The emerging economies are plutocracies.

Drifterwood

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You know: I agree with the premise. But so what?

We are concerned in the West that political decisions are increasingly taken for the benefit of a minority. In some countries that are becoming major powers, perhaps soon the most powerful, that minority also openly holds political power and is a much smaller minority, a tiny number of people.

What will this mean for a planet with over 7 billion people now and diminishing resources?
 

Klingsor

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We are concerned in the West that political decisions are increasingly taken for the benefit of a minority. In some countries that are becoming major powers, perhaps soon the most powerful, that minority also openly holds political power and is a much smaller minority, a tiny number of people.

What will this mean for a planet with over 7 billion people now and diminishing resources?

Um . . . we're fucked?
 
D

deleted15807

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What will this mean for a planet with over 7 billion people now and diminishing resources?

In summation:

Um . . . we're fucked?

"The fundamental driving force for humanity is the genital friction that produces more people. We are plague mammals, and plague mammals multiply fantastically until just before the last generation." - Lynn Margulis
 

Bbucko

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We are concerned in the West that political decisions are increasingly taken for the benefit of a minority. In some countries that are becoming major powers, perhaps soon the most powerful, that minority also openly holds political power and is a much smaller minority, a tiny number of people.

What will this mean for a planet with over 7 billion people now and diminishing resources?

I was feeling especially cynical when I posted that, for a number of reasons that are entirely personal in nature. I normally try and keep a global outlook and feel a much greater connection to my fellow Earth inhabitants than I did last night.

But the strains on the economy, with no foreseeable end in sight, have been especially hard on me (and my community) since early summer, culminating in the worst September and October I've seen in the five years that I've been working where I do now. It's only now slowly picking back up, but I'm still making less than half of what I normally would, and the stress is beginning to show.

The reality is becoming clearer to me that we're going to (or perhaps already are) relive the worst excesses of the end of the 19th century: the era of the Robber Barons. The Western concept of a dominant middle class seems pretty much like a brief, mid-20th century hiccup that is every day more a myth than reality. And the era of entrepreneurs is being eclipsed by one of a state/corporate interaction that excludes more and more folks from any real piece of the pie.

I'm not seeing any way out, and am therefore resigned to a cynical pessimism that would have shocked me ten years ago. I used to be the most optimistic person I knew :frown1:
 

Drifterwood

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I'm not seeing any way out, and am therefore resigned to a cynical pessimism that would have shocked me ten years ago. I used to be the most optimistic person I knew :frown1:

If I were a betting man, I would stake quite a lot that in whatever department you call it, bureaucrats are eying the European federal Sales Tax. We call it, the perfect irony, Value Added Tax; there is no value added, but it is a perfect tax, it quietly creeps into every cent you spend and the powers that be will see it as a way to reduce your Federal Debt.

If I were to die tomorrow, I, my estate would pay 40% death duties, correct, death is taxable. Given the 40 to 50% tax that I have been paying ever since I started to make more money than I needed, I will end up paying about 70% tax. And this is only on the bit that I took for myself. There is the tax on the jobs I created, the corporation tax, the business rates etc etc, oh and of course 20% VAT on any gross profit as well as import duties etc etc. My personal ledger with Government is probably somewhere like 95% in the government's favour. But hey, I can afford a roof and food at the moment, so long as the Bank's and Government's mismanagement doesn't fuck me over with no safety net.

So, you are correct. We all work for the man. Government, resource suppliers, banks and retailers, own virtually all of us and leave us scraps for which we are most humbly grateful. You can probably add lawyers and doctors.

Where the optimism?

If I know you at all Bb, you are like me. Cool Hand Luke to a decent degree.
 

Bbucko

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If I were a betting man, I would stake quite a lot that in whatever department you call it, bureaucrats are eying the European federal Sales Tax. We call it, the perfect irony, Value Added Tax; there is no value added, but it is a perfect tax, it quietly creeps into every cent you spend and the powers that be will see it as a way to reduce your Federal Debt.

If I were to die tomorrow, I, my estate would pay 40% death duties, correct, death is taxable. Given the 40 to 50% tax that I have been paying ever since I started to make more money than I needed, I will end up paying about 70% tax. And this is only on the bit that I took for myself. There is the tax on the jobs I created, the corporation tax, the business rates etc etc, oh and of course 20% VAT on any gross profit as well as import duties etc etc. My personal ledger with Government is probably somewhere like 95% in the government's favour. But hey, I can afford a roof and food at the moment, so long as the Bank's and Government's mismanagement doesn't fuck me over with no safety net.

So, you are correct. We all work for the man. Government, resource suppliers, banks and retailers, own virtually all of us and leave us scraps for which we are most humbly grateful. You can probably add lawyers and doctors.

Where the optimism?

If I know you at all Bb, you are like me. Cool Hand Luke to a decent degree.

I think that I'll have a better sense of some quality to my life when my income returns to normal, or at least something close to it. My job's always depended to a large extent on out-of-towners, but right now it's entirely so. The locals are really, really broke. If I didn't have my (slender) savings I'd practically be starving, and there's no way I could pay my rent. It's really kinda terrifying, so I just don't think about it.

Cool Hand Luke is an apt metaphor: you do what you have to because there isn't much choice, and making the most of it rewards in pleasures, no matter how simple sometimes.

That made me smile: thank you.

ETA: We have sales taxes, too. They vary by state (and, at least in NY's case, by county), though there's nothing like the VAT's absurdly high rates. If I recall correctly, in France it was over 20% when I lived there.
 
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vince

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I wouldn't mind the plutocrats if the fuckers did a half descent job of running things. But for the most part, in most countries, they act like American bankers. They make a hash of the economy and still take the lion's share. An accountable plutocrat is kind of a silly idea though.
 
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It doesn't mean these countries have embraced democracy just because they have embraced capitalism. I work with a lot of international students (mostly from China) whose families are the wealthy elite of their country. I'm constantly astonished at how indifferent and how little they know about poverty, corruption and social inequality/injustice in their own country. Everything "is just fine" if you ask them about it. Why would they give a crap anyways? They came out on top in their society, so it doesn't make any difference to them. They certainly aren't going to question the powers that be that made it possible for them to rise to the top. Just look at that poor little kid that got mowed down on the street in China by 2 cars and was passed by by 18 people. A child dying in the street in front of their eyes didn't evoke any empathy and stir them to action. I guess they felt that it wasn't their problem. It's such a sick world we live in where the $ is above all other.
 

citr

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It's the story of history, and really great if you are one of the elite. If you aren't, and you start to get overambitious, you will kept in line by physical force.
 

B_nyvin

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China is developing it's middle class very quickly as can be seen from it's rising domestic consumption. Although the wealth gap is indeed increasing

Brazil is actually the "worst" of the four. Mainly due to the diverse ethnicities in the nation and geographic divide between them. Rich white people in the southeast, poor blacks/natives everywhere else.
 

midlifebear

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Whilst we in the West are rallying against the 1%, it is a sobering reality that the emerging economies, the BRICS, are plutocracies under the control of the .0001%

Vladamir Putin is allegedly the richest man in the World now, supported by the so called oligarchs; though plutocrats would be a more correct term imo.

In China, 90% of the new millionaires owe their success to political connection. The families of the political elite run the business and natural resources of the country. The corruption of local officials that you may hear about, is in reality an asset grab race.

India tries to have justice from time to time and a strong middle class is developing, but the vast majority are destitute poor and no one gives a damn about them, whilst the seriously rich are in hyper drive.

Whilst you may not like the capitalist reality within your liberal democracy, take a moment to peep over your shoulder and see what is coming.

Well, yeah.
 

Drifterwood

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Should we decide the way it is going to be?

Or should we accept being told, this is the way it is going to be, you argue about the details of how you live with it amongst yourselves?
 

jakesph

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What is your solution to this? I mean hell india and china economies boomed pretty much overnigh, we just sat and waited for this day to come. Hell everytiime I see sine Russian elite, first that goes thru my mind is ex kg or something of that nature.
 

midlifebear

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Overtaking some US (and European) board rooms, taking Presidents, CEOs, CFOs. and a few second tier level criminals as war hostages and eliminating them would certainly make the world's all-controlling corporations sit up and take notice. This would, of course, include the major world banking execs. I've always been a great fan of the French Revolution.
 

Phil Ayesho

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Not for long.

Plutocracies can not long endure.

Corrupt capitalism is even more egregious and rapid in the rate at which it concentrates wealth.
As wealth coalesces to the tiniest fraction of a percent, in a modern world with communications that can not fully be controlled by those monied interests, the likelihood of major economic disruption rises.

As the Middle class becomes increasingly little more than the sector of the poor with good credit, The economic fabric on which plutocrats rely for their streams of riches begins to break down.

And that is when the folks being aced out start revolutions.

It is already starting, and starting with the most egregious plutocracies that have access to modern information systems... the Oil rich arab world.

It really is stupid of the ultra-rich to be so greedy... because by maintaining and supporting a growing middle class they would still grow rich... just a little slower in a world where the economies they take advantage of are more stable.

But they live such isolated lives, and trend toward such belief in their own "fitness" that they end up simply running a competition with other plutocrats over who can accrue the most, the fastest... rather than any realistic vision of what they could possibly do with such wealth in their short lives.

The 99% protest in the US is only going to grow, and the smart politicians will hop on board and press for real changes to rebuild the regulatory landscape the US enjoyed from 1932 thru 1984...

Or... dipshits like the Kock brothers can just keep up their plutocrat ways and find out first hand how the guillotine works.