The 50% solution to world problems 1. In ancient days farmers tilled the land and stored the harvest in warehouses. Although the farmer may have had title to the land, and owned the harvest, the harvest was not intended to be used up by the farmer and his family, nor be stored indefinitely to rot in the warehouses. The harvest was to be sold or given to the townspeople at reasonable rates (that they could afford), so that all could benefit from the harvest. This was an agreement that the townspeople had with the landowners. Should the farmer store and let rot the harvest so as to bring suffering upon the townspeople, it would be a punishable crime, whereby people would rightfully pillage the warehouse for the harvest at the expense of the farmer. 2. The fall of the Berlin Wall, and the combining of West and East Germany found a similar situation. East was to merge into West. The cost to West Germany to repair the infrastructure of East Germany was great. The government alone could not bear the cost of such transition. It was decided that 50% of the personal wealth of the citizens of West Germany would be taken by the banks to be used to rebuild East Germany. There is precedent in that activity. Feel free to correct this. I remember the shocking news, but did not investigate the details at the time. 3. Today, with the great disparity of wealth occurring worldwide, the wealth of individuals, groups, and corporations can and must be used to benefit all of the people. Today, the top 10 wealthiest people in the world have a combined worth of over $406 billion. That is a lot of money for 10 people, while millions go starving. Laws must be written to ensure that this situation is corrected. The 50% rule applied maybe every two years or so seems to be viable for the purpose of leveling out the disparity of world economic wealth distribution, so that all people can benefit from both the available resources, and from their own good work. It worked in Germany, and it can work worldwide.
Lots of words - but no substance. Good luck with your daydream, 'cause that's all that it is. :shrug:
You propose to adapt this idea to solve the world's problems? This certainly did not happen. What happens is that a certain amount of tax that the western states receive is transfered to the eastern states. But there surely was no seizure of personal property.
Not practical. Even $406 billion is not anywhere enough to even begin to solve the world's problems. The only solution is to get the people locally to solve their own problems, and the first step towards this is to kick out corrupt governments. This process is under way in Libya and other arab states.
This is why I had a problem with Iceaura when he wrote "The wealthy in the US have enough income and wealth to support elimination of the national debt through additional taxation of them alone." Their combined wealth if you took it all would not be enough to solve the national economic problems (never mind the world). I do also think that people in the US have to look locally or communally if they want to solve certain problems but I don't think its a process like you're looking at in Libya. The freedoms exists to solve the problem they just aren't using them.
Freedoms do not exist everywhere. You get situations like an African country that has farmers with saleable surplus, but they cannot sell their produce due to the fact that their national leader stole the money that would have gone to building roads. Without roads, they cannot get their produce to market. Nations with non corrupt (or minimally corrupt) governments can develop economically to a high level. Singapore was utterly, totally bankrupt and impoverished at the end of WWII when the Japanese left. However, they grew their own nation till they now have a very high standard of living. This can be done all over the world if governments are not corrupt.
Well corruption exists in those countries too, Singapore specifically. How do you intend to deal with government corruption?
If the corruption is bad, there is no alternative to getting rid of the government. This costs lives, and is what the Libyans are doing, we hope. With smaller degrees of corruption, you can live with it, and develop the nation, and hopefully evolve over time into a non corrupt system.
Singapore has corruption. Lee Kwan Yew and his family benefitted from said corruption but guess what? He never allowed it to extend to the demise of the nation as a whole, that's the difference. He created a kind of cultural safeguard against entrenched corruption within the system. Lee Kwan ruled his society with an iron fist, he even went so far as to demand by law that citizens save 10% of their salaries in their own accounts (no not anything like social security). Excellence was his mantra and he achieved it. You don't know what it is they are doing in Libya nor what these rebels are fighting for. They could turn out worse than their mad dog leader for all you know. Libya is a bad example.
@Skeptical Correction. Singapore is one of the LEAST corrupt countries in the world. Strangely enough they were talking about it on Link T.V, how the government creates a culture against corruption. Lee Kwan Yew however did benefit as well as his family.
The thing about the government of Lee Kwan Yu is that his period in power was largely free of corruption, which permitted the people to work hard and enjoy the rewards of their own labour, with a supportive government. Of course it was also a repressive government, with political dissenters jailed, and human rights poorly respected. However, it seems that such repression does not prevent economic growth if other factors are right. The key was the support for business and economic growth.
Well it depends of what we call repressive. I think charging someone a $2,000 fine for dropping chewing gum on the street repressive but then again Singapore is one of the cleanest most organized city-states. Basic freedoms are still honored in Singapore but you're right economic growth is not dependent on great freedoms. It worked because Lee Kwan Yew ruled with an iron fist and imposed his will on society which turned out to be the best. If he had taken a more democratic approach the whole thing may not have found any stability.
My point was that the wealth (in several forms) of the world should be evenly distributed. The $406B is evidence of how bad the problem is. Also, not a taking of assets as tax, but insuring that a goodly percentage of income is returned to the country for infrastructure. If I am making a few bucks an hour, then the subsistance of my family might be considered part of that return. The return should scale, but everyone, and corporations being considered as people - including them, should be contributing. BTW, who noticed the corporation running for congress in Maryland? The banking system should manage the financial wealth, because they are the predominate financial institutions in the (USA) country. In other words, we put trust into their ability to handle financial matters. Other types of wealth can be administered by their respective social institutions. Federal Government should have little to say about domestic proceedings. The primary interest of federal governments should be as liaisons with other governments, and the reaction time of the people to their behavior should be snap of the finger. Why we allow the dominance of government, corporations, and wealthy individuals to persist is beyond me, but it is symptomatic in my view that it does. Given a fair amount of resources a local jurisdiction can handle their own affairs, and if they get into trouble there are enough people to both recognize and repair the difficulties. We don't give ourselves enough credit that we can and should do this. The general populations have been beaten down since the beginning of recorded history, so that a few people can 'govern' the many. Our natural evolution has paid the price as a result. Work is a joy to the soul. Suffering is part of life. Excessive work and suffering is simply a failure of humanity to deal with simple problems while they are simple, with the results that allow excessive work and suffering. I think it is time for the many to govern themselves using more intelligent methods than the few have proposed.
Xmo This thought is not original. Carl Marx thought exactly that. His teachings were picked up and applied by the Soviets. Result = Stalin plus 20 million dead. You cannot apply those ideas without repression, and we have seen what that leads to!
Government by institutional committee? What I have seen is control by military (which is wrong in the first place) led by militants (who are also wrong). All that is needed is a switch to turn off their equipment. We are not living in the '30's and '40's. This is 2011, and we have the technologies to do nearly whatever we can agree to. What we don't have are the resources, and control over those resources. However, that can happen. We really do not need high powered weapons to solve problems. We can rid the world of them. I am really fed up with the status quo, which is like a diamond obelisk embedded in titanium. It is time for it to be felled with the vibrations of our collective voices. Saying what we cannot do is not helpful. Ask yourself, do you want global warming? Do you want war? Do you want overpopulation? Do you want disease? Do you want starvation? If you do not want these things, then why do they exist? If you do not want them, and I do not want them, and most of us do not want them, then why do they exist? They exist to serve the status quo. Period. Lets do solutions instead, and make an easy transition out for all of those things.
Xmo If your concern is overpopulation, war, and famine, be reassured. All these things are coming under control. Overpopulation. This results from too many children per couple. Also called fertility. 50 years ago, this was 5.5 in the third world. Today it is 2.5, which barely replaces the numbers per generation who will die. The reason the population is still growing is simple. The previous generation with high fertility produced lots of children who now have reached reproductive age. But they are barely replacing themselves. When this trend ends, population growth will also end. The United Nation predicts about 9 billion by the year 2050, at which point population will stabilise or reduce. http://www.un.org/popin/ War. Also reducing. Over time, deaths from homicides, executions and warfare is dropping as the world moves further from barbarism. One day, even the United States will catch up! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ramBFRt1Uzk Famine. Becoming much rarer. When I was a kid, 50 years ago, famines in India and Pakistan and Bangla Desh were common, and we saw figures of millions dead with terrible frequency. That does not happen now, and those countries are self sufficient with food production. We now see occasional famine in the more arid African nations, such as Darfur. In those places, the numbers of people dying is also getting lower. The world still has a way to go to control those problems, but the problems are reducing. Not an excuse to stop striving for improvements, but it is a good reason to be hopeful. Global warming is yet a potential problem, and a lot more has to be done. However, the damage from global warming so far is miniscule. The much greater potential damage of the future may or may not strike. We need to work for better systems, especially in our economies, to reduce the likelihood of serious harm from global warming, but I, at least, am optimistic, because I see how humanity has solved many of the problems of the past. We have the ability to solve this one also.
