"More than 85% of public tips on benefit 'frauds' are false" (in the UK)

[alex3619]

If everyone just works hard enough then everyone gets a fair share of the pie.

Versus.

There can be only one.

In reality one percent of the population have nearly all the wealth. They are not into sharing for the most part, but there are exceptions. Much of this wealth is inherited. Much of it is about who you know, not how hard you work. Much of it leads to undue influence, subverting the democratic process. Some voices do have more say than others.

Yet wealth only exists by social contract.

The economic future is bleak. Most of the big fortune 500 companies in the 40s in the USA disappeared. I do not know if this translates to people though. Yet we face economic disaster later this century if we don't fix things. Wealth is as ephemeral as life. Companies end. Wealth ends. Power ends. That is a fact of history. Some may be thinking our global interconnections preserve such power, but I think it makes it more vulnerable.

Yet even now in slightly hard times we see the poor commit suicide in droves and face despair but the rich get richer.

You can sum up a lot of public relations on these issues by referring to two things from the Roman Empire - bread and circuses. Blaming victims is part of circuses ... remember the Colosseum.

 

[TiredSam]

In reality one percent of the population have nearly all the wealth.

Zombie statistic alert!

 

[alex3619]

A bad source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distribution_of_wealth

The source claimed in Wikipedia is::

1. Henry, James (July 2012). "The Price of Offshore Revisted: New Estimates for Missing Global Private Wealth, Income, Inequality, and Lost Taxes" (PDF) (pp. 5). Tax Justice Network. Retrieved 15 April 2015.

According to this claim, 99.9% of the world population have only 19% of the wealth, as of 2000, and based on assets other than cash, and it is not clear if this is about public wealth, only private wealth.

In the James report, much less than 1% of the population have 81% of global wealth, based upon World Bank and US Treasury data.(2009 I think)


More recently Credit Suisse puts the figure at 1% of the population having 49% of the wealth.
http://www.theguardian.com/business...rcent-half-global-wealth-credit-suisse-report


This is brought home by the vast disparity between median and mean income. When there is huge disparity you know there is a problem. We are a consumer oriented global economy. Complete this sentence - When the consumers get poorer and poorer, the economy ....

Wealth and income are not the same either.

The percentage of wealth for the richest 1% was last very high just before the Great Depression. There is major concern with some economists that this is a very bad sign, and much of the wealth is speculative and not based on real assets or income. Stock market and land values tend to get and stay overhyped over time. Big crashes cause big corrections, and people and corporations go broke in record numbers.

There is also concern that a drive to efficiency, including efficiency of scale, is making many corporations less financially robust, and major economic shocks are more likely to have major damage.

Even six years ago the wealth distribution was much better.

The exact percentages vary year by year and with economic changes. They vary by method of calculation. They vary depending on source material. This is wriggle room though, this is not and cannot be exact. Yet the trend is clear.

The thing about wealth as opposed to income is that as incomes decline, those with hard wealth still have it. Land and hard assets remain even if cash is poor, for the most part. Power and security have, historically, been in hard assets. I expect that belief will crash late this century. The long term outlook appears bleak under current market behaviour... and I do not mean the next five years. I mean 50 or more years.

 

[TiredSam]

More or Less did an item on the Credit Suisse report, I listened to it ages ago. Interesting was that if you are in the UK on the minimum wage, you're in the top 10% globally, and if you have assets of 500,000 GBP I think it was, you are in the top 1%, so a lot of people who have paid off a nice house think that the 1% figure is people like Bill Gates, but don't realise they're talking about themselves.

 

[alex3619]

they're talking about themselves.

Yes, a lot of it has to do with global distribution. Great wealth is not very common in Africa for example. Wealth is more conspicuous in the developed world.

Yet even in countries like the UK the wealth distribution curve tends to be hyperbolic. Of the UK citizens, and I have not seen the specific graph for the UK, I expect that the same principle holds. I have seen this discussed in economic books, for the US. Wealth distribution is concentrated mostly in a small percentage of people, even country by country. Its not evenly distributed. The same pattern holds. Now I do not doubt that there are some tax havens, for example, where the pattern may be skewed. I see no reason why this is the case for most countries.

I have also seen discussions in economics where this can hold profession by profession. This depends on the profession though. Some professions have relatively stable income, such as electricians or accountants. There is some variation but around a theme. Median and mean incomes are close. However some professions have massively different incomes - median and mean are very different. Like actors, singers, writers etc. Most of these are relatively poor, but a few rise to serious wealth.

Some of the data also suggests, but so far as I know does not prove, that economic growth rates are tied to wealth distribution. This is association, not causation, but there are grounds to think its partly causal. I think its an under-researched area. The US had much better growth in the 50s and 60s, when taxes were higher. This is seen in what little data we have on how to boost an economy. Money returned to the poor has four times the impact, roughly (and if I recall correctly) than money returned to the wealthy by governments. This includes tax breaks. This only holds while most of that money is being spent on what are regarded as essential commodities etc. It is not grounds for massive increase of state pensions etc. That happened in Greece and we know the result.

Now some growth is also due to speculative growth, like housing and stock market prices. Real assets and income do not always justify such growth. This occurs when money is injected into that asset class, due to laws and regulations (such as negative gearing on housing) or due to speculative investment, or even worse, speculative investment using credit. This often does not apply to new businesses that are just floated on the stock market, as these are high risk and high reward scenarios, and a little different.

I am not a fan of high growth rates though. Most of the theoretical problems with growth come from economists and others equating money with real wealth. Real growth considered from a resources perspective has finite limits. This is different to speculative wealth and somewhat different to added value improvements. Economics deals with this by considering that as resources become scarce then costs go up, its self correcting. This is a fallacy. Its the resource costs of getting resources that count when considering limits. Reducing the idealized growth rate of about 3% to about 0.5% would give the world time to adjust, due to the impact of the doubling curve.

 

[TiredSam]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03gj7h9

 

[SilverbladeTE]

Exponential growth, vast ecosystem damage as resources are greedily grabbed up in wasteful ways,
the arrogant perversion the wilful denial of climate change caused by our greed and then add in things like our GROUP of illnesses being prevented from being researched and treated...and many more such, all adds up to havoc
I can easily see most of the Human Race exterminated in the ensuing conflicts, genocides and catastrophes by around 2065, certainly an end to civilization as we know it.

Note for those who can't believe such, check on the following:
2nd financial collapse
London Housing Bubble
Russians developing 100 megaton cobalt bomb ocean-detonated weapons as they know America/Uk are "coming for them"
The Elite across the world buying up hidey-holes in remote areas to escape the coming chaos
that's not crazy stuff, it's REAL and documented.

 

[worldbackwards]

Fine commentary from Frances Ryan, featuring ME and Fibromyalgia patients:
http://www.theguardian.com/society/...phantom-benefit-cheat-austerity-fraud-hotline

 

[TiredSam]

Excellent article. This tactic of deliberately brainwashing the population before putting a potentially unpopular policy into effect is popping up alarmingly frequently these days. It reminds me of how companies in the US send employees on positive thinking courses about taking personal responsibility and seeing opportunity in adversity, just to make sure no-one complains when they are fired in their thousands six months later. The level of pre-meditated manipulation by those in charge makes me feel uncomfortable, to say the least.