(
Luke, Chapter 12 verse 16-21): So Jesus told them this story: A rich man's farm produced a big crop, and he said to himself, "what can I do? I don't have a place large enough to store everything." Later he said, "Now I know what I will do. I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, where I can store all my grains and other goods. Then I'll say to myself, 'you've stored up enough good things to last for years to come. Live it up! Eat, drink, and enjoy yourself.'"
But God said to him, "You fool! Tonight you will die. Then who will get what you have stored up?" This is what happens to people who store up everything for themselves, but are poor in the eyes of God.
It is seldom that I take quotes from the Bible out of context. In this context Jesus implicates a spiritual--kingdom of God--connotation, but one can't help but realize it's political one as well. Did you ever ask yourself how come the rich get richer while we get poorer? Wealth concentration is not just a futile and reactionary response to the reality of poverty by the well-to-do. This reality also in turn has very detrimental consequences to society. Consequences like destabilization through such factors as civil unrest, rampant poverty, the deterioration of the family unit, the deterioration and neglect of internal infrastructure, and much more. Justice also becomes a victim. Greek journalist Kosta Vaxevanis
was arrested for publishing portions of the "LaGarde List." A list that also includes the names of 2,059 Greeks who "spirited money out of the country and into the warm embrace of UK-based HSBC Swiss offices." His arrest hints at a cover up. But why would the ruling class go through such lengths to arrest him? Is it maybe because the wealth is ill-gotten, or because at a time of economic hardship when the rich can bring their capital to the aid of their country, they refuse to do so, much to their chagrin if exposed?
Wealth accumulation undermines the rule of law in society where the rich conduct their affairs, public or private, with impunity. What you then have is a society of, for, and by the rich. In other words, a Plutocracy or a Kleptocracy or both. As Tony Montana, the main character in the move
Scarface once averred: "In this country you gotta make the money first. Then when you get the money you get the power......" It's human nature to give more importance to those with more things. With this observation, it is safe to suffice that the more money/wealth you have, the more significant you are in the eyes of society, whether good or bad.
A society where the heirs of the largest retailer in the world, Wal-Mart, can own more wealth than the bottom
40 percent of Americans combined is a travesty. But wealth concentration also brings to light that wealth, in a just society, is not supposed to even accumulate to begin with. In other words, it's what I would term as economic hijacking. Those at the upper echelon of society always find some way to take more money from those at the lower echelon. This short
video by Credit Suisse gives an idea of the growing global wealth disparity. A
report by Tax Justice Network, revealed that the global super-rich, and their families, in a "conservative" estimate, have
at least 21 trillion dollars in secret tax havens. The report stated that this is only financial, and not including physical assets like land, yachts, etc.
There are certain factors that I consider to be the driving force to this massive wealth accumulation. And the solution is very much obvious in my assessment.
Usury
I find the two main economic schools of thought (Austrian and Keynesian) not just deplorable because they are part of a dialectic created by the Elite. But as a very intelligent friend of mine once made the point, that in all their petty squabbles with each other, they never mention one thing: Usury. Usury is at the heart of wealth concentration. When a financial institution lends you money and asks for 15% interest, they basically sealed your financial fate. It's is their way of keeping you poor while they get richer. Usury funnels money out of the hands of average consumers on a mass scale and concentrates it into the hand of the few "moneylenders." By creating and maintaining a network of debtors, they are able to keep a constant and stable source of income, at the expense of the poor and middle class. Usury is slavery. So much so that thousands of years ago, in places like the Middle East and elsewhere, it was normal for a man to sell himself into slavery if he could not service his debts. Slavery has since taken a new form and context. Usury, by its imposition of crushing debt, undermines and threatens the family unit (the basic building block of society) by threatening to drive it into poverty (or abject poverty), and eventually destabilize it by stripping it of the little physical wealth/assets it has and pushing it over the edge. Usury destabilizes society in general by also undermining businesses. It helps drive down the standard of living, creates uncertainty, drives individuals to the point of suicide, and undermines an indebted nation's sovereignty by committing much of its financial obligations to a very wealthy few.
Tax Evasion/Tax System
One of the ways the Moneyed Class (Bankers, Politicians, War Profiteers, etc) concentrate their wealth is through tax evasion. Taxes are reflective of a society's justice system. The more fair the tax, the more unlikely it is that wealth is due for concentration. And this has many positive implications. Taxes are not viewed in a favorable tone in general, because people want to keep more of what they make. But most see it as necessary for society to properly function. And now taxes have become a bullet point in the case against wealth concentration. And for good reason. Between the 1940s and 1970s in the Unites States, the tax rate on the wealthy was considerably high. And what was that tax money used for? To build roads and bridges, to fund public institutions like public education and healthcare, to fund social safety net programs that are so widely popular among not just Americans, but Europeans and other peoples of the world. And the wealthy continued to live quite comfortably. There are many ways the ruling class evades taxes: creating tax-exempt "charities," putting their money in offshore or secret accounts, fraudulent tax reports, lobbying politicians for significantly lower tax rates, tax loopholes, subsidies, and other forms of tax policy designed to benefit them.
This deprives the state treasury, and incites talk of austerity. Then governments look for the money elsewhere, especially at the direction of the poor.
Bank Bailouts
Can anyone think of a more moronic economic policy? I think this is self-explanatory. Mainly because these banks are not using the capital to invest, but simply to sit on it and twiddle their thumbs while relishing in how much money they have. This is something known as "Capital Strike." They basically accomplish this through what I would term as economic extortion by fear-mongering the nation-states on the conditions that if their demands for more money are not met, an Economic Armageddon will ensue.
Wages/Globalism
In 1934, in a radio address, U.S Senator Huey Long
stated, "We do not propose to say that there shall be no rich men. We do not ask to divide the wealth. We only propose that when one man gets more than he and his children and his children's children can spend or use in their lifetime, then we shall say that such person has his share." The wage disparity between employee and employer is egregious. I can find numerous statistics everywhere. By now I presume it has become common knowledge or awareness. While workers are paid inadequate minimum wages, their bosses at the top echelon of the Corporate Ladder make close to
42 times the amount.
To exacerbate that is the issue of Globalism. Why should a corporation hire you when they can employ someone else on the other side of the world for an exponentially cheaper cost where that person cannot join a workers organization and demand fairer wages and benefits, because perhaps the corporation bribed the government to outlaw collective bargaining? Although it makes business sense, such a ploy is hardly ethical. It is one of the ways of wealth concentration. By off-shoring jobs in pursuit of more profits through cheaper labor, millions are incrementally rendered unemployed, underemployed, and ultimately impoverished, while these supranational corporations accrue more and more money.
Private Central Banks
Private Central Banks have the power to relax and tighten credit. They can help produce inflation and deflation, cause panic and eventually economic ruin. They are a tool created by the Moneyed-Class to manipulate markets and accumulate wealth through detrimental policy. One such primary example is the Federal Reserve (which was largely
responsible for the Great Depression of the 1930s) and the Bank of England (which helped create a depression in Britain in the 1920s). And as any knowledgeable individual would know, economic recessions and depressions devastate small investors, allowing for bigger ones to swoop in and take their assets for dirt-cheap prices, further concentrating the wealth in the hands of a few.
Speculation
The reason why food and oil are skyrocketing is due to speculation. As prices increase, this means that people must dig deeper and deeper into their pockets in order to procure the basic necessities and goods that we have become so accustomed to. This means that speculators and the dominant industries receiving all this capital from average consumers are making a lot of money off the backs of suffering individuals. This
report by political magazine
Counterpunch titled
International Speculation and Rising Food Prices, rightly attributes the rise in food to speculation. As the traditional principle of economics is that prices follow the Law of Supply and Demand, the writer of the article, Umberto Muzzei, points out that
"from 2006 to 2008 commodity prices rose scandalously, especially rice, wheat and corn. A tonne of rice rose from $600 in 2003 to $1,800 in 2008. After causing popular unrest in the world, prices fell as quickly as they climbed. Further proof that the cause was not supply and demand."
Same for oil. In this CNN article by Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, it is admitted that the Law of Supply and Demand have nothing to do with the rising price of oil: "What's the cause? Forget what you may have read about the laws of supply and demand. Oil and gas prices have almost nothing to do with economic fundamentals. According to the Energy Information Administration, the supply of oil and gasoline is higher today than it was three years ago, when the national average for a gallon of gasoline was just $1.90. Meanwhile, the demand for oil in the U.S. is at its lowest level since April of 1997."
And there's more: "
I've seen the raw documents that prove the role of speculators."
One last quote: "Even those inside the oil industry have admitted that speculation is driving up the price of gasoline. The CEO of Exxon-Mobil, Rex Tillerson, told a Senate hearing last year that speculation was driving up the price of a barrel of oil by as much as 40%. The general counsel of Delta Airlines, Ben Hirst, and the experts at Goldman Sachs also said excessive speculation is causing oil prices to spike by up to 40%. Even Saudi Arabia, the largest exporter of oil in the world, told the Bush administration back in 2008, during the last major spike in oil prices, that speculation was responsible for about $40 of a barrel of oil."
Now are you beginning to see how this amounts to wealth accumulation? I don't think I can make it more clear.
So What?
What do these affluent individuals do with all this money (whether ill-gotten or not)? Don't they share, don't they engage in projects that benefit society? Don't they use the money to employ more people? Of course not. They store these large amounts of grain in their barns, live it up, and enjoy themselves. They lobby lawmakers for even more money. They buy politicians on all levels. They fund think tanks that peddle talking points favorable to them. They spend as much money as they can fighting any and all efforts for true socio-economic and political reform, and so much more.
What people have to understand is that wealth concentration leads to disastrous consequences. It means the poor will likely bear the brunt of any economic burden or crisis. It means that a government supposedly representative of the people now pays a much more significant attention to the needs of the super wealthy, disregarding the voices of the downtrodden, the poor, the disabled/sick, the working class, and so on. It means an overwhelming atmosphere of wealth-favoritism exists that oversees the collusion of wealthy interests and government. Eventually this distorts justice systems.
In a world where wealth is highly concentrated, austerity is the talk of the day. Because someone has got to pay for these social services, and if not the rich, and the poor are going bankrupt due to detrimental economic policy, then what to do? As wealth concentrates, perpetual war and destabilization ensue. The capitalist class with their eventual grip on government will venture anywhere and everywhere to get what they want or preserve what they have. And they usually employ the services of standing armies whether public or private, to places domestic and/or abroad, and propagate and sponsor economic polices that create a disturbing disruption to the lives of the common folk.
Not only is the accumulation of wealth stupid, it is inherently immoral. Because the path it took was one of cheating, abuse, fraud, and other means. Never did the man in Jesus's story consider even giving just a little more to a neighbor or leaving a little more in the fields for poor people to eat their fill (as mandated by Jewish law
Leviticus 19 verse 9-10), or even to his workers (if he had any). God telling the man he was going to die, was a reminder of the stark reality that there is no such thing as security. Anything can happen to that man's grain (hailstorm, robbery, etc), and the fact that he came into the world with nothing meant that he was leaving with nothing. Being immensely wealthy, does not make one at peace, nor content.
The super rich always seem to forget who made them super rich. They did not get there on their own merit. Yet these same individuals who have been the greatest beneficiaries of government policy and favoritism, peddle right-wing talking points of lassiez-faire capitalism otherwise known as the "free market." But these recipients of fervent government leniency and favor, along with historical evidence, have proven time and time again that markets are not free. They are man-made. And these markets often times than not, bend to their will at our expense. And that's just it. The rich themselves create these economic hardships to begin with, and then profit from it.
So what do we do?
Well, one of the obvious solutions is to impose no austerity. In times of economic hardship, one will find that this is the main talking point of the well-to-do, which essentially indicates contempt for the poor and advocates for genocide. A national law against usury or a national cap on interest rates on loans WILL help yield progressive economic results. On top of that, end the private central banking system by nationalizing it or abolish it and create a national bank that will provide loans at zero percent interests rates for the use of manufacturing/production. Another one is a fair and progressive taxation system that does not funnel money from the bottom to the top and levels the playing field. Nations must fight against globalism, especially those from the English-speaking world, mainly the U.S.A. Protectionism when applied tactically and wisely can yield positive economic results. End the speculation on food and oil that is precipitating the impoverishment of millions. This requires an intellectually honest, organized and united front, that will make demands and provide a program that tackles social and political injustice, two inextricably linked paradigms that are responsible for this egregious concentration of wealth.
On top of that people must become pragmatic consumers by boycotting (this is also a form of activism) these corporations that they lend limitless amounts of time, energy, effort, and capital to, and replace them with their own alternatives. This will go a long way, starving these institutions into submission, and sending a message to these super rich individuals that we can stand toe to toe with them. The Lords of Capital versus a United Organized Front, Plutocracy versus a
Populist Platform.
It can be done, it should be done. Or else, things will get much worse.
