One Billionaire's Suggestion to Address Inequality

[Tom Sawyer]

Canada just purchased 13 WWI era tanks from the UK for $1.1 billion. They had previously purchased 4 Civil War era submarines from Britain 8 years ago, which caused a little controversy when the things started melting down. Not nuclear meltdown, but once the things touched water, they were dissolving.

Hey, that would be better than our actual navy

 

[bilby]

That's right; it is only the fraction of the 1% who care enough to get involved in politics who control government.

It's not the 1% though, it's just different groups that get involved in politics.

Control requires both motive and means. The 99% can be as motivated as they like; But if they can't outspend their motivated political opponents, their influence will be negated, and their control non-existent.

 

[Axulus]

It's not the 1% though, it's just different groups that get involved in politics.

Control requires both motive and means. The 99% can be as motivated as they like; But if they can't outspend their motivated political opponents, their influence will be negated, and their control non-existent.

If the 99% would stop buying so many almonds and used that money instead to gain political influence, maybe they could regain control:

Over the past year, Americans spent more on almonds than on selecting their representatives in Congress.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/07/magazine/who-wants-to-buy-a-politician.html?_r=0

 

[bilby]

Control requires both motive and means. The 99% can be as motivated as they like; But if they can't outspend their motivated political opponents, their influence will be negated, and their control non-existent.

If the 99% would stop buying so many almonds and used that money instead to gain political influence, maybe they could regain control:

Over the past year, Americans spent more on almonds than on selecting their representatives in Congress.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/07/magazine/who-wants-to-buy-a-politician.html?_r=0

If spending money is intended to be a requirement for political control, why have universal suffrage at all?

The idea behind representative democracy is that all eligible voters have equal say. Americans (including corporations!) should, as a moral principle, spend more on almonds - or indeed any other item - than on selecting representatives. Selecting representatives should cost as close to zero dollars as is practically achievable.

The costs of having a selection process are another matter; But the costs of making a particular selection amongst eligible candidates should be as low as can be achieved. I applaud the American people for spending more on almonds than on selecting representatives; I am disgusted by the fact that corporations do not follow their example; and I am appalled that this is considered perfectly reasonable and unremarkable by so many.

If you want to run your country based on wealth as the source of power, why have elected representatives at all? Why not just have a council of CEOs to pass legislation? It achieves the same end with far greater efficiency.

 

[Axulus]

If the 99% would stop buying so many almonds and used that money instead to gain political influence, maybe they could regain control:

Over the past year, Americans spent more on almonds than on selecting their representatives in Congress.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/07/magazine/who-wants-to-buy-a-politician.html?_r=0

If spending money is intended to be a requirement for political control, why have universal suffrage at all?

The idea behind representative democracy is that all eligible voters have equal say. Americans (including corporations!) should, as a moral principle, spend more on almonds - or indeed any other item - than on selecting representatives. Selecting representatives should cost as close to zero dollars as is practically achievable.

The costs of having a selection process are another matter; But the costs of making a particular selection amongst eligible candidates should be as low as can be achieved. I applaud the American people for spending more on almonds than on selecting representatives; I am disgusted by the fact that corporations do not follow their example; and I am appalled that this is considered perfectly reasonable and unremarkable by so many.

If you want to run your country based on wealth as the source of power, why have elected representatives at all? Why not just have a council of CEOs to pass legislation? It achieves the same end with far greater efficiency.

Stephen Ansolabehere, a professor of government at Harvard University, says that the facts are surprising only if we subscribe to an incorrect view. In a 2003 paper, “Why Is There So Little Money in U.S.Politics?” he argued that people and corporations actually view giving money as an ineffective way to influence politicians. Donations, Ansolabehere says, are best understood as a form of consumption, akin to making a charitable contribution. Donors are supporting a cause they believe in, and they take pleasure in doing so. “We basically think that giving money makes you feel good,” Ansolabehere told me.

Most campaign money, after all, comes in smaller chunks from individual donors. People who gave $3 to Barack Obama’s presidential campaign in 2008 could not have reasonably expected that their small contributions would influence the future president. Even those who give larger sums rarely contribute the maximum allowed by law, as might be expected of someone trying to buy influence. Instead, individual contributions have increased over time merely in proportion to personal income. Excepting lower-income families, who rarely give to campaigns, Americans from the upper-middle class on up give approximately the same percentage of their income, about 0.04 percent, according to Ansolabehere’s research, to politicians and political groups. Corporations also spend relatively little, and their spending has not increased substantially in recent years. “If companies thought they could just buy politicians,” said Timothy Groseclose, an economics professor at George Mason University, “we should see much more money being spent there.”
...

One reason is that buying elections is economically inefficient. Most voters, like most consumers, have defined preferences that are difficult for advertisers to shift. Chevron spent roughly $3 million during a recent campaign backing, certain City Council candidates in Richmond, Calif., where it operates a major refinery. Voters instead chose a slate of candidates who want to raise taxes. “Campaign spending has an extremely small impact on election outcomes, regardless of who does the spending,” the University of Chicago economist Steven Levitt concluded in a 1994 paper. He found that spending an extra $100,000 in a House race might be expected to increase a candidate’s vote total by about 0.33 percentage points. Investors appear to agree that companies can’t make money by investing in political campaigns. A 2004 study found that changes in campaign-finance laws had no discernible impact on the share prices of companies that made donations.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/07/magazine/who-wants-to-buy-a-politician.html?_r=0

 

[ksen]

If the 99% would stop buying so many almonds and used that money instead to gain political influence, maybe they could regain control:

Over the past year, Americans spent more on almonds than on selecting their representatives in Congress.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/07/magazine/who-wants-to-buy-a-politician.html?_r=0

If spending money is intended to be a requirement for political control, why have universal suffrage at all?

The idea behind representative democracy is that all eligible voters have equal say. Americans (including corporations!) should, as a moral principle, spend more on almonds - or indeed any other item - than on selecting representatives. Selecting representatives should cost as close to zero dollars as is practically achievable.

The costs of having a selection process are another matter; But the costs of making a particular selection amongst eligible candidates should be as low as can be achieved. I applaud the American people for spending more on almonds than on selecting representatives; I am disgusted by the fact that corporations do not follow their example; and I am appalled that this is considered perfectly reasonable and unremarkable by so many.

If you want to run your country based on wealth as the source of power, why have elected representatives at all? Why not just have a council of CEOs to pass legislation? It achieves the same end with far greater efficiency.

We already have that, it's called ALEC.

 

[dismal]

The big issue with the 1% running everything no one adequately had explained to me is how the 1% do this when they can't seem to agree amongst each other. What exactly do Nancy Pelosi, George Soros, Charles Koch, that guy from Chik-fil-A and LeBron James all agree on? How do they decide what we should do about, say, Yemen?

Do they have votes?

Do they spend money buying ads (in yacht magazines?) to convince each other?

Maybe this is why there is so little money in the official elections...

 

[ZiprHead]

Crap, that sucker is in Blunder Bay!

Dude, do you have any idea how much curl they'd need to deploy that stone for it to be a threat to Minnesota? That bad boy is aimed at the UP now days.

Please, no! I have family in Sault Ste. Marie.

 

[Malintent]

It's interesting that Mr. Jones thinks higher taxes is equivalent to violent revolution and war.

In what way is listing the 3 most popular solutions to an age old problem implying that one solution is equivalent to either of the other two? The logic escapes me... or were you trying to manipulate a point into this discussion the only way you were able to wedge it in?

 

[ksen]

Those are the three most popular ways to address inequality?

Cite?

 

[Canard DuJour]

The last time we had a series of "mass revolutions" over capitalism, he had a bunch of countries turn into communist hell holes. The only way revolutions like that would happen again is if people forget their history.

Not entirely. Those revolutions did actually improve the lot of many in what were capitalist or semi-feudal hell holes. Third world countries with no hope of becoming first world ones still look with envy at how they bootstrapped themselves into the second world.

Wars was the next on his list - what wars is he referring to? I'm not sure this is really a threat? Is he saying that the poorest countries, like in Africa and Middle East, will start wars with rich countries like Europe, Japan, China, or US? Why would they do that when many of these countries are growing economically at some of the fastest rates in their history, and things are rapidly improving in many of them?

No, he means inequality reduction within nations. It works in two main ways :

(1) Post-war, the reserve army of unemployed has been largely wiped out and there's a load of rebuilding to do. So labour - how the non-rich get their share - is more valuable.

(2) The rich can't avoid redistribution by invoking property rights since, without the non-rich putting their lives on the line, their property would likely be property of an occupying regime, or subject to summary expropriation by one. And the non-rich know it. That's how Britain got the NHS, the welfare state, nationalised utilities and key industries after WWII. People weren't asking for "free" anything, they were owed.

A couple of generations later, the rich usually start taking it all back.

 

[Jolly_Penguin]

Canada's military consists of 2 nuclear submarines, 4 tanks, 2 Avro Arrows, 4 thousand war canoes, 17 million moose, 23 million Canada Geese Poop Bombers, and 16 billion suicide attack beavers. Fear the teeth!

 

[Malintent]

not my claim... was using the example in its original context.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

Canada's military consists of 2 nuclear submarines, 4 tanks, 2 Avro Arrows, 4 thousand war canoes, 17 million moose, 23 million Canada Geese Poop Bombers, and 16 billion suicide attack beavers. Fear the teeth!

Actually, as a result of a PETA lawsuit, our military isn't allowed to use suicide attack beavers anymore and we poisoned them all to death in order to avoid being cruel to animals.

We then sold the pelts and used the cash to build an army of titanium-armored deathbots which are all powered by a nuclear core that can explode in the middle of enemy army formations and childcare centers. In retrospect, that's the kind of thing we probably should have gone for in the first place, but I don't have to tell you about the undue influence Big Beaver conglomerates hold in Parliamentiary budget committees.

 

[arkirk]

So he's first up against the wall, right?

No, I think that right should go to someone like Jamie Dimon or Lloyd Blankfein.

The problem is that the social reality (the currency of the advertizing industry in the country) has everybody thinking that some new technology is going to bail us out when really these new technologies that get ballyhooed in the press and "business news" are mostly gimmicky things designed to sell to people who think they cannot do without them....eight track players and Apple watches. We have been a throw away society for a long, long time. A satisfactory life is defined for Americans through advertising and their attentions are directed there. How can I get a bigger SUV, a better house, a faster more exciting game? This shit is ingrained in the American psyche so heavily that even the poor have skewed notions of what they can or should have. Unlike ancient Rome, it isn't just the emperor and his closest friends who sits and fiddles while the country goes to hell. It is all of us, with out many separate and individualist notions of what life ought to be like...heavily colored by advertising.

Now this uber rich clown gets up at TED and tells us he and a few of his friends can change the world with a new CORPORATE morality....give me a break! That is just plain ridiculous!

 

[SimpleDon]

http://blog.ted.com/justice-capitalism-and-progress-paul-tudor-jones-ii-at-ted2015/

Paul Tudor Jones recognizes there are only a few ways inequality, historically, gets resolved:



Jones doesn't like any of those options so what's his suggestion?

National surveys of corporate behavior

Jones proposes a fourth way: just corporate behavior. He formed Just Capital, a not-for-profit that aims to increase justness in companies. It all starts with defining “justness” — to do this, he is asking the public for input. As it stands, there is no universal standard monitoring company behavior. Tudor and his team will conduct annual national surveys in the US, polling individuals on their top priorities, be it job creation, inventing healthy products or being eco-friendly. Just Capital will release these results annually – keep an eye out for the first survey results this September.

It's interesting that Mr. Jones thinks higher taxes is equivalent to violent revolution and war.

By law in the US corporations are required to run their companies solely for the benefit of the stockholders. It is typical of the success of the agenda of the wealthy that no one in the US seems to question this law. But it is virtually unique in the world. In most capitalistic democracies the management of a corporation has to pay equal attention to the interests of the employees and society in general.

It is only logical. Most stockholders have little interest in the companies whose stocks that they hold. About 750 million dollars of my company's stock was held by an individual, a US billionaire who most of you would be familiar with. At the time I was on what in the US would be called the executive board of the company in charge of long term planning and R&D. I was tasked with giving a presentation to this man and his swarm of minions. Yes, more than one minion is a swarm.

Almost the last instruction that my CEO gave was, "of course, whatever you do don't specify what what industries we work in, if the business channel announced tomorrow that industry Xyz was tanking and you told them that we worked in industry Xyz he would dump our stock." Today he could do this sitting on the toilet using the "app" on his smartphone.

The employees are much more vested in the corporation and its success than the stockholders. And it seems reasonable that the corporation has to be held responsible to the society that they are in. that is the standard that people are held to, it is called citizenship.

 

[Axulus]

By law in the US corporations are required to run their companies solely for the benefit of the stockholders. It is typical of the success of the agenda of the wealthy that no one in the US seems to question this law. But it is virtually unique in the world. In most capitalistic democracies the management of a corporation has to pay equal attention to the interests of the employees and society in general.

What's really ironic is that you haven't even bothered to question whether such a law actually exists.

 

[ksen]

By law in the US corporations are required to run their companies solely for the benefit of the stockholders.

Um, no it isn't.

It is typical of the success of the agenda of the wealthy that no one in the US seems to question this law.

It's actually typical of the success of the agenda of the wealthy that so many people actually believe there is a law like that.

 

[Canard DuJour]

By law in the US corporations are required to run their companies solely for the benefit of the stockholders.

Um, no it isn't.

What's really ironic is that you haven't even bothered to question whether such a law actually exists.

Hmm.. well, no or maybe yes in the US, depending whether the company in question is likely to break up, go bust or get taken over. In which case what are now called "Revlon duties" (yep, as in shampoo) kick in, which do effectively mean the statutory shareholder priority thing. The threat of which can be a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Something similar applies in the UK, dunno about the rest of the EU.

 

[arkirk]

Um, no it isn't.

It is typical of the success of the agenda of the wealthy that no one in the US seems to question this law.

It's actually typical of the success of the agenda of the wealthy that so many people actually believe there is a law like that.

People do not behave "according to law." They behave according to what they believe. If the law were so damned important to people, our world would no look as it does today. Their beliefs are their "law" inasmuch as "law" means the determinant of what they do. Survival of the corporation is dependent on its viability in the stock market. Anything that detracts from that, is simply not tolerated by those in control. That amounts to AS GOOD AS A LAW, maybe more important. If you are Blankfein, you are doing God's work. He believes that I think. It is not a joke to him.