We commit to our partner and kids, and for some of us, our job.

Countries are getting in on the act and committing to fixing climate change.

Posh people wear little flag brooches to demonstrate the cause they align with…

There is an opportunity for regular folk to commit to an ideal.

Shock works great, so imagine this:

Every-time a rich person purchases something, they pay above the going rate. On purpose, with great fanfare. They get to show off.

But they commit to doing so. It becomes a club, a collective, a body. A movement.

Maybe one day we will hear someone say “would you like to pay extra” when you go to pay, and you wear the brooch.

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• Is it the shadow government / deep state?
• Or donor pressure?
• Or admitting that the capitalist dream is flawed?

The Washington Post, citing five sources and an internal administration document, said the “billionaire minimum income tax” plan would establish a 20% minimum tax rate on all American households worth more than $100m.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/mar/26/joe-biden-billionaires-tax

I like that simplicity. No ways around it – however your income is derived, at that level of income, you absolutely have to pay 20% income tax, which is way below what the middle class pay.

Impossible to argue against philosophically.

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The standard short version of how capitalism works is this: Workers get paid, and with that money they buy the goods that all workers have created, and that pays for costs of producing the goods.

It is circular. It works. Until someone is taking more than their fair share, and removes it from the economy by storing their wealth somewhere. This happens when increased productivity is not matched by increased wages, and the rich get more of the profits.

That means that there are more goods to be purchased than wages can pay for, because some money has been removed from the circular economy by rich people. Elon Musk doesn’t spend billions a year on goods.

To make up for that shortfall of cash to buy the goods we create, we borrow. 40% of Americans (the lowest earners) are spending more in any year than what they earn.

For this to keep happening, interest rates need to keep going lower and lower. So interest rates and inequality may be connected.

Fixing inequality means increasing the income of workers so that they get a share of the productivity increases they are part of. More income means higher interest rates to control spending, and meanwhile inequality decreases.

See this NYT article for some similar thoughts

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meritocracy: a system, organization, or society in which people are chosen and moved into positions of success, power, and influence on the basis of their demonstrated abilities and merit

So, if Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos suddenly arrives naked on a desert island – alone – will their verve and smarts make them rich?

What if they arrive on an island, that has a dozen people but no technology?

10,000 people and no technology?

5 people and they have learned how to kill rats with a trap.

How many people does he need (non-billionaires) and how many generations of technology (that he had no part in), to even start to become rich and superior?

The very rich, no matter how smart or hard-working, needed all of us to get there, one way or another. All of us. One person less would mean (on average) less success.

So feel free to ask a billionaire how successful they could have been on a desert island.

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There are two ways we can reduce inequality – government action or populist movements causing government action.

An overthrowing of Putin and the oligarchs would be a signal to the rest of the world’s governments that should be more honest, and more equitable.

It is really hard to predict which country will be next in removing dictators or becoming more democratic, but we know that people have a trigger point, which is when they see no other way of resolving things. Regime change doesn’t happen because of declining GDP numbers, it comes from enough people experiencing sufficient pain and difficulties to take action.

It looks like the Middle East is ready for some new uprisings, and social media is way more persuasive than a decade ago, so expect radical change, soon, in at least a few countries there.

Hollowed out by corruption and mismanagement and buffeted by adverse economic conditions, authoritarian governments in the Middle East are struggling to deliver the socioeconomic benefits that once pacified their publics. Armed actors, whether national security services or private militias, are playing an ever more important role in many countries—both economically and politically. Ordinary people, meanwhile, are being squeezed by growing violence on the one hand and dwindling resources on the other—just as they were prior to the Arab uprisings of 2011, and in Iraq and Syria, prior to the rise of the Islamic State.

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/middle-east/2022-03-22/middle-east-brink-again

One way of looking at the potential for an uprising is the ratio of armed forces to citizens. Too few forces and an uprising is easier to achieve. Too many and the military can turn on their leaders, because they have the power.

Asia and the Middle East dominate the rankings, with Greece the only odd one where the numbers are more than 6 per 1000 active military (30 countries). The United States is 51st with 4.2 per 1000. Interesting the lowest numbers are mostly in Africa which might need some explaining… although with Haiti at zero I suspect they just have a different names for government workers with guns, like police.

So based on low numbers, and inequality, these are my picks for uprising in the near future:

• South Africa
• Papua New Guinea
• East Timor
• Nepal
• Venezuela

It is more likely to be in the Middle East, but that cannot be foretold by numbers.

The post Revolutions and Equality appeared first on Evryone.

Like the banning of a book.

When you have 1 country x 52 states x 50 counties x 30 elected officials… multiplied by how everyone these days has a voice… shit will rise to the top, and biased news services find their fodder.

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The UK gives various honors, the most well-known of which is a knighthood. The number of people receiving UK / Commonwealth honors is extensive. The only medals in the US are in the military.

If people can gain respect and prestige outside of financial meritocracy, it will help to end inequality. But while the only reward is rocket ships and super yachts…

How Would It Work?

The categories should be wide and the levels of reward deep. The Presidential Medal would be on par with a knighthood or Nobel prize. But other awards could occur, at state levels perhaps.

The system is very non-partisan, and favoritism according to which party is in power happens, but is rare, and inconsequential. In the UK:

 The committees are composed of senior civil servants and independent experts in specific fields. The majority of the honours committees are non-civil servants.

Each subcommittee oversees nominations for its specialised area: Arts and Media; Community, Voluntary and Local Services; Economy; Education; Health; Parliamentary and Political Service; Science and Technology; Sport; and State. 

The individual committees assess the nominations and pass the nominations to the Main Honours Committee, whose members select the final list of nominations that are passed to the Queen by the Prime Minister.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honours_Committee

An easy example of who would get a Presidential Medal would be a Republican president awarding it to Jimmy Carter for his work in fighting homelessness. Everyone would applaud that, and it could only reduce divisiveness in the US.

The Media would then be able to to say Presidential Medalist Jimmy Carter in the same way as they feel compelled to obsessively tell us that Elon Musk happens to be a billionaire.

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A key form of storing that wealth (and removing it from the cyclical economy) is property. Often the family home is a key asset, because typically it won’t attract capital gains tax – it my home, not an investment!

So in many districts of the US, zoning laws are in place to make sure that only expensive, single family buildings can exist, even when multi-family buildings – apartment buildings of any size – would be economically viable. This is against the nature of free capitalism, and more akin to authoritarianism.

The American Prospect reports:

Exhibit A is exclusionary zoning, which outlaws the construction of duplexes, triplexes, and apartment buildings—housing that is more affordable for working-class families, many of them families of color—in affluent areas.

…In the 1970s, residents of Boston made national headlines for violently resisting school desegregation.

…Almost 50 years later, exclusion remains pervasive in the Boston area. In Wellesley, for example, which was home to the federal judge who ordered school desegregation, and where three-quarters of voters supported Joe Biden over Donald Trump in 2020, the population remains just 2.9 percent Black and 5.1 percent Hispanic. The median household income is $197,132.

…In the relatively diverse city of Cambridge (median household income of $103,154), for example, the zoning code states that the minimum lot size for multifamily housing is 900 square feet, while 15 miles away, in Weston (median household income of $207,702), the multifamily minimum lot size has been set at 240,000 square feet, some 267 times higher than Cambridge’s.

That’s 5.5 acres. There’s no logic behind such a rule.

The article cites other examples. Thankfully there is a chance that Biden can improve things, as the US slowly removes barriers to equality:

The House-passed version of the Build Back Better Act provides $1.75 billion for Unlocking Possibilities, a first-ever federal race-to-the-top program to provide incentives for states and localities to remove the exclusionary zoning policies that segregate Americans by race and class and make housing less affordable for everyone.

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Often the general narrative is that a rich person made a mistake and will learn their lesson, whereas a poor person has started down an unstoppable path of crime. Also, of course, the rich can afford better lawyers (as opposed to many poor folk not even having a lawyer), and awesome character references.

But it is rare to see these contrasts so blatantly extreme as this:

An American hedge-fund billionaire has surrendered 180 looted and illegally smuggled antiquities valued at $70m… The DA’s office said its inquiry found “compelling evidence” that the antiquities were stolen from 11 countries, and that at least 171 passed through traffickers before being bought by Steinhardt.

…“His pursuit of ‘new’ additions to showcase and sell knew no geographic or moral boundaries, as reflected in the sprawling underworld of antiquities traffickers, crime bosses, money launderers and tomb raiders he relied upon to expand his collection.”

…treasures include the Ercolano Fresco, which depicts an infant Hercules strangling a snake sent by Hera to slay him, which had been purchased from convicted antiquities traffickers for $650,000 in 1995, the year it had been looted from a Roman villa in the ruins of Herculaneum, near modern Naples. Today, it has been valued at $1m.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/dec/07/us-billionaire-michael-steinhardt-surrenders-70m-dollars-stolen-art

Keep in mind that hedge fund billionaires don’t really work for their money, and are the biggest tax-dodgers around.

And the result? No charges, no conviction.

Whereas a poor person who received a stolen toaster would be convicted, and even jailed if they had priors.

The post Different Punishments for the Rich appeared first on Evryone.

This week a group of around 80 people planned a large-scale robbery of a Nordstrom store in Walnut Creek, California. Police arrested three, and one was armed with a gun.

They used 25 stolen cars to block access for police, and used pepper spray, physical violence and a knife on Nordstrom staff, getting away with $100K in loot.

This is also recently happened in pharmacies, cannabis dispensaries and jewelry stores.

Desperate, impoverished people committing crime is not unusual anywhere in the world. But when people mass organise to participate in violent crime, for a gain of only $1000 each, that is next level. That is in the direction of a rebellion.

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