This one to do with a certain sense of gloom. You see, many people have this optimistic view that things are improving. I'm not sure what to call it exactly, but it's a pervading wish in society. "America is over the worst", "Europe is fixed", "Next year growth will return". That sort of thing. I guess it's fair enough to wish for the best.
But the problem I see is that there's virtually no drive or will for anything to actually change, and the causes of the problems that are popular to blame are wildly wrong. The Occupy movement had basically the right idea, but that largely (for now at least) has been beaten back and stalled. Other than that, you're very hard pressed to find even an activist movement, let alone a political party willing to take on the real problems.
And what pray tell do I think they are?
I think the system of wealth and how it runs our entire lives is perhaps workable in theory, but horribly flawed in it's current state. One of the manifestations of the current problem is in a curve of opportunity that comes with wealth. Lets concentrate on this one for now, because I think it helps explain why we seem to be on a hockey stick curve of doom.
If you're in the lower, middle, even low high end salary brackets these days, your money is largely tracked, identified, taxed and there's little you can do about it. You're in the bracket that can't afford legal tax avoidance. Or. If you can to some small degree, you're talking about a few thousand saved, enough to give you a smile maybe, but not enough to materially alter your overall financial position. You also can't afford to speculate on the markets to any real degree. Again, it's possible, but because the amounts that can be risked are fairly small, the amounts that can be made are also fairly small, and because you can't afford off shore accountants and brokers, the gains are going to get noticed and taxed.
At a certain point though, you're out of the woods. You can afford to offload all your tax affairs to experts in the dark arts of tax avoidance, and you can afford to pay the sums involved in setting up such schemes as a small blip compared to the quantities saved. You can also afford to speculate on the markets, you don't have to do it. Your broker will happily take that on for you, and unless you've picked a duff broker and tax accountant, you're pretty much home and dry.
The point is, at a certain point, wealth has been allowed to snowball wealth. Not just for individuals, for corporations as well. In the UK and USA you can find large corporations paying zero tax despite good earnings for the year in question. You can even find them being paid by the tax man just for having the grace to be in business and having good accountants.
You can muddle along with that sort of thing going on up to a certain point, but after a while, you begin to notice that far too much of the profit in just about everything is getting sucked out by those who can afford to squirrel it away and avoid the tax, or invest it to make yet more money to help pay for the money that's tucked away off shore.
This is just one aspect. The ability past a certain point for wealth to magically become almost untaxable because you can afford all the dodges and cheats available to you, and the benefit out weighs the costs. There are more. The culture of gouging as much money as possible out of any public expenditure is another, but that's another story.
So when you're looking at the world and wondering where has all the money gone? It's up there folks. At the top. In huge quantities. And it ain't trickling down.
If anyone can point me at a potentially viable political party willing to tackle even this one basic problem? I'd love to hear about them. All the serious political parties that I know about are funded by those exact same rich corporations and individuals. If you think they are willingly going to give any of that up you're just plain crazy. It's easier to let a few thousand commit suicide from austerity measures than even admit there's a huge wealth distribution problem.
You think I'm exaggerating?
See if this helps you picture the problem more clearly...
When is that going to change?
Well. I'd say it'll take civil wars, even international wars, financial collapse, mass poverty, and a huge depression to even begin to redistribute the wealth. I don't particularly want any of that to happen. It's just that's the only way I can see any of the current system changing in any meaningful way. Until then? Get used to things getting slowly worse, because nobody in power or close to getting power wants to do anything about it at all.
Hey. It's only human lives that get messed up and considerably shortened in the meantime. Don't be so glum. Us humans seem to love taking what could be a perfectly enjoyable lifetime and screwing it up for as many people as possible. It's how we do business. It's normal.
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