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Speaking at an international security conference in Munich, Germany, Kerry said:
“The aspirations of citizens are once again being trampled beneath corrupt, oligarchic interests – interests that use money to stifle political opposition and dissent, to buy politicians and media outlets, and to weaken judicial independence and the rights of non-governmental organizations.”
Most folks thought he was talking about Ukraine, but sounds a lot like what is going on the good old USA.
More conversation about the wealth gap in this country.
From the referenced article, “Michael Moore joined the demonstrators in Madison, Wisconsin on March 6, and mentioned that the 400 richest Americans have more money than all of their 155,000,000 fellow citizens at the bottom of the pyramid combined.” As much as I dislike Michael Moore personally, I have to agree with his positions on many things.
Here is another way to think about this number. The current USA population is 311,000,000 more or less. Half of that is pretty close to 155,000,000. So 400 people have as much wealth as 1/2 of the total US population. Mind boggling.
400 = 155,000,000. I started to quip, “in what universe”. I then realized it is in our universe.
This is one of most dramatic demonstrations of that concept I have seen. You have to strain hard to see the white dot that represents the rich among the sea of “commoners”. Call me a socialist, but nobody needs or should be that rich. I’m back on the one pie analogy. In order to have an over sized piece of pie you have to take some from someone else’s piece of pie. Or in this case a bunch of someones.
Link was not longer valid….sorry
What really slays me is that our politicians seem to be on a tear to make these folks richer. Call me old school, but I firmly believe that to whom that more is given, more is expected.
Link to an article about small companies that have decided that off-shoring manufacturing is not that good a deal. Labor may be cheap, but the quality and deadlines are not there.
Made in America: small businesses buck the offshoring trend
All I can say is hip hip hooray…maybe some more American companies will see the light. I detailed in another article my trials and tribulations trying to find a pair of work gloves NOT made in China. I did finally find a pair made in Pakistan. That is not the USA, but I would rather it be Pakistan than China.
I am still waiting for someone to explain to me why they are selling frozen vegetables from China. I’ve gotten where I check the “where from” on the package and if it is not USA or at least this hemisphere I put it back in the freezer.
Just in case you cannot read the graph which is data on wealth distribution in the USA from 2003.
The top 1% have 25% of the wealth in the USA
The top 5% have 50.7%
The top 10% have 62.9%.
That leaves 90% of us fighting over 37.1% of the pie.
The only country with a worse mal-distribution of wealth is Mexico.
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“Wealth is a person’s net worth, expressed as:
wealth = assets – liabilities
The word “wealth” is often confused with “income”. These two terms describe different but related things.”
“A study by the World Institute for Development Economics Research at United Nations University reports that the richest 1% of adults alone owned 40% of global assets in the year 2000, and that the richest 10% of adults accounted for 85% of the world total. The bottom half of the world adult population owned barely 1% of global wealth… Moreover, another study found that the richest 2% own more than half of global household assets.”
Source for above – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distribution_of_wealth
As Shakespeare so nicely put it, “There is something rotten in Denmark.”
Since you landed on this page this is an issue that probably concerns you. Question is now what are you going to do about it?
Here is my premise:
Mankind is busy destroying the ecosystem to a point that it may drastically affect our quality of life. It will probably also cause untold suffering and deaths in the next 30, 40 or 50 years if we do not change our course of action.
I think we can agree that there are numerous societies and countries across the world that are pretty screwed up. I am not going to except the USA as I believe that we are a society based on capitalism. The heart of capitalism is greed, one of the worse human traits.
The well being of individuals are based on environmental and societal conditions.
My question:
To me the above implies that any God does not care for the world or societies at large. Continue reading “What is up with that?”
I’m in the process of trying to learn/relearn Italian. Many moons ago I lived in Italy for 3 years during my Jr. High years. I was never fluent, but I spoke enough to not be cheated in the markets and play with the Italian kids.
I would like to revisit the country for an extended period, and go to places off of tourist road. So that is my motivation for studying the language.
I asked an Indian friend of my mine who is bilingual about language. He has been in the USA for 7 years, and of course, English is widely spoken in India. I was wondering about whether he thought in English, dreamed in English, did he need to translate English to his native tongue, etc. Below is his well thought out answer: Continue reading “Adding a second language”