The Bonfire of Insanities

"By almost any measure, the world is better than it has ever been" - Bill Gates, January 2014

Ponzi Capitalism works for fewer and fewer people with each passing day. The Idiocracy won't figure this out until after-the-collapse. Bill Gates, sometime after that...

Gates back on top of Forbes' billionaire rankings at $76 billion
Monday, March 3rd, 2014
"Forbes says a record 1,645 billionaires made the list this year, with an average net worth of $4.7 billion. That's up from 1,426 billionaires last year with a net worth of $4.2 billion. Total net worth of this year's list was $6.4 trillion, up from $5.4 trillion last year."

Bill Gates [January 2014]: 

"By 2035, there will be almost no poor countries left in the world." 

Oxfam [January, 2014]

"Seven out of ten people live in countries where economic inequality has increased in the last 30 years"

"Given the scale of rising wealth concentrations, opportunity capture and unequal political representation are a serious and worrying trend"

"The bottom half of the world’s population owns the same as the richest 85 people in the world"

"The richest one percent increased their share of income in 24 out of 26 countries for which we have data between 1980 and 2012"

"In the US, the wealthiest one percent captured 95 percent of post-financial crisis growth since 2009, while the bottom 90 percent became poorer."

"This massive concentration of economic resources in the hands of fewer people presents a significant threat to inclusive political and economic systems...inevitably heightening social tensions and increasing the risk of societal breakdown"

"The impact of political capture is striking. Rich and poor countries alike are affected. Financial deregulation, skewed tax systems and rules facilitating evasion, austerity economics, policies that disproportionately harm women, and captured oil and mineral revenues are all examples"

RECOMMENDATIONS (TO BILLIONAIRES)

Those gathered at Davos for the World Economic Forum have the power to turn around 

the rapid increase in inequality. Oxfam is calling on them to pledge that they will: 

• Not dodge taxes in their own countries or in countries where they invest and operate, by using tax havens; 

• Not use their economic wealth to seek political favors that undermine the democratic will of their fellow citizens; 

• Make public all the investments in companies and trusts for which they are the ultimate beneficial owners; 

• Support progressive taxation on wealth and income; 

• Challenge governments to use their tax revenue to provide universal healthcare, education and social protection for citizens; 

• Demand a living wage in all the companies they own or control; 

• Challenge other economic elites to join them in these pledges. 

My Comment: Ponzi capitalism will never work for the majority. It's inherently a one-way scheme intended to enrich the extreme minority at the expense of the majority.  The Davos elite will never adopt the above recommendations willingly, and like Bill Gates will merely pretend that the status quo is working.

There are not enough resources on this planet to allow the consumption-oriented lifestyle to scale across 7 billion people. It doesn't even scale anymore across the developed nations. Only the temporary East-West arbitrage gave the illusion that the system was working even as massively accumulated debts and environmental degradation warned us that it wasn't.

The Idiocracy is heading for mass bankruptcy on an unprecedented scale. Moral bankruptcy is already complete.