I agree completely. Most of the poor would be poor no matter who had accumulated wealth. This is NOT a financial issue, its an influence and power issue. Should the way the world works be dictated by thousands and thousands of people, or 85 people? Should it be allowed to be dictated by a dozen people? Probably not. :2 cents:

Dyna Mo,

You contention is that 85 people is dispersed enough that they wont come together and collude in ways that damage the interests of others, and yourself. Is that correct? If that is your point, how few would be a small enough group to scare you? 10? 20? Would 1 guy with 10 trillion dollars worry you at all, or are you fine with that idea?

And you just described the Federal Govt. of the United States.
Headed by a group of lifetime/career bureaucrats with more money and far more power than all those 85 guys combined.

And they even control the media enough to keep us from discussing them and instead turning the conversation into one of class warfare.

Robbie,

Two main problems with your argument.

1) The Federal Government is thousands and thousands of people. The Moon Landing conspiracy nuts lose sight of the fact that a cover up of a hoax would have needed ten thousand people and all their descendants to be in on it. Even if you just go with the elected officials in Congress you are still looking at 435 Representatives and 100 Senators. More than 6X as many people as the 85.

2) The 535 people in Congress, the person in the white house, the people on the Supreme Court, the NSA, and all the rest are now very heavily influenced by external money. Citizens United makes buying elections legal. The two party system makes buying elections affordable. The 85 people on that list can call up their Senator, their Congressman, or any of the other dozens in their pocket.... or call up the heads of agencies intended to regulate their own industries... any time they want.

no, my contention is there will always be the 85 richest people in the world. No matter what USA legilstation you want to pass re: term limits, this that or the other. Wipe these 85 off the globe and guess what? there's still 85 richest people on the planet. So your pointing at them as the problem is misguided.

the first trillionaire is already born.

Yep, and they keep following the same agenda no matter who is in there

In the end it's the career/lifetime senior guys in the Senate and House who run the committees. A handful of guys.

FAR more powerful and rich than all 85 billionaires put together. Hell, to them a "billion" is a joke.

There is no problem with my argument. You are talking about 85 guys with differing goals who earned their money.

I'm showing you ONE entity that has more money and definitely more power than all of them combined. And it has basically unlimited funds. It just prints more money whenever it wants to and deficit spends.

No one person can do that.

And yet you and others are all caught up in stupid class warfare that doesn't do anything helpful.
The govt. is the one holding all the cards, and they are the ones in charge.

Look at the mess we are in. Look at the world. The GOVT is the one responsible.

"War On Poverty" Over 15 TRILLION dollars spent to end poverty over the last 50 years.
Result: More people in poverty than when it started.

Hell, we could have just written out "paychecks" every week to people in poverty with that 15 TRILLION dollars and ended it.
Bet 2/3's of that money went down rabbit holes and into greedy fuckers pockets.

But let's blame Bill Gates for being rich instead. :(

There will always be a top 85, obviously. The concentration of wealth is the issue. The wealthiest 85 people a hundred years ago didn't control as much money as the bottom 50%. The wealthiest 2 people a hundred years from now should not control as much money as the bottom 95%.

Who do you think is picking them? Why do you think they all have the same agenda? Political parties provide a set of vetted candidates, backed by the same money from both 'sides' and let the public choose Republican Candidate A or Democrat Candidate A... there is no Candidate B. In local elections it's even cheaper, and even worse. That problem becomes more serious as less and less people are involved.

The idea that money = free speech is so outrageous. Citizens United has to be overturned. To allow a single person, or 85, to give unlimited amounts of money to any politician for any reason is just not right. Life is not fair, but political contributions damn well should be.

That's the thing....

I'm not raising the issue as a form of class warfare.

If you told me a guy earned 10 trillion dollars and spends it all on hookers and blow, I'm fine with that. He earned it and can do what he wants with it. The problem is that in our civilization, money = influence and many don't spend it on hookers or blow... they spend it on elections, creating tax loopholes, gutting environmental regulations, religious zealotry, creating hereditary wealth and all the rest.

Find a way to keep money from creating influence and I don't care if 1 guy has 99% of it. That isn't the world we live in... if 1 guy did have 99% of the money in our world, we would all be his de facto slaves. :2 cents:

You don't know that. In fact, I'd wager that at certain points in time, fewer people than 85 controlled >50% of the total wealth.

Absolutely true. Egyptian Pharaohs likely controlled much more than 50% of wealth at one point. We created a constitutional democracy to get away from those sorts of things, and put in separation of powers specifically to prevent concentration of influence. Now we are allowing money and a very tiny group of oligarchs to circumvent those safeguards.

Are you saying you do not believe the income of the top .00001% is growing at a frantic pace compared to the other 99.9999%?

Not at all, I'm saying it seems to me that what Robbie is trying to tell you is more in line with your views than what you are saying about the 85 richies.

Uh...brother, I understand your compassion and all. But the constitution was NEVER put in place to stop people from acquiring wealth.

This country was born because of oppressive govt. and over-taxation.

Separation of powers had nothing to do with "influence". It has everything to do with keeping each part of govt. in check so that the Pres. couldn't be a "king" .

And again...as you keep ignoring...it's the GOVT that is the all-powerful entity.

The picture you are painting is that the "EVIL" "rich" people are forcing the poor innocent govt. to bow down to them.

Well, that ain't how it works.

The GOVT is for sale. Not the other way around. The Govt. has the power, and it doles out bits and pieces for companies that line the pockets of the individual Senators and Congressmen.

You can't buy what's not for sale.

And the Govt. has more money and power than all of them combined. Do you not agree with that?

How can the banks or oil companies "own" an entity that could not only buy and sell them several times over...but has the power to forcibly shut them down and/or take them over and nationalize them.

No my friend. It takes two to tango. And this dance is orchestrated by the U.S. govt.

You have stated that 100 years ago there was no way that only 85 people could have so much of a percentage of the wealth.

Well, how about the U.S. Govt.?
100 years ago, in 1913 the entire federal budget was 714 MILLION dollars
In 1961 when I was born it was 94.4 BILLION dollars

In 2013 the govt. spent 3.8 TRILLION dollars.

A trillion is a thousand billion.

The numbers are mind numbing.

And we are in debt for over 17 TRILLION dollars.

I think it's time we stopped attacking each other as citizens...and started going after the REAL crooks in Washington D.C.

We completely agree on that. It was put in place in many ways to prevent wealth from having too much influence, and to prevent any insular group from amassing too much control. Again, if wealth did not give influence there would be no problem. If you can think of a way to prevent massive wealth from having massive influence that's great. Let me know. The whole point of elections, two chambers of Congress, three branches of government, an independent judiciary etc... is to make government too large for it to be controlled by a handful of people or a king. The same is true of private industry regulations.

When a tiny handful of people can circumvent those safeguards by funding the only two candidates for each seat in Congress, funding the Presidential campaign, buying local elections, hiring former officials as lobbyists etc it creates a very serious problem. The number of people needed to do that continues to shrink.

:thumbsup :thumbsup :thumbsup

Oh.. but we do know that money leads to corruption in politics. Time and time again.

Just yesterday alone: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014...wife-indicted/

It's like straight out of Family Guy when Lois was bribed with nice quasi-legal gifts in return for favors. This is from someone with really no money too. Some guy wanting favors for his business.

My point is...you can't buy what is not for sale.

I think it's not that companies buy "influence", but that Senators and Congressman are BLACKMAILING businesses.

You want to be able to do business? Then you're going to pay.

Basically...businesses CAN'T succeed without "contributing" to Senators, Congressmen, State, and Local govt. officials.

That's why I place "blame" on the heads of the ones with the real power: Govt.

There isn't one of us here who wouldn't put our money into paying off govt. if it meant we could be successful.

The only way to even GET on the "level playing field" is to pay off the ruling class of govt.

In reality, a TINY number of exceptionally wealthy corporations and oligarchs choose who will be a candidate for office. That same tiny group decides if the elected official will remain in office. They decide many of the key policy decisions the official will make while they are in office. That is the face of the problem.

The ass of the problem is that the people who get elected this way can go on to blackmail small businesses and create problems for barely rich people if it benefits them to do so. As long as they don't bite the few hands that feed them, they are free to fuck with everyone else, specifically because they are reliant on so few people to actually get them elected or reelected.

When the system works correctly the politician needs the public to get elected and is reliant on the public to get reelected. So they work for us. When the system is broken they don't need the public so they don't work for the public. The number of people they work for is continuing to shrink rapidly. It is a global problem not an American one.

You are looking at the ass of the problem rather than the face of the problem :2 cents:

Without getting too involved, seems to me that like most things, there's elements of both sides. Like you can't wash one hand without washing the other - this applies to both 'good' and 'bad' scenarios, including this one where you have few people with huge wealth, which in itself isn't a bad thing, but as you point out, it does lead to things that aren't really what you could call 'good'.

Anyway, very interesting and thought-provoking thread, carry on everyone :)

One comes before the other. If you always washed your right hand first and then your left, identifying problems with washing your right hand would be a bigger priority than identifying problems with washing your left hand.... because something about your right hand might be the proximate cause of the problems you later have with your left. :2 cents:

:helpme .

Well, let's mention a real example of what can cause the concentration of power in few hands - the country I live in.

The example may serve as a very interesting illustration since until 1989 there was NO private capital (as this was against the system). It's a very interesting premise for what followed and how it is 24 years from then, after almost all the country's capital and property was privatized and redistributed.


Before the break - all private enterprises were nationalized in 1948. There was no "capital" in the typical sense of the word, nobody could oficially attain wealth, officially - nobody could get rich and officially - nobody was rich. There was no means of private enterprise, everything was owned by the government.

The only way to attain wealth or luxury was to get involved in illegal activity, working off the books, stealing government owned property and reselling it on the black market, smuggling black market goods from the west or exchanging and dealing foreign currency, which was illegal to posses back then.

There obviously was no "middle class" in the typical sense of the word, meaning small businesses, people being self employed etc. There was only mass employment and everybody got paid enough to make a living but not enough to being able to afford luxury, which was not even offered.

So there was no capital in private hands, everyone's income was more or less equal, of course there were differences between the levels of income, but the prime minister of the country only made about 5 times more than what was the average wage, it may have been the best paid job in the country. The only export market was the Eastern block.

After the break in 1989 - the capital got privatized, it was either:

a) the heirs of those who formerly owned properties got their posessions back if they applied for restitutions.

b) voucher privatization - every adult citizen was given 1 000 "shares" that all had the same money value in the "voucher privatization" he could invest his money in the big privatized companies that were supposed to get public shareholders and then further trade or sell their shares.

c) Small businesses such as shops or restaurants were auctioned and the trade licenses paid for in cash.

The goal was to privatize existing enterprises, that had no past private ownership, and create the non existing class of self employed / small businesses - basically to create a free trade market.

Who benefited the most from the model? The capital!

Anyone who could put together money (immigrants with access to cash, foreign investors, crooks, the mob) immediately started to buy out the vouchers for cash, for as much as twenty times what was their initial money value (before one invested into anything).

There were so called "investment funds" that attained a great wealth of those vouchers thus also shares or full ownership of existing (and in many cases profitable) companies,

What followed is the history - there's countless stories of Wild East that are quite unbelievable. A major portion of property was stolen or dissolved in untrackable criminal schemes, banks and companies were ran to the ground, and the citizens that lossed their money were bailed out by the government (which is a little bit ironic).

At the end of the day, pretty much every industry segment with high barriers of entry consolidated to the hands of few, either multinationals or very few trusts or investment funds if you want to call it that way.

Fast forward to today - as of the end of the nineties - most of the previously profitable companies were either ran to the ground (in many cases on purpose - it doesn't help business when all the liquid funds get "tunneled out" or property sold under its market value by someone who hadn't paid it's market value in the first place to somebody else just to do the same).

The redistribution of wealth pretty much lead to the following capital holders:

a) multinationals (that either bought out functional big enterprises or started a local branch)
those control mainly:
- the energy market
- the water market
- telecommunications
- banking
- consulting and administrative services (aka the big four)

b) investment funds (that usually have history of crime behind them)
there is about three, four dominant ones, those control mainly:

- the real estate development market
- coal and heavy industry
- pretty much own the media (press etc., including one group's influence on the national, state owned TV) which they use mainly to dig up dirt on political parties they don't finance
- lately they are even buying out properties back from the multinationals or starting their own banks!

c) government (there are still some national companies)

- post services
- railways (not exclusively)
- plus the rest of the whole huge and everexpanding underpaid (again ironical) government sector (schools, universities, jail system etc.)

d) small businesses (sole traders and limited liability companies)
- usually either regional or very specialized
- there are a number of those that started small, became very succesful and later sold out (AVG is a good example)

Basically there's usually three to four players in each field, the result is for example:

- cartel prices on energy (although the market was liberalised and you can choose, you won't save)
- some of the highest banking fees in the world (banks make 53 pct. of their revenue on fees - meaning regular acccount holders, talk about a cartel)
- the second most expensive cell phone plans in Europe (although it may have gotten better recently)
- tax breaks for multinationals in exchange for jobs (which totally distorts the market and pushes competing businesses out of the game)
- three main grocery chains that are offering terrible quality, anything half decent costs about three times more than the "regular" crap (unfortunately this has lot to do with local consumer culture)

So if you're a regular citizen and would like to have a "regular type of life" you can be assured that:

- you'll pay a cartel dictated price for energy
- you'll pay the cartel dicated, highest possible price for your cell phone plan (all the three provides have totally )
- you'll only get paid a cartel dicated salary, since there's only so much the multinationals pay, and they definitely don't share profits with employees
- you'll get robbed by the banking cartel (with the highest fees in EU)

Plus:

- the multinationals rarely pay taxes, since lots of them, no matter of their market coverage inevitably end up in "loss"
- most of the companies profits move around the globe and never contribute anything that would be by any means local
- your salary will be just as much as "they" pay in "their" industry which will be in most cases just enough to more or less get by but not enough to save or start a business.
- the government usually passes laws in order to support those that delivered the "government officials". The percentage of diletants at the helm is purposefully corresponding with it too.

As a result, we have several tycoons and multinationals controlling pretty much any part of the market, that has high barriers of entry, such as several multinationals controlling the energy or banking business, we have one person in Fortune's top 100, several billionaires and some of the highest earning banks in Europe - one would say that this has to increase the quality of life yet...

The purchasing power of an average citizen in 2013 (aka how much real basic needs, such as housing, food, energies can one cover for an average income) is at about the same level as in 1989 (note that you're comparing a communist country with equal wealth distribution with "free market"). One was governement dicated prices, the second is cartel dictated prices.

Basically - the extra price for every overpriced cost of service or product is steered on the consumer, including major taxation of consumption (VAT at 21 pct.) while the price of doing business and making a profit for the big multinationals or those who use convenient business / tax schemes is diminished.

The system is basically built to leech out the most it can from the working man, and to enable the multinationals to leech out the most out of the system. It doesn't make the living conditions for one better, there's no motivation to do so.

At the end of the day, there's absolutely no "dripping down" of wealth to the poor - and I'm not talking about social or deadbeat cases, but about regular, educated, working people.

I'm not making any ideological stance - just an observation in order to fuel the discussion - that being - if you want to live a regular type of life in this environment, you may be up for hard times, and it won't get any better anytime soon.

Interesting case study. What makes it especially interesting is that the people and corporations who do that in one country are not a different group from the ones who do it in other countries. They are not multinationals, they are post-nationals... for them nations no longer have any significant meaning beyond 'what rules are in play to game each particular system.'

Thank goodness we got a dumb "Meme" in the discussion.

:(