Saturday, October 22, 2011
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EntrepreneursWorkshop.org
From Pawnshops to Poverty, Inc. How the Working Poor Became Big Business
- by Gary Rivlin
Creating a world without poverty
- Muhammad Yunus
Supercapitalism
- by Robert Reich
REASON: why Liberals will win the war
- by Robert Reich
The future of Success
- by Robert Reich
The Work of Nations:
Preparing Ourselves for 21st Century Capitalism
The Entrepreneur's Workshop is an adaptive, collaborative, for-profit venture, designed to establish and nurture social-business startups. The MISSION of the Entrepreneur's Workshop is to provide a low-cost professional workspace and idea laboratory, where socially responsible entrepreneurs can develop new business identities in a secure, ethical environment of open communication and collective potential.
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Capital in the 21st Century
by Thomas Piketty
The End of Money
by Tom H. Greco
Confidence Men
by Ron Suskind
William D. Cohan
"Money and Power: how Goldman Sachs came to rule the world"
Ha-Joon Chang
"23 Things they don't tell you about Capitalism"
From Pawnshops to Poverty, Inc. How the Working Poor Became Big Business
- by Gary Rivlin
Creating a world without poverty
- Muhammad Yunus
Supercapitalism
- by Robert Reich
REASON: why Liberals will win the war
- by Robert Reich
The future of Success
- by Robert Reich
The Work of Nations:
Preparing Ourselves for 21st Century Capitalism
2 comments:
I'm against CAPITALISM, I like regulated free-markets, A.K.A. Fair-Markets, but unrestrained capitalism allows the rich to make money by manipulating markets and hurting the poor. You can EARN as much money as you want, but those who live of the interest on their trust fund should be taxed at 50%.
Capitalism is just the amassing of capital resources and profiting off interest (i.e. usury). But such wealth is unearned, generated from the labor of others or the work of nature.
If the laborers freely choose to enter an agreement whereb...y the value of their work is transferred to others, that is a just financial relationship. But they can ONLY make that choice freely if they have no fear of harm and thus some reasonable guarantee that all their basic needs, such as safety and security, will be met, even if they make a different choice.
Because capitalists own all the natural resources of the planet without taking any of the responsibility (i.e. through limited liability corporations), the people's labor is stolen, extorted via threats of starvation or similar demise, should people choose not to barter their labor for food, they risk social alienation, illness, and death.
As long as maximizing profit is the highest value, then the system is unsustainable. Because on a finite planet, capital is also finite, and in a competitive system there must be winners and losers. In a cooperative system, we will all win, some may win more, but their will be no losers (except the criminals, i.e. those who would harm others for profit).
The only way to maximize the potential for the planet, and freedom for the people, is to socialize the planet's resources and guarantee a minimum standard of living for everyone. No homelessness, no starvation, no poisoning. This is the opposite of the current system.
The most valuable resource we have is the biodiversity of the planet. We must stop the mass extinction of species due to human enterprise, and preserve what is left for future generations. What nature created should not be owned, nor patented, it is the inheritance of all people, but our system of property rights allows corporations to destroy our inheritance for profit.
Under the current unsustainable system of capitalism, we are headed for hell, because natural resources and ideas are defined as 'property', yet their is no tax on their ownership. We need to limit all such 'property' ownership, tax it appropriately, and return to merit based income. Such regulated free-markets, will produce a financial floor, where even the ill and mentally inferior will live with dignity and all people will have the freedom to choose their financial relationships and maximize their individual potential.
Unfortunately, all the powerful people today depend upon the existing systems, and most of them live in the USA. They don't have the ability to sustain the system, but they will use all of their resources to try. This means they either learn to share, or
they will destroy the world. Adapt or die.
I wouldn't mind a flat tax, if the corporations and the wealthy actually paid it. Because as it stands, the rich pay less than 10% of their actual income in taxes, and corporations actually get paid by the government, and most do not to pay... any taxes.
According to Kiplinger, the top 1% (incomes > $343,927) reported 16.9% of all the country’s taxable income, and they paid 37% of all the taxes. While people in the bottom 50% (everyone < $32,396) earned just 13% of the income, and paid 2.25% of all the income tax.
The 1% made more than the bottom 50%, but only paid 37% of the taxes. Fairness dictates that they should pay at least 50% of the taxes, because they get as much financial benefit as at least 50% of the population, but this is deceptive, because rich people hire tax accountants to HIDE most of their income in tax shelters so that they can deduct or avoid income tax. Thus, they only pay taxes upon the personal income that they choose to let Uncle Sam see. The rest they "re-invest" so that they don't loose any of its value. Or they write off their income as a business expense, so that they benefit without paying either corporate or personal taxes.
Of course the loopholes in our tax law were put there for this reason, so you might assume that the rich must pay a lot for lobbyists and political campaigns, kind of like a tax on the wealthy for controlling our government legal system, but actually they pay less than 1% for everything regarding such political systems, even the TV commercials.
Corporations are worse than the rich, and owned by them too. Big businesses usually act as government contractors, thus their income comes from the government. Then they get subsidized by the government, and also get special laws passed in their favor for doing business in a given location, or providing jobs to a given area. They also often get tax breaks or incentives for producing their products, or selling them overseas. Finally, they never pay taxes, because they can 're-invest' all of their income back into the business, and thus all their profit is redistributed as a business expense, salary bonuses, or dividends. And that doesn't even include buying out their competitors, or devaluing their stock, while 'investing' in dividends that short their own stock through a third party. The schemes are infinite. General Electric was paid $3.5-billion and never paid a dime in taxes. Bank of America didn't pay taxes and was BAILED OUT to the tune of $43-Billion, not to mention their undisclosed 'emergency loans' from the Federal Reserve.
Thus, if we had a 9% flat tax, no tax loopholes. It would raise revenue.
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