"If you have no capital, why be a capitalist?"
The 0.001% know the score. They are fully aware that the economic system is unfair and unsustainable.
This was on display at the Milken Conference in Beverly Hills.
" I think the American dream is lost," said Bridgewater Associates founder and billionaire Ray Dalio on a recent CBS broadcast...
At the star-studded Milken Conference in Beverly Hills, there was a growing sense of concern over the rise of populist politicians pushing agendas on the left.
Note that they aren't concerned about populist agendas on the right.
" If you have no capital, why be a capitalist?" asked Sir Micheal Hintze, a billionaire and founder of London-based hedge fund CQS, during the conference.One attendee, Guggenheim Partners' Alan Schwartz, said "what's really coming is class warfare."
That is a surprising amount of self-awareness and common-sense that you won't find with working-class conservatives.
"I don't want to be a tone deaf CEO; while the company is doing fine, it is absolutely obvious that a big chunk of [people] have been left behind," Dimon said at an event in March unveiling a new $350 million program by the bank to help people in underserved communities get jobs.While President Donald Trump rode the support of people struggling to make ends meet to the White House, his policies have only been exacerbated the divide between the haves and the have-nots, experts say, with his tax reform being the primary point of contention. Major corporations like Dimon's have used the savings they have gotten from the tax bill not to pay workers' higher salaries or create new branches, but to buy back stock, boosting their share prices and helping the minority of the American population that is invested in the stock market.
Right. So the masters of the universe know that something must change, buuuuuuttt they have no intention of making those changes.
Of course most of the 0.001% are still unaware.
In fact, the 44% of millennials that would prefer to live in a socialist country are "people who don't know history," according to Citadel founder and billionaire Ken Griffin, who purchased the most expensive apartment sold in American history earlier this year.His comment led to some on Twitter to question Griffin's selective knowledge of history, put succinctly by New York Times contributor and best-selling author Diana Henriques.
"Plutocrats who sputter about class warfare without addressing inequality need to brush up on the 1920s."
That's the thing that always gets me about the capitalist cheerleaders - they act like they know history when they actually don't.
If the barricades have not been erected in the streets, they were told several times over, they could soon be unless there is reform of the American economic system.“It’s not whether we should be capitalist or socialist. It’s how do we make sure that capitalism is working the way it has in the past,” said Alan Schwartz, a managing partner at global investment firm Guggenheim Partners, who warned of “class warfare.”
...Milken told the audience that there is concern over the free enterprise system: “Obviously it is not working for everyone.”
And then someone spoke an important bit of truth.
Niall Ferguson, a senior fellow at the conservative Hoover Institution at Stanford University, said that when young people say they favor socialism what they really mean is simply a bigger role for government.“There’s evidence they really don’t know what socialism is,” he said, pointing out how his students seem to admire European social democracies, which are nonetheless capitalist.
Ferguson is absolutely right. Who do you think is to blame for young people mistaking social democracies for socialism?
Answer: People from think tanks like the Hoover Institution who keep telling everyone that any program that helps poor people is evil socialism that is indistinguishable from totalitarianism.
Dalio made a reported $2 billion last year alone and has an estimated net worth that tops $18 billion, making him the country’s 25th richest person, according to Forbes.He raised eyebrows last month with a post on LinkedIn that warned that unless the American economic system is reformed so “that the pie is both divided and grown well” the country is in danger of “great conflict and some form of revolution that will hurt most everyone and will shrink the pie.”
Yep, that appears to be exactly where we are headed.
Comments
Niall Ferguson is the guy who, in a feat of historical
revisionism rivaling holocaust denial, started arguing that World War I was ... "necessary".
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
Remember the Maine!*
Remember the Lusitania!
Remember the Arizona!
After that, we simply stopped declaring wars.
What in hell were the Framers thinking, when they required the vote of a group people who had to run for re-election every two to six years in order to start a war? That elected officials should be accountable to voters for committing voters' children and tax dollars to some blood and money pit like Vietnam or the Middle East? It's so much more politically convenient to have only one person who can only run for re-election one time make that decision.
I can't speak for Serbian royals, but I don't know how necessary it was for Woodrow Wilson to get the US into that war, especially after he ran for re-election and won on "He Kept Us Out of War."
*On most days, you can find on ebay a glass container replica of The Maine that used to be filled with candy. What's more appropriate for a little kid than a glass replica of a sunken ship filled with candy, instead of the decomposed bodies of sailors? They used to be relatively inexpensive when I first started collecting Depression glass, but I could never bring myself to buy one. Prices have gone up, though.
Remedial history for oligarchs
I think they need to brush up on their world history, too. They can start with 1789. The French aristocracy didn't think it could happen to them either.
"Don't go back to sleep ... Don't go back to sleep ... Don't go back to sleep."
~Rumi
"If you want revolution, be it."
~Caitlin Johnstone
It's been a long time since 1776. Even a long time since
Confederates allegedly fired on Fort Sumter.
In addition, the left needs to make up its mind: Do we need an armed revolution or should almost no one, especially leftists, own firearms?
Anyway, I think it's too late for an armed revolution. Try planning anything nationwide by any means without cc'ing the NSA. There are even mics on city streets.
Can't the masses just keep quiet --
and donate their labor-power to us?
After all, under our beneficent leadership planet Earth is only on the verge of ecological collapse -- and look what happened last time that was tried.
No, wait -- that's never been tried before.
The ruling classes need an extra party to make the rest of us feel as if we participate in democracy. That's what the Democrats are for. They make the US more durable than the Soviet Union was.
Wow!
" ....boosting their share prices and helping the minority of the American population that is invested in the stock market."
So the plutocrats are all for helping minorities! Who knew?
Ferguson really got that right
The GOP traditionally pushes the meme that hates government and wants to shrink it. They push propaganda and slogans that government is bad, giving money to people is bad, investing in a better society is bad, public education is bad, public health care is bad, environmentalism is bad.
But the fact is, the American people actually want more government. In recent years, the majority of Americans in both Parties have said they want their government to do much more to help the people and the environment. This sentiment has been growing for a long time. Now it is snowballing. Young people immediately pick up on the greed and sickness that is "anti-socialism." Anti-socialists do not deserve to be members of a nation. They are not building a civilization. They should not have a vote or a voice in the affairs of this nation if a better society for humanity is not their first priority.
In 2020, the people are going to be voting for themselves, perhaps for the first time. They want a government dedicated to improving their lives right now. Why else would modern humans even form a government?
But they will also see that both parties belong to the nation's asset-strippers, the profiteers of destruction and waste, and the election simply has no agenda or platform or vision to immediately improve the lives of the people, to repair the damage done to them by neglect, to makes things easier and more comfortable; and to make them feel economically secure instead of fearful at every turn. An intellectually honest voter will find no leaders with such a vision. All the candidates have repeatedly voted to harm the people, to degrade their natural resources and birthrights, and to undermine or prey upon their society. Their cowardice has kept politicians silent in the face of the shocking injustice that runs though this nation. The lack of regulations and protections for people under the onslaught of predatory capitalism is an assault upon civilization.
The fact is...
that government increases in size when the "anti-government" forces attain power. What happens of course is that "big government" only gets smaller insofar as it helps the masses, and that "big government" gets bigger insofar as it subsidizes the 1%.
The ruling classes need an extra party to make the rest of us feel as if we participate in democracy. That's what the Democrats are for. They make the US more durable than the Soviet Union was.
It's no coincidence
That the rise in pro-socialism sentiments coincides with the rise in the number of people who identify as "no religion"...
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22928900-one-nation-under-god
" In the beginning, the universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry, and is generally considered to have been a bad move. -- Douglas Adams, The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy "
In TN
In Tennessee they just added "In God We Trust" to new licence plates. So now I have to see the phrase even more. It's disgusting IMO. The first one I saw I though that person had put a sticker on it or something. Then I saw another and looked it up when I got home. Sure enough, TN wants to push Gawd down our throats even more. I mean, it's obviously not enough to have the phrase above the doors to the courthouses and on every piece of paper and coin money.
I didn't make that connection.
And I see now that is logical and important.
You Secular Humanist, you!
I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.
The pie has been shrinking for 40 years.
Four decades of trickle down (on) has been a complete failure. Or perhaps it was successful, depending which side you're on.
Modern education is little more than toeing the line for the capitalist pigs.
Guerrilla Liberalism won't liberate the US or the world from the iron fist of capital.
There's 'Class Warfare' right now
The 99% are getting hammered by the 1%.
Gëzuar!!
from a reasonably stable genius.
What was it that Jay Gould said?
"I can hire one half of the working class to kill the other half." That's the principle they operate on.
The ruling classes need an extra party to make the rest of us feel as if we participate in democracy. That's what the Democrats are for. They make the US more durable than the Soviet Union was.
Class warfare has likely been waged since
since the first caveman declared that he was going to be heading the clan from now on. It used to be called "might makes right" or "leadership" or "monarchy." It only gets called class warfare when the historic winners of the war feel threatened by the people they've been ripping off. Er, I mean, when the job creators feel threatened by the lazy laggards who contribute little to nothing to society.
Yeah, that's it. "The lazy laggards who contribute little to nothing to society ripping off the job creators = class warfare." That's the ticket!
well, shucks.
the true Masters of the Universe expressed their worry over wealth inequality at Davos again this year. they have the little people in mind, and have our backs, they say every year.
but come on, gjohnsit; how unfair of you not to have featured this laudable largesse:
"Billionaire Marc Benioff recently put his vast wealth to work on a cause that is plaguing his hometown of San Francisco, donating $30 million to the University of California-San Francisco to study the causes of homelessness."
why in the world would there be so many homeless in silicon valley? let's see if we can figger out the reasons! it must be hellish complicated.
I've long been frustrated to keep reading or hearing
that Democrats "are clueless" or "just don't get it," or "are scared of Republicans."
I just want to shout, "WAKE UP!"
Democrats, very like Republicans, are doing what they want to do and think they can get away with. And Democrats, very like Republicans" want to "reform" "entitlements" while spending more and more on the military. Just look at who voted for Trump's budget.
Please bear in mind as well that who does and doesn't vote for a bill is an endeavor in which Republicans and Democrats often coordinate, depending upon whose voter base passage or defeat of the bill is likely to piss off most.
Just focused: The Milken Conference? Michael Milken?
The guy who went to prison for securities fraud and is now worth almost four billion bucks?
Geez. He really "redeemed" himself, didn't he?
Milken
Naw, he's just gone back to Milken the working classes, just like he used to.
"US govt/military = bad. Russian govt/military = bad. Any politician wanting power = bad. Anyone wielding power = bad." --Shahryar
"All power corrupts absolutely!" -- thanatokephaloides
Dimon could start with salary increases at his own bank
He didn't know the salary of his own people at the bottom. Which when calculated are $500 short every month just to live a min. level. JP Morgan under Dimon got a $12 BILLION bailout. I am still waiting for my bailout.
I wish this myth could be put to bed.
Like it or not, the truth is that a solid majority of the American population is invested in the stock market either directly or indirectly. For example,
And don't forget the millions of people that are day traders, individual investors, or have inherited or otherwise acquired stock.
In my view, there are two troubling issues regarding stocks: First, a small, wealthy segment of the population own or control the majority of publicly traded stocks. Second, having so many people directly or indirectly subject in various ways to the vagaries of the stock market is obscene.
myth?
It's not a "myth", as only direct investors get the majority of the profits from the Casino.
Without the power to remove their funds completely at will without penalty, something only direct investors enjoy, most uptick-related gains are lost, and indirect investors either never see them or lose them on the next downtick.
Which, in turn, is why this is correct:
"US govt/military = bad. Russian govt/military = bad. Any politician wanting power = bad. Anyone wielding power = bad." --Shahryar
"All power corrupts absolutely!" -- thanatokephaloides
Disagree.
The stock market affects the retirement or potential retirement of millions of ordinary Americans. What the wolves of Wall Street do directly harms or helps those ordinary people. Other millions suffer indirect effects, such as higher insurance premiums.
It is a myth that only a minority is invested. As you yourself pointed out, there are only a small number that control the investments. However, there are hundreds of millions affected by that control.
Downplaying the pervasiveness of the stock market on the lives of ordinary Americans gives more power to the controllers. That's not a good thing for you and gjohnsit to be enabling.
Some context
The median 401(k) balance of $24,800.
Those are questionable statements.
Pension funds are either mostly, or entirely, invested in bonds, not stocks.
They are required to hold AAA rated securities, and few companies are AAA these days.
That's extremely indirect.
Sure, sure.
Let's just ignore the massive impact the stock market and manipulation of it have on so many people because you question rather than research the data I presented and because some of the links are indirect, although the effect on cost and availability affect the insured. No problem.
There's an important difference between being financially
exposed to the stock market, versus being invested in the stock market. When you're exposed, you share in the losses, but not the profits. When you're invested, you share in the losses and the profits (according to the capitalist mythology anyway) .
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
unless i get a rebate on my insurance premiums when the
stock market goes up, my insurance plan doesn't represent an "investment" in the market. to the contrary, the people invested in that context are the shareholders of the insurance company and the executives of the insurance company, who in addition to lucrative options will get paid big fat bonuses out of those investments.
while 50 million americans might have 401ks, most have such small amounts in those 401ks that they can hardly be imagined to be "invested" -- not in the context of an economy where the bottom many percent get paid about $10k/year short of anything that might be thought of as a living wage. many are also not fully vested, and never will be, because their employers operate vesting schedules that are a mockery of the average time their employees last.
etc.
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.