COMMENTARY: The one percent
By Dickson Igwe, Contributor
Jack the super-wealthy and the working poor austere trickledown economics has created a world oligarchy.
The world is ruled by the super-wealthy. A great irony with globalization is that it has re-established the exponential social inequalities inherent in both ancient and recent history.
Furthermore, globalization has benefitted autocrats and authoritarian rulers. Democracy has not benefitted from globalization, albeit, globalization has created a new middle class- in relative terms- in Asia, Africa, and the Third World, of over a billion people.
The new middle class is ruled over by authoritarians and dictators mainly. OK. From the gilded age of the early 1900s, back to medieval feudalism, then all the way back to the start of written history, the world has been ruled by elites. Monarchs, scribes, warrior kings, landed nobles, and wealthy merchants, have ruled from the time of Ancient Egypt. Democracy is actually very recent. And women and blacks in the west only got the vote in the early to mid-1900s.
Slavery, toil of the peasantry the norm
For most of human history, slavery, serfdom, and the toil of the peasantry have been the norm. The one percent rule the world assisted in their control of the global economy by the nine percent. The nine percent are the advisers: lawyers, bankers, administrators, managers, and the security and military apparatus, who keep the wealth of the one percent ‘safe and sound’.
The nine percent form a type of professional upper class: they are an invisible wall between the 90% and the one percent. The nine percent are in the $150K to $1 million earnings bracket. These are proverbial ‘’henchmen’’ of the super-wealthy and powerful.
Drop swords of xenophobia
OK: What struggling ‘western workers’ fail to realize is that they would actually be better off were they to drop their swords of xenophobia and race hate, and two work with their fellow black and minority colleagues, to obtain better wages and benefits from the one percent, who own their places of work.
The one percent dislikes Unions and socialist type organizations intensely, and for good reason. Before the onset of the Supply Sided, Trickle Down, Economy, post the 1970s, the 90 percent — the working and middle classes- were actually better off in real terms than they are today. The Keynesian Economy was a bottom-up fiscal culture that invested heavily in social infrastructure that benefitted the masses. Public investment and economic stimulus drove western economics. Keynesian economics and socialism are symbioses. Since the onset of Trickle Down in the early 1980s, wages and living standards have stagnated for the 90 percent.
Massive transfer of wealth
Instead, there has been a massive transfer of wealth from 90 percent to one percent. A key reason for this transfer has been the increase in private debt brought on by the Trickle Down, Economy. This is debt that is indirectly owed to the one percent. Debt is a tool for increasing consumer demand. Increased consumer demand drives up both corporate profit and personal debt under the Supply Side Economy. Debt is also a reason for the boom to bust economic cycle.
Now, that growth in wealth inequality has been blamed for social upheaval in the US and the UK. Migrants are not to blame for job losses in the UK and USA. Those job losses are the result of a new world economic order that is integrated and top-down, where factory and business owners can move assets offshore, or to the Far East, at the click of a mouse.
Under the trickle-down supply-side economy, CEOs and top executives contemplate the purchase of their second yacht and third vacation home while the struggling working and lower-middle classes get the crumbs that fall off the “proverbial buffet table”.
Politicians who are part of the one percent like Donald Trump, giving tax breaks to their super-wealthy friends, will not help blue-collar types in Iowa and Ohio.
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Can you drop the subject race at some point please. Your focus on white black yellow and purple is getting a bit annoying.
We are all people no matter what color or nationality. Let’s treat each other that way.
The same nonsensical student union left wing political, tinged with racism, nonsense week after week. Is there no cliche that does not apply to Igwe.
Why do you people hate the truth? Wake up and see. Igwe is not your enemy for showing you the stark realities. Deluded people – no wonder we are all in trouble as you —– bury your heads in rum and coke and fail to see what is happening under your very —- behinds
“When the mind and body is idle, the devil dances”. For all of you that don’t know what that means, it refers to someone who has nothing to do and evil Pours out of their body. Perhaps instead of spouting your evil and racist thoughts you should consider a second job or maybe a first and second job that doesn’t require your racist brain to be involved. Perhaps digging ditches!! You can use the weight loss and exercise!!
You are probably another deluded —– guy who voted for Donald Trump- not to worry you will soon taste the results of your stupidity
Actually, this is simplistic rubbish, repeated ad infinitum, and with historical errors. Please find something else to write about, if you must, and maybe turn the light inward.
I understand – people like you attend your boring cocktail parties and are terrified of the truth – and you are well aware of the grand design that has ripped off the 90% – anyway you will shortly see the results of your self deceit
He who cannot face truth finds them umcomfortable and ask that they not be told.
Yet, those are the same one same people who will have no problem spouting the cristobol lies, to suit their historical perspective and purpose, or the most recent atrocities of the Germans against the Jews.
But will ask the Black man , on the other hand, to forget about slavery and move on.. Bunch of hypocrites..
The plain truth is, no person on earth can escape race and racial issues. To suggest otherwise is to be blind and hypocritical, period. No one on earth can say he/she does not see or live color. To suggest otherwise makes you a liar.
You see the color of your hair changing and rush to have it dyed. The same way you see the color of skin and have formed judgements about it. Who are you trying to fool? Your bigotted self?
The world, over the last 12 plus centuries, have been developed along race and skin color lines. So, to ask Mr. Igwe to refrain from commenting on race is like asking the ocean not to be salty. What? only a lunatic or a conceited mind would do do such.
This is a creation of the European. Indeed, more historical facts can be provided here in support of this truth, but it can also be found elsewhere.
Indeed, wealth inequality is a global issue. There is a gaping and widening hole between the wealthy and the poor and the wealthy and the middle class. 1% of population owns approximately 50% of the world’s wealth. Even more scandalous is per Oxfam( Oxfam is a confederation of 19 independent charitable organizations focusing on the alleviation of global poverty, founded in 1942 and led by Oxfam International), 26 individuals own more wealth than the poorest 50%(3.8 bn people).
In the US, 1% of families hold 40% of all wealth; bottom 90% hold less than 25% of all wealth. And the bottom 90% holds 73% of all debt. The prevalence of plastic is increasing the level of debt and the debt crisis. Plastic is easy to use but difficult to pay off, especially if only the minimum payment is made; it is the worst debt to incur. Further, the richest 1% own more wealth than the bottom 90%.
Moreover, the wealthy/rich has greater opportunities to invest to enhance their wealth. It takes money to make money as the saying goes. For the most part, the poor lacks the discretionary resources to invest, for while the wealthy/rich sail around on their yachts or fly around on their jet stream jets or feast on caviar at luxurious mansions/hotels, the poor struggles to put shelter over their heads, clothes on their backs and feed their families.
Further, CEO-to-Worker compensation is a scandalous 278:1. As Slaves contributed and sacrificed the most and got the least so too is modern day workers. The only people that didn’t benefit from Slavery were slaves and their descendants; approx 3000 British families were compensated after the abolition of slavery. The challenges for the developed, emerging and undeveloped countries is 1)reduce the level of poverty, 2)increase the level of worker compensation and 3)narrow that gaping wealth inequality gap. The increasing wealth inequality gap may be an existential threat to economic growth and development and to social order.