What makes me sad is that in reading one of her interviews I know that she has experienced how the giant wealth gap in the Philippines poisons the culture. In short, her Aunt was murdered by one of her servants, apparently a revenge killing for the years of condescending treatment and little pay. In the Philippines, the majority of the wealth is controlled by ethnic Chinese people-- this was , as far as I can tell , a deliberate attempt by the Marcos regime to have clients who depended on him for their survival. Sure, the Chinese families could get rich, but Marcos also knew that since they were a minority, he would always be able to stoke ethnic resentment if they got out of line. She does say in one of her interviews "We need to find ways to redistribute the wealth, whether it's property title and giving poor people property, land reform .... Redistributive mechanisms are tough to have if you have so much corruption." I don't think that she understands that the very educational system and norms she is pushing with her children, are the very reason that we face the destruction of the middle class in the United States.If general levels of resentment are really high, it is very difficult to prevent others from harming you.
Zuckerberg is 27, for example.The poster was responding to the claim that no one, not even self-professed rich people, in their 20s is in the top 1%.
Yeah, dummy. Any sensible appraisal of the typical prospects of a young person has to take Zuckerberg into account!
I absolutely agree with you that charity is not the answer. Charity is poorly-focused (large sums of money need to be allocated centrally so that there is coordination and prioritization) and simply doesn't exist at a scale that's sufficient to tackle the problem.I'm not sure how, say, Facebook and Google engineers created the miserable conditions you're talking about.It's a systemic problem, and you can't blame them as individuals. So the closest you'll get to an answer is: "by participating." That's not their fault as individuals, but to many people looking for change, an offer of charity is unnecessary or even insulting.
posted by wildcrdj at 3:08 PM on October 12 [+] [!]
All snark aside it isn't about bringing down the rich, it's about building an economic and political system that empowers its membership. If it helps, you can think of the rich as potential casualties of that, they certainly will.
Charity is great, and helps a lot of people, but it's not a solution to problems that are actually inherent in the system. Often enough, it looks like it's being done to defuse the anger of the exploited at the bottom.
posted by Stagger Lee at 6:16 PM on October 12 [3 favorites +] [!]
And yet again all you mopes are all still talking about person income taxes. You still can't get beyond the language constructed for you back in the neoliberal think tanks of the 1960s. Seriously, even the (arguably) wealthiest (not by income, but real wealth) company in the world, Exxon Mobile Corp's entire sales for a year would only dent our national debt. You think a few Buffet's paying a little bit more is going to do more than make it angry?This is by no means a refutation of your claims, but I just want to point out the smallest bit of irony here: by using the national debt to frame your remarks, you yourself are repeating rhetoric cooked up by conservative think-tanks, namely the rhetoric that the national debt is our biggest problem right now, and that fixing it will fix the current economic problems.
why would you "hate the actions" your parents took in making money on the stock market. If they just invested well, its ethically fine.It's pretty unlikely.
Rockefeller invented modern philanthropy and probably gave away more in real dollars than anyone else, ever. Billions in 1900 dollars, which would be many trillions today.Inflation since 1900 has been 25 fold, not thousands fold. So $1 billion then would be $25 billion today. He wouldn't have given away anything near trillions of dollars.
He wasn't making 1% of GDP in 1937 though, he was just worth an equivalent amount, its not the same.Yeah, people need to learn the difference between GDP and wealth.
But you (as an empath, after all) gotta get that the vibe in here is fairly hostile to anyone with money.It's interesting, his name rarely matches his comments.
Zuckerberg is 27, for example.Wow, a guy who's parents could afford to send him to Harvard and exter would do well after graduation... Zuckerberg is actually a perfect example of how success comes to those who are rich and well connected to other rich people, not people who are smart or hard working
86: I want the funds I have contributed as income tax this year allocated as follows: * As govt sees fit ____% * Defence ____% * Education ____% * Foreign aid ____% * Health care ____% * Research ____% * Welfare ____% * Other: ______________ ____% ______________ ____% ______________ ____% ______________ ____% ______________ ____% ______________ ____%
Until recently, most studies just broke out the top 1% as a group. Data on net worth distributions within the top 1% indicate that one enters the top 0.5% with about $1.8M, the top 0.25% with $3.1M, the top 0.10% with $5.5M and the top 0.01% with $24.4M. Wealth distribution is highly skewed towards the top 0.01%, increasing the overall average for this group. The net worth for those in the lower half of the top 1% is usually achieved after decades of education, hard work, saving and investing as a professional or small business person. While an after-tax income of $175k to $250k and net worth in the $1.2M to $1.8M range may seem like a lot of money to most Americans, it doesn't really buy freedom from financial worry or access to the true corridors of power and money. That doesn't become frequent until we reach the top 0.1%.tl;dr: Here is a pretty infographic that basically summarizes everything you need to know.
Personally, I've long been in favour of a system whereby we get to affect the budget collectively as we fill in our tax returns.I don't really see this working. Getting things done requires long-term thinking and prioritization, and the resolve to do things that are unpopular for long-term gain. Not only that, but people already have drastically-skewed ideas of what the budget is, which to me does not suggest that they would do a good job of creating it.
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posted by Slackermagee at 2:12 PM on October 12, 2011