The natural course of concentrated wealth is eventual revolution, usually, no matter the size of the security forces or the certainty of the ruling class myths. Much like the boom and bust of most economic cycles, concentration and revolution seem linked as a cycle.
i love how people who are obliviously not one of the 62 persons feverishly defend those 62 persons while also discrediting the poor. if you don't have a problem with this then either you are one of those 62 or you are a hard working poor (relatively) american dreamer. answering OP's question, no it isn't. how do i know, because history has repeated itself since the dawn of civilization and us stoopid hoomans can't seem to realize it and stop repeating our mistakes.
These numbers from Oxfam, don't really seem to match up with the World Bank numbers. If you believe this report from Oxfam then you would be led to believe the rich are sucking the last drops of blood from the poor and that poverty is out of control. The World Bank numbers I posted awhile back seem to be very counter to that, since poverty has never been lower in human history. Further, the report is worded as if it is just a piece against tax havens more than anything. It repeatedly seems to indicate that tax havens are a major cause of wealth inequality. However, the very nature of a tax haven would mean wealth would be leaving the rich nations and going to the poorer nations....because of their lower taxes. Also, I'd really like to see something supporting your claim that the middle class is struggling worldwide. To me it looks like the middle class is booming worldwide. China and other Asian nations have a lot of people and they have a middle class that is expanding rapidly. Please tell me if I am thinking about things incorrectly or missing something.
I'm only 8 so if you could explain it in the form of a crayon drawing then that would be helpful. Anyhow, you completely ignored numbers and data from the World Bank that are directly counter to your argument. You said globalization is bad for the poor, however the opposite is reality. Globalization and greater economic freedom seems to be very positive for middle class development and the elimination of poverty.
No, I said first world middle class and poor. Globalization certainly hasn't been very positive for the American middle class and the elimination of American poverty. 46 million Americans are on food stamps.
The idea that there are less poor because the WORLD BANK and OXFAM say so is ludicrous. A quick look at the methodology will tell you: 1) The studies posted by robbie are out of date. They use an older poverty line of $1.25. The new world bank ludicrous poverty line is $1.90 under which 900+ million people continue to live in poverty. Moreover, the poverty line is based on the national poverty line data of 15 arbitrarily chosen poor countries. In a middle income country, the poverty line is about 4 dollars. Are we supposed to believe the poverty line went up $0.65 in 10 years? Give me a break. 2) The poverty line they use is ludicrous even at $1.90. Yes there are less people living under $1.90 a day, but making less than $1.90 a day is not the same today as it was even 10 years ago. 3) The amount of bad debt saddled to the countries where most people live is huge, and even personal debt is booming among poor people. It doesn't matter if you make $3 a day if you owe more than that. As these governments are falling, organizations like the world bank are not freeing people from the debt they were saddled with by oppressive leaders who they had no control over. That debt is unsustainable and will be paid by people directly. 4) Social programs are being eliminated in poor countries by entities exactly like the World Bank and that is making life less sustainable for the poor. World Bank and Oxfam themselves admit that they don't take these things into account. 5) Everything is relative. The likelihood of implosion or explosion does not depend on comparison to past years, it depends on comparison of a person's living standards to the living standards of people whom they interact with. This is how humans work. We want what we know is possible. We don't care what happened 10 years ago when less was known about how to achieve success. Lebron James is not trying to beat Kareem Abdul Jabbar, he's trying to beat Stephen Curry.
You guys do realize that Marx was wrong and that Proletarian revolutions are not very common.....right? Concentration of wealth in and of itself isn't the cause of revolution, but it can lead to the abuses that can cause revolutions. If the people are starving, they might revolt. If the wealthy are abusing and killing the poor, they might revolt. Rich people being extremely rich in comparison to the poor isn't a cause for revolution so long as there is a certain standard for quality of life. Envy by itself motivates a lot of of people to complain, but rarely to revolt.
The two data-sets don't strike me as necessarily contradictory. Oxfam compares relative wealth of the rich and poor. World Bank compares the wealth of the poor to a standard. As the wealth generated by the world goes up over time, you can have a lessening of poverty while still concentrating most of the gains in wealth in the richest people. I'm glad the plight of the poor in the world is getting better with time. That is how it should be. People are industrious. They work all the time, and all that work should be creating wealth. People shouldn't be living in shacks of corrugated metal forever. But, is the wealth ending up in the right people's pockets if the very richest are seeing such enormous gains? That strikes me as an inefficiency in the system.
Ah you meant first world poor and not the poor in general. The poverty rate has been relatively stable for the past 50 years (between 12% to 15%), so I think it is a stretch to say globalization has made Americans more impoverished. It did take a significant move up after the great recession along with the wealth gap. I attribute this changed in the wealth gap more towards Bush tax policies than I would to globalization.
The reason why there are many less poor in the world is because China and Southeast Asia are far richer than they were 30 years ago. It isn't simply because Oxfam and the World Bank say so. Also, for whatever it is worth the World Bank was using 2011 PPP and yes the numbers in the pictures I posted do need to be updated to the $1.9/day. Yes, a massive number of people still live in poverty but the rate has declined a spectacular amount over the past few decades. It's down from around 37% in 1990 to just below 13% as of 2012.
I agree it is an issue that wealth is being extremely heavily concentrated, but I don't know what the solution is.
I don't think you can separate tax policy or environment policy or labor policy from globalization. The effect of globalization ripples throughout the entire economy. Increased competition forces lower taxes, lower environmental standards, and labor policy that favors management. Economic freedom has negative consequences. The free market is a scourge.
Though I posted the marxist rant above I actually agree with you. Having food, shelter, and entertainment may be enough. It's not the traditional first world goal but it might be the 'average of the world' goal. I keep thinking that ubiquitous information would lead to a revolution of consciousness where people actively vote for the general welfare because it's so obvious. It should actually resound with religious people, but alas, it does not.
As much as a player holding a hand of mostly 6s and 7s want the ******* to call revolution, our conservative brethren on the board are correct that famine and starvation are historically the no. 1 and only reason peasants revolt (which makes the American Revolution singularly inspirational). Keep the plebs fed and distracted, and everything will be peachy.
True. I think it is sustainable, but only if those at the top realize that they have to be careful not to cross the that threshold. The "plebs" will tear up the social contract if they can't feed themselves or their kids.
In my ever humble opinion, the reason we don't see revolutions starting over issues such as class envy is because of how horrible they often are. Basically unless you are starving or are being killed and wrongfully imprisoned by the thousands, it's simply not worth it. There have been relatively bloodless revolutions in the past, but they are outliers. I'm not sure I share your opinion of the American revolution, it wasn't really a peasant revolution so much as it was the elites of one area wrestling power away from elites too far away and too weak to hold on to it. It was bankrolled and led by what today we'd call the 1% and just used the lower classes as fodder.
I think Rousseau would argue that they'll only tear up the social contract if conditions are bad enough to warrant entering a state where life is "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short". If we're sticking with that, fear of the state of nature can often keep a social contract in place long after some think it should be "torn up".
