Financial Industry Windfalls often Detriment to Citizens

Its important to level-set any discussion of financial industry reports by clarifying that we all are deep in the clutches of a global Great Depression, and not a simple “Recession” as the newspapers, our leadership, and Keynesian Economics “experts” employed at our financial industries, would rather have us believe. When we don’t acknowledge the fact that we are in the grip of a Great Depression, we are not then compelled to look at the wealth distribution solutions that have corrected all Great Depressions every sixty years this past 4000 years.

Why we continue to use socially-irresponsible Keynesian Economics during Economic Depressions is an intrigue in itself, as this was the system developed in the 1930s that stalled important Wealth Distributions to the breaking point until Hitler in 1939 Germany found enough support to start a World War. By the end of that war, we surely did have wealth well distributed – but at terrible cost in lives and suffering.

Surely, the tenants of Keynesian Economics are a mistake that we cannot want to repeat in a mature Nuclear Era where War could lead to an extinction-level event? Ironically, Keynes himself famously stated “And then we are all dead” when asked what about the consequences of his theories. He too is dead and never would see the resulting Depression that had to result from his theories, and yet we see banks and economists wearing blinders and continuing status-quo by these tenants still in today’s Great Depression.

This summer, Canada received an upgrade to a Triple-A Credit Rating; and it was an event that Canadian politicians were quick to laud. But success in wealth creation and financial industries, does not equate to success for its citizens. In fact, in the case of Canada and many countries, solid financial industry gains are at the expense of the individual success of its citizens. When this happens, Financial Industry windfalls can be said to announce pervasive hardships for Citizens in fact.

Whenever major banks & lenders, our largest businesses, and crown corporations can gleen record corporate profits by: offshoring cheaper engineers or automations, short-sighted managers reduce headcount; or accounting and legal firms might gain record profits and bonuses through successful tax avoidance; or perhaps user fees and insurance fees are raised and citizens are now forced to pay these higher rates – and, of course, there are an array of other socially-irresponsible decisions that are used daily to pump-up our Financial Industry’s success metrics. Canada is the most lax of the G7 in curtailing any of these negative behaviors and this might warrant a higher credit rating all by itself; a sort of reward for poor government oversight. Now that country can accumulate even more debt; which is not what citizens want to hear either.

As Financials are Tertiary Economy spending, none of it creates new production and much of it is at our expense. It’s estimated that as many as $100 billion dollars per year are avoided by multi-national corporations extorting the legal system and a five-inch-thick swiss-cheese Canadian Tax Law. Worse than this, the Canadian Legal System has a solid track-record of siding with business when government lawyers do coral cheaters into courtrooms as well.

Most countries in the European Union, and the U.S., are already working to reverse some of these reckless policies. The U.K, the U.S. and Australian governments are hearing loud public backlash from their forgotten population. Brexit, Donald Trump, Extremism, and other social-problems and voter-revolutions fill our newspapers globally now. If anyone thinks that a Justin Trudeau vote wasn’t a vote of desperation from Canadians, think again; Stephen Harper’s Conservative “maintain-status-quo” election policies left Canadians with little choice than to choose the next least-worst option. Canada now sits at #100/150 on the CMI – Country Management Team Index thanks to twenty-years of trade deficits and poor management; Holland is the size of Lake Ontario with 1/100 of Canada’s resources, with many more social programs, and it generates the same GDP with half the population.

I often talk about the importance of the Golden Rule in social planning discussions because the rule says that when we give people abundance in the things that they need,  they won’t have need to want, to hate, to steal, make socially irresponsible decisions, seek vengeance, condone violence, and so on. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs says as much too – a person who can’t feed their children or one who is crippled by a disease whose cure is too expensive to afford, can neither do nothing; nor can they afford the time to generate new commerce and wealth for their country, nor work for oppressed people living elsewhere in the world – and this of course, must sound obvious to any reader.

A Good Life for everyone was the American Dream – and in G7 societies, revolutionists stopped being revolutionists because they had what they needed. More than this – we Canadians committed to “Stand on Guard” to defend this Good Life and great society of ours because we had a very good thing unique in all the world. We had one-income households that afforded education, cottages, healthcare, security, on and on, similar to other G8 and G20 nations – but that was back in the 1960s and 70s.

Our children are “boiled frogs” in comparison – somehow believing that they should not be actively working to change a system that prevents them from starting families as young adults, within their own home and in the neighborhoods they grew up in as well. This used to be the norm for early baby-boomers in near every G8 nation; the last to give up this Good Life was Russia in 1986’s Perestroika. Before then, any good student could take degree studies, marry, having kids, “own” their own home – and almost everyone was assigned a family cottage too. A 20-year-old woman would often be the last of her girl-friends if she did not yet have her first child already.

Fast forward to today, where young adults struggle for academic degrees, to be able to find jobs, to pay record-high student loans, to save for a house in bubbles which have them competing against public hedge funds for shelter – and rents are up 100% too. So, when they can finally find a mate (inside a 70% divorce-rate society), they might be well into their 30s and 40s before everything is ready for them to have their first child. That is the definition of madness – whether your boiled-frog legs realize it or not – take a good look at what passes for reality today and realize that we have very politely lost too much.

When people do not have their basic human needs and rights met; when the things they need in order to live within a family-friendly community are scarce – which is true for 80% of our planet by the way – people will ever turn to voting, then writing, then protest, then militias and revolution – in a desperate bid to survive – as needs be. Two cows will graze peacefully for a lifetime in abundant pastures; but introduce  a scarcity – one portion of honey for example – and then they will they fight over the scarce honey. Ironically, they never needed honey to begin with, and just as ironically; we have no need of scarcity by way of our technology’s capacity to build abundance through automation – but that construction project takes leadership too (see #WPProjects).

History reminds us that extremism is going to reignite when living conditions become intolerable – because revolution is loud, it is self-effacing – but it forces change and specifically – it forces wealth distribution.

Revolution is just a symptom; take any revolution in history be it Russian, French, American – pick your Revolution really. Brexit, Justin Trudeau, Donald Trump, are similar protest-votes by an electorate ignored, forgotten, and angered by status-quo leadership and their supporting panels of clearly incompetent “experts”.

The Point – A Good Life is measured at home – and not by trade agreement theory nor Credit Ratings.

Most G20 countries are feeling increased social problems: record high divorce rates, housing bubbles, record incarceration rates; all symptoms of our present Monetary System’s inability to build a Good Life for all. The U.S. actively maintains a dividing line of people who have nothing at around 40% (according to the 2010 Fed Reserve); 40% equals 160 million people in that country. This chart was taken from Wikipedia in 2015…

Notice that this dividing line is not at 51%. Why is it only 40%? Because that small shift from 40% to 51% would create a change in the status-quo; because at that point, the majority of voters – who have nothing, will insist on Wealth Distribution through their vote. How is a “dividing line” possible? How is it maintained? By a Hillary Clinton, or similar politician, who works with large staffs diligently to ensure that $100 million or 1000 jobs, makes it into specific communities (of voters) whenever its needed – and in doing this, the line of inequity is carefully preserved albeit under the guise of “winning the election”. This is no exaggeration, you have seen politicians in the news recently making big funding amounts appear on a day’s notice sometimes and almost always media-covered. Loyal and arguably well-purchased supporters are at the podium to speak to how this or that politician are terrific.

Here we see yet another project for democratic reforms to address. Benjamin Franklin was no pillar of honour either, but he was smart enough to save his own neck and to also clearly note that ‘When the people find that they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic.’ Our system is such a place – but we stick with it because we don’t know anything else – this is our “Status-quo” and it was the only system ever taught to us – and that sad fact too is overdue a reform. Why?

Because – elsewhere in the world, the average Netherlands citizen, living in a country that still enjoys the American Dream, generates 300% more wealth (measured in GDP Export) than a Canadian or a Britain and 150% more than an American. Why? Because all – that’s 100% – of their citizens can participate in the economy. They have housing, childcare, healthcare, retirements, guaranteed incomes – all of them – and so naturally their per capita stats will be higher. What is really incredible, is how much more productive are these socialistic policy counties. The Netherlands rank #5 on the CMI; so why are we all not emulating these high-performance policies?

Click here to read how to add another $60 billion in exports to the Canadian and UK Economy; and $500 billion to the U.S. Economy – annually!

The underlying cause, the “disease” responsible for symptoms of social problems, is inequity – and an indicator like a Credit Rating increase, has no correlation to a Good Life; just the opposite in Canada’s case.

In Canada, the U.S., and U.K., unemployment-driven income interruptions are squandering private pensions, stalling the launch of families (my five 20-something kids are grasping at straws to start a life), government workers don’t have enough benefits to fix their teeth, to afford daycare and mortgages, for just a couple of examples.

And what happens when Canada is forced to return to a 5% bank rate? Ka-boom. In new subdivisions, we can expect upwards of 30% of families to be evicted from their homes by the Sheriff – and to where? You do not want to know how inadequate Canadian safety nets are when you run out of income and then savings – you simply won’t sleep at night.

There are solutions for all of these problems – this is not another doom-and-gloom report; far from it. If you want to cure society’s woes, #WPProjects at http://csq1.org/world-peace-transition-projects-faq/  is a step-by-step guide to vote – and then building the projects needed to create financial controls and sustainable abundance at home – and then worldwide in just a few years. Actually solving Abundance is the part that we do understand.

The world’s first fully automatic farm in Kyoto produces 30,000 head of lettuce daily just this year – now add croutons and Parmesan… Caesar Salad anyone? No – not anyone – rather, everyone!

Two real concerns in this discussion are that – 1. Our politicians are not recognizing – and then not enacting the corrections that cure the underlying disease of inequity and scarcity – with Abundance and Wealth Distribution. If leadership don’t recognize what are the sources of the problem; if they continue to ignore the learnings of dozens of past Great Depressions; and the fact that they are surrounded by a failed academic and economics expert panel today; citizens – cannot hope to target a sustainable solution and cure – which does mean that a deepening circular cycle of social problems will continue.

2. By having a leadership with no “Right Plan“ alongside an uninformed public – a voice of reason and “cure” comes along like a Bernie Sanders in the U.S., and he cannot gain widespread support. For society to work properly, both the rich and average citizens must prefer to buck status-quo, where status-quo is the impulse that “It worked for my father – so it must be the way to go now”.

Status-quo doesn’t work at the end of a game of Monopoly; the winning hotel owner cannot continue to play on – although he might surround himself with Milton Friedman sycophants who try to convince him so. Who was Milton Friedman, he was an “expert” that reassure the 1% that they were not directly responsible for social problems erupting everywhere by ignoring their trickle-down obligations to society through the 1980s and 90s. He was arrogant, persuasive, irresponsible and verifiably-wrong.

As evidence that real revolutions are not far off, in the US, incarceration rates are five times higher than the next highest G7 country; extremists are responsible for 11,000+ gun deaths and 500+ mass shootings take place annually in that country; in Japan, there were two gun deaths last year. Its estimated that in major U.S. centers, a large and rising percentage of young female students now turn to sex work in order to cover rents and pay down student loans because $7 per hour jobs don’t meet ends; our educated daughters and sisters choose between prostitution and destitution. Even Amsterdam, a famous working port city, protects women from forced prostitution – G7 countries would have us ignore it?

The newspapers and media want to blame social problems on religion; or it must be race; gender inequality; no – the underlying problem is wealth inequity in fact.

Our housing, lending, and income systems were all designed to work in a single-income one-job-for-life Good Life that worked splendidly right up until the 1970s; Russia was the last to lose this amoung the G8. “Value-systems” of Greed is Good, Winners are real men – and real Americans – choose your literal poison; are selfish and unsustainable it turns out. Our devaluing of empathy for our fellow man has cost us dearly in much more than just income. The 1994 movie Nuremburg summarized “What is Evil?” as the absence of empathy for others; the statement summarized both the money lenders’ starvation-wage abuses in Germany before the rise of its Socialist Labour Party (Nazis) and it summarized Germany’s Generals for permitting atrocities to take place in the name of simply “following orders”. Are our business leads simply “following orders” when they collect obscene bonuses for making socially responsible decisions today? You bet they are – and its exactly the same evil whenever important social needs are ignored.

Whether you ignore, or do not understand, the underlying cause of social problems, our media’s focus on misleading financial reports or on symptoms like hatred and violence – which are absolutely unacceptable things of course – but these symptoms are not going anywhere until the underlying disease is cured.

A sister article to this one discusses how inequity easily creates extremism, racism, gender and religious hatred –see  http://csq1.org/forums/topic/brexit-justin-trudeau-and-religious-extremism/ .

This topic needs our complete attention; and Wealth Distribution will effectively cure most of the other social problems that fill our media today at the same time. Everyone can have a good life and can live in a family-friendly society – here at home and elsewhere. Once the problem is solved, capitalism can begin a new 60-year cycle – and this time around, we will be educated enough to implement Economic Controls that prevent troughs and inequity proactively.

We want to protect victims of inequity – and to do this best we need to discuss both tactical / immediate (these are the eye-for-an-eye security discussions) – and, strategic solutions that really solve the underlying problem sustainably once and for all.

Check out #WPProjects Social Projects for a checklist to take to the polls with you everytime you vote. To put an end to the worry and downward spiral in our society, we need to see the problem and then rally behind planning that fixes these inequity and the social troubles once and for all.

The Golden Rule is not a platitude; what it really is, is a time tested and proven sustainability model.

 

Edward Tilley

 

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Author’s Notes:

Understanding the importance of sustainable abundance, and how to achieve it quickly, is the reason that I wrote World Peace – The Transition; and architected the World Peace Transition Projects, a strategic solution summarized on Twitter and Google+ as #WPProjects.

#WPProjects is a Proof; which means that it is the simplification of 1000+ pages of research that examine and spell-out how do we actually build Good Lives in every society scalably. We can roll-out these Social and Technical solutions worldwide in just a few years while we target tactical immigration, education and policing solutions immediately. Read the summaries for #WPProjects at CSQ1.org and then dig as deep as you like in the 500 page how-to guide available at Amazon and other major book resellers (click here for more).