Post: #1

"An economy for the 1%"

In 2015 62 individuals had the same amount of wealth as 3,6 billion people, the bottom half of humanity. Amazingly as recently as 2010 it was 388 individuals who held this much wealth.

This report published three days ago by Oxfam titled "an economy for the 1%" seems to not have received a lot of publicity in many places.
Wealth inequality is a subject that has interested me recently.

Here are some key points from the report:

>The wealth of the poorest half of the world's population has fallen by $1 trillion since 2010, a decline of 41%, whilst the wealth of the world's richest 62 people has increased by $500 billion and now stands at $1,76 trillion.

>Since 2015 the world's richest 1% of people are now wealthier than the rest of humanity.

>Tax havens and tax dodging underpin the increasing wealth inequality and the explosion of the wealth of the world's richest people. effectively there is a different set of rules for the richest.

>Oxfam calls for the abolition of the tax haven system saying it is impoverishing nations as rich people and multi-nationals do not pay their fair share to society.

>Tax dodging is rampant as 188 of 201 leading companies have a presence in at least one tax haven.

>$7,6 trillion of individuals' wealth is kept off-shore, depriving governments of about $190 billion per year in taxes.

>About 30% of Africa's financial wealth is held off-shore, depriving governments of $14 billion per year.

>Tax dodging by multi-national corporations deprives developing nations of about $100 billion per year.

>Despite growing inequality and the concentration of wealth, world leaders set a goal in 2015 to eliminate extreme poverty by the year 2030 (meaning within 15 years).

>The rate of return on capital earned by the richest is consistently much higher than the rate of overall economic growth.

>9 of the world's richest 62 people are female.

Full report: https://www.oxfam.org/en/research/economy-1

Post: #2

So, how do I tax dodge my way to being richer than the poorest 4 billion? Would appreciate a datasheet.

Post: #3

Mind blowing...

Post: #4

(01-21-2016 07:04 AM)Suits Wrote:  So, how do I tax dodge my way to being richer than the poorest 4 billion? Would appreciate a datasheet.

I'm speculating here (excuse the pun) but it seems firstly one needs to have a certain, very large amount of money, such that one is better off dodging taxes rather than paying the reasonable share.
Tax dodging itself won't make anyone rich in the first place.

Post: #5

What's wrong with tax havens? Why should corporations or people be required to give their money to corrupt, self-interested governments? The amount of taxes in existence is astronomical, and societies in years past have survived with a tenth of the current tax now. Minimizing tax as a business is a must, given the incredible treasonous wastage of our world leaders. Corporations, as greedy or immoral as some may be, satisfy a consumer demand. They're providing something we want. Instead of focusing on them, how about focusing on the political class which is truly responsible for all our ills.

Post: #6

I could care less what Oxfam says about anything. Their stance on the migrant crisis amongst other things makes this article suspect.

Who are these 62 individuals? Are they titans of industry? Why is it their fault that 3rd world governments like to keep their citizenry impoverished for the benefit of those countries elite?

It's not the fault of those 62 individuals that the 3.2 billion poor aren't smart enough to figure out how to pull themselves out of their holes.

While I have my own complaints about runaway capitalism and exploitative actions like giving tax funded bail outs to banks, the 3rd world (looking at you Africa, India, and China) are shit holes for a reason. Corruption in local government is high and the general populace has a, "fuck you, pay me" attitude.

The west's wealth shouldn't be spent on cleaning up the 3rd world. If they can't do it themselves, then it's their own damn fault and isn't the responsibility of the west or the 62 individuals to fix it themselves.

Post: #7

Meh. I hate when they agglomerate third world shitholes into these types of analyses.

Struggling to scrape by through working minimum wage jobs in America?
You greedy bastard, you should be ashamed of yourself, don't you know you make more money than 50 Africans put together?

Are you a real estate agent that just got a commission on selling a $500k house? You should be lynched and and your daughter raped, you capitalist pig, what you made in the 15 min it took to sign the purchase agreement could feed a village in Bangladesh for a year!

I'm not saying there isn't a problem with inequality in the West, there definitely is. But fuck the third world. They are not children, they don't like us, and they are not our responsibility. We should not make them part of the equation when analyzing what ails our society.

Post: #8

Who gives a shit.

The only people who complain about this are those unable or unwilling to comprehend that people aren't equal. In their simplistic minds, all wealth just magically comes out of the ether, and inequality of its possession is a sign of "unfair distribution". To them, the word "earn" triggers great cognitive and emotional distress. They might have to come to the conclusion "I suck".

Business isn't a linear payoff. If you're first to market, or if you're 2mm ahead of the rest of the competition, you get most of the money. At the same time, the rest of the world gets to buy your awesome stuff at an affordable price. Let's have a fucking cry.

Of course at the same time, 1 billion people have left poverty over the last 20 years, thanks to the beauty of inequality AKA free markets. You won't hear these folk celebrate that because it gets in the way of their antisocial designs.

Post: #9

This study seems to be pushing a socialist agenda. Why would the average Westerner be grouped in with the average African or Indian? Wages and the cost of living are in two different leagues. Drop off the poorest Westerners in Sub-Saharan Africa and they can live like kings and queens.

Speaking of America, we don't need Robin Hood to save us from the big bad 1%. We need a better tax code. A flat tax or something similar makes much more sense than an 80,000 page IRC.

Post: #10

The 62 individuals are said to be (no mention of any of the Rothschilds):

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/...h-7197275:

bill gates
amancio Ortega
warren buffett
jeff Bezos
carlos slim helu
larry Ellison
mark zuckerberg
Charles Koch
david Koch
liliane Bettencourt
Michael Bloomberg
larry page
sergey brin
Bernard arnault
jim Walton
alice Walton
sam robson Walton
Christy Walton
li ka-shing
wang jianling
phil knight
George soros
Jorge lemann
steve ballmer
georg schaeffler
forrest mars, jr
Jacqueline mars
john mars
david Thomson
Sheldon adelson
mukesh ambani
lee shau kee
maria franca fissolo
jack ma
Leonardo del vecchio
Stefan person
carl Icahn
Michael dell
paul allen
beate heister and karl Albrecht, jr
susanne klatten
anne cox chambers
dhanin chearavanont
tadashi yanai
laurene powell jobs
ma huateng
len blavatnik
alwaleed bin talal alsaud
theo Albrecht, jr
Stefan quandt
azim premji
Michael otto
dilip shanghvi
ray dalio
Donald bren
serge dassault
hinduja brothers
aliko dangote
dieter Schwarz
james simons
cheng yu-tung
Charles ergen

Post: #11

wi30 Wrote:This study seems to be pushing a socialist agenda.

Welcome to Oxfam, the socialist political organisation that did the study. Even the fucking Daily Mail in 2014 was willing to query their shit: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/articl...ganda.html

Quote:The charity’s campaigns and policy director, Ben Phillips, denies this, saying that Oxfam is ‘a resolutely non-party political organisation’.

But he adds that Britain faces ‘a tide of rising inequality. This is an unacceptable situation in one of the world’s largest economies, and politicians of all stripes have a responsibility to tackle it’.

This would be an unsurprising claim from Ed Miliband or Ed Balls. But from a professed charity?

Phillips presents as facts, assertions that are, at best, highly controversial. So does Oxfam’s website, which proclaims: ‘Breadline Britain. More and More UK families are going hungry.’

Many of us would react to such claims by saying: ‘Rubbish.’

Britain’s GDP is now for the first time larger than it was in 2008: far from getting poorer, this country is getting richer. Poverty here is relative, not absolute.

Where there is hunger, it is generated by bad life choices - not cruel government - compounded by a voluntary influx of migrants from some of the poorest societies on Earth.

The same can be said about the rising use of charity food banks, which Oxfam cites as evidence of desperation.

Ben Phillips has denounced the alleged ‘rise of inequality’ in Britain while the French economist Thomas Piketty has also made much-publicised claims about this - arguing that the gap between the rich and the poor has been soaring - to the delight of British Lefties. But many of this socialist ass’s statistics have been chewed to ribbons.

Of course, Britain has inequality, but so has every society on Earth. It is utterly wrong to claim that the human condition in this country - even at the bottom of the pile - is worsening.

Worldwide poverty has halved in the past 20 years, mostly as a result of capitalist policies.

Nothing to see here, more whining Reds who still haven't figured out why the Berlin Wall fell, move along.

God save us from people who mean well. -storm

Post: #12

Oxfam calculates individuals from their net worth - assets minus liabilities equals net worth.

After college I was probably in their 10-20% of the worlds poorest (student loans, very few assets). My brother did the same, then grad school. 4-5 years later he bought a giant house in the American suburbs, he is probably still in the bottom 5% based on their methodology.

If you look at the bottom 20% by continent it is almost exclusively Europe and North America (because of debt culture).

After I paid down my student loan and banked some cash in my 401k I soared past a billion people in China, a billion people in India and another billion in Africa.

Post: #13

The list seems quite accurate to me, even considering Oxfam's suspect politics.

However, I have something else to say!

Imagine these 62 living just for themselves, having a good time at their yachts and private jets and counting gold bars in their vaults - that's all fine! If I were mind-bogglingly rich, I'd also spend my time fucking thousands of prostitutes and snorting tons of coke in front of a giant OLED screen displaying my bank accounts.

But where's the problem - some random Mark Zuckerberg guy who owns tens of billions parades in front of citizens, entrepreneurs, politicians - that guy puts on an act: "I want to make the world a better place!" Everyone is so delighted with him donating everything all his possessions to charity, while in reality he doesn't actually do any humanitarian work, but instead spends his days spying on all of us to please some Zionist glue-sniffing zombies. Well fuck his stinking mother!

Do you understand? Some Soros, Gates, Clinton or Rockefeller creature's selling you a fantasy about him being a great humanist benefactor, and as soon as our head is turned he goes around the world pushing GMO, financing color revolutions and arming terrorists who don't even know what the fuck they're fighting for.

That is what is getting on my nerves!

Post: #14

Yeah, when millions of US citizens pay 10s if not hundreds or thousands of dollars into a lottery which then gave 3 winners more than 300 million dollars each, with a top prize exceeding 1 billion, you sort of come close as to why there is a pyramid in regards to wealth distribution.

If it was easy to become rich and powerful we would have many more rich and powerful people. Poor people will for the most part remain poor.

Post: #15

(01-21-2016 09:57 AM)Foolsgo1d Wrote:  Poor people will for the most part remain poor.

Yep, and it will never be different. Never has been, and never will be. The only question is if they will be "can't pay my cable bill" poor or "can't buy enough food to live" poor.

The poor American lives better than a 17th century king. A hot shower, flush toilet, electric lights, running water, phone calls, free unlimited entertainment with a TV set. If it weren't for the fact the king had a pile of teenage girls to roll around in I'd pick being the poor American any day.

Oxfam can, as we say in the old country, "go suck a fat one".

Post: #16

And? What's your point?

Post: #17

As other have alluded to, the cutoff for being in the global 1% is about $32k a year.

Meaning at least half of Americans are a part of that group and most of the rest are pretty close.

Post: #18

I'm playing the devil's advocate here, but couldn't a reasonable counter argument be that lots of these individuals are sitting on heaps of cash made by people who are made to work brutally hard, long hours for little pay? These people also often have no alternative but to work.

Also, this just means that the rich can control even more so the politics in countries such as the US/UK.

Post: #19

The reason why this is important, and the reason why we should care, is because excessive concentrations of wealth in a society destabilize that society.

It threatens republican democratic institutions by producing plutocratic oligarchies, rather than governments which are run with the interests of the public at heart.

I discussed this issue here:

http://www.returnofkings.com/32017/the-c...tal-wealth

That is why we should care.

It directly magnifies poverty, greed, injustice, and a host of other evils. It reduces the role of the public to that of a passive spectator, subject to the whims of the ruling caste.

It destroys the middle class and transforms society into something resembling the worst Third World tyranny.

Of course there are always going to be haves and have-nots. No one doubts this. But it is a matter of degree. America in 1960 was far more equitably configured in terms of wealth distribution.

Now, things are simply ridiculous.

If peaceful ways can't be found to ensure some measure of equity in these matters, then the result will be political instability, social unrest, and in extreme cases, civil war and dictatorship.

Post: #20

The only thing I want to know is how to safely dodge taxes.

If these fat cats can get away with evading millions and millions of tax liability every year, there has got to be away I can hang onto an extra $500-$1000 a month.

Not that I need it, but it would be awfully nice to take home more of what I make like these assholes do.

Post: #21

(01-21-2016 11:56 AM)Quintus Curtius Wrote:  The reason why this is important, and the reason why we should care, is because excessive concentrations of wealth in a society destabilize that society.

It threatens republican democratic institutions by producing plutocratic oligarchies, rather than governments which are run with the interests of the public at heart.

I discussed this issue here:

http://www.returnofkings.com/32017/the-c...tal-wealth

That is why we should care.

It directly magnifies poverty, greed, injustice, and a host of other evils. It reduces the role of the public to that of a passive spectator, subject to the whims of the ruling caste.

It destroys the middle class and transforms society into something resembling the worst Third World tyranny.

Of course there are always going to be haves and have-nots. No one doubts this. But it is a matter of degree. America in 1960 was far more equitably configured in terms of wealth distribution.

Now, things are simply ridiculous.

If peaceful ways can't be found to ensure some measure of equity in these matters, then the result will be political instability, social unrest, and in extreme cases, civil war and dictatorship.

The poorer people feel relative to their peers, the more bitter, angry, resentful, and violent they become.

Also the reason why economically successful minorities are so hated throughout the world within their respective societies.

Post: #22

Math is hard.

I can't believe I have to be the first to point this out. The article says that by these 62 people having wealth equal to the lower half of the world's population, they have half the world's wealth.

I hope everybody who takes a second to think about this sees the problem.

The lower half of the world's population has extremely little wealth (ie. Net Worth). I would estimate without looking it up that the lower half probably has about 5% of the world's wealth. Therefore these 62 people together have about 5% of the world's wealth. That's still a lot, but it is a full order of magnitude less than the 50% the article claims. This is pure SJW bullshit.

Frankly, I don't think it is that surprising that the top 62 major fortunes represent this portion of the world's wealth. Keep in mind that most of the lower 50% has the opportunity to improve themselves, spend less than they earn, and build up some savings and net worth. If everyone in the lower 50% increased their net worth by $1000, that would be $3.5 trillion in wealth. However, they lack the cultural background, self-discipline, capacity for delayed gratification, and basic intelligence to do so. They will never have any significant net worth. Even if the SJWs seized 100% of the assets of these 62 people and distributed it to the bottom 50%, they would spend every cent immediately, and still have no wealth.

Post: #23

(01-21-2016 09:57 AM)Foolsgo1d Wrote:  If it was easy to become rich and powerful we would have many more rich and powerful people. Poor people will for the most part remain poor.

In this country, at least, wealth, for the most part, is the product of intelligent, socially-rewarded habits and behaviors. The opposite is also generally true - ie, most poor people are poor for a reason.

Giving poor people wealth does not automatically impart responsible, productive, middle-class behavior patterns....those are the source, not the result, of wealth.

Post: #24

Here's why income inequality isn't really an issue. Can Warren Buffet personally buy up all the food in the country and starve us to death? Hypothetically yes, but practically no. He has no incentive to, and even if he tried the combination of people producing extra food due to increased demand and just raiding his food stockpile would make it fail. Essentially Warren Buffet can only consume as much as any other man, plus say a few big houses and some jet fuel.

If you were to take all of these billionaires' wealth and give it all away to the poorest 4 billion people, nothing would effectively change for those poor people. If you're Ndugu in Africa and you have one goat, and suddenly you have two goats due to wealth redistribution, you'll rapidly find that everything at the local store costs twice as much, and you need to sell twice as much goat milk to make ends meet. The productive capacity of the world is rather divorced from the amount of fiat currency in existence.

Post: #25

(01-21-2016 12:16 PM)RoastBeefCurtains4Me Wrote:  Math is hard.

I can't believe I have to be the first to point this out. The article says that by these 62 people having wealth equal to the lower half of the world's population, they have half the world's wealth.

I hope everybody who takes a second to think about this sees the problem.

The lower half of the world's population has extremely little wealth (ie. Net Worth). I would estimate without looking it up that the lower half probably has about 5% of the world's wealth. Therefore these 62 people together have about 5% of the world's wealth. That's still a lot, but it is a full order of magnitude less than the 50% the article claims. This is pure SJW bullshit.

Ha ha. Joke's on you. The richest 80 people in the world actually have about 0.7% of the world's wealth.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/29/upshot...verty.html

Yeah, all you Lenin-quoting losers, that's less than 1%. Power to my pee-pee.