One Finite Planet

One Finite Planet

Trump: Real Problem, No Solution

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The USA does have a real problem.

Donald Trump has a campaign slogan ‘Make America Great Again’.  So has America stopped being great?  The USA has changed from a country where most people saw their incomes increasing and saw themselves getting richer, to a country where most now see themselves getting poorer.  For people seeing themselves as becoming poorer, America seems not as great as it was. Donald Trump may not have the answer, but so far he is the only one in the campaign saying he sees that there is a problem, and he recognises the pain, and that America is as great as it should be.  I suggest this is propelling Trump forward, and if the Democrats keep denying there is any problem, then Trump could go all the way.

src= http://inequality.org/wealth-inequality/

Look at the graph to the right. From the mid 1920s, until the early 1980s  the gap between the rich and poor in the USA closes. Most of the population were getting closer in wealth to the rich, so they also felt richer.   This was also a period overall of real wage growth, people not only felt richer, the were getting richer.  From the early 1980s gap between most people and rich started widening again, making people feel less and less rich. Over this same period most data sources has seen no real median income increase  and many suggest for the most recent few years there has been an income decline.  So while middle America is at best going nowhere the rich still get richer than ever making everyone else feel relatively increasingly poor.

The promise has been ‘the rich get richer, but we will all get a share’ is looking more and more to deliver only for the rich.  So the politicians are only delivering for the rich,  and the system is broken.

Something Different.

Along comes Donald Trump. People are feeling pain and he acknowledges their pain and even suggest he will help, declaring ‘Make America Great Again’.  Trump states what everyone ‘knows’ but only Donald and Bernie are saying: the system is broken.  Just stating the system is broken, and being ‘outside the system’ is different enough to get attention.  Trump may be rich, but at least he is not the puppet of the rich is the proposal.

Blame.

Trumps states that foreigners are taking American jobs.  For manufacturing  all profits and work is moving offshore, mostly to China.  The foreigners taking American jobs may generate more than they take and lower cost of products from China may help with the cost of living, but logic counts for little with a population  who are disenfranchised and are looking for people to blame.

So Trump is sympathetic to the pain and even states he has identified those to blame.

The problem is that the real blame lies with the move ‘beyond growth age’ for a system that rewards the rich first and then has almost nothing left to distribute amongst the general population.

Solutions.

What Trumps is lacking is actual solutions other than bullying those he blames.  Even those he does not blame.  Why are iPhones not made in America?  It seems more that Trump would force them to be made in America rather than try to remove the reasons this activity has moved offshore.   But even solving the ‘not made here’ problem  would simply be an attempt to again increase growth, within a system that is still increasingly broken in terms of distribution of wealth.  America has sufficient wealth to be great for all its citizens, if only there was a better way to share that wealth.

Greater wealth distributed even more unevenly solves nothing.

Table of Contents

Categories

Flawed Australian voice of Indigenous People referendum: The irony of a voice campaign that failed to listen.

A tragic lost opportunity. Why didn’t those proposing the voice make changes to remove ambiguity and eliminated enough of the negative perception to win over enough support instead of simply declaring” “No, if that is how you see it you are either racist or stupid!” Was it just that there was no willingness to listen?

Australians had an opportunity in a constitutional referendum to righteously shout loudly “I am not a racist” by voting for a proposition that, at its core, could be seen as fundamentally flawed, divisive and even potentially racist, in the hope even a risk of moving in the direction of apartheid is still better than nothing.

The referendum resulted in a huge setback for action on indigenous disadvantage and while it did seem unlikely to do anything to unify Australians and offer more than some possible affirmative action, the division resulted with even sometimes “yes” voters being encouraged to also be racist.

This is a deeper look trying to see each side from the perspective of the other, with the reality that both sides had a point, and a vast majority of people do want equality and unity.

Perhaps it little more work could bring things together and offer a fresh enough perspective to move beyond just another well-intentioned patronising racism failure like the stolen generations?

Read More »

Crime: A litmus test for inequality?

Around the world, many countries have both a battle with equality for some racial groups and minorities and also a battle with crime-rates within and by those same groups.

Should we consider crime rates the real sentinels of problems and a solution require focusing on factors behind crime rates? Or is the correct response to rising crime rates or crime rates within specific groups an adoption of being “tough on crime”, thus increasing rates of incarceration and even deaths in custody for oppressed minorities and racial groups?

This is an exploration of not adjusting the level of penalties and instead focusing on the core issues and inequalities behind crime-rates. It is clear that it is “damaged people” in general rather than specific racial groups that correlate with elevated crime rates, so why not use crime rates to identify who is facing inequality?

Read More »

Influence: There’s no free lunch and they use your data to make you pay.

It can seem all those tech companies are so dumb giving away services for free.

I recently read another comment containing the “I don’t want Google getting more of my data to sell” and it reminded me of the question, ‘why is your data valuable?’ people too rarely ask. The common myth is that Facebook and Google etc want your data so they can sell it, but even with companies that do sell your data, it still requires someone to turn data into money, and enough money to fund the “free” services of the tech companies and allow them enough spare to make profits beyond anything seen in the world previously. So how does the data turn into so much money?

There is no such thing as a free lunch. Google and Facebook etc make their money from advertising, not from selling data, and unless they use can the data to persuade you to buy products at prices inflated by advertisers paying part of the sale price to Facebook/Google etc, they would lose money.

Your data is used to inflate the cost of living and earn votes for politicians with an agenda that gives them a budget to spend. They (Google/Facebook etc) don’t want to sell your data, but the reality, is more sinister: they use it to have to change your thinking, so more of your money will go to make them richer.

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The Power struggle in Australia.

From “the biggest corruption scandal ever” in Brazil, problems in Venezuela, human rights in Saudi Arabia and Iran, to the problems caused by lobbyists against action on climate change, an abundance of fossil fuels is a source of political power, yet rarely force for good, and Australia, with a wealth of coal and gas, is not spared.

The current crisis in Ukraine not only drives up energy prices globally, but it also creates a dilemma for gas producing nations.

Read More »

Fragile Democracy: Was Scott ‘Scomo’ Morrison autocrat of Australia?

Democracy collapses when a leader, who is able to bypass the checks and balances, uses their position to retain power.

Steps by recent leaders Scott Morrison and Australia and Donald Trump in the USA, raise questions as to whether current reliance on conventions and constitutions reliably protects democracy.

China, Russia and even North Korea are all technically democracies, and all proof of how technically being a democracy does not necessarily deliver real democracy.

Read More »