62 people have more wealth than 3.5 Billion people, Oxfam

[sdw]

http://montrealgazette.com/storylin...-wealth-as-the-worlds-poorest-half-oxfam-says

Of course the numbers are unfair. The question is why is it happening?

If a person spends the entire day working very hard to scratch out enough to support themselves for that day - they will always be poor. It doesn't matter if that work is farming, labor for others or theft. If enough support for one day costs a day's work - the person will always be poor.

If a person spends a portion of a day working to support themselves and the remainder of the day learning or working - they will become wealthier each day.

It does not matter where you live or what you work at - the equation is always the same.

So you take a Richard Branson (Virgin group of companies) or Elon Musk (Tesla, SpaceX). Well educated, work at high value occupations. Both are in the list of 62. Then you take a trash picker in Rio. Illiterate, competes to win half a can of rotting beans, loses most of the time. One of the list of 3.5 Billion.

BTW - Nobody in Vancouver is on the list of 3.5 Billion, in the rest of the world - one of our homeless would be considered wealthy by one of the 3.5 Billion.

Clearly Education has a lot to do with the ability to become wealthy. Not an Education that is, in reality, Day Care. Real Education, in Private Schools devoted to learning, devoted to pushing the ability of the student. Both Richard Branson and Elon Musk were educated in Private Schools. Bill Gates was educated in Private Schools and Harvard, as the son of a very successful Mother and Father, money was never an issue. Warren Buffett was educated in Washington DC, he's the son of a Congress Man. Again, affording an education was never an issue.

Education is such an important driver to becoming wealthy that a person should do whatever it takes to get that education. I joined the Navy. I was a client for years of an SP who had a "plan" despite being born to poor, greedy, abusive parents. She now has an education and has retired into a new life where nobody knows how she got her education.

Successful Parents have a lot to do with the ability to become wealthy. Not only can they afford a good education, they also drive the child to excel and demonstrate what is needed to succeed.

Where you live has a lot to do with the ability to become wealthy. If you live in a Nation that has a Rule of Law, what you have isn't easily stripped away. If you live in a Nation where the law is the whim of the ruler, what you have is always stripped away. If you live in a Socialist Nation, the party cadre will impose "Fairness" upon you and what you have will be stripped away. People in the Soviet Union keep finding this out, people in China are finding this out again. In Nations where the Socialism is "softer", wealth is stripped away by popular vote.

This is why there are two kinds of Very Wealthy. Those who's wealth is stripped away from the general population as is the case in Saudi Arabia, China, Russia, etc.. And those who are wealthy because of excellent education, financial aid from their family and a determination to excel.

So, what are the solutions?
1. Be born to successful parents.
2. Get the best education your parents can afford.
3. Live in a Nation with "Rule of Law", emigrate as Elon Musk did if you have to.
4. Create high value "stuff". You can't get wealthy producing widgets, you can get wealthy producing a product that didn't exist before you came along.
5. Follow the rule of 10%. 10% saved, 10% invested, 10% given to "good works". Live on the 70% that's left. Saving and Investing are not the same thing. Wealthy people that don't give to "Good Works" find themselves resented and subject to "fair equalization" by popular vote or mob action.
6. Be prepared to pay your fair share of taxes. Nations that don't tax the wealthy in a fair manner cannot deliver the services necessary to support a civilized society. Too little, the Nation doesn't have the money. Too much, the Nation finds that the wealthy can vote with their feet.

Don't spend yourself out of any possibility of being wealthy.
In Vancouver, a person with 5 million dollars in assets and no house can easily live on the income generated without working. If you have a house, you will need 10 million.
If a person has more than 10 million, they should be able to increase their net worth without a need to work.

 

[badbadboy]

I read the article this morning on Vice.

Here is the paragraphs that struck a chord with me.

Oxfam also highlighted the "global spider's web" of tax havens that allows this wealth to stays out of reach of ordinary citizens and governments. Its report pointed out that 9 out of 10 of this year's World Economic Forum corporate partners have a presence in at least one tax haven.

It is estimated that $7.6 trillion of individuals' wealth — a twelfth of the global total — sits offshore, said the report. If tax were paid on the income that wealth generates, an extra $190 billion would be available to governments every year, it said.

The report notes that corporate investment in tax havens almost quadrupled between 2000 and 2014.

https://news.vice.com/article/sixty-two-people-now-have-a-greater-net-worth-than-half-the-worlds-population

 

[sdw]

For some definitions of wealthy, yes, punitively high taxation rates should be considered, but only after changes to our tax system to better mirror parts of the US system.

First, change our citizenship laws such that, if one renounces their Canadian citizenship, they are deemed to have sold all their worldly assets at fair market value on that day and are taxed on the return from those sales in accordance with the tax code that is in effect on that date.

Second, all Canadian citizens pay Canadian taxes on their income / investment returns regardless of where in the world it is earned. If there is a tax treaty in place (like the one Canada has with the USA & some other countries) they only pay to Canada the difference between what they pay in taxes on those earnings to the country they earned them in and what is owed under Canadian tax code. If the foreign rate is higher, then they pay no Canadian tax but do not receive any 'rebate' on overage paid to foreign governments.

Third, tax earnings from equities at the same rate as earnings from income. This ensures that someone working for a living doesn't have a higher nominal tax rate than some trust account lounge about.

Finally, place a cap on total taxable (post-deductions) earnings. for example, on taxable income in a year above, perhaps, five million dollars ($5,000,000.00), the tax rate is 100%. Nobody needs an annual taxable income that great.

They don't want to give it to the government? Give it to the charity of their choice instead. They don't like it at all? Great. They can give up their citizenship, pay the taxes owing and go to a foreign tax haven with what is left.

It would also cut down on the foreign born, foreign living folks who acquire a convenient Canadian citizenship as a fall back for tough times in their home countries with no real intention to live as a member of Canadian society.

You raise a few of the more grievous ways people avoid paying their fair share of Canadian Taxes.

On the First point I agree completely. In fact, I would make it illegal to have dual citizenship for any reason after a person has reached adulthood. If you are a child, you have to make a choice on the birthday that allows you to vote. You don't get to vote in two nations. If you are an adult, you must make a choice.

On the Second point I think that people should pay the Canadian Taxes, and then the taxes in the foreign nation. Maybe some people will get taxed twice on the same income. So what? It is their choice to work there or park investments there. When things go to shit where they are working, they expect the Canadian Government to come and help them.

On the Third point, I agree.

On the Fourth point, you have to remember what the Beatles did. They paid British taxes at 85%. It was when the government raised the taxes to 97% that they left the country.
A person should not be able to deduct more than the taxes payable. There should be no "Depletion Allowance" for Oil and Mining, there should be no "Carry Over From Previous Years". Both of those deductions allow corporations to avoid paying any taxes. A corporation cannot be allowed to contract another division of the corporation to provide product or services and then be able to set the price at a point that isn't charged by another supplier.

The biggest problem, you don't address. A corporation that wishes to operate in Canada, must pay Canadian Taxes on the income earned in Canada. We have Corporations that are carrying over from other years, their contributions on behalf of their employee's participation in Health Plans, Employment Insurance and Pension Plans. That's because they are allowed to "Pay Dividends" to the Corporate Identity in the Haven, before calculating the Canadian Taxes payable.

An Example: Canada Steamship Lines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada_Steamship_Lines

...One month later, in July 1981, Power Corporation announced it was selling its subsidiary CSL Group for $195 million (CAD). CSL Group at this time included the shipping company, shipyards, engineering firms, and a bus service (Voyageur, previously known as Provincial Transport). The following month, in August 1981, Paul Martin and his friend Lawrence Pathy with the help of Gordon Black, secured financing and announced their intention to purchase CSL Group Incorporated for the price advertised by Power Corporation.

On August 9, 1983, citing federal government interference in the shipping industry, Martin stated: "then... they are going to come in with some grand and glorious package that will give the government control of the industry because they don't understand private enterprise." ...

...In November 1993, the newly re-elected Paul Martin was appointed to the cabinet and named Minister of Finance. On February 1, 1994, Martin placed his shares in CSL Group Inc. under a "Supervisory Agreement" to be managed by lawyers and financial advisors, although he would be allowed to intervene in company decision-making should events warrant.

In June 2002, Martin quit the cabinet as Minister of Finance to pursue a bid for leadership of the Liberal Party of Canada. On March 11, 2003, Martin bowed to public and media pressure on his interest in CSL Group Inc. and announced that he would sell his interests in the company to his three sons, saying that his ownership would "provide an unnecessary distraction during the leadership race."

On December 12, 2003, Martin became the 21st Prime Minister of Canada. On January 28, 2004, the federal government, in response to opposition party and media enquiries, revealed that CSL Group Inc. had received $162 million in federal government contracts, grants and loans since Paul Martin became Minister of Finance in 1993. Earlier figures released in 2003 had suggested CSL Group Inc. had only earned $137,000 in federal government contracts during this time period. ...

...Throughout the 1990s, CSL Group Inc. oversaw the reflagging of several former Canadian-registered vessels which were placed under the shipping registries of nations commonly referred to as flags of convenience, where safety and labour laws were relaxed to be more business-friendly. ...

...Asterisk (*) denotes vessels owned by CSL Group Inc. All other vessels are "pooled" with pool partners Egon Oldendorff, Marbulk Shipping Inc (50% owned by The CSL Group), and the Torvald Klaveness Group, of which CSL Group Inc. owns partial or controlling shares.

Pretty neat scheme eh? And he was doing this as Finance Minister and then Prime Minister. A lot of this story on Canada Steamship Lines is told here:

http://www.canada.com/national/feat....html?id=a633dcfc-e7ad-44b1-ac59-7eb514eae945

 

[johnsmit]

It seems you both loss your selves when it comes to dealing with the wealthy.
As if taking their money ..or the money they have gouged..made through unreasonable profit taking..financing wars...drugs and striping countries of resources.. is the only way yo solve poverty.

Insisting that they pair their fair share..or maybe higher amounts. .is not the solution ..to people not having an education ...or having an opportunity to even have a job..And that job sould be something that is long term .productive to society and the world well being ..
Unlike most job which are short term and just there to make quick profits ...and very seldom owned by any of those 62 richest people

The reason there is poverty in our own country ..is be cause of our values..they resone we are not one of the poor countries is because of rule of law..and the insistence of the population of their rights..which if pushed they will fight for..
But it is allways privet indaviduals and corporate groups that will supply jobs..and control governments. .with their money. No country has ever been formed or sustained with out those people.

The average people does not have the wish ...or ability to make a country work ..we barely manage our own finances..and fuck up our own lives on a regular bases.


Canada is one of the odd countries ..very large..the biggest ..lot of resources. .small population ..which makes it very expensive to keep the infastructute going..
And yet governed manages ..even with the corruption and social apathy towards .wasted and miss managed funds by incopatent government .

Taking from the rich .and over taxing them is not the answer.
Changing the world attitude is..Change it to one if caring for each other..rather then just one of caring for my rich brothers...those of my religion..or race/tribe..and stop taking more then we need and wasting so much ..

 

[johnsmit]

And I did not even touch on the other issues of how the masses Omar controled and kept in their state of poor worker.and ignorant.

 

[johnsmit]

One question I have for any one that is not rich and thinks they have tomuch and don't pay their fair share..
What would you do with your share of the power ball winnings..all though after paying their fair share if taxes each will only get 160 million .
What would you do . Just spend it or make it grow..?
Party..give money to family and friends...live the life of the rich?
Or would you .male a corporation. .create jobs...help charities..invest in your cam unity and it's people ..?

That is why most of us just stumble from day to day. Looking for more money when we actually make enough and coukd fo more with the little we have...I know I have had a lot more to spend then I do today..was a lot younger..and could do more work ..but what I make today is a third of what I could make ..and if I watch my spending I still can save money if want and need to..
I just have to beat down some if my bad habits lol

 

[westwoody]

Bill Gates is rich because he created something.
His innate qualities cannot be produced by schooling, they may be encouraged and exploited but not created.
You can put your kid into minor hockey but that will not make them into Wayne Gretzky.
Everyone is an individual with their own abilities or lack thereof.

Education is very important. Anyone who can should get their kids into a private school. I pay for my late friend's grandson to go to a private school. The difference between public and private is unbelievable, you have to see it to believe it.
The parents who pay extra are automatically more invested in their child's education. It shows.

 

[johnsmit]

Sorry like all ways I over work a sentence with the wrong grammar and punktuasion and spelling of course
I guess I should of taken some of my own advice and gone back to school when I had the time and money.

But you missed the the meaning of what I try to say completely because you get tied up in what the errors are and not the content .even though it is a compilation of scattered thoughts.��

 

[Cami Parker]

Agree. My mom stays on my case to buy property, but I just keep telling her my money is perfectly fine right where it is. Just goes to show that self made men who do not come from money but still managed to become wealthy deserve a special kind of reverence.

 

[overdone]

corporations which are not people (they are persons under the law which is a different thing)

when did our supreme court or Parliament declare this as a fact of law?

must have missed that one, or are we now just following the US now?

 

[sdw]

He "created" a relatively minor piece of software by adapting the CPM operating system to the Intel 8080 chipset architecture. The then failed is his efforts to sell outright that code to IBM for a relatively small sum of money and agreed to settle for selling copies of the software to IBM under a licensing agreement. Microsoft was an initial success in spite of his best efforts, not because of it.

One just has to look at ultimate market failure of the technically better DR-DOS of the DOS era to see that monopolistic licensing agreements and anti-competitive business practices and not technical brilliance were the basis on which he built his wealth.

The DR-Dos/MS Dos war has always been interesting. Wikipedia has completely documented the war. MS Dos shipped in 1981 as MS Dos which was sold to computer manufactures other than IBM and as PC Dos which was installed on IBM PCs. DR Dos shipped in 1988 after Digital Research tried to have MS Dos/PC Dos declared by a court to infringe on CP/M. IBM basically bought Digital Research off, a fact that doesn't seem to have made it into your account of the history. Digital Research spent years trying to get people to buy various flavors of CP/M until shipping DR Dos in 1988.

MS Dos owes a fairly significant portion of it's ideas to TOPS-10 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TOPS-10 and TOPS-20 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TOPS-20 which is what Paul Allen and Bill Gates originally started Microsoft to write utilities and command languages for.

What really drove the success of the IBM PC platform was the "Killer Apps". Word Perfect, dBase and Lotus 1-2-3 were what made PCs essential in the business. When people started to bring work home, PCs became necessary at home also.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WordPerfect
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DBase
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lotus_1-2-3

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DR-DOS

Origins in CP/M

Digital Research's original CP/M for the 8-bit Intel 8080 and Z-80 based systems spawned numerous spin-off versions, most notably CP/M-86 for the Intel 8086/8088 family of processors. Although CP/M had dominated the market, and was shipped with the vast majority of non-proprietary-architecture personal computers, the IBM PC in 1981 brought the beginning of what was eventually to be a massive change.

IBM originally approached Digital Research, seeking an x86 version of CP/M. However, there were disagreements over the contract, and IBM withdrew. Instead, a deal was struck with Microsoft, who purchased another operating system, 86-DOS, from Seattle Computer Products. This became Microsoft MS-DOS and IBM PC DOS. 86-DOS' command structure and application programming interface imitated that of CP/M. Digital Research threatened legal action, claiming PC DOS/MS-DOS to be too similar to CP/M. IBM settled by agreeing to sell their x86 version of CP/M, CP/M-86, alongside PC DOS. However, PC DOS sold for $40, while CP/M-86 had a $240 price tag. The proportion of PC buyers prepared to spend six times as much to buy CP/M-86 was very small, and the availability of compatible application software, at first decisively in Digital Research's favor, was only temporary.[2]

Digital Research fought a long losing battle to promote CP/M-86 and its multi-tasking multi-user successor Concurrent CP/M-86, and eventually decided that they could not beat the Microsoft-IBM lead in application software availability, so they modified Concurrent CP/M-86 to allow it to run the same applications as MS-DOS and PC DOS.

This was shown publicly in December 1983[3] and shipped in March 1984 as Concurrent DOS 3.1 (aka CDOS with BDOS 3.1) to hardware vendors.[4] While Concurrent DOS continued to evolve in various flavours over the years to eventually become Multiuser DOS, it was not specifically tailored for the desktop market and too expensive for single-user applications. Therefore, over time two attempts were made to sideline the product.

Initially, Digital Research developed DOS Plus 1.2 to 2.1, a stripped-down and modified single-user derivative of Concurrent DOS 4.1 and 5.0, which ran applications for both platforms, and allowed switching between several tasks[5] as did the original CP/M-86. It did not perform well, and Digital Research made another attempt, this time a native DOS system. This new disk operating system was launched in 1988 as DR DOS.

Although DRI was based in Pacific Grove and later in Monterey, California, USA, the work on DOS Plus started in Newbury, Berkshire, UK, where Digital Research Europe had its OEM Support Group (51.40612°N 1.326374°W) located since 1983. Since 1986, most of the operating system work on Concurrent DOS 386 and XM, Multiuser DOS, DR DOS and PalmDOS was done in Digital Research's European Development Centre (EDC) (51.414478°N 1.512946°W and 51.420339°N 1.515223°W) in Hungerford, Berkshire, UK.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MS-DOS

MS-DOS (/ˌɛmɛsˈdɒs/ EM-es-DOSS; acronym for Microsoft Disk Operating System) is an operating system for x86-based personal computers mostly developed by Microsoft. It was the most commonly used member of the DOS family of operating systems, and was the main operating system for IBM PC compatible personal computers during the 1980s to the mid-1990s, when it was gradually superseded by operating systems offering a graphical user interface (GUI), in various generations of the graphical Microsoft Windows operating system by Microsoft Corporation.

MS-DOS resulted from a request in 1981 by IBM for an operating system to use in its IBM PC range of personal computers.[7][8] Microsoft quickly bought the rights to 86-DOS from Seattle Computer Products,[9] and began work on modifying it to meet IBM's specification. IBM licensed and released it in August 1981 as PC DOS 1.0 for use in their PCs. Although MS-DOS and PC DOS were initially developed in parallel by Microsoft and IBM, in subsequent years the two products diverged and became different from each other, with recognizable differences in compatibility, syntax, and capabilities.

During its life, several competing products were released for the x86 platform,[10] and MS-DOS went through eight versions, until development ceased in 2000. Initially MS-DOS was targeted at Intel 8086 processors running on computer hardware using floppy disks to store and access not only the operating system, but application software and user data as well. Progressive version releases delivered support for other mass storage media in ever greater sizes and formats, along with added feature support for newer processors and rapidly evolving computer architectures. Ultimately it was the key product in Microsoft's growth from a programming languages company to a diverse software development firm, providing the company with essential revenue and marketing resources. It was also the underlying basic operating system on which early versions of Windows ran as a GUI. It is a flexible operating system, and consumes negligible installation space.

Paul Allen and Bill Gates in 1981, with the computers that run Microsoft Basic or it's licensed variants.

And Yes, you do see a Tandy (Radio Shack) TRS-80 there. The last Tandy product that Bill Gates and Microsoft wrote the firmware for is the TRS 80 100 which was a neat Laptop that ran on 4 batteries. I still have one. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRS-80_Model_100

The ROM also contains a terminal program, TELCOM; an address/phone book organizer, ADDRSS; a to-do list organizer, SCHEDL; and a simple text editor, TEXT. The TELCOM program allows automation of a login sequence to a remote system under control of the BASIC interpreter.[2] As with other home computers of the era, a vast collection of PEEK and POKE locations were collected by avid hobbyists.

Invisible files in the system RAM named "Hayashi" and "Suzuki" commemorate the names of designers Junji Hayashi and Jay Suzuki. Another invisible deleted file named "RickY" refers to Rick Yamashita.[3] The Model 100 firmware was the last Microsoft product that Bill Gates developed personally, along with Suzuki. According to Gates, "part of my nostalgia about this machine is this was the last machine where I wrote a very high percentage of the code in the product".[4][2]

 

[sevenofnine]

you know its because were stupid rich people are smarter then us.

they don't invest there money, they invest ours and charge us for the privilege, if we profit they get a share if we don't they still charge us fees its a win win,

they don't build there own buildings to host sports teams, they con us the poor tax payer to build billion and million dollar structures so they can charge us high ticket prices ridicules prices for parking beer etc etc. there billionaires mostly, but they use tax payers money,
we listen to the bull shit millionaires spew forth in there way to becoming billionaires on our hard earned bucks because were greedy and suckers,

the truth is were all mostly greedy, but billionaires more so and willing to cut a few corners some of us won't, we dream of having what they have and listen to there crap if you only spend on this buy this, you will live the life have the dream, but the money gets funnelled into there pockets. they have conned us.

and we are too stupid.

just read something on the news, if oil isn't enough there is going to be a major debt crises a lot of countries are over extended and there is no way in hell they can pay it back,

greed is going to be the end of us, cheap dollars low interest rates. were all spending like drunken sailors governments included.