it’s true inequality is getting greater and the rich super richer. but you have to be a bit careful with your use of data here. Say you are rich and own assets worth 100 – then something happens like a financial crisis and your assets fall 30% to 70, if they then recover from 70 to 100, that’s a 43% increase. Some of what you report here looks like ‘recovery’ wealth increases. Notice that if you just looked at the percentages you could think their asset grew more than they fell.

I really don’t think “bail outs, sovereign borrowing and QE” mean “taking the wealth of those who were already poorer”

take QE for example – buying assets with newly printed money. How does that hurt the poor? The only way QE has a cost is if it causes inflation – which hurts those with assets (the rich?) and helps borrowers (the poor?).

What will hurt the poor is, as you point out, carrying the burden of living under a government trying to pay off huge sovereign debts, in the government has not better idea that spend less and tax more. As others have said, next to that proposition, default looks appealing (although there are some default doomsday scenarios out there – I don’t know enough to foresee the consequences of PIG defaults). If Ireland does try to pay off its debts, the scale of the task is so enormous, even if it does raise taxes and find ways of soaking the rich, cutting benefits in the bargain might be inevitable (I haven’t looked at the numbers, and don’t like the idea of inflicting costs on the badly off any more than you do).

So in 2010 when the markets had a large recovery the wealth of the rich grew by 12% – not a huge surprise.

What happended to the wealth of the rich in 2008 when world markets tanked?

I am always amazed when people have a go at the rich, it’s like those sort of people want the money the rich has to spend as they see fit but at the same time doesn’t want them to have it!
If the rich didn’t make that money which others get to have a share in, how else would you generate cash to motivate people to help others? Oh yes, maybe their looking at communism for an example of how else to run society, that would work wouldn’t it?

It really is time those who have a fluffy heart and want to help all the worlds people grew up & faced facts.

There isn’t enough wealth to go around the worlds needy, even if we/they wanted to.
The world is over populated, deal with this & you help stop making children who will starve.
Find a way to give electrical power to the worlds people without using fossil fuel, because the way “they” are doing it now is crap!
And make the world stop spending over a trillion dollars a year on arms to keep things as they are!
In the meantime, if you really want to help the worlds people stop moaning about how much the rich wont spend on them and just go and help them yourself.

@ Workman Fred

Seriously, mate, you have to stop accusing everyone who isn’t a hardline free marketeer of being a communist. It has this unfortunate tendency to make you look deeply stupid.

China went from being extremely equal to being extremely unequal in a very short space of time. How are the poorest in China doing now compared to then? Would you prefer a system where the poorest have enough to eat, a roof over their head and free education and health care (e.g. in the UK in 2011) or a system where everyone is equally dirt poor?

After reading LE’s elegant demolition of the OP, I wonder if the term “ideological cretin” might not be more accurately applied to David Malone than M Lenain. “Slightly harsh you might think.”?

@Chaise Guevara

“stop accusing everyone who isn’t a hardline free marketeer of being a communist”

Seriously, mate, you have to stop making things up because you don’t like what I’m saying but can’t think of a better way to try to win the argument, FYI, it’s not working, and making you look deeply stupid.

Anywho! The reason I used the word this time was because I see no other way to work society than how we are doing it now and if you do want to do it another way, communism must be the way you are thinking, is it not?

@ 7 Workman Fred.

“The reason I used the word this time was because I see no other way to work society than how we are doing it now and if you do want to do it another way, communism must be the way you are thinking, is it not?”

I love how you deny doing something, then do that exact thing in the same post.

To answer your question: no, obviously it isn’t, because if it was I wouldn’t object to you throwing the “communist” label around, would I? There’s such a thing as striking a balance between total state control and total individual and market freedom. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone who truly desires one extreme or the other; we’re normally arguing over where that balance should be struck.

The idea that people who object to the worst excesses of capitalism must be commies is what we call a false dichotomy. In other news, it’s not my fault if you’re paranoid enough to see Reds under the bed.

If you actually read the OP, you’ll see that David isn’t objecting to people getting rich on principle, he’s objecting to the rich getting even richer at the expense of the poorest and most vulnerable. I’m surprised a self-professed working-class campaigner like yourself would find that objectionable.

this might interest some, on the theme of the poor getting poorer.

it’s from a Chicago economist (boo! hiss!) who warned in 2005 that “financial innovation” was made the world more dangerous (oh, hooray!), arguing that a “growing underclass in developed countries will prolong economic crisis” and that inequality is bad news. video here

@3

“There isn’t enough wealth to go around the worlds needy, even if we/they wanted to.”

Bullshit.

To answer your question: no, obviously it isn’t, because if it was I wouldn’t object to you throwing the “communist” label around, would I? There’s such a thing as striking a balance between total state control and total individual and market freedom. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone who truly desires one extreme or the other; we’re normally arguing over where that balance should be struck.

Him throwing it around wouldn’t be so bad if he weren’t the biggest communist poster LC has had since Richard Seymour.

@8. Chaise Guevara

“I’m surprised a self-professed working-class campaigner”

I think you have me wrong!
I look out for myself because I can, if when I’m talking I do so from a poor working class point of view, it’s because I am, but don’t think I think any better of someone because they have more money than me in the bank, I don’t , we all go to the toilet the same.

That said, I know many who don’t use a computer for putting their point across on political sites, maybe it’s a confidence thing, I’m the odd one as far as I can make out, but then believe me, I know how some on these blogs can be if you can’t put your point across as “neatly” as they think you should, and dare you make a spelling mistake against someone you’re arguing with, well……………

So I talk to people at work and when I’m out and about and match it up with how I feel about things and so when I come onto sites like this I know I have some back up to what I am saying.
It has taken a few years and a spell check to gain the confidence to argue like I do, but as you may have noticed the other day when I did, I’m called, naive, rich educated playing dumb, uneducated, a troll, a racist and even calling myself Fred was wrong, I won’t go on but that was just in a couple of posts, I’m still here!

I’m no ones campaigner, but if I do happen to stick up for “my own” or use them as an example in the process of having my say than so be it.

Right, put em up

Ps, My name isn’t Fred, that’s what I call my computer

@10 Mr S. Pill

“Bullshit.”

You have such a way with words.

So educate me instead of using foul language, you’re only making yourself look nasty, surely you can do better than that?!

@13

Sigh. Once upon a time (a few months ago in fact) I would’ve taken the time to search google for references, sources, impartial reports and such like that back up my view. For a while now I’ve seen that this has no affect on people like yourself (Lib Con’s other resident troll So Much For Subtlety is another guilty party here) and it’s far easier just to call you out on your bullshit.

The onus is on you to prove your nonsense statements (re:not enough wealth to go round; everyone who disagrees with extremo-freemarket capitalism is a communist; etc) as far as I’m concerned.

@ 12 Workman Fred

Well, you said that you stick up for your kind, and defined your kind as working-class Brits. So I’m really not sure what I’m supposed to have got wrong in calling you “a self-professed working-class campaigner”.

As for this stuff about you being called “naive, rich educated playing dumb, uneducated, a troll, a racist”, is that supposed to relate to me in any way? The only thing I’ve called you from that list is “troll”, and you were trolling at the time.

To be honest, I’m just not sure how your post at 12 in any way related to my post at 8, which you were apparently replying to!

@14. Mr S. Pill

Sometimes I just use logic, sometimes facts, but I have no idea how you think you can answer that!
I’ve had a quick search, I think this sums up your task!

“How much actual money is there in the world?
To make this question answerable in a finite amount of time, let’s simplify things and ask, “How much money is there in actual United States dollars?” Since the statistics for the U.S. are easy to come by”

“all of the deposits those banks have at reserve banks [source: Hamilton]. According to the Federal Reserve, there was $908.6 billion in the M0 supply stream as of July 2009 [source: Federal Reserve].According to the CIA, there were 307,212,123 Americans alive that month [source: CIA]. If you took all the cash and divided it up equally, each person should have about $3,000 in cash on them”

So let’s look at the last bit as an example shall we?
ONLY $3,ooo each, as America is one of the richest countries, and can only raise that amount each, in cash, how would they help feed the worlds needy with that? Do you want them to sell their house? And then what would they have left for themselves?
Who else do you think can feed the worlds needy and give them all they need?

Really interested on how you think you can work it out.

@16

Money is not wealth. Try again.

@15

“campaigner”

It was that which got me going.

“is that supposed to relate to me in any way?”

You admit to calling me a troll so I suppose so,

“I’m just not sure how your post at 12 in any way related to my post at 8″

By distance
Call it a friday rant

@16 Mr S. Pill

“Try again”

Nah, logic dictates there’s not enough wealth in the world to look after all the needy or the bleeding hearts would have made them spend it by now

@19

LOL. Unfortunately “logic” (word abuse much?) is wrong here, because “bleeding hearts” don’t rule the world. Or indeed any part of the world. Hell we’re barely managing to keep a flimsy welfare state running on our island let alone anything more radical.

As an aside, and because I’m not a total arse, I suggest you read a book called The Spirit Level. It may open your eyes a bit to what people who aren’t communists but desire a fairer society actually want – as well as proof that the more equal the society the better it does, on pretty much every level.
More info here.

@ 18 Workman Fred

Ah, so a Friday rant is when you ignore everything substantial that the other guy says? Very productive.

I called you a troll at the time because you were trolling. If you act badly you can only expect people to call you on it. If, on the other hand, people are generally mudslinging at you instead of addressing your points, that’s out of order, but I haven’t done it, so don’t lay it at my door.

There’s nothing free market about what’s been going on in the financial world.

@1 LE,

“take QE for example – buying assets with newly printed money. How does that hurt the poor? The only way QE has a cost is if it causes inflation – which hurts those with assets (the rich?) and helps borrowers (the poor?). ”

You’ve got this totally backwards. QE hurts the poor, inflation hurts the poor, because their income is fixed or if not fixed does not vary to keep up with prices. As Mr S Pill says @ 17, “Money is not wealth.”, therefore creating ‘new’ money redistributes the wealth from the poor to the rich.

The monetary system is the heart of the matter. It is through the monetary system that we are exploited by governments and central banks counterfeiting money. Those who get the money first benefit by spending it while it still has a higher value. By the time it gets spread around, all the prices have gone up.

Before dismissing what I’m saying, I urge you people to hear or read what Murray Rothbard (and other hard money people) says about money and banking.

@20. Mr S. Pill

If I ever get a chance I might read it.

But, as I said the other day, “I will be happy when the world gets a conscious and stops spending trillions on arms instead of looking after the worlds needy”, but some might say we are still cavemen when it comes to that and so will continue to buy weapons and kill each other instead.

Anywho, still don’t reckon you know the answer though : )

@3 – okay, I’ll play. Say you’re right (you’re not): there’s not enough money about to ensure everyone has enough.

Then all we need is a wee revolution: shoot half the people in the world, and the lucky survivors will have twice as much each, whilst there will be three billion (or whatever) fewer bullets in existence! That’s maths, comrade.

Oh, by the way, there’s a spelling mistake in your life.

@24 J

“Then all we need is a wee revolution”

Let’s say we don’t!
Let’s say we find a way to give everyone on the planet not only enough money to feed themselves but enough to buy a few luxuries, like light fittings, fridges, freezers a TV, a computer, an overseas holiday and maybe even a car.
With the population we have now let alone many more because everyone can now produce as many babies as they like without the worry of feeding them, how do we power all the electric needed, because we don’t have the technology to produce it now without using fossil fuels and imagine the price of oil because of the demand and also the pollution.

The world only has a finite amount of power we can get from it and we can only produce a certain amount of food on it, what happens when these demands can’t be met? War maybe and millions get killed for their oil and food, looks like we’ve been doing the oil thing for a while now!

Giving the world the money to feed it’s self obviously isn’t the end of the story even if it could be done, the world needs a new power source & some bionic plants to keep up with demands and I don’t want to eat genetically modified food, do you?

Strange how looking after the worlds people could bring about the destruction of many of the worlds people!

@23

“If I ever get a chance I might read it.”

I sincerely hope you do. It may well open your eyes to a few facts about the world.

@25 I actually do want to eat bionic plants. They sound fucking awesome!

@25 – so, just to be clear, the world needs massive change in order for the human race to survive (or some shit), and you want to entrust that responsibility to those who’d only get involved if they might secure a profit at the end of it?

Surely far better to shoot half the population (no, not really) and terrorise the survivors into eco-submission?

I do wish we would stop wasting potentially interesting threads on trolls.

Trooper
You are right that inflation can hurt the poor if either state benefits or low wages don’t keep pace with price inflation. I should have thought of that. Neither of those things are necessary, but may occur. The rest of your argument is nonsense I’m afraid. Hard money nuts are nuts. Those who ‘get’ the money from QE have done so by selling bonds to BofE, which they can sell to anybody else at any time and get to use the money before it looses value as you put it. The only gain comes because QE props up asset prices, reducing the state’s cost of borrowing at the same time, by the way.

“It really is time those who have a fluffy heart and want to help all the worlds people grew up & faced facts.”

Priceless, the troll is having a “let them eat cake moment.”

“There isn’t enough wealth to go around the worlds needy, even if we/they wanted to.”

They said the same thing a hundred years ago when there was only 1 billion people on the planet.

@5. Blue Eyes: “China went from being extremely equal to being extremely unequal in a very short space of time.”

In 1993, China was a nation where a handful of people ran the economy and where the technocrats were the only people who had access to a car, lived in a big house, had servants, travelled abroad. They did not necessarily have money in the bank but their political positions made them very wealthy. Extraordinarily wealthy compared to those who they ruled.

Post economic reforms of the 1990s and 2000s, there are hundreds of thousands of Chinese people who are wealthy in their own country, and they are wheeling and dealing to get their money out of China. Most of them are wealthier than the technocrats who “run” China today.

So is China less or more equal than 20-odd years ago?

If the measure is that only technocrats deserve to live a high life, China is less equal. But that is an extraordinary measure of equality.

When I read a story that begins “A study by Boston Consulting Group on global wealth and who…”, a light bulb comes on. (The same light bulb comes on when I read about the TUC, LibDems, Church of England commissioning a study.)

The Boston Consulting Group did not stump up the money to provide academic illumination. They commissioned a study to scare people with money.

“But the growth from 2008 to 2010 was driven by the recovery of equity markets and much less by the generation of new wealth.” According to the Boston Consulting Group, if your millions are worth more, that was a freak consequence of financial market behaviour. And perhaps you might wish to use the services of wealth management experts: Boston Consulting Group.

@29 I think your missing the point of Internet discussions. You see the entire collected archive of lib con et al essentially consists of “pointless arguing of the toss”. Everyone starts out with their opinion, argues about it for a bit, then takes their completely unchanged opinion home with them.

@34

“Everyone starts out with their opinion, argues about it for a bit, then takes their completely unchanged opinion home with them.”

Not true! At least, for myself… I’ve changed my mind on at least two things through debating (or at least, watching the debate) on Lib Con. Not that I can quite remember what they were, now…

@34. Cylux; “Everyone starts out with their opinion, argues about it for a bit, then takes their completely unchanged opinion home with them.”

As Mr S. Pill mentions it doesn’t always work out that way. But there is a lot of shouting DOWN PEOPLE WHO DISAGREE WITH ME.

There is a massive issue where the wealthiest are rewarded well for success but appear to be immune from the consequences of failure. The bank bailout was a disgrace as is any public subsidy given to an allegedly private company.
Another major issue in creating ineqaulity is the casual way in which governments of all persuasions have used indirect taxes as soft revenue. Regressive by nature, these stealth taxes do far more damage to the little guy than they ever will to his boss.
http://outspokenrabbit.blogspot.com/

When you consider that the top 1% of income earners pay 24% of all income tax (plus, obviously, a massive proportion of VAT, fuel duty etc), and the top 10% pay just over 53% of all income tax, then if the top earners are making more money then it will proportionately benefit the UK Treasury.

Besides, anyone with a pension, ISA or any other market linked product has also benefited (although I think I am right in saying that the FTSE is only back to the level of 2007, so no real growth).

So what’s the problem?

38
I wonder how many people, given the choice, would choose to pay the higher rate of income tax or be part of the group who pay the lower rate?

@29. Graham

“do wish we would stop wasting potentially interesting threads on trolls”

What a nasty troll I am, how dare I try to put a different point of view on your site and spoil your enjoyment of all agreeing with each other, how dare I not conform to how you see the world and I’m also so sorry I’m not as educated as yourself, I’ll just get my coat now shall I? Yes I’m being sarcastic what do you expect?

There are only so many books I can read or opinions I can find, I’m happy to change how I see things if the arguments put to me make sense and then happy to pass that opinion on to those who I find that have the opinion I had before. What more can I say?

If you want to educate me in how you think I should think then please do so, if you just want to think me a troll then maybe just ignore me, if those who run this site think I should go and never return with my unchanged opinion then ban my IP address & I’m gone………simples.

It’s a pity that there are so many ‘well educated ideological cretin[s]…’ about. Great phrase.

@30 LE

“Neither of those things are necessary, but may occur. The rest of your argument is nonsense I’m afraid. Hard money nuts are nuts”

Oh thanks for explaining that I’m actually insane, because I’ve read different economists to you. If only there was some kind of mandated warning mark on such books, I could have been saved.

“Those who ‘get’ the money from QE have done so by selling bonds to BofE, which they can sell to anybody else at any time and get to use the money before it looses value as you put it. ”

Yeah, but would anyone else be buying them?

“The only gain comes because QE props up asset prices, reducing the state’s cost of borrowing at the same time, by the way.”

Yes, like I said they get the new money first and spend it, pushing up prices. The vast majority are not amongst the handful of financial institutions benefiting, and have to pay the price through higher prices.

From your point of view, is there any limit on QE, or can central banks just keep printing money ad infinitum with no harm to anyone, and only crazy people think that there could be a problem with this?

3 things have to change:

1) the monetary system
2)the function of corporations
3) the political system

These issues are global.

The global economy are in danger because of the imigration of corporations to the third world (China etc). They want lower salaries and biger profits…
The same time, banks give loans for keeping the increase of GDP. But the productive sector shrinks and the unemployment is increasing.

The banks collapse…
Who will pay the loans; Who will save the banks from bankruptcy; The citizens…. We will pay.. But how?

There are no jobs.. There are no factories.. There are no primary production sector. There are Only banks and loans…….

Who will pay… We.. But how; That leads to the national bankruptcy… THis is the problem for our south european countries.. Greece, Portugal, Spain…

The solution, their solution… To make us like China, with 2-5 dollars per day… This is crazy.. What do you do?

The same problem have the USA. Their monetary system, their banking system is a bubble.. And american citizens have to pay? But why??? And how???

See the video: http://youtu.be/M8ZH1ejtIFo