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treethymes · 7 months

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With the exceptions of North Korea and Cuba, the communist world has merged onto the capitalist highway in a couple different ways during the twenty-first century. As you’ve read, free-trade imperialism and its cheap agricultural imports pushed farmers into the cities and into factory work, lowering the global price of manufacturing labor and glutting the world market with stuff. Forward-thinking states such as China and Vietnam invested in high-value-added production capacity and managed labor organizing, luring links from the global electronics supply chain and jump-starting capital investment. Combined with capital’s hesitancy to invest in North Atlantic production facilities, as well as a disinclination toward state-led investment in the region, Asian top-down planning erased much of the West’s technological edge. If two workers can do a single job, and one worker costs less, both in wages and state support, why pick the expensive one? Foxconn’s 2017 plan to build a U.S. taxpayer–subsidized $10 billion flat-panel display factory in Wisconsin was trumpeted by the president, but it was a fiasco that produced zero screens. The future cost of labor looks to be capped somewhere below the wage levels many people have enjoyed, and not just in the West.

The left-wing economist Joan Robinson used to tell a joke about poverty and investment, something to the effect of: The only thing worse than being exploited by capitalists is not being exploited by capitalists. It’s a cruel truism about the unipolar world, but shouldn’t second place count for something? When the Soviet project came to an end, in the early 1990s, the country had completed world history’s biggest, fastest modernization project, and that didn’t just disappear. Recall that Cisco was hyped to announce its buyout of the Evil Empire’s supercomputer team. Why wasn’t capitalist Russia able to, well, capitalize? You’re already familiar with one of the reasons: The United States absorbed a lot of human capital originally financed by the Soviet people. American immigration policy was based on draining technical talent in particular from the Second World. Sergey Brin is the best-known person in the Moscow-to-Palo-Alto pipeline, but he’s not the only one.

Look at the economic composition of China and Russia in the wake of Soviet dissolution: Both were headed toward capitalist social relations, but they took two different routes. The Russian transition happened rapidly. The state sold off public assets right away, and the natural monopolies such as telecommunications and energy were divided among a small number of skilled and connected businessmen, a category of guys lacking in a country that frowned on such characters but that grew in Gorbachev’s liberalizing perestroika era. Within five years, the country sold off an incredible 35 percent of its national wealth. Russia’s richest ended the century with a full counterrevolutionary reversal of their fortunes, propelling their income share above what it was before the Bolsheviks took over. To accomplish this, the country’s new capitalists fleeced the most vulnerable half of their society. “Over the 1989–2016 period, the top 1 percent captured more than two-thirds of the total growth in Russia,” found an international group of scholars, “while the bottom 50 percent actually saw a decline in its income.” Increases in energy prices encouraged the growth of an extractionist petro-centered economy. Blood-covered, teary, and writhing, infant Russian capital crowded into the gas and oil sectors. The small circle of oligarchs privatized unemployed KGB-trained killers to run “security,” and gangsters dominated politics at the local and national levels. They installed a not particularly well-known functionary—a former head of the new intelligence service FSB who also worked on the privatization of government assets—as president in a surprise move on the first day of the year 2000. He became the gangster in chief.

Vladimir Putin’s first term coincided with the energy boom, and billionaires gobbled up a ludicrous share of growth. If any individual oligarch got too big for his britches, Putin was not beyond imposing serious consequences. He reinserted the state into the natural monopolies, this time in collaboration with loyal capitalists, and his stranglehold on power remains tight for now, despite the outstandingly uneven distribution of growth. Between 1980 and 2015, the Russian top 1 percent grew its income an impressive 6.2 percent per year, but the top .001 percent has maintained a growth rate of 17 percent over the same period. To invest these profits, the Russian billionaires parked their money in real estate, bidding up housing prices, and stashed a large amount of their wealth offshore. Reinvestment in Russian production was not a priority—why go through the hassle when there were easier ways to keep getting richer?

While Russia grew billionaires instead of output, China saw a path to have both. As in the case of Terry Gou, the Chinese Communist Party tempered its transition by incorporating steadily increasing amounts of foreign direct investment through Hong Kong and Taiwan, picking partners and expanding outward from the special economic zones. State support for education and infrastructure combined with low wages to make the mainland too attractive to resist. (Russia’s population is stagnant, while China’s has grown quickly.) China’s entry into the World Trade Organization, in 2001, gave investors more confidence. Meanwhile, strong capital controls kept the country out of the offshore trap, and state development priorities took precedence over extraction and get-rich-quick schemes. Chinese private wealth was rechanneled into domestic financial assets—equity and bonds or other loan instruments—at a much higher rate than it was in Russia. The result has been a sustained high level of annual output growth compared to the rest of the world, the type that involves putting up an iPhone City in a matter of months. As it has everywhere else, that growth has been skewed: only an average of 4.5 percent for the bottom half of earners in the 1978–2015 period compared to more than 10 percent for the top .001 percent. But this ratio of just over 2–1 is incomparable to Russia’s 17–.5 ration during the same period.

Since the beginning of the twenty-first century, certain trends have been more or less unavoidable. The rich have gotten richer relative to the poor and working class—in Russia, in China, in the United States, and pretty much anywhere else you want to look. Capital has piled into property markets, driving up the cost of housing everywhere people want to live, especially in higher-wage cities and especially in the world’s financial centers. Capitalist and communist countries alike have disgorged public assets into private pockets. But by maintaining a level of control over the process and slowing its tendencies, the People’s Republic of China has built a massive and expanding postindustrial manufacturing base.

It’s important to understand both of these patterns as part of the same global system rather than as two opposed regimes. One might imagine, based on what I’ve written so far, that the Chinese model is useful, albeit perhaps threatening, in the long term for American tech companies while the Russian model is irrelevant. Some commentators have phrased this as the dilemma of middle-wage countries on the global market: Wages in China are going to be higher than wages in Russia because wages in Russia used to be higher than wages in China. But Russia’s counterrevolutionary hyper-bifurcation has been useful for Silicon Valley as well; they are two sides of the same coin. Think about it this way: If you’re a Russian billionaire in the first decades of the twenty-first century looking to invest a bunch of money you pulled out of the ground, where’s the best place you could put it? The answer is Palo Alto.

Malcolm Harris, Palo Alto

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maribatz-2k · 2 years

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Day 10: Adoption of The Rich

Note:

So I walked away and my son pushed publish. XD

READ ON! :)

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"That's it! Today's the day! I'm adopting Chloe!" Marinette says drawing up adoption papers.

"So I get a new sister?" Adrian asks sitting next to her in class. "Wait, she's already technically my sister."

"Welp, she needs to know proper love, Chaton." Mari says finishing up and smiles as she leaves two blank spots for signatures. After months of convincing Chloe that she needed the right environment and people, she had become close to Mari and Adrian more. They met up in the library at one of the small tables and talked over the document with Max monitoring. Yes it's not a legal thing, but hey, not the point here! Chloe agreed and signed her name first then Mari making it now "official."

A year later, now seniors, Mari has succeeded in adopting Adrian, Chloé, Kagami, and Zoé. She'd have adopted Luka, but he was always a part of her family so no adoption paperwork needed. They decided to do a graduation trip kagami agreed to join while Luka said he would be joining his father on tour across the United States. Lots of debate on locations and where they would stay for the month. Yes, you heard right, a month. Finally settling down to closing eyes and pull strings to pick the location, luck had decided on Gotham.

The four walked across the stage in their first sets of cap and gowns, accepting their diplomas they earned with sweat and blood and meet up with Marinette's parents, Kagami, and Luka. The group huddled together in a giant group hug filled with congratulations. The night before their flight, everyone crashes at the Dupain-Cheng's house, well everyone but Luka. He had to leave after graduation day. Despite having to get up early for a flight, Mari stayed up later than everyone else, too excited to sleep. And boy did she regret that decision on the flight there.

Arrival at in Gotham, Adrien was carrying Mari on his back as Chloé led everyone to a paid limo. Marinette had fallen asleep and refused to wake up long enough to even get off the plane. Snugged into the limo, they rode toward the richest hotel Chloé and Kagami picked out against Mari's desire.

Marinette woke up in a strange bed and it was dark outside. With an annoyed stretch, she slides out of the bed and looks around finding a balcony outside her window and three other doors. She went to the first door finding it connected to a big open living room. Quietly closing it she tries the second door opening up to a beautiful grand bathroom. Blinking, she sees her hair is a jumbled mess she quickly rips her hair out if the pig tails and brush her fingers through the knitted strands. She didn't bother with the third door figuring it was the closet then goes out onto the balcony and look around.

Gotham strangely looked beautiful at night. Sure you got the big lights scanning the sky, and the loud noises lights everywhere that you can't see the stars. But watching the people and the buildings just glitter was starry enough for Mari. She leans against the rail catching sight of shadows jumping and swinging from roof top to roof top. Something tells her that its the vigilantes of Gotham probably on patrol. She notices two of them stopping at the building across from her what seems to be arguing? Marinette just couldn't hear what was being said, but there was lots of movement and someone just went over the edge falling.

"Oh my god!" Marinette yells covering her mouth not catching her scream in time. The fallen person shot his grappling gun, up at the building across from her and slam against the wall. He looks over at her then zips up to the roof and disappear after the second person. Mari quickly ran back into her room, closing the double doors, and flop on her bed until later that morning.

Three blondes and two blunettes enter Gotham Mall. There's a joke here right? Well try this one. Chloe insists on going shopping for their first official day in Gotham. Kagami linked her arm around Mari's as they walked behind the triplets going from store to store. They finally took a break in the food court circling one of the center tables with each blunette between them. Chloe was complaining about how tired she is but still wants to shop. Zoe was leaned over her drink, stirring the ice around watching Mari draw. Adrien conversed with Kagami over who knows what.

"Let's play again." Adrien clears his throat. Mari looks up and Chloe gleams.

"I know just the one." Chloe says and Mari groans.

"No..."

"Yes."

"What game?" Zoe asks. Mari puts away her sketch book and lays her face into the table.

"Rich man, poor man." Chloe says. Kagami chuckles.

"The card game?" Zoe asks again reach over and pets Mari's hair.

"No. Chloe is talking about us people judging on who's rich and poor. Winner is the one with more points or if you can identify the big name." Mari mumbles then sits up pressing her head into Zoe relaxing. Zoe gives an "oh" expression. So the game begins. They started in the food court and across the whole mall. Adrien kept score on his phone as they walked; Chloe scored ten for poor one rich, Zoe got five poor zero rich, and Mari didn't participate at least not yet. She was waiting for the big game. Now Chloe knows all the big names, so Mari has to be smart about her choices. They have gone through almost all the clothes stores only to come up toward the bookstore. As the game commence, Mari moves into the bookstore with Zoe and Adrien while Kagami and Chloe sat on the bench talking.

Mari slips into the classic romance section until she found one of interests. Of course it's on the freaking top shelf, so she tried to reach on her toes but then decided to climb. A chuckle was heard beside her taking her attention from the climb to falling off the shelf with a yelp, landing in someone else's muscled arms.

"Whoa there princess." The man said.

"Mari!" Adrien and Zoe run over. Soon Chloe and Kagami walk behind them and face palms.

"Of course. Leave it to Mari to not only fall but fall into a big rich." Chloe says as Kagami laughs behind her hand. Marinette blushes covering her face forgetting she was in someone's arms.

"Then Mari wins. Again." Adrien says with a chuckle. The man and his companions look confused. He sets her down finding her smaller in height than he thought.

Mari, meet the Wayne kids. Kids, meet your new mom in a few days." Chloe says then drags Marinette and her crew out to their shopping bags then leave.

Sure enough, a week later adoption papers were tapped on her balcony doors for all the ROBINS to sign.

@maribatserver

#maribat #mlb x dc #ml x dc #maribatmarch2023

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dailyanarchistposts · 29 days

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B.7.1 But do classes actually exist?

So do classes actually exist, or are anarchists making them up? The fact that we even need to consider this question points to the pervasive propaganda efforts by the ruling class to suppress class consciousness, which will be discussed further on. First, however, let’s examine some statistics, taking the USA as an example. We have done so because the state has the reputation of being a land of opportunity and capitalism. Moreover, class is seldom talked about there (although its business class is very class conscious). Moreover, when countries have followed the US model of freer capitalism (for example, the UK), a similar explosion of inequality develops along side increased poverty rates and concentration of wealth into fewer and fewer hands.

There are two ways of looking into class, by income and by wealth. Of the two, the distribution of wealth is the most important to understanding the class structure as this represents your assets, what you own rather than what you earn in a year. Given that wealth is the source of income, this represents the impact and power of private property and the class system it represents. After all, while all employed workers have an income (i.e. a wage), their actual wealth usually amounts to their personal items and their house (if they are lucky). As such, their wealth generates little or no income, unlike the owners of resources like companies, land and patents. Unsurprisingly, wealth insulates its holders from personal economic crises, like unemployment and sickness, as well as gives its holders social and political power. It, and its perks, can also be passed down the generations. Equally unsurprisingly, the distribution of wealth is much more unequal than the distribution of income.

At the start of the 1990s, the share of total US income was as follows: one third went to the top 10% of the population, the next 30% gets another third and the bottom 60% gets the last third. Dividing the wealth into thirds, we find that the top 1% owns a third, the next 9% owns a third, and bottom 90% owns the rest. [David Schweickart, After Capitalism, p. 92] Over the 1990s, the inequalities in US society have continued to increase. In 1980, the richest fifth of Americans had incomes about ten times those of the poorest fifth. A decade later, they has twelve times. By 2001, they had incomes over fourteen times greater. [Doug Henwood, After the New Economy, p. 79] Looking at the figures for private family wealth, we find that in 1976 the wealthiest one percent of Americans owned 19% of it, the next 9% owned 30% and the bottom 90% of the population owned 51%. By 1995 the top 1% owned 40%, more than owned by the bottom 92% of the US population combined — the next 9% had 31% while the bottom 90% had only 29% of total (see Edward N. Wolff, Top Heavy: A Study of Increasing Inequality in America for details).

So in terms of wealth ownership, we see a system in which a very small minority own the means of life. In 1992 the richest 1% of households — about 2 million adults — owned 39% of the stock owned by individuals. The top 10%, owned over 81%. In other words, the bottom 90% of the population had a smaller share (23%) of investable capital of all kinds than the richest 1/2% (29%). Stock ownership was even more densely concentrated, with the richest 5% holding 95% of all shares. [Doug Henwood, Wall Street: Class racket] Three years later, “the richest 1% of households … owned 42% of the stock owned by individuals, and 56% of the bonds … the top 10% together owned nearly 90% of both.” Given that around 50% of all corporate stock is owned by households, this means that 1% of the population “owns a quarter of the productive capital and future profits of corporate America; the top 10% nearly half.” [Doug Henwood, Wall Street, pp. 66–7] Unsurprisingly, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that more than half of corporate profits ultimately accrue to the wealthiest 1 percent of taxpayers, while only about 8 percent go to the bottom 60 percent.

Henwood summarises the situation by noting that “the richest tenth of the population has a bit over three-quarters of all the wealth in this society, and the bottom half has almost none — but it has lots of debt.” Most middle-income people have most of their (limited) wealth in their homes and if we look at non-residential wealth we find a “very, very concentrated” situation. The “bottom half of the population claimed about 20% of all income in 2001 — but only 2% of non-residential wealth. The richest 5% of the population claimed about 23% of income, a bit more than the entire bottom half. But it owned almost two-thirds — 65% — of the wealth.” [After the New Economy, p. 122]

In terms of income, the period since 1970 has also been marked by increasing inequalities and concentration:

“According to estimates by the economists Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez — confirmed by data from the Congressional Budget Office — between 1973 and 2000 the average real income of the bottom 90 percent of American taxpayers actually fell by 7 percent. Meanwhile, the income of the top 1 percent rose by 148 percent, the income of the top 0.1 percent rose by 343 percent and the income of the top 0.01 percent rose 599 percent.” [Paul Krugman, “The Death of Horatio Alger”, The Nation, January 5, 2004]

Doug Henwood provides some more details on income [Op. Cit., p. 90]:

Changes in income, 1977–1999 real income growth 1977–99

Share of total income

1977

1999

Change

poorest 20%

-9%

5.7%

4.2%

-1.5%

second 20%

11.5

9.7

-1.8

middle 20%

16.4

14.7

-1.7

fourth 20%

+14

22.8

21.3

-1.5

top 20%

+43

44.2

50.4

+6.2

top 1%

+115

7.3

12.9

+5.6

By far the biggest gainers from the wealth concentration since the 1980s have been the super-rich. The closer you get to the top, the bigger the gains. In other words, it is not simply that the top 20 percent of families have had bigger percentage gains than the rest. Rather, the top 5 percent have done better than the next 15, the top 1 percent better than the next 4 per cent, and so on.

As such, if someone argues that while the share of national income going to the top 10 percent of earners has increased that it does not matter because anyone with an income over $81,000 is in that top 10 percent they are missing the point. The lower end of the top ten per cent were not the big winners over the last 30 years. Most of the gains in the share in that top ten percent went to the top 1 percent (who earn at least $230,000). Of these gains, 60 percent went to the top 0.1 percent (who earn more than $790,000). And of these gains, almost half went to the top 0.01 percent (a mere 13,000 people who had an income of at least $3.6 million and an average income of $17 million). [Paul Krugman, “For Richer”, New York Times, 20/10/02]

All this proves that classes do in fact exist, with wealth and power concentrating at the top of society, in the hands of the few.

To put this inequality of income into some perspective, the average full-time Wal-Mart employee was paid only about $17,000 a year in 2004. Benefits are few, with less than half the company’s workers covered by its health care plan. In the same year Wal-Mart’s chief executive, Scott Lee Jr., was paid $17.5 million. In other words, every two weeks he was paid about as much as his average employee would earn after a lifetime working for him.

Since the 1970s, most Americans have had only modest salary increases (if that). The average annual salary in America, expressed in 1998 dollars (i.e., adjusted for inflation) went from $32,522 in 1970 to $35,864 in 1999. That is a mere 10 percent increase over nearly 30 years. Over the same period, however, according to Fortune magazine, the average real annual compensation of the top 100 C.E.O.‘s went from $1.3 million — 39 times the pay of an average worker — to $37.5 million, more than 1,000 times the pay of ordinary workers.

Yet even here, we are likely to miss the real picture. The average salary is misleading as this does not reflect the distribution of wealth. For example, in the UK in the early 1990s, two-thirds of workers earned the average wage or below and only a third above. To talk about the “average” income, therefore, is to disguise remarkable variation. In the US, adjusting for inflation, average family income — total income divided by the number of families — grew 28% between 1979 and 1997. The median family income — the income of a family in the middle (i.e. the income where half of families earn more and half less) grew by only 10%. The median is a better indicator of how typical American families are doing as the distribution of income is so top heavy in the USA (i.e. the average income is considerably higher than the median). It should also be noted that the incomes of the bottom fifth of families actually fell slightly. In other words, the benefits of economic growth over nearly two decades have not trickled down to ordinary families. Median family income has risen only about 0.5% per year. Even worse, “just about all of that increase was due to wives working longer hours, with little or no gain in real wages.” [Paul Krugman, “For Richer”, Op. Cit.]

So if America does have higher average or per capita income than other advanced countries, it is simply because the rich are richer. This means that a high average income level can be misleading if a large amount of national income is concentrated in relatively few hands. This means that large numbers of Americans are worse off economically than their counterparts in other advanced countries. Thus Europeans have, in general, shorter working weeks and longer holidays than Americans. They may have a lower average income than the United States but they do not have the same inequalities. This means that the median European family has a standard of living roughly comparable with that of the median U.S. family — wages may even be higher.

As Doug Henwood notes, ”[i]nternational measures put the United States in a disgraceful light… The soundbite version of the LIS [Luxembourg Income Study] data is this: for a country th[at] rich, [it] ha[s] a lot of poor people.” Henwood looked at both relative and absolute measures of income and poverty using the cross-border comparisons of income distribution provided by the LIS and discovered that ”[f]or a country that thinks itself universally middle class [i.e. middle income], the United States has the second-smallest middle class of the nineteen countries for which good LIS data exists.” Only Russia, a country in near-total collapse was worse (40.9% of the population were middle income compared to 46.2% in the USA. Households were classed as poor if their incomes were under 50 percent of the national medium; near-poor, between 50 and 62.5 percent; middle, between 62.5 and 150 percent; and well-to-do, over 150 percent. The USA rates for poor (19.1%), near-poor (8.1%) and middle (46.2%) were worse than European countries like Germany (11.1%, 6.5% and 64%), France (13%, 7.2% and 60.4%) and Belgium (5.5%, 8.0% and 72.4%) as well as Canada (11.6%, 8.2% and 60%) and Australia (14.8%, 10% and 52.5%).

The reasons for this? Henwood states that the “reasons are clear — weak unions and a weak welfare state. The social-democratic states — the ones that interfere most with market incomes — have the largest [middles classes]. The US poverty rate is nearly twice the average of the other eighteen.” Needless to say, “middle class” as defined by income is a very blunt term (as Henwood states). It says nothing about property ownership or social power, for example, but income is often taken in the capitalist press as the defining aspect of “class” and so is useful to analyse in order to refute the claims that the free-market promotes general well-being (i.e. a larger “middle class”). That the most free-market nation has the worse poverty rates and the smallest “middle class” indicates well the anarchist claim that capitalism, left to its own devices, will benefit the strong (the ruling class) over the weak (the working class) via “free exchanges” on the “free” market (as we argue in section C.7, only during periods of full employment — and/or wide scale working class solidarity and militancy — does the balance of forces change in favour of working class people. Little wonder, then, that periods of full employment also see falling inequality — see James K. Galbraith’s Created Unequal for more details on the correlation of unemployment and inequality).

Of course, it could be objected that this relative measure of poverty and income ignores the fact that US incomes are among the highest in the world, meaning that the US poor may be pretty well off by foreign standards. Henwood refutes this claim, noting that “even on absolute measures, the US performance is embarrassing. LIS researcher Lane Kenworthy estimated poverty rates for fifteen countries using the US poverty line as the benchmark… Though the United States has the highest average income, it’s far from having the lowest poverty rate.” Only Italy, Britain and Australia had higher levels of absolute poverty (and Australia exceeded the US value by 0.2%, 11.9% compared to 11.7%). Thus, in both absolute and relative terms, the USA compares badly with European countries. [Doug Henwood, “Booming, Borrowing, and Consuming: The US Economy in 1999”, pp.120–33, Monthly Review, vol. 51, no. 3, pp. 129–31]

In summary, therefore, taking the USA as being the most capitalist nation in the developed world, we discover a class system in which a very small minority own the bulk of the means of life and get most of the income. Compared to other Western countries, the class inequalities are greater and the society is more polarised. Moreover, over the last 20–30 years those inequalities have increased spectacularly. The ruling elite have become richer and wealth has flooded upwards rather than trickled down.

The cause of the increase in wealth and income polarisation is not hard to find. It is due to the increased economic and political power of the capitalist class and the weakened position of working class people. As anarchists have long argued, any “free contract” between the powerful and the powerless will benefit the former far more than the latter. This means that if the working class’s economic and social power is weakened then we will be in a bad position to retain a given share of the wealth we produce but is owned by our bosses and accumulates in the hands of the few.

Unsurprisingly, therefore, there has been an increase in the share of total income going to capital (i.e., interest, dividends, and rent) and a decrease in the amount going to labour (wages, salaries, and benefits). Moreover, an increasing part of the share to labour is accruing to high-level management (in electronics, for example, top executives used to paid themselves 42 times the average worker in 1991, a mere 5 years later it was 220 times as much).

Since the start of the 1980s, unemployment and globalisation has weakened the economic and social power of the working class. Due to the decline in the unions and general labour militancy, wages at the bottom have stagnated (real pay for most US workers is lower in 2005 than it was in 1973!). This, combined with “trickle-down” economic policies of tax cuts for the wealthy, tax raises for the working classes, the maintaining of a “natural” law of unemployment (which weakens unions and workers power) and cutbacks in social programs, has seriously eroded living standards for all but the upper strata — a process that is clearly leading toward social breakdown, with effects that will be discussed later (see section D.9).

Little wonder Proudhon argued that the law of supply and demand was a “deceitful law … suitable only for assuring the victory of the strong over the weak, of those who own property over those who own nothing.” [quoted by Alan Ritter, The Political Thought of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, p. 121]

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kp777 · 9 months

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By Jake Johnson

Common Dreams

Jan. 9, 2024

"Almost nobody says we should have the richest pay the least. And yet when we look around the country, the vast majority of states have tax systems that do just that."

Nearly every state and local tax system in the U.S. is fueling the nation's inequality crisis by forcing lower- and middle-class families to contribute a larger share of their incomes than their rich counterparts, according to a new study published Tuesday.

Titled Who Pays?, the analysis by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) examines in detail the tax systems of all 50 U.S. states, including the rates paid by different income segments.

In 41 states, ITEP found, the richest 1% are taxed at a lower rate than any other income group. Forty-six states tax the top 1% at a lower rate than middle-income families.

"When you ask people what they think a fair tax code looks like, almost nobody says we should have the richest pay the least," said ITEP research director Carl Davis. "And yet when we look around the country, the vast majority of states have tax systems that do just that."

"There's an alarming gap here between what the public wants and what state lawmakers have delivered," Davis added.

In recent years, dozens of states across the U.S. have launched what the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities recently called a "tax-cutting spree," permanently slashing tax rates for corporations and the wealthy during a pandemic that saw billionaire wealth skyrocket and company profits soar.

A report released last week, as Common Dreamsreported, showed ultra-rich Americans are currently sitting on $8.5 trillion in untaxed assets.

According to ITEP's new study, tax systems in just six states—California, Maine, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, and Vermont—and the District of Columbia are progressive, helping to reduce the chasm between rich taxpayers and other residents.

Massachusetts, which has one of the more equitable tax systems in the nation, collected $1.5 billion in revenue last year thanks to its recently enacted millionaires tax, a measure that improved the state's ranking by 10 spots in ITEP's Tax Inequality Index. Minnesota has also ramped up its taxes on the rich over the past several years while expanding benefits for lower-income families, ITEP's study observes.

"The regressive state tax laws we see today are a policy choice, and it's clear there are better choices available to lawmakers."

But the full picture of U.S. state and local systems is grim. In 44 states, tax laws "worsen income inequality by making incomes more unequal after collecting state and local taxes," ITEP found.

Florida has the most regressive tax code in the U.S., with the richest 1% paying a mere 2.7% tax rate while the poorest 20% pay 13.2%.

Florida is among the U.S. states that don't have personal income taxes, which forces them to rely on consumption and property taxes that are "nearly always regressive," ITEP notes in the new analysis.

"Eight of the 10 most regressive tax systems—Florida, Washington, Tennessee, Nevada, South Dakota, Texas, Arkansas, and Louisiana—rely heavily on regressive sales and excise taxes," the study says. "As a group, these eight states derive 52% of their tax revenue from these taxes, compared to the national average of 34%."

Aidan Davis, ITEP's state policy director, said that "we've seen a lot of states shift their tax systems to become even more regressive in recent years by enacting deep tax cuts for the wealthiest."

The report points to Kentucky's adoption of a flat tax and repeated corporate tax cuts, which "delivered the largest windfall to families in the upper part of the income scale and have been paid for in part through new or higher sales and excise taxes on a long list of items such as car repairs, parking, moving services, bowling, gym memberships, tobacco, vaping, pet care, and ride-share rides."

Davis said that "we know it doesn't have to be like this," arguing there is a "clear path forward for flipping upside-down tax systems and we’ve seen a handful of states come pretty close to pulling it off."

"The regressive state tax laws we see today are a policy choice," said Davis, "and it's clear there are better choices available to lawmakers."

#regressive tax code #progressive tax code #tax the rich #wealth inequality #income inequality #tax law #politics #itep #public policy

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loominggaia · 7 months

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Great kingdoms from richest to poorest?

This is another one that's hard to answer, because as I always say, each Great Kingdom contains many different cities/holds within them, and these cities may have great economic disparity between them.

For example, Queenswater and Eastwalk are both Evangelite cities and they are even quite close to eachother geographically. But Queenswater is filthy rich, while Eastwalk struggles with rampant poverty. Places like Queenswater raise the average wealth of Evangeline Kingdom as a whole, while places like Eastwalk bring the score down.

So, if I were to calculate each Great Kingdom's wealth overall, I would rate them from rich to poor like this:

Matuzu Kingdom

Zareen Empire

Empire of Damijana

Mogdir Kingdom

Evangeline Kingdom

Aquarian Alliance

Folkvar Kingdom

Lamai Nation

Seelie Court

Unseelie Court

Etios Nation

Yerim-Mor Kingdom

1-4: Stupid rich.

5-9: Average.

10-12: Struggling.

I will add that a Great Kingdom's wealth in gold doesn't always translate to the amount of power they have. For example, Etios Nation may not have the strongest economy, but it has powerful alliances, a strategic location, and a strong, hardy population that makes it a fearsome contender on the world stage. Unseelie Court doesn't have the best economy either, yet its leader is so fucking crazy and volatile that they can still get what they want most of the time. Every kingdom has its own strategies for pulling power out of their asses, even if they don't have gold in their pockets.

Also, an economic crash isn't always what causes a kingdom to collapse. It wasn't a bad economy that destroyed the Bormek Commonwealth, for example. In fact, their economy was booming for most of the kingdom's life. It was a poorly-conceived war which destroyed this kingdom, as its leaders bit off more than they could chew when they declared war on nature. Nymphs came to nature's defense and killed so many Bormish people so fast, it was actually the sudden population drop that led to Bormek's demise.

One more thing I want to add: this list has fluctuated drastically in the past, and it continues to fluctuate over time. There was a time when Yerim-Mor Kingdom proudly sat at the top of this list, and now they are at the very bottom due to various world events. The World of Looming Gaia is dynamic, meaning it is always changing as the story goes along, so this list might look completely different if we skipped a few years ahead in the timeline. This is just the state of it at this moment.

Questions/Comments?

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rjzimmerman · 26 days

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Excerpt from this story from Truthout:

he top 10 asset management firms now control $50 trillion of global wealth. They answer to no one but the ultrarich — the 0.05 percent — whose fortunes they continue to expand. The rest of us pay the price. Investing in everything from fossil fuel companies to private prisons to weapons manufacturers, they provide the economic lifeblood for some of the most destructive forces in the world. This not only undermines democracy, but imperils our very survival.

In his new book out this September, Titans of Capital: How Concentrated Wealth Threatens Humanity (The Censored Press & Seven Stories Press), Peter Phillips takes us deep into the world of these transnational asset management firms and the people who run them: the “Titans.” He shows how they constitute a new global elite who wield nearly unchecked power.

Peter Handel: Your new book, Titans of Capital, is a follow-up to your book, Giants: The Global Elite, which was published in 2018. Why did you feel the need to build on this earlier work?

Peter Phillips: Titans of Capital updates and expands Giants. Giants identified the 199 directors of the world’s 17 top asset-management companies, which between them managed more than $41.1 trillion in wealth. Now, five years later, in Titans of Capital, I examine the ongoing rapid concentration of global capital and how fewer and larger companies now manage the excess financial wealth for the 0.05 percent, the richest people in the world.

The number of trillion and multitrillion-dollar capital investment management companies has nearly doubled from 17 in 2017 to 31 in 2022, now collectively managing over $83 trillion. These firms hold the core of global capital wealth, with the top 10 managing $50 trillion in combined assets.

In tracing the path from Giants to Titans, I show how wealth inequality and power imbalances continue to grow and threaten everything from democracy to the environment to our personal health.

In Titans you don’t talk about the financial elite as an abstract entity. You give us specifics about who they are, what they do and how they operate politically. Who are the Titans and what should we understand about their impact on the world?

The Titans are the individuals who serve on the boards of directors of the 10 largest capital management companies in the world as of 2022: BlackRock, Vanguard Group, UBS Group, Fidelity Investments, State Street, Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan Chase, Amundi, Allianz/PIMCO and Capital Group.

The Titans hold the center of global capital in their hands. Governments, military, intelligence agencies, policy groups, corporate media, and other capitalists consider the Titans’ concentrated wealth to be a special interest that requires constant sociopolitical protection and support.

#global wealth #economic inequality #billionaires #asset management firms #Titans of Industry #Peter Phillips

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religion-is-a-mental-illness · 1 year

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By: Wilfred Reilly

Published: Jun 28, 2023

Former president Barack Obama no longer believes that non-white Americans can be successful in the US.

I am being a bit glib, but only a bit. During a podcast interview last week with former Democratic Party apparatchik David Axelrod, Obama criticised Tim Scott, black Republican senator for South Carolina and 2024 presidential candidate. Scott is well-known for his optimism and belief in the American Dream, previously stating that ‘I know America is a land of opportunity, not a land of oppression’. Taking a clear swipe at Scott, Obama said: ‘I think there’s a long history of African American or other minority candidates within the Republican Party who will validate America and say, “Everything’s great, and we can make it”.’

According to Obama, that belief is untrue. Noting several elements of America’s racist past, Obama declared: ‘We can’t just ignore all that and pretend as if everything’s equal and fair. We actually have to walk the walk and not just talk the talk.’ Before signing off from the show, he went on to describe black and other ethnic minorities as ‘rightly sceptical’ of positive racial messages like those of Senator Scott.

Beyond the sheer bizarreness of a former national leader describing his own country as a racist hole, Obama is just plain wrong. Evidence shows that it is simply not true that non-white Americans can’t make it in the US.

This claim is quickly disproven by a look at the Census Bureau’s lists of household income by ethnicity. The wealthiest population group in the US is not white Americans, but rather Indian Americans. This group brings in a median household income of $142,000 annually, in comparison to just under $75,000 for Caucasians. The second-richest group is Taiwanese Americans, who pull down $119,000 per year for each household. In fact, most of the top 10 highest-earning groups (and all of those consistently averaging six figures per year) are racial minorities – Indians, the Taiwanese, Filipinos ($101,000), Pakistanis ($102,000), Sri Lankans ($97,000), Iranians ($96,000) and Chinese Americans ($93,000).

In contrast, one of the poorer groups listed is white Appalachian Americans, at $50,000 per home per year. On the other hand, black immigrants tend to do fairly well, with the Guyanese, Ghanaians, Barbadians, Trinidadians and Nigerians all coming in at above the $70,000 per year mark. Jamaicans ($66,000) and other West Indians ($64,000) also come close. Nigerian immigrants are one of the best-educated groups in the US, ahead of both Asian and white Americans.

African Americans do quite a bit worse. However, the median black household income as of 2021 – an Appalachia-like $47,000 – still ranks higher than the median household incomes for the UK, Austria and Italy. In any case, the high earnings of African and Caribbean immigrants demonstrate that African Americans’ low performance cannot be due to racism. Rather, it is largely down to the fact that black households tend to have fewer people in them.

The black single-motherhood / father-absence rate, at least at the time of birth, currently sits at a staggering 77 per cent. Simply put, a family consisting of a single mother and infant will earn less lucre than one that includes a husband, wife and employed teenagers. While this situation is far from ideal, there are still many individual black Americans, whether they come from stable families or not, who are extremely successful by any global or historical standard. Tim Scott was himself born into a poor, single-parent household and yet nonetheless managed to rise to the position of senator.

Obama’s ‘cannot succeed’ claim is strange given the reality of modern America, and given his own background and path through life. Simply put, Obama is not a descendant of American slaves. His mother was an upper-middle-class white woman from Kansas and his father was a prominent Kenyan economist. Obama grew up primarily in well-off enclaves, such as in upscale districts of Hawaii’s Honolulu and Indonesia’s Jakarta. Young Obama was surrounded by other wealthy non-white groups and expats. While this might be a little politically incorrect to say out loud, watching him try to explain the US black experience to Scott, a scion of the Carolina cotton country, borders on the surreal.

Interestingly, attitudes like Obama’s (although he didn’t always talk like this) seem to be getting more common among first- and second-generation minority immigrants to the US. This is despite the fact that most of these people have never had a ‘back of the bus’ experience in their lives. To give one typical example, writer and race activist Saira Rao started a fracas on Twitter last week by saying:

‘White people love to say “not everything is about race”. This from the people who committed genocide of Indigenous people, genocide and enslavement of African people. Those behind the Chinese Exclusion Act, Operation Wetback and the Muslim ban. You made everything about racism.’

The remarkable thing about this claim is that even those events on Rao’s list that did happen (US black genocide and a national ‘Muslim ban’ are simply made up) will not have impacted her in any way. Rao is a second-generation Indian American. Only the Exclusion Act might have been potentially relevant to a legal immigrant from Asia. And even then, the act was passed in 1882 and formally repealed 80 years ago. Attitudes like Rao’s are part of a broader trend of post-1965 migrants making embarrassing attempts to link themselves to historical slavery or Jim Crow.

However silly they may sound, the beliefs held by the likes of Obama and Rao can have serious negative impacts. Imagine being told for almost all your life that you are unlikely to succeed. That every social interaction is rigged against you. That the people who seem like your closest football and lunchroom buddies are likely liars and secret racists. How might this affect you?

Hard data give a clear answer. A 2021 study found that these demoralising takes have a real, measurable impact on people. Simply reading a typical despairing passage about ‘systemic racism’ from woke authors like Ta-Nehisi Coates resulted ‘in a significant, 15-point drop in black respondents’ belief that they have control over their lives’. Worse still, we now teach precisely these ideas in schools, colleges and workplaces across the US, often in mandatory classes or training.

At the heart of this discussion is what Thomas Sowell once called ‘a conflict of visions’. The US faces a choice about what to tell new and aspiring citizens about our society. Are we a flawed but ultimately good country, where people of all colours and persuasions can thrive? Or is the US a genocidal racial-caste state, which should be constantly trying to atone for its historical sins?

Let us sincerely hope that we choose to embrace the first vision over the second.

Wilfred Reilly is a spiked columnist and the author of Taboo: 10 Facts You Can’t Talk About, published by Regnery. Follow him on Twitter: @wil_da_beast630

Remind me again... in which direction do people migrate, as far as western countries are concerned? To or from? /s

#Wilfred Reilly #Barack Obama #systemic racism #victimhood culture #victimhood complex #victimhood #wokeism #woke #cult of woke #wokeness #wokeness as religion #antiracism as religion #antiracism #religion is a mental illness

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mariacallous · 1 year

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“Stocks closed higher today amid brisk trading…” On the radio, television, in print and online, news outlets regularly report trivial daily changes in stock market indices, providing a distinctly slanted perspective on what matters in the economy. Except when they shift suddenly and by a large margin, the daily vagaries of the market are not particularly informative about the overall health of the economy. They are certainly not an example of news most people can use. Only about a third of Americans own stock outside of their retirement accounts and about one in five engage in stock trading on a regular basis. And yet the stock market’s minor fluctuations make up a standard part of economic news coverage.

But what if journalists reported facts more attuned to the lives of everyday Americans? For instance, facts like “in one month, the richest 25,000 Americans saw their wealth grow by an average of nearly $10 million each, compared to just $200 dollars apiece for the bottom 50% of households”? Thanks to innovative new research strategies from leading economists, we now have access to inequality data in much closer to real time. Reporters should be making use of it.

The outsized attention to the Dow Jones and Nasdaq fits with part of a larger issue: class bias in media coverage of the economy. A 2004 analysis of economic coverage in the Los Angeles Times found that journalists “depicted events and problems affecting corporations and investors instead of the general workforce.” While the media landscape has shifted since 2004, with labor becoming a “hot news beat,” this shift alone seems unlikely to correct the media’s bias. This is because, as an influential political science study found, biased reporting comes from the media’s focus on aggregates in a system where growth is not distributed equally; when most gains go to the rich, overall growth is a good indicator of how the wealthy are doing, but a poor indicator of how the non-rich are doing.

In other words, news is shaped by the data on hand. Stock prices are minute-by-minute information. Other economic data, especially about inequality, are less readily available. The Bureau of Labor Statistics releases data on job growth once a month, and that often requires major corrections. Data on inflation also become available on a monthly basis. Academic studies on inequality use data from the Census Bureau or the Internal Revenue Service, which means information is months or even years out of date before it reaches the public.

But the landscape of economic data is changing. Economists have developed new tools that can track inequality in near real-time:

From U.C. Berkeley, Realtime Inequality provides monthly statistics and even daily projections of income and wealth inequality — all with a fun interactive interface. You can see the latest data and also parse long-term trends. For instance, over the past 20 years, the top .01% percent of earners have seen their real income nearly double, while the bottom 50% of Americans have seen their real income decline.

The State of U.S. Wealth Inequality from the St. Louis Fed provides quarterly data on racial, generational, and educational wealth inequality. The Fed data reminds us, for example, that Black families own about 25 cents for every $1 of white family wealth.

While these sources do not update at the speed of a stock ticker, they represent a massive step forward in the access to more timely, accurate, and complete understanding of economic conditions.

Would more reporting on inequality change public attitudes? That is an open question. A few decades ago, political scientists found intriguing correlations between media coverage and voters’ economic assessments, but more recent analyses suggest that media coverage “does not systematically precede public perceptions of the economy.” Nonetheless, especially given the vast disparities in economic fortune that have developed in recent decades, it is the responsibility of reporters to present data that gives an accurate and informative picture of the economy as it is experienced by most people, not just by those at the top.

And these data matter for all kinds of political judgments, not just public perspectives on the economy. When Americans are considering the Supreme Court’s recent decision on affirmative action, for example, it is useful to know how persistent racial disparities remain in American society; white high school dropouts have a greater median net worth than Black and Hispanic college graduates. Generational, racial, and educational inequality structure the American economy. It’s past time that the media’s coverage reflects that reality, rather than waste Americans’ time on economic trivia of the day.

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meandmybigmouth · 5 months

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Robert Reich4h

Former Secretary of Labor

What to say to a Republican who complains about the federal debt.

Friends,

Republicans are attacking Biden for expanding the federal debt, and the House “Freedom Caucus” is livid that speaker Mike Johnson has agreed to more funds for Ukraine, claiming it will expand the debt even further.

Can we just have some sanity here?

The federal debt is a problem. This year, the United States will spend about $870 billion, or 3.1 percent of gross domestic product on interest payments on the debt. That’s more than the entire defense budget.

But take a closer look.

The major reason for the huge federal debt is Trump’s and George W. Bush’s tax cuts, which together added $10 trillion to the debt since their enactment. They’re responsible for 57 percent of the increase in the ratio of the national debt to the economy since 2001.

Excluding the one-time costs of responding to Covid-19 and the Great Recession, the Bush and Trump tax cuts account for more than 90% of the increase in the debt ratio.

Most of the benefits of those tax cuts, not incidentally, have gone to the rich. 65 percent of the benefits of the Trump tax cuts have gone to the richest fifth of Americans, 22 percent to the top 1 percent.

And as the federal debt has risen, most of the interest payments on it have gone to the rich, too. Wealthy investors park their savings in treasury bonds directly or indirectly in treasury bonds held by mutual funds, hedge funds, pension funds, banks, insurance companies, personal trusts, and estates.

Decades ago, wealthy Americans financed the federal government mainly by paying taxes. In the 1950s, the top marginal tax rate on the wealthy was above 90 percent. Even including all tax credits and deductions, it was higher than 50 percent.

Since the Reagan, Bush, and Trump tax cuts, though, wealthy Americans have financed the federal government mainly by lending it money and collecting interest payments on those loans -- profiting when the rest of us pay them back.

Which means a growing portion of everyone else’s taxes are now paying the rich interest on those loans instead of paying for government services everyone needs.

So the next time you hear Republicans complain about the federal debt and our swelling interest payments on it, remember that: (1) the debt has grown mainly because of Republican tax cuts, (2) those cuts have mostly benefited the rich, (3) the rich are now the major recipients of interest payments on that debt, (4) and those interest payments are crowding out spending on childcare, elder care, affordable housing, better schools, paid family leave, and everything Americans need.

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purple-beans · 2 years

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I posted 19,866 times in 2022

15 posts created (0%)

19,851 posts reblogged (100%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@there-is-pie-in-the-fridge

@elesh-nussy

@agentduckorico

@nonbinary-bosmer

@loth-catgirl

I tagged 278 of my posts in 2022

#okay but - 5 posts

#also - 5 posts

#prev tags - 4 posts

#eat the rich - 3 posts

#i mean - 3 posts

#superyacht - 2 posts

#the netherlands - 2 posts

#okay but like - 2 posts

#but like - 2 posts

#that's it - 2 posts

Longest Tag: 138 characters

#now i dont know if this is gonna be translations but honestly even if im getting a bunch of emails in fucking latin ill be happy as can be

My Top Posts in 2022:

I just finished Gideon the Ninth and well, she's just gone then? Dead and scooped up into Harrow as an infinite death-juice battery?

9 notes - Posted November 8, 2022

Hey Outer Wilds Tumblr. I need some help.

I've had EotE since the moment it came out. But I just can't, for the life of me, get through those sections. You know the ones. As soon as I get to them, my anxiety just goes. Through the roof. And I just, really want to do this. I wanna experience it, for myself. But I don't know how..

30 notes - Posted March 22, 2022

Waterparks still makes good music you guys are just mean

49 notes - Posted July 10, 2022

Well I just finished reading Iron Widow and I would like to recap my thoughts as uhhh,

Holy Shit

64 notes - Posted July 17, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

So here's a fun fact. Jeff Bezos is having a new superyacht built by the Dutch yacht builder Oceanco. Just behind Rotterdam. This yacht is a massive, 400-something feet sailing monstrosity. Three massive masts. And now Oceanco has been located in that same spot for years right. They know exactly what the restrictions are, how high all the bridges between them and the North Sea are.

One of these bridges is the Koningshavenbrug, colloquially known as "De Hef" (the Lift). De Hef is a former railway bridge over the Port of Rotterdam, which today is out of use but stands there as a "Rijksmonument", a state monument. This means that this bridge can't just be demolished or altered, because it's well, a monument for a part of Rotterdam's past.

De Hef is also, too low for Jeff Bezos' new toy. So, going against what the city of Rotterdam said in the past, namely that the bridge would never again be dismantled, they're going to dismantle the bridge. Just temporarily mind you, under the guise of "maintenance". Because they can't alter the bridge. Because it's a monument.

But hey if you're the richest man in the world, I guess you can just buy your way to having a monument dismantled in order to have your boat pass by.

TL;DR: Jeff Bezos ordered a boat a company who knows the height of these bridges. This company designed a boat that's bigger than the bridges. They're now tearing a bridge down just for Bezos' boat.

Source: English. Dutch.

412 notes - Posted February 2, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

#tumblr2022 #year in review #my 2022 tumblr year in review #your tumblr year in review

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sa7abnews · 1 month

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My Week at the Buzzy Meditation Retreat That Promises Bliss on Demand

New Post has been published on https://sa7ab.info/2024/08/16/my-week-at-the-buzzy-meditation-retreat-that-promises-bliss-on-demand/

My Week at the Buzzy Meditation Retreat That Promises Bliss on Demand

Nick Cammarata has always been unusually happy. The 31-year-old AI safety researcher had a good childhood, but it wasn’t just that; situations that made others depressed seemed to roll off him. “I think I was probably happier than 99% of people. It’s just kind of unfair luck,” he says. “I figured maybe what I had was as good as it gets.”

Then, in 2021, as part of an effort to investigate whether life could get even better, Cammarata discovered the jhanas. These eight advanced meditative states, characterized by deep concentration and blissful absorption, have been practiced for thousands of years but were long considered the domain of mystics and monks with decades of training. Cammarata, however, taught himself to enter these states after around 1,000 hours of solo meditation practice. “I was shocked that it was possible to get this thing you turn on in 10 seconds and just get joy for five hours straight,” he says. “Nobody talks about it.”

So he started to. In the past few decades, a handful of American Buddhist teachers had published books and led retreats on the jhanas, but knowledge hadn’t spread much beyond meditation circles. Cammarata’s enthusiastic tweets about the jhanas got the attention of many in the Bay Area, fueling a growing interest in the ancient practices. Now neuroscientists are researching these altered states of consciousness, more meditation teachers are guiding people into them, and a much hyped startup called Jhourney—where Cammarata is a minor investor—claims most of its participants can reach them in under 40 hours of meditation.

The mainstreaming of the jhanas may represent the next frontier of the mindfulness movement, which has taken hold in American schools, hospitals, and workplaces and, propelled by apps like Calm and Headspace, become a billion-dollar industry. Mindfulness has been shown to minimize stress, improve focus, and help with pain management. It’s perhaps no coincidence that this surge in interest comes as mental-health issues are soaring globally, and as the U.S.—the richest country in the world—has dropped out of the top 20 nations for happiness, largely because of a decline among under 30s. Dr. Matthew Sacchet, director of the Meditation Research Program at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital, believes the destabilization of the pandemic, as well as other global challenges, has contributed to a “crisis of meaning” that makes advanced meditation increasingly appealing.

Read More: The Mindful Revolution

Stephen Zerfas, the 32-year-old CEO and co-founder of Jhourney, describes the startup as a well-being moon shot. “There’s hundreds of millions of people that have experienced meditation, and for them, it’s largely incremental,” he tells me at the Alembic, a meditation center in Berkeley, Calif., in early May. “Far less than 1% of them talk about it as absolutely transformative.”

Many in Silicon Valley see the jhanas as offering a tantalizing promise: a way to reprogram one’s internal software to access bliss on demand. It’s an idea in keeping with the Bay Area’s history as a playground for those chasing both peak performance and peak experience. If done responsibly, the upside could be enormous. Most of us tend to outsource our happiness to external sources—imagining that if we could just get rid of one thing bothering us or obtain another thing we want, we’d finally be happy. Jonas Mago, a cognitive neuroscientist studying the jhanas at McGill University, argues that this mindset overlooks our innate capabilities: “We don’t recognize that we have the profound power of shifting our own states by doing introspective work.”

Now, a new industry around the jhanas is taking shape—one that must navigate thorny tensions between spirituality and market forces. Jhourney’s approach isn’t without controversy. Some critics question whether the company has the expertise to guide retreats safely; others worry about repackaging rich practices as self-help techniques. “Jhourney is saying they’re not Buddhists and yet they’re using a Buddhist term,” says Tina Rasmussen, an American meditation teacher. “And that’s because it sells. If they’re really trying to help people, why are they charging so much?”

On a cool evening in May, I join 42 others in a conference room at the Applegate Jesuit Retreat Center in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada. As the room falls silent, five members of the Jhourney team—all young white guys—begin recounting how they went from viewing meditation as a chore to discovering real joy through the practice. As with others here, my own history with meditation is inconsistent at best. As a child with bad eczema, I sometimes used a jaap mala (a loop of prayer beads) to distract myself from the urge to scratch, inspired by my Hindu grandfather who meditated for an hour before dawn each day. But as an adult, my attempts to meditate usually devolved into rumination, leaving me feeling worse. I’ve come here with the same goal as everyone else: to learn how to tap into mind-blowing states of joy—in under a week.

In 2018, reeling from simultaneous breakups with a co-founder and a girlfriend, Zerfas signed up for a 10-day silent meditation retreat. “I quickly learned things could get worse,” he tells the room at Applegate with a grim laugh. After eight days of migraines, he changed techniques and stumbled into the most euphoric experience he’d had in a year. “If this was replicable,” he recalls thinking, “this changes everything.”

For the next year, he meditated daily and tried to hack his way back into that state. It wasn’t until 2021 that he came across Right Concentration, a jhana instruction book by American meditation teacher Leigh Brasington, and found a framework that seemed to explain his experiences.

Though they are most comprehensively delineated in the Theravada Buddhism school of Southeast Asia, the jhanas predate the Buddha and find parallels across contemplative traditions, from Carmelite nuns to Sufi mystics. According to the suttas (core Buddhist scriptures), the Buddha spontaneously entered the first jhana as a child some 2,500 years ago and later gave precise instructions on how to cultivate these progressively more profound states as part of the path to enlightenment. But over time, the jhanas largely fell out of common practice. And even as Western Buddhist teachers have worked to make them more accessible, mastering jhana still took significant time and dedication. “When I first heard about jhana, the assumption I had was that 30 people in the world could do this and maybe I’d be able to do it in my 80s if I practiced really hard,” says Kathryn Devaney, a neuroscientist, founder of the Alembic, and an adviser to Jhourney.

The goal of dramatically reducing the effort needed to access these states motivated Zerfas to quit his software-engineering job at Lyft in 2021 and co-found Jhourney the following year with Alex Gruver, then a management consultant. “It was an insane thing to do,” Zerfas says, “to try to replicate this thing that’s supposedly been around for a few millennia that nobody has heard of and then try to teach other people.”

The company initially focused on developing neurotech, like a consumer headset, to guide people into jhanas, raising $750,000 in pre-seed funding. Last fall, however, Zerfas and Gruver pivoted to retreats, soliciting feedback from around a dozen Buddhist teachers as they developed their approach. They see themselves not as spiritual leaders teaching the Buddhist dharma, but as “engineers” focused on sharing practical guidance as efficiently as possible. Since October, Jhourney has guided over 400 people through 16 retreats, and claims that more than two-thirds of participants enter jhana regardless of meditation experience. The online retreats cost $1,100 and in-person ones start at $1,800, though a higher-end offering in June cost upward of $5,000. (Scholarships are available.) The hope is that within a few years, Jhourney could be teaching tens of thousands of people the jhanas each year. “To reach millions, tech intervention will be necessary,” Zerfas says.

Read More: How Meditation Went Mainstream

For inspiration, he looks to the mindfulness movement, which has effectively secularized and scaled meditation techniques through apps and corporate programs. Traditional jhana instruction, which involves intimate teacher-student relationships and intensive retreats, may be harder to mainstream, but Jhourney wants to promote a bold idea: that interventions can do more than bring those suffering up to a healthy baseline—they can also catapult the ostensibly well-adjusted into unprecedented levels of thriving. Zerfas compares jhana to an inverted panic attack: instead of anxiety spiraling, positive emotions accentuate one another, leading to intense states of bliss and peace. “If you taught people how to navigate these positive-feedback loops in their own system, it would be almost as valuable as reading and writing,” he argues. “We teach those skills in second grade, so why wouldn’t we teach this?”

At my retreat, Burning Man stickers decorate water bottles and conversations touch on Wim Hof ice baths and psychedelic therapy. Most of the 43 people here—I’m one of only six women—are young, affluent tech workers from the founders’ networks or who hang out on “meditation Twitter,” which skews heavily male. We’re told that Jhourney has taken as many lessons from coding boot camps as it has from meditation retreats. Key messages include work smart, not hard; run your own experiments; keep iterating. At first glance, this crowd seems more focused on Silicon Valley-style optimization than traditional spiritual pursuits.

But during a welcome ceremony in the chapel on our first morning, people open up about what brought them here: redefining their relationship to pleasure; showing up for loved ones; navigating a breakup or career transition. Some confess they were hesitant to tell others about their plans, aware that the idea of seeking altered states might seem esoteric or self-indulgent.

I’ve been telling people I’m here “on assignment,” but I quickly realize if I want to access the jhanas, trying to stay detached and analytical isn’t going to work. As I sip a cup of cacao, a giant white Jesus Christ on a crucifix looming above, another word comes to mind: healing.

I’m reluctant to admit this, even to myself. While I’m not typically prone to anxiety or depression, the period before the retreat was among the hardest of my life. In the span of 10 months, I’d been diagnosed with severe endometriosis as well as a rare genetic form of diabetes; then, the simple act of tying my shoe led to agony and emergency spinal surgery for a rare condition that could have caused permanent paralysis if not treated quickly enough. For months afterward, I couldn’t exercise, or sit or stand for longer than 30 minutes without discomfort; I’d lost sensation on my left side from the hip down, and no one could tell me if, let alone when, it might fully return. My relationship with my body had become defined almost entirely by pain and frustration.

Motion is lotion is what I was told repeatedly during rehab, as movement helps nerves regenerate and signals your body to heal. I took that advice to heart, keeping busy with travel, working long hours, and socializing. People kept congratulating me on how well I was doing. Inside, I felt nothing like my old self.

Advised by my physiotherapist to meditate, I started doing app-guided breathing exercises and reading about meditation online. Critics warn that Jhourney risks reducing a profound contemplative path to a quick fix. Truthfully, that’s what appealed when I first emailed Gruver and Zerfas asking if I could attend a retreat and write about it. I’d already lost countless hours to medical appointments, hospital stays, and simply being in pain. I wanted to feel better, and soon.

At the start of the retreat, I hand in my phone, unplugging from email and the news cycle for the first time in a decade. My days begin with lakeside walks in the morning mist, followed by ecstatic dance at 6:45 a.m. and yoga at 11 a.m. Group meditation sessions bookend each day. Most days I meditate for six to eight hours, lying on a sofa or under the trees listening to birdsong.

But meditation, I discover, isn’t inherently relaxing. Humans aren’t designed to be still; meditation involves rewiring evolutionary instincts to seek pleasure and avoid pain. A retreat forces you to confront your psychology, Devaney says: “It’s really gnarly work—not a day at the spa.”

The first morning, we’re tasked with recalling positive memories as a way to spark the joy that might eventually lead to jhana. Instead, virtually every time I shut my eyes, I’m met with intense flashbacks from my year of medical crises. That evening, when someone mentions falling asleep during meditation, I’m shocked.

But the meditation works more quickly than I expected. Within a day, the flashbacks have faded and I find myself regularly drifting off. Over time, I stop policing my mind, no longer berating myself if I get distracted; if my inner critic pops up, I visualize putting her in a hammock to lie down. I become more alert to what I enjoy: one morning, during dance, I realize I am no longer having fun, and rather than forcing myself to stay out of some misplaced sense of obligation, I simply leave.

Still, cultivating positive emotions is harder than I anticipated. I find my typical British stoicism, while useful in a crisis, has inadvertently muted my capacity for joy. When I recite mantras like May I be happy, an internal voice questions my right to happiness in a world full of suffering. The idea of unearned joy feels almost transgressive, undermining everything I’ve learned about needing to work hard and accomplish things in order to be happy.

A turning point comes halfway through the retreat, during a forgiveness meditation. Tears flow as I realize how much anger I’ve been harboring—toward doctors who’d dismissed my symptoms, myself for not seeking help sooner, people in my life who couldn’t see my suffering. As I walk by the lake afterward, listening to birds chirping and frogs croaking, I feel the anger flow through me, white and hot and cleansing.

Soon, I find myself more attuned to my body, able to examine whether an emotion feels open (like joy) or closed (like frustration). We are advised to take cold showers and taste hot sauce, to notice when we are bracing against experience rather than surrendering to it. Gradually, I feel the tingles that apparently signal the start of the jhanas, the kind of thing I once might have dismissed as pins and needles. (Piti is the term Buddhists use; I think of it as a bubbly golden liquid, like champagne.) But I keep running into unexpected resistance, and the doorway to the jhanas shuts.

Of course, I’m not alone in my struggles. “There was an aspect of the Jhourney retreat that felt like you were a Pokémon and they were trying to get you to evolve jhana levels as quickly as possible in a week,” one participant tells me. That strikes a chord: as the days pass, I increasingly feel the pressure of being surrounded by goal-oriented people who are succeeding where I am not.

Succeeding at what, exactly? One of the challenges with the jhanas is that as with falling in love, ordinary speech doesn’t seem to do them justice. Analogies abound: getting goose bumps while listening to music; cuddling with a partner after sex; the satisfaction of completing a major project. The initial jhanas, characterized by high-energy experiences, seem to vary dramatically. One Jhourney participant likens the first jhana to the jolt of putting your tongue onto a battery, while another describes a floating sensation so intense that she wondered if her water had been laced with MDMA. There’s more consensus about the fourth jhana, however, which seems to be characterized by a deep peace and equanimity, a stark contrast to the internal dissonance most of us are used to in everyday life—thinking about emails while talking to a loved one or worrying about a past conversation while trying to enjoy a party. The fourth jhana, Devaney says, “feels like every atom in your body has had a nice meal, a good glass of water, and is sitting back in its armchair after dinner. It’s very profoundly like your whole system is on the same page.”

Read More: How to Be Mindful if You Hate Meditating

This unified state of mind can be a powerful tool for introspection and insight. Many Buddhists see the jhanas as preparation for deeper meditation leading to awakening, not as ends in themselves. “Jhanas offer a systematic training in letting go,” says Shaila Catherine, author of Focused and Fearless (recently republished as The Jhanas). “A mark of genuine mastery of jhana is dispassion toward pleasure, not seeking it on demand.” But some believe that even for those without loftier spiritual goals, the jhanas can be valuable—helping people “move their emotional set point a little more towards the happy scale,” as Brasington puts it.

There are also intense debates about what “counts.” Some teachers, like Catherine, say that jhana requires you to remain completely absorbed for long stretches without a single thought arising. Rasmussen, who co-authored Practicing the Jhanas, believes Jhourney is teaching pleasurable states that fall short of true jhana, which she compares to steam powerful enough to drive a locomotive. “If people think it’s steam when it’s water,” she says, “that is false advertising.”

This is hardly new: for almost as long as people have been practicing the jhanas, they’ve been arguing over how to define them. Brasington says the disagreement stems partly from varying interpretations of ancient texts and partly from the fact people are inclined to believe their way is the right way. “Spiritual teachers, unless they’re really advanced, are just plain old human beings,” he says.

While some teachers see “lighter” versions of the jhanas as more practical for modern lives, concerns persist about diluting the term. Jhourney stands by its use of jhana, emphasizing that it’s transparent about traditional definitions and helps connect participants with resources and teachers if they want to pursue further practice. “We’re just helping people experience more joy when they meditate,” Gruver says. “That seems like such an unambiguously good thing to me.”

Read More: Can Meditation Improve Your Health? Here’s What to Know

Rui Bao, who works in public education, compares her experience during a February retreat to six to eight months of therapy progress, saying it felt as though she were “sitting in a circle holding hands and singing kumbaya with all the different parts of myself.” Jake Eaton, a magazine editor, describes a cathartic experience in which he grieved for the turbulence of his childhood while feeling gratitude for the progress he’s made since. Even people who don’t reach jhana can find therapeutic effects, like one man who cried for the first time in 30 years during his Jhourney retreat.

And for some, the benefits can be lasting. Startup founder Ruby Yu says since her retreat last fall, her self-critical voice has quietened, she can’t remember the last time she got angry, and she’s much more familiar with joy. “That baseline of unpleasantness is much, much lighter,” says Yu, who is now working with Rasmussen to deepen her practice. “Whether or not it’s what the Buddha was truly talking about in the suttas, I don’t care. All I care is that it made meditation a lot easier for me.”

While it’s tempting to think that science will be able to resolve these centuries-old debates, neuroscientists say it’s difficult to define exactly at what point something is or isn’t a jhana. “What we know is that the mind has the capacity to get deeply absorbed by certain experiences,” says Mago, the McGill neuroscientist. “What’s right or wrong in the end is defined by what helps people.”

Richard J. Davidson, founder and director of the Center for Healthy Minds at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, notes that even modest amounts of meditation—under 10 hours of practice in beginners—can change brain plasticity. But he cautions against commercializing the jhanas prematurely. “People saying this benefits them is all well and good, but without real scientific evidence, we have no idea,” he says. “Anyone trying to monetize this should raise red flags.”

Read More: How 5 Minutes of Daily Meditation Enhanced My Life

Neuroscientists are increasingly trying to understand how the jhanas might affect the brain. A January study out of Harvard and Mass General found that the jhanas are related to distinct patterns of neural activity across various parts of the brain that correspond with experiential aspects including attention, joy, and equanimity. Preliminary research by Mago and Michael Lifshitz, an assistant professor of psychiatry at McGill, showed that during deep jhana meditation, patterns of communication in the brain became more flexible and unpredictable and practitioners showed increased cognitive diversity and creativity afterward. These early findings align with theories that deep concentration can short-circuit the brain’s predictive mechanisms—leading to vivid, direct experience as mental chatter falls away. “Our perception of the world is much more malleable and adaptable than we think,” says Lifshitz, “and we can deliberately train our experience to function differently.”

By my final full day on retreat, I’m noticing a subtle internal shift, as if the mental creases that had gathered inside me were smoothing out. Still, I haven’t experienced a jhana, and I find it hard to shake the idea that I’m letting down not just my instructors but also my future readers. Experts say that paradox seems to lie at the heart of jhana. “You need to want it, but also be OK with not getting it,” says philosopher and meditation researcher Terje Sparby. Over lunch, I share my dismay with instructor Grant Belsterling, who encourages me to reframe my experience—to think of happiness less as a state and more as an ongoing process. “You can have a goal without devaluing where you’re currently standing,” he tells me.

That afternoon, during a final 45-minute guided session with curriculum director Judah Newman, I lie on a sofa with my eyes shut and describe a warm yellow feeling of friendliness spreading through my body. Soon I run into a familiar obstacle: the lower left half of my body—still suffering nerve damage—is unable to fully experience that. For months, I’ve been in something of a holding pattern, with no way of knowing if I might regain the sensation I’d lost. Newman asks what the frustration is trying to tell me. “To accept that things won’t ever be the same again,” I reply. Another thought immediately follows: But they can still be good.

This realization unlocks something powerful. Suddenly, a luminous yellow substance washes over me, as if hope is saturating every cell of my body. My mind is filled with a montage of positive images of the future. I can’t stop smiling. After Newman leaves the room, the energy ebbs and flows, alternating between deep contentment and intense glee. At one point, I laugh uncontrollably for a minute or two. It feels like being on a drug.

When he returns, I tell him about my experience. He smiles: “That’s usually what I think of as the first jhana.”

Whether it’s real or “diluted” seems beside the point. For the rest of the afternoon, I experience a kind of surreal afterglow: flowers and leaves seem brighter, ordinary things are funnier, and I feel a newfound lightness toward people around me. For months, my body had felt alien and disconnected. Now I’m finally embracing it as a whole, capable of both pain and profound joy. For the first time in a long time, I feel compassion rather than frustration toward myself.

Jhourney’s motto, “Come for the bliss, stay for the personal growth,” acknowledges that while confronting internal conflicts can be unpleasant, it’s often transformative. But as meditation has gone mainstream, the marketing has often glossed over its primary purpose: radically transforming one’s sense of self and reality. That reshaping of perception can be seriously destabilizing. “People didn’t know what they were signing up for when they were just paying attention to their breath,” says Ruben Laukkonen, a meditation researcher at Australia’s Southern Cross University.

There’s an increasing awareness of the potential risks of meditation, especially in high doses, as reports of depression, anxiety, and psychosis, though rare, have surfaced. “The journey to the cliff edge can be incredibly short,” warns Daniel Ingram, a retired emergency-medicine physician and author of Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha.

One woman’s Jhourney experience illustrates these concerns. The woman, who requested anonymity to protect her privacy, says she had informed the company of her history with depression but quickly began to feel highly agitated during an online retreat. “For about a month after, I lived in a state of very intense alarm,” says the woman, who left early, in part because of a family matter. While she thinks the experience may have ultimately been beneficial, it felt unpredictable. And though she praised the facilitators’ compassionate response, she didn’t seek further help from them, feeling that they were too young and inexperienced to guide her. More troublingly, fellow meditators discouraged her from speaking out, fearing she might “tank” a cool new company. “In this splash of enthusiasm, people who have a bad experience might be tempted not to talk about it,” she says, “because they’re afraid that they’ll seem like buzzkills.”

Jhourney declines to comment on specific individuals but acknowledges the risks, estimating that 1% of participants have experienced difficult emotions from some sort of internal conflict or trauma—but claiming they almost all later find the experience positive. Establishing the dangers of meditation is tricky: no one tracks base rates; meditation may attract those with pre-existing psychological challenges; some believe discussing negative experiences can become self-fulfilling prophecies; factors like participant selection criteria, dosage, and meditation technique all play a role. (Jhourney uses Imperial College London’s exclusion criteria for psychedelic research to screen participants.)

Critics like meditation teacher Vince Horn have accused Jhourney of “arrogantly endangering people’s mental health” in pursuit of capital gain. But Zerfas and Gruver believe their approach is safer than that of other retreats, highlighting innovative measures they’ve implemented in consultation with top experts. David Treleaven, author of Trauma-Sensitive Mindfulness, says Jhourney’s plan sets a new industry standard, “the kind of thorough and thoughtful approach I’ve long hoped to see in the field of meditation.”

Much of the backlash against Jhourney stems from a deeper skepticism among many Buddhists toward commercializing spiritual practices. They warn that fast-tracking the jhanas outside of the structure of ancient lineages risks overlooking crucial insights and that meditation stripped of its ethical core could be weaponized for ego-boosting or other destructive tendencies.

And yet millions could potentially benefit from deep meditative practices without subscribing to Buddhist norms. Secular teachings may also offer people more agency than traditional hierarchical models. “We want a plurality of ethics,” says Lifshitz. “We don’t want to assume that just because someone is a skilled meditator and a good teacher they have the right ideas about what’s good in the world.”

Zerfas doesn’t believe any religion can claim IP on the jhanas, calling them “discoveries, not inventions.” He says it’s almost a “moral imperative” to share them widely, and companies can scale access more effectively than nonprofits. “For-profit models live or die by their impact,” he says.

And while Gruver recognizes that Jhourney’s current staff may be positioned to teach a certain audience, he remains optimistic that over time, many organizations could work together to discover how different demographics best learn these techniques. “There are going to be hundreds of approaches to this problem. We just want that work to get done.”

In the final season of the TV show The Good Place, the characters arrive in the afterlife only to discover that even eternal bliss can lose its luster. With every desire met, the residents of the actual Good Place, or heaven, have become apathetic, their lives stripped of purpose. “Everyone is a happiness zombie!” one character exclaims.

The scene captures a key concern some Buddhists have about Jhourney’s approach. They fear it might create “jhana junkies” who get overly attached to pleasurable states, missing out on deeper spiritual insights that reduce self-interest and increase wisdom and compassion. Critics argue that without proper follow-up, practitioners might just sit around getting high on self-generated pleasure.

Yet to my surprise, it seems that for most people, finding the bliss button doesn’t make you want to press it all the time. Sasha Chapin, a writer who has been meditating for over a decade, describes the jhanas as “cool toys that you tend to put away after an initial period of obsession.” Pure pleasure, it turns out, isn’t really what humans want.

Modern meditation culture draws in a wide array of people, from the deeply suffering to the casually curious, from spiritual New Age seekers to productivity hackers. “Aren’t we all here to become a more effective person?” one man candidly remarked during my retreat. While it’s easy to dismiss the interest in the jhanas as another Silicon Valley fad, Devaney argues that even the much derided Bay Area “optimizer” mindset can be a starting point for real transformation. “If you’re going to try to do something to make yourself feel better than other people, it’s better to meditate than to buy a helicopter,” she says. “Eventually, the meditation is going to show you yourself in a way that buying all the helicopters is not.”

For all the debates, Jhourney does seem to be offering a taste of profound states to many who might otherwise never encounter them. Some participants, myself included, discover a new appreciation for meditation that may ultimately lead to deeper self-exploration. “Jhana is like pouring water onto the leaves of a plant,” Cammarata argues. “It also goes very deeply into the roots, whether you know it or not.”

My curiosity about Jhourney had been sparked by a desire for a quick fix. On my retreat, I realized how impossible that was. Two months and many hours of meditation later, my emotional range has widened. I feel love and joy more strongly, and while self-compassion may not come naturally, I’m less inclined to fight my body’s limitations—instead tapping back into that feeling of wholeness. In trying to make myself “better,” I stumbled upon an age-old lesson: true peace comes from accepting things just as they are.

#News &x26; Politics

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douxlen · 1 month

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My Week at the Buzzy Meditation Retreat That Promises Bliss on Demand

New Post has been published on https://douxle.com/2024/08/14/my-week-at-the-buzzy-meditation-retreat-that-promises-bliss-on-demand/

My Week at the Buzzy Meditation Retreat That Promises Bliss on Demand

Read More: The Mindful Revolution

Read More: How Meditation Went Mainstream

Read More: How to Be Mindful if You Hate Meditating

Read More: Can Meditation Improve Your Health? Here’s What to Know

Read More: How 5 Minutes of Daily Meditation Enhanced My Life

When he returns, I tell him about my experience. He smiles: “That’s usually what I think of as the first jhana.”

#News &x26; Politics

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kp777 · 2 years

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By Robert Reich

The Guardian Opinions

Oct. 2, 2022

On Tuesday, the Congressional Budget Office released a study of trends in the distribution of family wealth between 1989 and 2019.

Over those 30 years, the richest 1% of families increased their share of total national wealth from 27% to 34%. Families in the bottom half of the economy now hold a mere 2%.

Meanwhile, a record share of the nation’s wealth remains in the hands of the nation’s billionaires, who are also paying a lower tax rate than the average American.

How do the ultra-wealthy justify their wealth and their low tax rates? By using three myths – all of which are utter rubbish.

The first is trickle-down economics.

Billionaires (and their apologists) claim that their wealth trickles down to everyone else as they invest it and create jobs.

Really? For more than 40 years, as wealth at the top has soared, almost nothing has trickled down. Adjusted for inflation, the median wage today is barely higher than it was four decades ago.

Trump provided a giant tax cut to the wealthiest Americans, promising it would generate $4,000 increased income for everyone else. Did you receive it?

In reality, the super-wealthy don’t create jobs or raise wages. Jobs are created when average working people earn enough money to buy all the goods and services they produce, pushing companies to hire more people and pay them higher wages.

The second myth is the “free market”.

The ultra-rich claim they’re being rewarded by the impersonal market for creating and doing what people are willing to pay them for.

The wages of other Americans have stagnated, they say, because most Americans are worth less in the market now that new technologies and globalization have made their jobs redundant.

Baloney. Even if they’re being rewarded, there’s no reason why the “free market’ would reward vast multiples of what the rich were rewarded with decades ago.

The market can induce great feats of invention and entrepreneurship with lures of hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars – not billions.

As to the rest of us succumbing to labor-replacing globalization and labor-saving technologies, no other advanced nation has nearly the degree of inequality found in the United States, yet all these nations have been exposed to the same forces of globalization and technological change.

In reality, the ultra-wealthy have rigged the so-called “free market” in the US for their own benefit. Billionaires’ campaign contributions have soared from a relatively modest $31m in the 2010 elections to $1.2bn in the most recent presidential cycle – a nearly 40-fold increase.

What have they got for their money? Tax cuts, freedom to bash unions and monopolize markets and government bailouts. Their pockets have been further lined by privatization and deregulation.

The third myth is that they’re superior human beings.

They portray themselves as “self-made” rugged individuals who “did it on their own” and therefore deserve their billions.

Bupkis. Six of the 10 wealthiest Americans alive today are heirs to fortunes passed on to them by wealthy ancestors.

Others had the advantages that come with wealthy parents.

Jeff Bezos’s garage-based start was funded by a quarter-million-dollar investment from his parents. Bill Gates’s mother used her business connections to help land a software deal with IBM that made Microsoft. Elon Musk came from a family that reportedly owned shares of an emerald mine in southern Africa.

Don’t fall for these three myths.

Trickle-down economics is a cruel joke.

The so-called free market has been distorted by huge campaign contributions from the ultra-rich.

Don’t lionize the ultra-rich as superior “self-made” human beings who deserve their billions. They were lucky and had connections.

In reality, there is no justification for today’s extraordinary concentration of wealth at the very top. It’s distorting our politics, rigging our markets and granting unprecedented power to a handful of people.

The last time America faced anything comparable was at the start of the 20th century.

In 1910, former president Theodore Roosevelt warned that “a small class of enormously wealthy and economically powerful men, whose chief object is to hold and increase their power” could destroy American democracy.

Roosevelt’s answer was to tax wealth. The estate tax was enacted in 1916, and the capital gains tax in 1922.

Since that time, both have eroded. As the rich have accumulated greater wealth, they have also amassed more political power – and have used that political power to reduce their taxes.

Teddy Roosevelt understood something about the American economy and the ultra-rich that has now re-emerged, even more extreme and more dangerous. We must understand it, too – and act.

#tax rates #economics #trickle down economics #free market #tax wealth #estate tax #capital gains tax #politics #tax the rich

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sanjaylodh · 8 months

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Country Foreign Continent

By the way, friends, the country in whose chair I am carrying out our civilization story is

that is my country india

How many countries, continents and nations are there in the whole world?

There are 195 countries in the world today. This total comprises 193 countries that are member states of the United Nations and 2 countries that are non-member observer states: the Holy See and the State of Palestine.

What are the 7 continents and their countries list?

The Seven Continents | Overview & Facts - Video & Lesson ...

The number of countries in each continent fluctuate based on different timely political reasons, but Africa has 54 counties, Antarctica has 0 counties, Asia has 47 countries, Australia has 14 counties, Europe has 43 counties, North America has 23 counties, and South America has 12 countries.

Which country is No 1 in world?

For the second year in a row, Switzerland is the best country in the world, according to the U.S News and World report.13 Sept 2023

Are there 252 countries in the world?

The United Nations, for example, recognizes 251 countries and territories. 1 The United States, however, officially recognizes fewer than 200 nations. 2 Ultimately, the best answer is that there are 196 countries in the world.26 Feb 2020

What is the smallest country in 2023?

Smallest Countries in the World 2023 - Wisevoter

The smallest country in the world is Vatican City, with only 0.44 square kilometers. Monaco is the second smallest country, with 2.03 square kilometers.

Which country has only 33 people?

The Smallest Country In The World That Has Only 32 People ...

One such country is republic of Molossia, which is located in Dayton, Nevada and has only 33 people living there. This tiny country is considered as one of the smallest sovereign states in the world with only 0.2 square kilometers of land area.11 Jun 2022

What is no 2 country?

Canada. Canada takes up about two-fifths of the North American continent, making it the second-largest country in the world after.

What is the top 10 richest country?

The top 10 richest countries in the world by GDP per capita are as follows:

Singapore.

Qatar.

Macao SAR.

United Arab Emirates.

Switzerland.

Norway.

United States.

San Marino.

More items...•2 Jan 2024

Country: How many states are there in India?

28 states

There are 28 states and 8 union territories in the country. Union territories are administered through an administrator appointed by the President.

Which is the 29th state of India?

Telangana

The correct answer is Telangana. In 2014, Telangana became the 29th state of India. Telangana was formed by reorganizing the state of Andhra Pradesh. Hyderabad is the capital of Telangana.

How many districts are there in West Bengal?

23 districts

West Bengal is now divided into 23 districts.

How many municipal areas and panchayat areas are there in Howrah district?

How many panchayats are there in Howrah district?

Howrah district - Wikipedia

The district has 30 police stations (Howrah Police Commissionerate has 16 general police stations including 1 women's PS, 1 cyber crime PS and Howrah Rural PD has 10 general police stations including 1 women's PS, 1 cyber crime PS), 157 gram panchayats and There are 50 censuses. Towns.

How many municipalities are there in Howrah?

Howrah Municipal Corporation - Wikipedia

In July 2015, Howrah Municipal Corporation and Bally Municipality were merged. The 35 wards of Bally Municipality were reduced to 16 under Howrah Municipal Corporation. In November 2021, the West Bengal Legislative Assembly passed a bill to separate Bally Municipality from Howrah Municipal Corporation.

This colorful season of our world covering so many areas, districts, states, countries, foreign continents,

Translate Hindi

देश विदेश महादेश

वैसे दोस्तों मैं जिस देश की कुर्सी में बैठकर हमारी यह सिविलाइजेशन स्टोरी को अंजाम दे रहा हूँ

वो है मेरा देश इंडिया

यह पूरी दुनिया में कितने देश महादेश और राष्ट्रसंघ वर्तमान है

आज विश्व में 195 देश हैं। इस कुल में 193 देश शामिल हैं जो संयुक्त राष्ट्र के सदस्य राज्य हैं और 2 देश जो गैर-सदस्य पर्यवेक्षक राज्य हैं: होली सी और फिलिस्तीन राज्य।

7 महाद्वीप और उनके देशों की सूची क्या है?

सात महाद्वीप | अवलोकन एवं तथ्य - वीडियो एवं पाठ...

प्रत्येक महाद्वीप में देशों की संख्या अलग-अलग सामयिक राजनीतिक कारणों के आधार पर घटती-बढ़ती रहती है, लेकिन अफ्रीका में 54 काउंटी, अंटार्कटिका में 0 काउंटी, एशिया में 47 देश, ऑस्ट्रेलिया में 14 काउंटी, यूरोप में 43 काउंटी, उत्तरी अमेरिका में 23 काउंटी और दक्षिण अमेरिका में 23 काउंटी हैं। 12 देश हैं.

दुनिया में नंबर 1 देश कौन सा है?

यू.एस. न्यूज एंड वर्ल्ड रिपोर्ट के अनुसार, स्विट्जरलैंड लगातार दूसरे वर्ष दुनिया का सबसे अच्छा देश है। 13 सितंबर 2023

क्या विश्व में 252 देश हैं?

उदाहरण के लिए, संयुक्त राष्ट्र 251 देशों और क्षेत्रों को मान्यता देता है। हालाँकि, संयुक्त राज्य अमेरिका आधिकारिक तौर पर 200 से कम देशों को मान्��ता देता है। अंततः, सबसे अच्छा उत्तर यह है कि दुनिया में 196 देश हैं। 26 फरवरी 2020

2023 में सबसे छोटा देश कौन सा है?

विश्व के सबसे छोटे देश 2023 - समझदार मतदाता

दुनिया का सबसे छोटा देश वेटिकन सिटी है, जिसका क्षेत्रफल केवल 0.44 वर्ग किलोमीटर है। मोनाको 2.03 वर्ग किलोमीटर के साथ दूसरा सबसे छोटा देश है।

किस देश में केवल 33 लोग रहते हैं?

दुनिया का सबसे छोटा देश जहां सिर्फ 32 लोग रहते हैं...

ऐसा ही एक देश है मोलोसिया गणराज्य, जो डेटन, नेवादा में स्थित है और वहां केवल 33 लोग रहते हैं। केवल 0.2 वर्ग किलोमीटर भूमि क्षेत्र वाले इस छोटे से देश को दुनिया के सबसे छोटे संप्रभु राज्यों में से एक माना जाता है।11 जून 2022

नंबर 2 देश क्या है?

कनाडा. कनाडा उत्तरी अमेरिकी महाद्वीप का लगभग दो-पाँचवाँ भाग घेरता है, जिससे यह दुनिया का दूसरा सबसे बड़ा देश बन जाता है।

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प्रति व्यक्ति सकल घरेलू उत्पाद के हिसाब से दुनिया के शीर्ष 10 सबसे अमीर देश इस प्रकार हैं:

सिंगापुर.

कतर.

मकाओ एसएआर.

संयुक्त अरब अमीरात।

स्विट्जरलैंड.

नॉर्वे.

संयुक्त राज्य अमेरिका।

सैन मारिनो।

अधिक आइटम...•2 जनवरी 2024

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भारत का 29वाँ राज्य कौन सा है?

तेलंगाना

सही उत्तर तेलंगाना है। 2014 में तेलंगाना भारत का 29वां राज्य बना। आंध्र प्रदेश राज्य का पुनर्गठन करके तेलंगाना का गठन किया गया। हैदराबाद तेलंगाना की राजधानी है।

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23 जिले

पश्चिम बंगाल अब 23 जिलों में विभाजित है।

हावड़ा जिले में कितने म्युनिसिपल एरिया और पंचायत एरिया है

हावड़ा जिले में कितनी पंचायतें हैं?

हावड़ा जिला - विकिपीडिया

जिले में 30 पुलिस स्टेशन हैं (हावड़ा पुलिस आयुक्तालय में 1 महिला पीएस, 1 साइबर अपराध पीएस सहित 16 सामान्य पुलिस स्टेशन हैं और हावड़ा ग्रामीण पीडी में 1 महिला पीएस, 1 साइबर अपराध पीएस सहित 10 सामान्य पुलिस स्टेशन हैं), 157 ग्राम पंचायतें और 50 जनगणना हैं। कस्बे.

हावड़ा में कितनी नगर पालिकाएँ हैं?

हावड़ा नगर निगम - विकिपीडिया

जुलाई 2015 में, हावड़ा नगर निगम और बल्ली नगर पालिका का विलय कर दिया गया। हावड़ा नगर निगम के अंतर्गत बाली नगर पालिका के 35 वार्डों को घटाकर 16 कर दिया गया। नवंबर 2021 में, पश्चिम बंगाल विधान सभा ने बल्ली नगर पालिका को हावड़ा नगर निगम से अलग करने के लिए एक विधेयक पारित किया।

इतने एरिया जिले राज्य देश विदेश महादेश लेकर हमारी दुनिया की यह रंगिन मौसम

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speedyposts · 8 months

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Why has a court blocked Elon Musk’s $56bn Tesla pay?

A Delaware judge has scrapped a $55.8bn compensation package for Tesla boss Elon Musk after years of legal arguments about his pay. Tesla stocks dropped 2 percent after the ruling before recovering to close at just over $187 a share.

Wednesday’s ruling came after a shareholder sued Tesla directors in 2018 in the Delaware Court of Chancery, claiming that Musk was overcompensated. The pay package, agreed in 2018 to be paid out over 10 years after Musk hit certain targets, was the biggest in United States corporate history. It contributed to Musk’s standing as the world’s richest man as the CEO hit the dozen targets set by 2023. Musk may appeal the ruling but has not indicated whether he will.

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Speaking in court, Judge Kathaleen McCormick said the amount was “unfathomable” and blamed Tesla’s leadership for not properly informing shareholders about it.

The ruling saw Musk drop a notch on the world’s richest people list by Forbes, becoming the world’s second richest person after Bernard Arnault, boss of the French fashion and cosmetics empire LVMH.

Here’s what we know about Musk’s pay deal and why it was controversial:

Musk, who founded Tesla in 2003, does not receive a salary from the electric carmaker. He agreed to the $56bn compensation package in 2018 to cover a period of 10 years.

The deal awarded Musk stock worth about 1 percent of Tesla’s equity each time the company achieved one of its operational and financial goals, such as ambitious aims set in 2018 to increase the Tesla market cap from $59bn to $650bn within 10 years. This meant hitting targets set for Tesla’s share price and the company’s profitability. Musk hit all 12 targets set by Tesla by 2023.

The package helped boost Musk’s personal worth and made him the highest paid CEO in the US. According to Forbes, the tycoon was worth from $198bn to $220bn in November.

Tesla is currently worth $596bn and is ranked the ninth largest US company by valuation.

Tesla’s lawyers argued that the pay package was designed to incentivise Musk as the company increased production of its Tesla Model 3. The CEO, a controversial figure because of his public takes on world affairs, is also head of the spacecraft company SpaceX and social media site X, formerly Twitter.

Richard Tornetta, an individual Tesla shareholder, filed the lawsuit against Musk and senior Tesla executives in 2018, arguing that the package was excessive and the board had not acted independently.

Tornetta, a drummer who was once in the heavy metal band Dawn of Correction, owned just nine of Tesla’s 3.1 billion shares in 2018 when he filed the suit. His shares are worth about $1,700 today. According to the court, Tornetta’s lawyers will be compensated by Tesla.

Gregory Varallo, Tornetta’s lawyer, argued that Tesla shareholders were not informed how easily Tesla’s financial goals would be achieved when they voted on the package and Musk, who owns more than 411 million shares (just over 12 percent), did not need further incentives.

Varallo also said the board did not disclose that Musk had designed the pay package himself or how close Musk was to some of Tesla’s payment committee members, such as Antonio Gracias and Ira Ehrenpreis, who the CEO has had personal and business relationships with for several years.

When it was announced, the deal sparked debate about widening pay inequalities at US companies and drew criticism from organisations such as the California State Teachers’ Retirement System, a major pension fund and a holder of Tesla shares.

Researchers said US CEOs were paid 399 times more than the average worker in 2021.

Outside the US, pay disparities are also pervasive. The High Pay Centre analysed 350 companies in the United Kingdom in 2022 and found that the difference in average pay between CEOs and other employees had hit a ratio of 57 to 1. At some companies, the pay gap between CEOs and the lowest-income workers was as high as 75 to 1.

In a poll carried out by the organisation, 76 percent of respondents said CEOs should not earn more than 20 times the pay of middle- and low-income colleagues. Oil giant British Petroleum and shoe retailer JD recorded the widest pay gaps.

What did the judge say and what happens to the package now?

In her 201-page opinion, McCormick said Tesla’s board had failed to protect shareholders.

She noted that the Tesla executives who voted for the package were well known to Musk although the CEO and his brother, Kimbal Musk, a major shareholder, recused themselves from the vote.

“Swept up by the rhetoric of ‘all upside,’ or perhaps starry eyed by Musk’s superstar appeal, the board never asked the $55.8 billion question: Was the plan even necessary for Tesla to retain Musk and achieve its goals?” the judge wrote.

Tesla must submit a new pay package to McCormick at a yet undefined time. The judge will then approve and finalise the ruling.

Musk’s lawyers may appeal although it’s not yet clear if that will happen.

Musk conducted a poll on X on Wednesday, asking users if Tesla should change its state of registration to Texas, where the company’s headquarters is located. More than 1.1 million people responded with 87 percent in favour of the move.

“Tesla will move immediately to hold a shareholder vote to transfer state of incorporation to Texas,” Musk wrote.

Musk did not reveal a timeline for the shareholder vote and eventual transfer. The CEO said in January that he was seeking to double his Tesla stake to 25 percent after he sold shares to pay hefty bills like his $44bn purchase of Twitter in 2022.

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