I believe in fairness and justice. I do not think that is unreasonable. I believe that a person should be rewarded a fair amount of pay for a day’s work.
I do not think everyone should be paid the same or there should be uniform standards of living though I do believe in equality.
There are some things that seem so iniquitous that they shriek at me:
Seemingly just 85 people awn assets equivalent to the poorest half of the world. That means that 85 people, who could easily fit into a single small bar, a tube train or bus, own as much of the world as three and a half billion people! That is the equivalent number of people as the whole populations of India, China, Britain, the USA, Indonesia, Germany, Russia, France and Turkey put together!
In Britain it is not quite so bad: 71% of the country is owned by 10% of the people; or put another way 90% of the people get to live off 29% of the country’s land.
What is worrying is the way these super-rich people have accumulated their trillions. Nobody can ‘earn’ that amount of money. The idea is absurd. How could anybody work hard enough or be good enough to earn a million an hour?
Most of these people earn their money by exploiting poor people, getting them to work for a pittance and creaming off the profits. They work globally in order to reduce labour costs and avoid tax. They operate tax scams and manipulate global markets to create more profit. They strip assets from other companies, destroy the environment to get resources out as cheaply as possible, and create poverty. Poverty is necessary to have a work-force to exploit. The third world is destabilised in order to maintain markets. The only criteria is how much money can be made.
There is a whole global ball-game going on at a level beyond the ordinary person’s understanding. We only get a glimpse of the chicanery that goes on behind closed doors as politicians are bought and sold, corruption and baksheesh are everyday tools, threats, war and destabilisation are weapons to be deployed, the media is controlled by the rich with their vested interests and lobby groups control the voting. The money markets are manipulated and ordinary people are pawns in the game.
What happened at Grangemouth recently sums it up. The Billionaire Jim Ratcliffe played brinkmanship with thousands of working people’s livelihoods. He threatened to close the petrochemical works Ineos and take it abroad (where he could exploit poorer people more and scam off more profit) laying off thousands of workers.
Under this callous threat of closure Jim Ratcliffe then pulled in millions of pounds from the government (of our money) and reduced the wages of the workforce, docked their pensions and worsened their working conditions.
Having screwed everyone he promptly bought a new £130 million luxury yacht with crew that reputed costs £10,000 an hour just to sit idle, and bought himself a £5 million mansion in Hampshire, well pleased with his work.
The workers went back to work longer for less and Jim headed out to cruise round the Mediterranean.
This is not jealousy. I do not envy the lifestyle of these people. I am just appalled by the unfairness and the debris of poverty, misery and destruction they leave in their wake.
My only solution, following disillusionment with alternative political systems, such as communism, which prove equally as bad, is to suggest that we move to a more global system where universal laws and systems might prevent this blackmail, create fairness and put an end to inequality and poverty.
Surely we cannot survive much longer if we are ruled by the selfish, greedy super-rich who run the world for their own gain and do not care about people or global consequences?
This system stinks! Anyone got a better one?
I’ve read this piece’s contents before somewhere else though it’s been jiggered around with slightly. Perhaps credit is due to where credit is due.
I had to laugh at one point and the question arose: Is there really any such need for the profound use of such archaic and obsolete language expressionism’s such as “iniquitous”? It’s as if you’re attempting to address the Oxford Union in 1910 or something. It’s a blog, nothing more. It’s also not your language as expressed 99% of the time which infers it’s used as a forced exaggeration. There’s really no such need and nobody will ever think any more or less of you for refraining from such.
May I remind you of some ten days or so ago when you claimed not to fully understand all the contextual interpretations of the term “maligned” in connection with your post “Wish You Were Here”. I was surprised considering your claims as a writer at your lack of integral knowledge as to the variety of contextual uses of the word and fear that you had understood based only on its first principal definition in reference to something “evil”, which was patently not the case. The term ‘maligned’ also means to misinterpret – which funnily enough is exactly what you did do.
I’m sorry to bring such grief but it’s difficult not to being as I am a Statement Analyst.
(No, I absolutely cannot divulge as to whom employs me!)
I can however, immediately (or almost immediately) detect “untruths”, exaggerations, personal detachments, divisive expression and a host of other give-aways that writers or those making a written statement cannot fail but to express. In short, I can read them like a book.
Considering Jim Ratcliffe’s rather shitty start in life where he obviously wasn’t born with a silver spoon in his mouth, was brought up in one of the most deprived and backward parts of the country and by no means received an above average state education having attended a nothing level school, he did rather well for himself.
Don’t believe all the bullshit about his monetary dealings with his employees. It’s all false and some parts of the media out gunning for him. Besides he only owns two-thirds of that company (he owns many others) and doesn’t do the day-to-day management. You’ve been sold another false story – again.
He’s got a net worth of 21 billion and that little yacht and house adds up to almost nothing in his terms.