economy

Why do the rich spend so lavishly instead of helping those in need?

This post is a response to a question initially posed on Quora, and can also be accessed via “https://www.quora.com/Why-do-the-rich-spend-so-lavishly-instead-of-helping-out-those-in-need/answer/Antonio-Amaral-1“

…because they can, and because they’re being rewarded for their success in accruing large sums of money with more money by the puppets they pay to play the role of a government representative of the people.

Why should they care about helping those in need if that fundamentally changes nothing about the existence of those in need?

Why should they cut back on their trips across the globe for their favourite ice cream to ease someone’s suffering for only a few moments while they continue to suffer throughout their lives?

Isn’t it just easier to let the suffering die so that they can be done with their misery once and for all?

Don’t we shoot horses when they break their legs?

https://youtu.be/qsKQiVJkEvI?si=gfT7KT5PNSX-G4rJ

They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? (1969) ⭐ 7.8 | Drama

The real problem here is the concept of altruism. In an economically just world, altruism would be moot.

We already know that the executive boardroom is populated with the same density of psychopaths as a prison. Yet, we somehow expect they will be charitable enough with their money to sacrifice their luxuries to temporarily ease the pain of those suffering from unmet basic needs.

As individuals, they can only accomplish a little of anything.

As a group, however, we can ensure our system holds them accountable for their fair share of contributions to the world in which they disproportionately benefit from its bounties.

If they were held accountable for how they were at our height of middle-class growth, they would be more successful at helping all in need in proportion to their contributions as a whole because no one would benefit more or less from an act of altruism.

By returning tax rates on the wealthy to an Eisenhower level of progressive taxation, replete with the rules restricting corporations from benefitting from loopholes that permit them to escape a tax burden, we would resolve the needs of those in need on a systemic level.

We would not need to rely on a delusional expectation of the mega-wealthy to voluntarily practice austerity as has often been imposed upon the little people.

Have a close look at what happened to tax rates in the 1920s. That era was called the “Roaring 20s” because it had a booming economy due to the wealthy having much more disposable income. The same thing happened in the 1980s when Reagan dropped tax rates. The economy boomed briefly, and everyone loved Reagan because of it.

In both cases, those boom periods were finite and led, in the first case, to a worldwide war, while in the second case of Reagan’s tax cuts, it led to the “Great Recession.”

That’s what happens when large sums of money are released “out to the wild” for the peasants to get their trickle-down benefits. In the first case, that form of “voodoo economics” was called “Horse and Sparrow” economics because the Sparrow would benefit from all the food the horse hogged and shat out the other end.

That’s what trickle-down has always been. The little people get what the wealthy shit out as waste for them, and we’re supposed to find ways to live in dignity with that disgusting degree of indignity mounted onto our lives while we labour to make the rich wealthy.

It is precisely this dynamic that has been responsible for every social meltdown in history.

Meanwhile, if you look at that tax table, you’ll see the higher taxes resulted in the most tremendous growth ever for the middle class while the most significant number of people were lifted out of poverty.

None of it occurred because we relied on the generosity of greedy people but because we had our system tuned to maximize the benefits of a capitalist system.

“Trickle-down economies” are also called “boom and bust economies” because they go through cycles of recession and growth. The wealthy class loves this dynamic as the little people must suffer through periods of belt-tightening austerity. For the little people, austerity means having to go without essential needs being met, while for the wealthy class, austerity means excellent deals on going out of business sales. This is where they make their most significant cash grabs.

When small businesses thrive in a booming economy, they grow in value and expand while taking on more debt. That debt eventually crushes them when the cycle of a bear economy rears its ugly head. Many are forced to sell or go personally bankrupt and become devastated entirely for life. Many accept giving up the business that they grew out of love for what they were doing and allowed “an Elon Musk” to step in and claim credit for all their years of hard work while benefitting from that work to win humungous profits when the economy turned back into a bull.

It’s a class warfare game they have been playing with us as they corrupt the capitalist economy like it were a casino, and they’re the house that always wins, no matter how lucky any of the little people are.

This is why the guillotines come out whenever the little people figure out how badly rigged the game is against them.

The rich spend lavishly because they can and because they have rigged the game in their favour to specifically allow them to spend our money while programming the gullible among us to run interference for them as they victim-shame their fellow little people and accuse them of all the disgusting behaviours exhibited by the wealthy class, such as accusing the working class of wanting to steal the “hard-earned money of the rich” instead of demanding the money they stole returned to their victims.

The Disturbing Link Between Psychopathy And Leadership

Why are there more psychopaths in boardrooms?

Some care about those in need, but about 20% don’t, and they make it impossible to change the system because they invest billions in making it unfair while the rest reap the benefits of their corrupt activities. As a whole, they intentionally aim to strip the little people of our value precisely so they can spend gobs of money feeding their egos.

Due to their unrestrained behaviour, our species is on a trajectory toward extinction. Should we not push back on their greed and restore economic sanity, we won’t be able to continue at this pace, and we’ll be so severely humbled as a species that we may never recover, even if we survive the naive stupidity of our time.

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Is capitalism simply the human nature of “survival of the fittest”?

This post is a response to a question posed in its full format as follows: “Is capitalism simply “survival of the fittest” in humans, and just an explanation of human nature instead of an ideology?”

No. Capitalism is a system of exchange of value.

The toxic competitiveness that becomes defined as “survival of the fittest” is a human mental illness that perverts a life-saving, poverty-destroying system into a weapon of mass destruction serving their selfish whims.

Capitalism is not the problem, and the sooner we stop blaming abstractions, the sooner we can solve the issues that are being made worse with a tool like capitalism.

Capitalism is only one tool in a kit of corruption wielded by corrupt humans who destroy lives while seeking dominion over all others.

Another tool is our political system, and it’s being just as corrupted as capitalism.

Yet another tool being corrupted by vile creatures resembling humans is our justice system.

Our systems are corrupted by corrupt human beings seeking only one end: dominion.

The problems that have persisted throughout human history have always been the same: an evil obsession with power.

We are facing the threat we have always faced — power.

Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

The only way out of the mess we are creating is to attack power, to disempower consolidations of power.

The only solution to the threat of concentrated power is to spread power throughout the globe and all of society — to share in power as equally as possible.

This is why democracy exists today, in whatever hobbled form it does.

This is why democracy is necessary for our survival as a species.

We must always find concentrations of power as threats to our existence and properly distribute power throughout the masses.

Everywhere power is concentrated, it is an enemy of the people and of the progress toward achieving our potential as a species. Institutions, industries (particularly multinational), and organizations of all stripes must be converted into democratic institutions.

We cannot continue to allow autocratic institutions to increase their power because their endgame is always dominion.

Spreading power to create democracy everywhere and in all things necessitates equipping the unskilled, the undereducated, and the under-developed with the knowledge and capacity to handle their increased personal power properly.

For this reason, we must learn to value education on such a level that we view it as the lifeblood of our existence as a species. Without it, we die.

Human nature craves education, even among those who hold educational institutions in disdain, because no one is oblivious to the value of learning something that makes their life even better.

Anyone in a position of teaching others knows that education is the link in the chain of our human existence as we pass on what we have learned from others to a future that stands upon generations of shoulders before them.

The light of awareness glowing within the mind of someone who has just learned something valuable is the most priceless treasure one can experience while passing on the most priceless gift one can give another.

Capitalism is a tool that can and has lifted us out of poverty, and we, the people, must take back control of capitalism to shape our future for the betterment of all and not solely for the few.

We must wrench the wheel of capitalism from the hands of those corrupted by its power and return it to its rightful owners — we, the people.

Why has the UK’s economy grown so slowly under the Tories?

This post is a response to a question initially posed on Quora.

lol… but not lol

It’s sad.

It’s frustrating.

It’s maddening.

It’s a bang your head against the wall to relieve the pain of blind ignorance kind of thing.

It seems that no matter where one travels on this tiny blue pearl adrift in a lightless ocean, one universal constant that science does not accommodate is the obliviousness demonstrated toward a long and less than venerated history of fiscal incompetence by those branding themselves as fiscally competent by virtue of their propensity for preservation.

As the old adage goes, “It takes money to make money,” while the CONs among us lack the spine to explore beyond their survival instincts, which favour hoarding among the favoured class.

It’s always the little people who get stuck with the honourable burden of austerity, never the luxury recliner class. They deserve their effetes, after all, because they are superior to the little people. That’s why they’re considered “royalty,” and by God’s good graces, they have a divine Reich to rule.

They should not be expected to lift heavy fingers to make manifest a reality catering to their sensibilities. That’s what the little people are for.

The little people are the beasts of burden by divine decree, and no one should ever question that wizdumb.

Conservatives are fiscally conservative, and that makes them better money managers than the swarthy class, which demands to be paid for the value they contribute to society and the luxuries of the pampered class.

If the uncouth class manages power, then debts and deficits will be deemed horrendous failures in leadership. If they hold the keys to the halls of power, then debts and deficits are a feature, not a bug.

If the tree-hugging barbarians wish to spread the wealth around to their peers, that’s a grievous violation of overreach for which they must be punished. The trillions in wealth generated by the sweat of hundreds of millions of brows rightfully belongs to their natural rulers.

When they Reichfully sit upon their thrones, then they are empowered by the lard almighty to share it with their peers, and if it so happens that one of them over-indulges, they are permitted to trickle down the excess to the wanton waifs beneath them. They must be careful, however, not to release too much of a flood because that would embarrass their peers by revealing the extent of their gluttonous obscenities.

They cannot afford that sort of smear to their optics because that would incite the little people into another of their tizzies to make heads literally roll.

No one wants any more cake. It’s too disruptive to their digestion.

At any rate, their inability to peer past their navels and acknowledge themselves as members of the same species as the rabble they exploit into early graves makes it impossible for them to notice opportunity when it knocks on their over-filled bladders.

They would rather piss into their chamber pots than allow any of their precious golden treasure to be used to elevate the lot of humanity.

If they did that, they would soon run out of heads to trod upon and lose track of who was a worthy peer by birth or an anomaly by self-made fortune.

If this seems a bit cynical, it’s because it is quite cynical toward a movement that has steadily reversed the course of capitalism to raise a world out of poverty by weaponizing it as a means of establishing power. The economy belongs to everyone while our systems undergo a consolidation of power that has historically been the cause of systemic collapse and widespread chaos.

In the words of economist Dean Baker,

The market is just a tool, and in fact a very useful one. It makes no more sense to lash out against markets than to lash out against the wheel. The reality is that conservatives have been quite actively using the power of the government to shape market outcomes in ways that redistribute income upward. However, conservatives have been clever enough to not own up to their role in this process, pretending all along that everything is just the natural working of the market. And, progressives have been foolish enough to go along with this view.

The economy should serve the social contract, not subjugate it while Conservative politics the world around have never quite accepted the reality that we are, all of us, in this together. A successful and prosperous future requires a mindset that accommodates all needs, not just those one can personally benefit from. The fundamental difference between the conservative “me” mentality versus the liberal “we” mentality is the cause of poor economic performance. It always has been and it always will be because it constitutes myopic and self-serving thinking favouring power to the few, and not the people at large.

Why is there so much civil unrest and more expected in the UK?

Civil Unrest and Its Expected Growth

It’s not just the UK. There has been a trend toward increasing civil unrest around the world.

Global Growth Trends in Civil Unrest

Global Protests and Riots Almost Double from 2011 to 2018

Institute for Economics & Peace | Experts in Peace, Conflict and Risk

The Institute for Economics and Peace provides an in-depth analysis of civil unrest in the UK specifically through the .pdf available from the link below:

Click to access UKPI-2024-briefing-web-1.pdf

Note from this quote a clue as to the causes of civil unrest:

“The UK has become less peaceful in the last decade. Peacefulness in the UK deteriorated by almost 11 percent in 2022, the most recent year of measurement. This is the eighth deterioration in peacefulness in the last decade and the first since 2020. Fifty-eight Police Force Areas (PFA) deteriorated, while eight improved. This is the largest number of PFAs to deteriorate since 2018.

Of the five UKPI indicators, homicide was the only one to improve, while the remaining four — violent crime, weapons crime, police officers, public disorder — deteriorated”

This suggests the aggravating factors for civil unrest do not lie within social dynamics among the population but an overall level of dissatisfaction with systems failing to meet the needs of the people.

Sadly, the propensity for ignoring causes and treating symptoms has exacerbated the problems as police have increasingly adopted militaristic policies for “serving and protecting” the public.

The militarization of the police has made this phenomenon worse, not better and they’ve been allowed to evolve in a counter-productive strategy that fails on every front from inciting civil unrest to increasing incidents of their wrongdoing as police are responsible for up to 40% of all domestic violence incidents.

Police Stress Results in 40% Involved in Personal Domestic Violence Incidents
Police Stress Results in Alcohol Dependency Issues

Click to access ED338997.pdf

The strategy of militarization of the police has turned them into a terrorist organization for many citizens. This is a consequence of conservative politics because imposition is the only language they understand.

Here is a summary provided by Chat GPT on social events in which Police catalyzed riots as a consequence of their inept approach to conflict de-escalation (from a U.S. perspective):

Numerous social events throughout history have seen police actions catalyzing riots. Here are some notable instances:

1. 1965 Watts Riots (Los Angeles, California):

– Trigger: The arrest of Marquette Frye, a black motorist, by a white California Highway Patrol officer.

– Outcome: Six days of rioting, resulting in 34 deaths, over 1,000 injuries, and extensive property damage.

2. 1967 Newark Riots (Newark, New Jersey):

– Trigger: The arrest and beating of John Smith, a black cab driver, by white police officers.

– Outcome: Six days of rioting, 26 deaths, hundreds of injuries, and widespread destruction.

3. 1967 Detroit Riots (Detroit, Michigan):

– Trigger: A police raid on an unlicensed bar, or “blind pig,” in a predominantly black neighbourhood.

– Outcome: Five days of rioting, 43 deaths, over 1,000 injuries, and significant property damage.

4. 1968 Chicago Riots (Chicago, Illinois):

– Trigger: The assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., followed by police actions during protests.

– Outcome: Several days of rioting, 11 deaths, numerous injuries, and extensive property damage.

5. 1980 Miami Riots (Miami, Florida):

– Trigger: The acquittal of four white police officers in the beating death of Arthur McDuffie, a black motorcyclist.

– Outcome: Several days of rioting, 18 deaths, numerous injuries, and extensive property damage.

6. 1992 Los Angeles Riots (Los Angeles, California):

– Trigger: The acquittal of four LAPD officers in the videotaped beating of Rodney King, a black motorist.

– Outcome: Six days of rioting, 63 deaths, over 2,000 injuries, and widespread destruction.

7. 2001 Cincinnati Riots (Cincinnati, Ohio):

– Trigger: The police shooting of Timothy Thomas, an unarmed black teenager.

– Outcome: Several days of rioting, resulted in injuries and significant property damage.

8. 2014 Ferguson Unrest (Ferguson, Missouri):

– Trigger: The police shooting of Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager, by a white police officer.

– Outcome: Weeks of protests and riots, resulting in injuries, arrests, and property damage.

9. 2015 Baltimore Protests (Baltimore, Maryland):

– Trigger: The death of Freddie Gray in police custody.

– Outcome: Several days of protests and rioting, resulted in injuries, arrests, and property damage.

10. 2020 George Floyd Protests (Nationwide, USA):

– Trigger: The police killing of George Floyd, an unarmed black man, by a white police officer in Minneapolis.

– Outcome: Protests and riots across numerous cities in the U.S., resulting in deaths, injuries, and significant property damage.

These events highlight the recurring issue of police actions triggering significant social unrest, often reflecting deeper systemic issues within society.

Imposition is conflict escalation NOT conflict resolution.

Although the militarization of the police is entirely the wrong way to go in addressing social unrest, they are a symptom of resolvable political problems beginning with the short-sighted views of conservative politicians who interpret every problem as a nail because they have learned only how to wield a hammer.

Nuance escapes them.

The patience required to facilitate peaceful resolutions runs contrary to a profit-oriented mindset that equates time spent with lost dollars.

The core problem is also exacerbated by their sycophantic support of the conditions that led to last century’s Great Depression and were responsible for triggering the Second World War. We are watching those conditions and their consequences replaying themselves right now in real-time with the horrifying implications inherent within the corrupt American system.

No nation is immune to the impact of economic distortions feeding despair among the public.

The core problem catalyzing the increase in civil unrest is economic by nature.

It’s the Economy, Stupid!

The core problem feeding the despair driving otherwise peaceful citizens into extreme action is the economic distortion corroding the basic patience, tolerance, and decency of otherwise peaceful people who want only to live modestly dignified lives but cannot because we have all been robbed of trillions in a class warfare that seeks to resurrect a facsimile of governance resembling a medieval caste system of two classes of people; rulers and serfs.

Middle Class Wealth Vanishing

This trajectory is unsustainable and will continue to feed unrest.

Profit-Driven Corporate Sociopathy

This sociopathic profit motive cannot but lead to chaos.

Global CO2 Emissions by Lifestyle

Making matters worse is that the lifestyles of the wealthy class have put humanity on a trajectory toward its extinction.

No one should be surprised by an increase in public unrest.

Things are going to get MUCH uglier before they get better.

The questions we need to address are:

  1. “How many casualties can we tolerate before we come to our senses?”
  2. How much pain and suffering can we stomach before we lose our shit?
  3. How many millions must die due to preventable causes and the behaviours of sociopaths hellbent on destroying this planet will it take before civilization is a chaotic mess of violent insurrections all around the world?
  4. What will it take for the wealthiest among us to show some leadership and help set this ship of humanity onto a path toward a sustainable future?
JFK — Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.

(This post was an answer to a Question posed on Quora — where all my posts on Medium have originated; hence the personal response indicated within this article. — https://www.quora.com/profile/Antonio-Amaral-1/ )

Why fascism always appears in economically struggling countries.

Freikorps members flying the flag of the German Empire during the Kapp Putsch, Munich, 1920.

When people suffer from economic struggles, particularly over a prolonged period, they become desperate for someone to step up to the plate and offer solutions they cannot devise for themselves. People become conditioned through desperation for a strong leader to take charge and “lead the way to prosperity.”

Desperation causes people to lose perspective, while critical thinking skills suffer from a need to quell the pain. Anyone who can convincingly present themselves as a saviour will be welcomed with open arms.

Even though the solutions to economic problems may be obvious, they’re also too far out of reach of hope to implement them.

In today’s world, we are dominated by a handful of wealthy people who control all our systems with deaf ears to the cries of the suffering. Most of their focus is on their well-being, fortunes, and plans for their futures and legacies. The rest of us matter only insofar as we can be useful to them.

As our economies have become global and our economic infrastructures have become multinational entities, we have lost our communities.

Only a few decades ago, our communities thrived by our connectedness to each other.

We have lost that, while those who have been the greatest beneficiaries of a global economy have lost their sense of community attachment because the entire globe is their playground.

The plutocrats among us who are most responsible for the economic hardships suffered by millions are entirely due to their wins at the expense of the millions suffering today. Their goal has never been to raise humanity out of poverty, even though that has been the promise of capitalism.

They have their armies of servants at their disposal to secure themselves against resistance and to continue reshaping the world into their image. They are perceived as being too far beyond the reach of laws to allow the little people any sense of hope for justice.

Anyone who can present themselves as a leader capable of alleviating their suffering is welcomed with a total investment of all their hopes and dreams, while a widespread perception of one capable of rising to that need is one from among the untouchable class. That’s why someone like Donald Trump can succeed in assuming control of an entire party through a cult level of worship.

The trouble is that leaders who claim to be their solution also demand their unquestioning loyalty and obedience. That’s the key which opens the door to fascism because the only way for a single leader to wield enough power is to align themselves with the existing status quo of power.

Donald Trump — “Nobody know the system better than me, which is why I alone can fix it.”