Posted on 01/25/2012 6:33:06 AM PST by blam
THE SEEDS OF DYSTOPIA: Roubini & Co. Scare The Crap Out Of Davos
Henry Blodget
Jan. 25, 2012, 7:53 AM
From Nouriel Roubini's yfrog page
An uplifting post-lunch session at Davos entitled GLOBAL RISKS 2012: THE SEEDS OF DYSTOPIA...
Professor Nouriel Roubini's on the panel, along with the head of Amnesty International and a few other non-profit organizations.
Some key points made by the panelists:
* Two of the panelists confessed that they had to look up the word "dystopia" when they heard the title of the session. It means the opposite of utopia.
* Roubini thinks the term accurately describes today's world
* Social unrest, Roubini says, is tied directly to economic uncertainty
* What is connecting everyone in the world these days, continues Roubini, is economic and financial insecurity, the rise of income and wealth inequality, challenges from poverty, unemployment effects of financial crisis.
* Freakouts about debt loads, moreover, are leading to budget cuts--which, in europe, at least, are making the recession worse.
* 225 million people worldwide are unemployed
* 1 in 3 people on planet are poor or unemployed
* 1% of the world's families own 40% of the wealth
* Wages as a percent of GDP are at an all-time low
* Corporate profits as a percent of GDP are at an all-time high
* Current policies will lead to explosions
* This inequality is "Great Gatsby revisited"
* We're in a "vicious circle"... fiscal asterity to solve debt problem making everything worse
So, how do we fix this?
Some ideas from the panel:
* More unionization, more power to the worker
* More investment in education
* More investment in "human capital"
* More investment in infrastructure
(snip)
(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
Hmmm, all their proposed solutions are things that have failed in the past to address the woes they cite. I guess we just haven’t been trying hard enough.
Of course, if you're all worked up about poverty and wealth inequality then give your sh!t away until you think everyone's equal.
AND THE ANSWER???
More Unions, more taxes!
Brilliant!!!!
* More unionization, more power to the worker
* More investment in education
* More investment in “human capital”
* More investment in infrastructure
When the world economy is in the toilet, and you are thinking of investing, you are too late to the party. You should have been thinking of ways to improve while things were looking rosy. Now with a shrinking economy, shrinking tax revenues, shrinking incomes, there isn’t any cash for crap. Learn the lesson? Fat chance, the first opportunity to increase spending, the jerks will be off to the races again.
With all this automation and computerization we don’t need as many people to make things or in the workforce in general. Part of the solution is to disperse urban concentrations out to the countryside and have them grow their own food. Half the population in our major cities cannot justify their existence there. They feed off the system via various welfare payments. They do not contribute and they breed more of the same.
So get them out to the country where they can earn their daily bread by the sweat of their brow. I would set up loose communal farms for them where the good farmers could still prosper and the lazy would fall behind
Problem: Everybody is poor or unemployed.
Solution: Let’s tax the hell out of them for their own good.
That’s the ticket.
Who is John Galt?
So, the answer to 1 in 3 being unemployed is . . . .
Taxes.
I’m sorry I missed out on the shimmering intellect on display at Davos.
You have to ask yourself a question: Could Fulton have invented and marketed the steam engine in the US of 2012? How about the Wright Brothers?
I have a better idea:
Reform tort law, roll back taxes, and reduce the cost of failure in the US and then let the US pull everyone elses chestnuts out of the fire.
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