Sliding Back to a Victorian Age

[polly7]

By Roberto Savio

Source: Other News

Tuesday, September 17, 2013

A recent report by the Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion at the London School of Economics has recently called attention to the fact that, at the present rate of inequality, by the year 2025, the United Kingdom will have returned to the unequal society of the end of the 19th century. In other words, we are going back to the times of Queen Victoria!

In 2010, the incomes of the chief executives of the 100 largest companies in the U.K. increased by 49 percent, while the average pay rise was just 2.7 percent. According to a European Banking Authority report, in 2010 and 2011, 2,436 U.K. bankers earned more than one million euro per year, against 162 in France and 36 in the Netherlands. Nearly 50 percent of the funding of Britains Conservative Party comes from the financial sector. No wonder that British Prime Minister David Cameron is obliged to choose the City over Europe.

The world trend is exactly the same. In China, there are 1.3 million millionaires. In its last report, Forbes, the magazine for the rich, happily informs its readers that the 2013 Forbes Billionaires list now boasts 1,426 names - including 122 in China - with an aggregate net worth of 5.4 trillion dollars, up from 4.6 trillion dollars. “We found 210 new ten-figure fortunes,” it says.

In other words, we could fill a 300-seat plane with the 300 richest persons in the world, yet their wealth exceeds the combined wealth of three billion people: nearly half of humankind.

So the real question is: in a vastly unjust society, does democracy work? Or does it become just a formal mechanism to accommodate those inside the system, and ignore the excluded? Do those 300 sitting in the plane of extreme wealth have the same view of the world as the 3 billion poor left on the ground? And if not, does their view of the world counts as much as that of the 300 people on the plane?

Full Article: http://www.zcommunications.org/sliding-back-to-a-victorian-age-by-roberto-savio.html

It's only raining money and jewels and bonds and dividends on the top 1%.

And they aren't pulling out their umbrellas; they are stashing their money overseas and moving their factories to slave wage workforces in other nations.

http://www.zcommunications.org/400-richest-americans-worth-more-than-gdp-of-canada-or-mexico-by-mark-karlin.html

[OffWithTheirHeads]

1. I think the Feudal era is more likely

[blkmusclmachine]

2. Shock Doctrine, baby!

9/11 was the catalyst...

[BlueToTheBone]

3. Could we get them all on one plane?

Maybe send it to the moon?

[xfundy]

4. I was thinking, maybe get them a pilot on minimum wage.

[BlueToTheBone]

5. Oh the irony of that. n/t

[Sentath]

6. Halfway through his 3rd shift