EVERYONE CAN BE WEALTHY
BUT WE CAN’T AFFORD
THESE MONEY HOARDING
BILLIONAIRES ANYMORE
TIME TO DECIDE: Is the impossible dream of
being a billionaire more important to you than a higher standard of living for
everyone?
There is enough for everyone! Enough food,
water, land, housing, medicine, and things like paid time off, vacations and
travel, toys, music, sporting equipment, etc.
It is the distribution of resources that are
creating our problems! Before World War 2, before the Technological Age, the
world population was never more than 2 billion. It is now 7.8 billion. And
humans are using resources at a rate never experienced before. Even if the
population were still 2 billion, we would be facing this crisis at some point. Things
are too unequal.
We could all be “rich.” Let’s look at what
wealth really is.
WEALTH
Wealth is having more than enough.
Wealth is an abundance.
Abundance exists in nature.
Wealth is specific to humans.
TWO WAYS TO CREATE
WEALTH
Wealth can only be created by two things:
exploitation of natural resources and human labor. Wealth only exists when
there is more than what is needed. A human alone, eating and using only the
resources necessary for survival, would still need to labor, but would not
create wealth for someone else.
Natural resources can be depleted. Human labor
exists as long as humans exist, and without wealth.
Natural resources plus labor can create wealth.
And human labor can create wealth on its own. For example: A tour guide or
other non-material service (labor). A
tour bus (natural resources turned into a bus using human labor).
Money and currency are the main way we exchange
labor and natural resources.
If I have enough extra to give you or loan you
something, that is wealth. That is wealth for both of us.
DEBT IS WEALTH
The distribution of wealth can also create
wealth (interest). And the distribution of wealth is performed by human labor
(like loan officers, bankers, etc).
If I set up an unfair economic arrangement (by
use of force, or coercion, or persuasion, or contentment) and you accept the
arrangement, that is still wealth.
If you work and create the item (or money, or
credit) that I am loaning or giving you, that is still wealth.
Even if you cannot pay your debts, a debt is
wealth.
THE U.S. DOLLAR IS
BASED ON DEBT INTEREST
Until 1933 the dollar was backed by gold. The
Federal Reserve had to keep enough gold to cover 40% of its demand notes. The
Gold Standard is now obsolete.
The U.S. Government's promise has replaced
gold. But all of the U.S. Government's money is from taxes (income, excise, and
social insurance, and any interest derived from investing taxpayer funds). The
U.S. Government does not produce any wealth of its own. It is really the
taxpayer's promise that backs the U.S. dollar.
New money is created when the banks make a
loan. The Treasury prints money for the Federal
Reserve. (They can “unprint” money, too, but this has little effect on the
“mundane” economy, beyond balancing the books, as in 2008.)
The banks (not the government) earn money from
the interest. When the banks make bad
loan decisions, like in 2008, the government “bails out” the banks with
taxpayer money. Even though the banks
did not lose their own money or do anything to earn the money.
In 2008, the banks got paid twice for crashing
the global financial system. The banks
got bailout money and they kept all the houses. The people that lost their
homes still had to pay their taxes to the U.S. government or go to jail.
Banks are supposed to pay taxes on the profits
they make from loan interest payments.
The U.S. Tax Code allows banks to define their profits as net zero. They
do not usually pay taxes. When banks do
pay taxes, they pay extraordinarily little.
THE FEDERAL DEBT AND
THE FEDERAL DEFICIT
The national debt is accumulated deficits.
A deficit is a shortage of money.
The U.S. Government has a $23 trillion deficit.
$23 trillion divided by 327 million people (the entire population of the U.S.)
equals $70,337 per person.
Every single person (babies, retirees, disabled
- everyone) in this country would have to pay an extra $70,337 in taxes to
level that shortage. To do that each person would have to earn an extra
$200,962 in their lifetime and pay 35% of that in taxes.
A person working full time and making federal
minimum wage ($15,080 a year) would need to work an extra 13 years and four
months to earn $200,962.
FREELOADERS AND
HOARDERS
Banks are freeloaders (leeches, really), and so
are large corporations. Large
corporations do not pay their fair share of taxes. Amazon made $11 billion dollars profit in
2018. They did not pay any taxes. Their tax return showed that they were owed
$129 million in tax breaks.
Since the minimum wage does not cover the cost
of living, taxpayers also subsidize corporations by supporting low wage workers
with the Earned Income Tax credit, welfare like Food stamps and Medicaid, and
other government programs. Welfare is really paid to the rich.
Most wealthy people pay a lower percentage of
taxes than minimum wage workers. In 1944
the tax rate for someone earning the equivalent of $2.5 million today was 94
percent. Today it is 37%. We need to
raise the taxes on the wealthy. A higher tax bracket would prevent the
accumulation of excessive wealth.
We also need to charge transaction tax on stock
market purchases, close the carried interest loophole, and limit inherited wealth.
EVERYONE NEEDS TO WORK
Wealthy people do not always work, and when
they do, it is rarely the “essential work” that our society requires. We need
to require at least one year of civic service, at the very least, from
everyone.
And if everyone
worked, we could all work less. To have all
these advances like automated check outs, and
agricultural machinery that can replace back breaking human labor, and to not
use them because “they are taking away someone’s job” is ridiculous.
Labor (and resources) need to be divided
fairly. The people who worked through
the Covid pandemic are worth billions.
Not Jeff Bezos. And Bezos should
not be sitting on his yacht having meetings on how to hoard more money while
his employees work without a living wage, benefits, or union representation.
TRASH IS TO WEALTH WHAT
SHITTING IS TO EATING
Trash is also a
form of wealth. A wealth of the wrong kind. Packaging, plastic and paper
grocery bags, used motor oil, fast food ketchup packets, disposable diapers-
all of these things were created by human labor and natural resources. Our
trash will outlive us and our money.
Recycling is
reaching its limit of usefulness. And
recycling requires resources. Those
plastic grocery bags? It takes more resources to recycle them then to make
more. And even the recycled ones only more plastic bags and packaging.
Our trash is
poisoning our environment, now and hundreds of years in the future. Humans
require a very narrow set of circumstances to survive- a 100-degree temperature
range, a certain ratio of oxygen and water, etc. If you are 60 years old or younger and have
an average life expectancy in the US of 77 years, you will experience water
shortages, supply chain breakdowns, more pandemics, and grid disruptions, with
more and more frequency unless we change our ways.
What has been
happening since 2019 and Covid will only increase. Even if we don’t have another
global pandemic. And once the
disruptions and shortages being, they will snowball. Those of us in developed
countries, that are the most grid dependent, will suffer the most.
We not only need
those computer chips for our phones and televisions, we need them for almost
everything. Stocking up on toilet paper is not going help when public utilities
aren’t working.
We need to start thinking
about wealth differently. We are
producing (and consuming) more than is necessary simply for the benefit of a
small percentage of people that contribute nothing and give very little. We
need to start talking to our reps and each other about a new and better future
for all of us. (Except those lazy billionaires.) oneminuterevolution.blogspot.com
