A
few days ago, I posted a lengthy item concerning my feelings toward Classical
South Florida. If you wish to review it,
just check the posting dated October 26, 2011.
If you missed them, I encourage you to go back and read the past
postings. They are always available.
Also,
as of this writing, Jack’s Potpourri was viewed by folks in ten nations over
the past seven days. Ninety-two were in
the United States, 28 were in the Netherlands (a teacher must have found that
posting on Miro and made a class assignment out of it), two each were in
Germany, Kenya, Russia, Singapore and there was one hit each in Hong Kong,
Indonesia, South Korea and Moldava. We
get around.
Sixty-eight
percent of viewers used Internet Explorer to get here and 16% used Mozilla
Firefox. Windows was the operating
system of choice, being used by 83% of viewers while 11% used a MacIntosh
operating system.
JL
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Economics
201 – Wealth Redistribution
Planet Earth is a fortunate
planet, endowed with a multitude of riches.
Natural resources abound. Rich
soils and agreeable climates produce food for its inhabitants. The human race has been able to build and
develop the planet in a positive manner over the centuries so that, in effect,
the sum is worth far more than its parts.
Resources such as straw and mud baked in the hot sun were combined to
make bricks in ancient times. And a
brick hut is worth more than mere mud and straw, just as steel girders are
worth more than the iron ore and coal from which steel is made. And that added value can be moved around from
person to person. The Egyptian who built that brick hut may have exchanged it
for more than the worth of the mud and the straw, and suddenly he had money in
his hand to spend on food and clothing, for which he no longer had to scrounge
for himself, or even on more straw and mud to build more huts. And from humble beginnings like these, all of
our economic systems developed.
There is plenty of wealth in
the world. Economic problems, in Europe,
in Africa, in Asia and of course, in the United States, stem from how that
wealth is distributed among the planet’s population. There are many ways that this can be accomplished. If this were an ideal world, the Marxist
concept of taking “from each according to their abilities” and giving “to each
according to their needs” might work. But this isn’t an ideal world and people
don’t like to see the fruits of their labor given away to those who for one
reason or another didn’t work as hard as they did, or receive less than others for
all the work they did because their need was not as great as that of others.
Communism works for brainless automatons, but not for real people. That is why it eventually fails wherever it
is tried, as is the case of all kinds of totalitarian socialism. Its fault is that people will only accept it
if it is forced upon them with an iron fist.
The free enterprise system,
capitalism, whereby wealth is derived from hard work and putting money to work
developing resources, creating profits and increasing the wealth of the world,
just like that early Egyptian who had a thriving sun baked brick business did,
is another example of how wealth is distributed. Unfortunately, it often results in situations
where there are two kinds of people, “haves and have-nots.” Often, governments step in to look out for
the welfare of the “have-nots,” and with such dependence on government,
liberties are diminished. Sometimes, because of the extreme success of the
“haves,” the planet’s wealth becomes concentrated in their hands. On its voyage there, some of it is skimmed
off by governments to care for the “have-nots” and some is skimmed off by the
banks and the financial industry which acts as custodian for all of this
wealth, handles its continual moving around, and cultivates its growth. But wealth really isn’t necessary for growth
to occur in our economic system. The vision of future wealth is sometimes
enough to create credit which, for the short run anyway, can accomplish some of
the same things real wealth does.
But things can go wrong with
this system. Credit can be granted which
cannot be repaid. The underwater mortgage
problem in the United States is an example of this. Remembering that we can
have “have” and “have-not” nations as well as individuals, the fragile
economies of Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal and Ireland are examples of this. Only when these countries started to have
trouble paying their bills (interest on the bonds they issued) did the term
“sovereign debt” come into common use. Right
now, the world has more wealth that it ever had but it is not in the right
places. Too much of it is in the hands of a very few people or controlled by
financial institutions and governments which do not want to risk letting go of
it. In Saudi Arabia and some of the Gulf
states, a very, very few profit from control of the world’s major source of
petroleum.
Redistribution of wealth is
what the Arab Spring was all about. The
people who rebelled aren’t ending up with any more liberty than they previously
had, but they are looking for a chance to personally get their hands on a bit more
of the world’s wealth than they previously had.
The Occupy Wall Street demonstrators in New York, claiming to be the
99%, object to the amount of wealth in the hands of the 1%. In the eyes of some, we have a socialist
system looking out for “banks too big to fail” as well as the truly
impoverished with the government guaranteeing a measure of wealth in both
situations, while everyone else works within a capitalist system, working or
fighting for what they feel is their fair share of wealth. Tea Party adherents
basically want less of the wealth in the care of the government and more in the
hands of those who worked for it. Full employment, of course, assures the transfer of wealth to working people in the form of wages and salaries. Unemployment hinders it. Where
the wealth is and who controls it have been the causes of most of the wars in
the history of the planet. And
obviously, It is the reason for bank robberies and burglaries,
locally and internationally.
Solving the world’s economic
problems comes down to how we are going to redistribute the world’s
wealth. It has to be done, or everything
will come tumbling down like a house of cards.
When Europe bails out Greece, enabling that country’s debt to be paid
off to some extent, that amounts to redistributing debt from more solvent
nations to an impoverished one. And if
that redistribution involves bonds held by United States banks, that transfers
some of our wealth as well. United
Nations and United States aid to poor third world nations does the same thing. International
trade moves wealth around as it has done in the relationship between the United
States and China. When our country’s
subprime mortgage problem is ultimately solved, wealth will be transferred from
the government and the banks to mortgagors, some deserving and most undeserving
of it, whether we like it or not.
The chief economic problem
of the next few decades is whether wealth redistribution in the United States
and the entire world will take place in an orderly, well thought-out and
organized manner or in slipshod, scattershot ways which probably will create
even more problems, including wars, than we have now. The fellow who made bricks from mud and straw
never realized the mess he started.
Jack Lippman
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After reading all of that dull stuff, you deserve a break, so here's another of those wonderful girls painted by Alberto Vargas during the 1940s and 50s with some advice for you.
How
to Protect Your Computer
(Taken from a Special Advertising Section on this subject
in Bloomberg Business Week of October 24)
1. Keep Your Firewall On: Firewalls protect your computer from hackers
who try to gain access to crash it or steal information. Software firewalls are widely recommended and
come prepackaged.
2. Install or Update Your
Antivirus Software: Antivirus software is designed to prevent
malware from embedding on your computer.
If it detects malicious code, like a virus or a worm, it works to disarm
or remove it before it can do serious damage.
3. Install or Update Your
Antispyware Technology: Spyware is surreptitiously installed on your computer
to let others peer into your activities on the computer. Some spyware collects information about you
without your consent or produces unwanted pop-up ads. Antispyware combats these intrusions.
4. Keep Your Operating Systems
Updated: Computer operating systems are periodically
updated to stay in tune with technology requirements and to fix security
holes. Be sure to install the updates.
5. Be Careful of What Your
Download: Carelessly downloading email attachments can
circumvent even the most vigilant antivirus software. Never open an email attachment from someone
you don’t know, and be wary of forwarded attachments even from people you do.
6. Turn Off Your Computer: Many of us leave our computers on 24/7, but a
computer that is always turned on is more susceptible. Beyond firewall protection, which is designed
to fend off unwanted attacks, turning the computer off effectively severs an
attacker’s connection – be it spyware or a botnet.
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Can
anyone tell me what’s a botnet?
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Most readers of this blog are alerted by
Email every time a new posting appears. If you wish to be added to that
Email list, just let me know by Emailing me at Riart1@aol.com. Also, be aware that www.Jackspotpourri.com is now
available on your mobile devices in a modified, easy-to-read, format.
JL
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posting to a friend, or enemy for that matter, whom you think might be interested
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