauseatum by Hollywood, the notorious mass-media; by the western education system, schools from primary to universities – private or state-run, are indoctrinating our kids with neoliberal dogmas that keep enslaving them.

Independent thinking has become a crime, as it impedes the advancement of slavehood. Education is designed to kill individual thinking and the wide range of inventiveness – because it’s dangerous – for those who enslave and control us. ‘New-speak’ education has to make us thinking what the system wants us to think. That’s what western education has become in the last 50 years – a farce to keep us as non-thinking idiots.

Idiots are easily enslaved and exploited and sent to wars – to steal foreign resources to satisfy the greed of a few. We love to be cannon fodder, as we were told – enslaved – to believe that good patriots love to die for their country. We are blinded and avoid seeing that we are dying fighting to satisfy puppet leaders’ greed for power and money – whose power is nothing more than that allowed them by the Masters who control the world and who pull the strings on their marionettes.

Wakeup from slavehood 2017! – Make 2017 the last slave year!

Peter Koenig is an economist and geopolitical analyst. He is also a former World Bank staff and worked extensively around the world in the fields of environment and water resources. He lectures at universities in the US, Europe and South America. He writes regularly for Global Research, ICH, RT, Sputnik, PressTV, The 4th Media (China), TeleSUR, The Vineyard of The Saker Blog, and other internet sites. He is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed – fiction based on facts and on 30 years of World Bank experience around the globe. He is also a co-author of The World Order and Revolution! – Essays from the Resistance.

The original source of this article is Global Research

Copyright © Peter Koenig, Global Research, 2017

Getting rich is largely about luck – shame the wealthy don’t want to hear it

 

“The American dream is a myth, just like the London investment banker’s fantasy. Those who make money are often not very talented at all. They were just lucky at the right points in their lives. They might have worked hard and often are driven and greedy, but thousands of others will have worked as hard as them, been just as greedy as them, and not consistently struck it lucky. Most often, those who make money had money given to them in the first place, through inheritance that increased their chances; but it is always down to luck. Don’t believe the myth of the nice, kind, gifted, self-made entrepreneur.”

Eat the rich?

A new report confirms how the rich become deluded about their talents, but also hints at a growing acknowledgement of inequality.

Source: Getting rich is largely about luck – shame the wealthy don’t want to hear it

theconversation.com

Danny Dorling

Halford Mackinder Professor of Geography, University of Oxford

May 5, 2017

The UK suffers from the highest levels of income inequality in Europe – partly because of the delusions of its rich. In countries where the rich have less, they tend to be less delusional, about themselves, about other people, about what is possible, and about why some become rich.

In the UK, it is unsurprising to read that an investment banker thinks £100m is a lot of money but “not a ridiculous amount of money”. In a report in The Guardian newspaper this week, we also heard that one particular banker is “fairly confident” that a driven and passionate individual could “start from zero and get to £100m within 20 years”.

 

Grab it while you can… Vova Shevchuk/Shutterstock

However, there is hope. In the research report that kicked off this latest set of news stories, Katharina Hecht from the London School of Economics and Political Science found that one third of her sample of extremely rich people working in the City of London agreed that “the government should reduce income differences”. The sample is extremely small and this subset of the very rich has not been asked similar questions before, but what they say chimes with reports from the US last year which implied attitudes among the extremely wealthy are beginning to change.

In 2016 in New York, 50 millionaires wrote to the state’s governor, Andrew Cuomo, asking him to increase their taxes because they thought economic inequalities had grown too high. The group included Abigail Disney, granddaughter of Walt Disney, and Steven Rockefeller, a fourth-generation member of that very wealthy family. The offspring of the rich at least know they did not bring in their riches, let alone create them out of thin air.

In truth, no one creates wealth out of the ether as the mythic phrase “wealth creator” suggests. Most wealth is appropriated from others, not made. Wealth can grow but only when it is well shared, not corralled into the hands of a few. Wealth growth rates are highest in countries that are more equitable than their neighbours.

Four years after the great financial crash, Michael Lewis, one of the most successful people ever to write about the financial industry tried to explain to a group of Princeton University graduates why most of his own and his audience’s success would be down to luck. The author of The Big Short and Moneyball told them that the odds would just be tipped a little in their favour if they were born with a silver spoon in their mouth:

People really don’t like to hear success explained away as luck – especially successful people. As they age, and succeed, people feel their success was somehow inevitable. They don’t want to acknowledge the role played by accident in their lives. There is a reason for this: the world does not want to acknowledge it either.

Lucking out

The world Lewis was talking about was not the whole world, but the world as seen by the elites in unequal countries. By “world” he really meant “America”, and in particular he was talking about the “American Dream” – the idea that anyone can make it if they try hard enough and are talented enough, no matter how economically unequal the society is they are competing in.

 

Chance encounter. EPA/ALEX HOFFORD

The American dream is a myth, just like the London investment banker’s fantasy. Those who make money are often not very talented at all. They were just lucky at the right points in their lives. They might have worked hard and often are driven and greedy, but thousands of others will have worked as hard as them, been just as greedy as them, and not consistently struck it lucky. Most often, those who make money had money given to them in the first place, through inheritance that increased their chances; but it is always down to luck. Don’t believe the myth of the nice, kind, gifted, self-made entrepreneur.

We live in a world in which those who have got to the top have got there not out of great merit, but because they often had a few unfair advantages to start with, such as being born male, white and rich, because they had many lucky breaks on the way up, and often because they were willing to stamp on others’ chances as they rose. The human world does not consist of just a few superior beings able enough to do the key things that need doing, and a lumpen mass of inferior beings who could never do these things and so should be penalised appropriately.