To understand just how grim the coming decade is likely to be for the world’s super-rich, let’s start with three premises:
1) Capitalist democracy — defined as free individuals managing their own property and periodically electing new leaders — is the only system of social organization that’s consistent with human nature and is, therefore, sustainable.
2) Capitalism inevitably produces inequality as a few participants — through energy, creativity, and (frequently) luck — do extremely well while the vast majority do okay and a few do very badly.
3) Since the big winners — now commonly known as the 1% — are vastly outnumbered by the rest of society, they can only keep their exulted position if they convince the 99% to let them be. If the rich fail to make their case, everyone else will simply vote to expropriate the most visible fortunes.
If you accept these assertions, it follows that enlightened elites would be all about fostering upward mobility, because when people on the lower rungs of the economic ladder know that by working hard and following the rules they can move their families to the next higher rung in a reasonable amount of time, they focus on their on improving prospects and don’t much care if a few billionaires live like princes and kings.
But that’s emphatically not the case these days. The current generation of corporate and political winners have blatantly and systematically exploited nearly everyone else. Amazon, for instance, staffs its hellscape warehouses with RV caravans of migrant senior citizens working long, hard days for subsistence wages. Apple makes its high-margin phones in Chinese sweatshop factories where suicide is the biggest occupational health hazard.
Manufacturing company CEOs close their domestic factories and ship the jobs overseas, then pay themselves massive year-end bonuses to reflect the resulting slight uptick in profit margins. Banks hijack the political process to get themselves deregulated and then pass laws that make borrowers lifetime slaves of creditors. Politicians enter public life with modest bank accounts and retire multi-millionaires. Pretty much the entire political/corporate class favors more-or-less open borders, guaranteeing themselves cheap nannies and gardeners while American wages stagnate.
And they do all this publicly, apparently so sure of their virtue that they see no need to hide their predation.
And now, as debts mount and anger builds, the typical response of this “breakaway civilization” is to buy compounds in New Zealand in which to weather the end of the financial world.
Populism becomes the new normal
Why would any voting majority put up with the above? Well, they wouldn’t if they have alternatives. And now the political system is offering plenty, in the form of left and right-wing populism. In virtually every major country there are movements, parties and individual politicians who point out that the system is rigged in favor of the rich an promise to claw back what was stolen. And they’re doing well. Donald Trump, Brexit, France’s Yellow Vest protesters and Bernie Sanders are examples of this process in action, but they’re just the beginning. Every major country will have its Trump or Sanders in the coming decade, which means globalism will be dismantled, marginal tax rates will soar, fortunes will be expropriated, and borders will be closed to free movement of people and/or capital. It will, in short, be open season on the aristocracy.
Imagine, for instance, President Bernie Sanders’ reaction to a mass migration of mega-fortunes to overseas end-of-the-world bunkers: “Oh, you’re leaving? Fine. Go. But your mansions, bank accounts and stock portfolios stay here to fund health care. And we’re talking to New Zealand about a bunker tax. Bon voyage.”
This of course will lead to an implosion of capitalist wealth creation right out of Atlas Shrugged. Which is to say the 1% will lose twice, first when governments take big chunks of their fortunes, and then when whatever is left evaporates in a global financial crisis.
To sum up, the coming decade will be bad for just about everyone except gold bugs. But it will be the fault of the people who should have seen it coming and could have prevented it.
There will never be poetic justice until the torches and pitchforks are heard.
Prescient observations.
Another way of saying it is that the Global Economy is based primarily on Consumerism as the main end product (71% +).
America is the last Mass Volume Consumer Market still standing & capable of absorbing globally exported consumer products.
The America middle class is the major customer for these imported consumer products,and it is broke & has run out of credit.
If these bankrupt consumers can’t get credit to consume,the whole Global Economy will fold up!
The super wealthy are super wealthy because they are insiders in a basic Pyramid Scam known as Central Bank Reserve System.
A system set up to systematically loot the nation’s wealth for the enrichment of the key insiders.
This system of Reserve Banking is great,for insiders, in it’s early stages because
most of the wealth in the financial system is highly leveraged.
Leveraged debt the insider keep rolling over so the payback time keeps being pushed into the future.
The current problem with all of this leveraged wealth paper wealth is that it is now payback time & the huge debts in the markets can’t possibly be paid off!
Why do so many commentators believe that globalists spent a century getting here, but have no exit strategy?
They plotted their way in, but don’t have a plan for getting out?
Doubtful.
On a day of their choosing, they will perform a controlled demolition which they will blame on a patsy, and those that endure it will a) blame the patsy and b) beg the globalists to bring order from the chaos.
And they will – the next iteration of their tyranny will be truly Orwellian, and those they rule over will have begged them to impose it.
All we can do is name the launch day of their manufactured crisis, and forecast its nature.
I have no doubt, Nefti, that in practice you are correct. But I do hope this time, with extensive social media and high awareness, the people will not be fooled this time around – perhaps?
I think the following video can shed light on the problem.
https://youtu.be/9w6QYPzF2TI
Lengthy office hrs but still unable to earn the things you truly deserve. A getaway planned for a long time and still unable to go. Your office work does not enable you to spend very much required amount of time with your beloved. For everybody who is going through all of this? In that case, we certainly have useful solution for you. A job opportunity which happens to be completely web-based. This implies you can work from anywhere for small amount of hrs which enables you to make money as much as $20000. It truly is a fantastic possibility to be your own boss and live the way in your own terms . Visit this amazing opportunity >>> earn35kpermonth.am-geilsten.de
Desire Money? Also, require family members Time?IF you would like to MAKE SOME swift CONSISTANT cash, all you have to devote is few hours every day.You Could Possibly Receive up to $500 Each Week and allocate precious time with your nearest and dearest. Check out This Site for specifics ej.uz/o7ph
Yes! Run to New Zealand so the Chinese can sweep down and put you in camps! LOL
Read “The Great Leveler” by Walter Scheidel (2017). He examines income inequality across all of human history. His conclusion: leveling can ONLY be achieved through violent, disruptive events that shake society to its core. This includes prolonged war, lethal plagues like the Black Death, and violent, top-to-bottom revolutions.
His analysis shows that the 1% NEVER give up their privileged position voluntarily. If elected, the Stalinist, Bernie Sanders, will go after the 1% with everything he’s got. That’s exactly what his followers want. How will that work? Scheidel’s final words are chilling.
“If history is anything to go by, peaceful policy reform may prove unequal to the growing challenges ahead. But what of the alternatives? All of us who prize greater economic equality would do well to remember that with the rarest of exceptions, it was only ever brought forth in sorrow. Be careful what you wish for.”
Excellent commentary John, thank you and I too am trying my best to educate the 99% against the coming disaster – I hope you are right, but you cannot eat gold:
https://www.theburningplatform.com/2020/02/15/the-financial-jigsaw-issue-no-91/
You’re not expected to eat gold. You use it to exchange for a currency perceived to have more value to buy food, or other things necessary for survival when the local currency is worth nothing and the shelves are bare anyway. Anything you want is instantly magically available.
Ask anyone who has actually survived such a crisis.
Thanks robt, of course in practice you are right, but I was being ironic; implying the man in the lifeboat with lots of gold but no water – an extreme.
The big problem is the mass adoption of the survival of the richest way of thinking which creates a situation where no matter how much effort one makes or intelligence one has there is no legitimate way of getting started let alone moving up in the world. Thanks to wage suppression and unrestrained real estate profiteering we are there and any real or presumed social contract is busted. It is the wild, wild west when you really think about it. The elites need to be concerned about what their actions lead to and what those actions will inspire.
There is behavior that the elites like and there is behavior that preserves the elites. They are not the same thing.
Complete BS if you believe this. The 1% corporate oligarchs make the rules, and no matter who votes for what, the rules benefit the ones who make them.
Only on a state/local level will people be able to take back their sovereignty. Much more likely to see states create their own financial system maybe based on gold when the economy gets bad enough.