The Community Business Venture (A GENERAL OVERVIEW DISCUSSION)

[Jessica]

My God, the situation is even more dire than originally thought. New research indicates Thomas Piketty's ground breaking book, "Capital in the Twenty-First Century," the recent de facto blockbuster describing economic inequality was underestimated in its effect. In fact, a new study by Osca Jorda ,who works for The Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, with his book, "The Rate of Return On Everything," points in the direction of worsening economic inequality. His work squarely indicates the research from Piketty's book underestimated the historical rate of return on wealth.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/won ... a6b31fe6b6

Frankly, we are screwed. Totalitarianism is an arrangement of state power in which the ruling elite control the conditions of political and social existence while subverting the authority of individuals. With worsening economic inequality totalitarianism looms so much closer.

Doctor A, from his post #5 of this topic line, describes the impact of rising economic inequality when he says the resultant consequences are,

Climate change
Terrorism
Drugs and alcoholism
Teen age pregnancy
The effects of money in politics
Pollution and green initiatives
Longevity rates in various demographics
Women's rights
Racism
War
Social and work mobility
Prison recidivism rates
Education rates

And the list goes on...

But there is one root common denominator underlying all of these afflictions and that is Economic Inequality. It is obvious if we could significantly decrease Economic Inequality by decreasing Income Inequality we could ameliorate many of these problems.

The idea for a company, First Rate Crowd, that manifests itself as the very embodiment of reducing Income Inequality, is both brilliant and doable. It is a cohesive and practical mechanism helping to mitigate these problems. This is because it addresses the common core denominator of Economic Inequality. It is with great confidence I support the initiative for this Community platform. Should it be implemented on a significant scale, the world would be a much better place to live.

If ever there was a need to take action against economic inequality, this is it.

[MaureenCarter]

If anyone is interested, here is my list of the detrimental effects of income and economic inequality. I am sure there are others but these are the ones I was able to conveniently locate just on this site.

First, here are the ones Doctor A listed.

Climate change
Terrorism
Drugs and alcoholism
Teen age pregnancy
The effects of money in politics
Pollution and green initiatives
Longevity rates in various demographics
Women's rights
Racism
War
Social and work mobility
Prison recidivism rates
Education rates

Here is my list.

Wars (increased)
Terrorism (increased)
Life expectancy (decreased)
Math and literacy (decreased)
Climate change (increased)
Infant mortality (increased)
Homicides (increased)
Imprisonment (increased)
Teenage births (increased)
Trust (decreased)
Obesity (increased)
Mental illness (increased)
Drug addiction (increased)
Alcoholism (increased)
Social and work mobility (decreased)
Impact of money in politics (increased)
Pollution (increased)
Women's rights (decreased)
Racism (increased)

Perhaps Richard Wilkinson who did the video would have a full listing.

Maybe it will take a slap in the face with a wet fish for some people to notice a pattern of problems here. But for me it is quite obvious.

[Jessica]

Now we have more news of evil coming our way with the Sinclair Broadcast Group. For those who need a refresher, here is a short video explaining what is happening,

phpBB [video]

From my previous post #10,

Here I present five signs of totalitarianism. The presence of any one of these offenses alone casts doubt about a leader's commitments to democratic political leadership. When they occur together, however, they raise the alarm that we may be witnessing a derailment of a political experiment that has taken two and half centuries to refine.

Sign 2: Regime Controls the Truth. Totalitarian regimes insist that they alone know what is true; this official narrative is perfect and closed to debate.

Sign 3: Regime Suppresses Knowledge Producers. Purges of universities, media organizations, think tanks, nonpartisan government administrations, and research institutes are de rigeur under totalitarian regimes.

Sign 4: Regime Invents Common Enemies. Totalitarian regimes energize their base and forge national unity by emphasizing an us- vs them mentality:

The Guardian explains how these reporters were held hostage to repeat the Orwellian message by Sinclair.
By Terri Gerstein, April 08, 2018
These Americans are trapped in their jobs: they need to pay $10,000 to quit
Why would dozens of news anchors recite a Sinclair Broadcast group script? Because their contracts entrap them

Dozens of news anchors robotically intoned This is extremely dangerous to our democracy, after reciting what turned out to be a script by Sinclair Broadcast Group, owner and operator of 193 local TV stations. Dan Rather called it Orwellian, and many have asked in amazement: why would local journalists across the nation allow themselves to be used in such a demeaning way?

The answer is clear to me, as a lawyer with decades handling cases involving low-wage workers: people need jobs. But the anchors may have an even more specific concern: an employment contract that doesn't just bind but entraps them.

Among other things, Sinclair contracts contain a requirement that employees must pay their employers if they leave their jobs before their contract terms end. For example, an employee making $50,000 annually might have to pay in the ballpark of $10,000 if she wanted to leave after one year of a two-year term.

While its plainly illegal to impose a penalty on employees for leaving a job, the contract describes this requirement as liquidated damages. But such damages are allowed only in very limited situations, such as when an employee leaves a job shortly after receiving, at the employers expense, costly, specific, and transportable training. This is hardly the situation for Sinclair employees.

The Sinclair contracts also contain a non-compete clause, barring employees from working for competitors for a set time period after separation. Non-competes have come under considerable public scrutiny of late, covering around 20% of workers, according to a recent report.

Some states already limit non-competes: they're unenforceable in California; banned for low-wage workers in Illinois, and prohibited for broadcast employees in New York and, as of last week, in Utah. Many other states have active legislative proposals.

And even where there is no statute, state case law typically allows non-competes only to protect the employer's legitimate business interests (like trade secrets), and requires them to be reasonable regarding time period and geographic scope. Preventing a journalist from working for BuzzFeed or Facebook anywhere in the world seems, well, not very geographically limited.

Sinclair is not alone in using contracts to reduce worker's rights. More than half of private sector non-union employees can't bring cases in court because they are subject to forced arbitration, sometimes even as a requirement of applying for a job. The furniture chain Raymour & Flanigan contractually slashes the time for bringing discrimination claims in half, with mixed results in court. One New York tutoring company had contract provisions requiring employees to waive their right to apply to unemployment benefits, and to indemnify the company if they applied and lost.

Given the importance of an independent press, the Sinclair example may be particularly sinister. But the use of employment contracts to trap and exploit workers is a growing trend, including for low-wage workers, who may sign the contracts rapid-fire among a pile of papers in the HR office or among a string of touch-screens, and who often don't receive copies of their own contracts. Worst of all, they have no real ability to consult with lawyers or understand what they're giving up; and they have no choice but to sign if they want the job.

Companies that try to limit their liability by hoodwinking their employees into signing abusive employment contracts are taking advantage of the extreme power imbalance between an employer and a working person. People need to put food on the table and a roof over their heads. Abusing that fact to keep people tethered, and to steal away basic rights, is reprehensible. And as the disturbing Sinclair videos demonstrate, disempowerment of workers has an effect that pervades things we value in society, among them the free flow of information and journalistic integrity.

My previous post #10 also presents a dire warning from Barach Obama,

Its not that democracy is fragile, exactly, but it is reversible, according to former President Barack Obama.

During an interview earlier this week at the Economic Club of Chicago, Obama reminded his audience to remain vigilant in protecting the values and institutions that make up American democracy or risk following in the path of Nazi Germany.
You have to tend to this garden of democracy, otherwise things can fall apart fairly quickly. And we've seen societies where that happens, he told interviewer Mellody Hobson, president of Ariel Investments, after defending institutions such as freedom of religion and freedom of the press. (Obama admitted, however, that the latter sometimes drove him nuts during his time in the White House.)

So you've got to pay attention and vote, Obama said in video of the event.

I also state in my post #9, under Economic Inequality, Future Concerns: The Singularity, Pitchforks And Torches Will No Longer Be Able To Stop The 1%, where I make the point that,

Once they control the language they will control the laws, once they control the laws they will control the technology, and once they control the technology they will control us.

It sure does look like they are trying to control the language and what is said to me.

The Admin of this site presents some definitions of slavery from 1-B Economic Inequality: The Outrage! FUTURE CONCERNS: THE SINGULARITY, New Age Slavery,

Post by Admin, Mon Nov 09, 2015 2:09 pm
From the Oxford Dictionary and Merriam Webster Dictionary we find the following excerpts for the meaning of slave and slavery. Perhaps you find yourself relating to these definitions when it comes to your job and overall financial condition.

Oxford Dictionary

1) A person who is the legal property of another and is forced to obey them.

2) A person who works very hard without proper remuneration or appreciation.

3) A person who is excessively dependent upon or controlled by something.

Merriam Webster Dictionary

1) drudgery, toil

2) submission to a dominating influence

3) the state of a person who is a chattel of another

Sterling then drives the slavery point home from his post #22, from 1-B Economic Inequality: The Outrage! FUTURE CONCERNS: THE SINGULARITY, New Age Slavery

Can you read the handwriting on the wall or do you need a rifle barrel poked into your ribs or a trudgeon slammed up side your head to get the point? The world is drinking the poisoned Kool Aid of authoritarianism which derives its power from a loss of democracy and inequality. Take note, authoritarianism and inequality are the very bedrock of slavery. Say goodbye to your freedoms unless you are willing to fight for them.

To drive this concept home, Fareed Zakaria presents a global view on the demise of democracy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2YoKJfu_90

Anyone still sitting on the side lines while Donald Trump continues to make his own power grab is inviting slavery into their lives.

All the dots of authoritarianism, new age slavery, Orwellian thought, and Brown Shirt like tactics, when connected together, spells doom for Democracy if Trump and his thug cronies get their way. Let us all stand together to block them before it is too late.

[MaureenCarter]

I am adding food insecurity (increased) to my list of the detrimental effects of income and economic inequality.

Although obesity is a derivative of this in may cases, there are those who are not obese but still suffer from the negative effects hunger and malnutrition.

Where I live in California, if you factor in the cost of living, we have the highest poverty rate of any state in the nation as referenced below.

POLITIFACT CALIFORNIA
TRUE: California has the nation’s highest poverty rate, when factoring in cost-of-living
By Chris Nichols on Friday, January 20th, 2017
http://www.politifact.com/california/st ... ty-rate-w/

"If you look at the official poverty measure in California, we’re about average with the rest of the country," Mayes said. "But if you use the supplemental poverty measure, we are in the lead. We have the highest poverty rate in the nation -- higher than New Mexico, higher than any of the southern states, Louisiana, Alabama, higher than Idaho."

From 2013 to 2015, California had America’s 17th-highest poverty rate, 15 percent, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s Official Poverty Measure. That measure uses income levels to determine poverty, but does not consider differences in cost-of-living among states. It lists the official poverty threshold for a two-adult, two-child family at $24,036 in 2015.

During the same period, California had the highest poverty rate, 20.6 percent, according to the census’ Supplemental Poverty Measure. That study does account for cost-of-living, including taxes, housing and medical costs, and is considered by researchers a more accurate reflection of poverty. For a two-adult, two-child family in California, the poverty threshold was an average of $30,000, depending on the region in the state, according to a 2014 analysis by Public Policy Institute of California.

Looking at state poverty rates, the second highest is Florida’s 19 percent, followed by New York’s and Louisiana’s shared 17.9 percent rate. The national average is 15.1 percent using the supplemental measure.

Clearly poverty and food insecurity are related in a detrimental way to economic inequality which is corroborated in the following article.

From: Sage Journals

Economic Inequality, Food Insecurity, and the Erosion of Equality of Capabilities in the United States
Michael B. Elmes
First Published November 10, 2016 Research Article

Abstract

This article explores how economic inequality in the United States has led to growing levels of poverty, food insecurity, and obesity for the bottom segments of the economy. It takes the position that access to nutritious food is a requirement for living and for participating fully in the workplace and society. Because of increasing economic inequality in the United States, growing segments of the U.S. economy have become more food insecure and obese, eating unhealthy food for survival and suffering an erosion of “equality of capabilities” that undermines their ability to play a “full and active part in the functioning of (their) community.” Unequal access to nutritious foods in the United States is attributable in part to an industrial food system that is designed to produce short-term profits for industrial food producers, processors, and distributors that extract surplus labor value through market concentration and opportunistic behavior at the expense of the long-term benefits for consumers, food workers (including farmers), and ecosystems. Economic inequality, food insecurity, and the erosion of equality of capabilities in the United States have given rise to protest movements, social movements, social innovations, and some modest strengthening of regulations to make access to and consumption of healthy food a right for every person. Implications for business and society research are explored.

[Doctor A]

The USA is primed for a revolution and/or a civil war; let us make it a nonviolent event should it occur. The midterm 2018 election for congressional control and the 2020 Presidential race will have a lot to do with the making of these possible events. The FRC business venture, featuring the Economic Inequality Rating App, (EIRA) is a means to bring about law-abiding peaceful change.

Will a civil war, with all of its chaos, morbidity, mortality, and economic collapse, really happen?

31% Think U.S. Civil War Likely Soon
From Rasmussen Reports in Politics http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_ ... ikely_soon
Wednesday, June 27, 2018

Thirty-one percent (31%) of Likely U.S. Voters say it’s likely that the United States will experience a second civil war sometime in the next five years, with 11% who say it’s Very Likely.

Robert Reich, a pillar of liberal thought, presents the following frightful scenarios,

New American Journal
Are We Headed for Another Civil War?
June 9, 2018 https://www.newamericanjournal.net/2018 ... civil-war/

Imagine that an impeachment resolution against Trump passes the House. Trump claims it’s the work of the “deep state.” Fox News’s Sean Hannity demands every honest patriot take to the streets. Rightwing social media call for war. As insurrection spreads, Trump commands the armed forces to side with the “patriots.”

Or it’s November 2020 and Trump has lost the election. He charges voter fraud, claiming that the “deep state” organized tens of millions of illegal immigrants to vote against him, and says he has an obligation not to step down. Demonstrations and riots ensue. Trump commands the armed forces to put them down.

If these sound far-fetched, consider Trump’s torrent of lies, his admiration for foreign dictators, his off-hand jokes about being “president for life” (Xi Xinping “was able to do that,” he told admirers in March. “I think it’s great. Maybe we’ll give that a shot some day.’), and his increasing invocation of a “deep state” plot against him.

The United States is premised on an agreement about how to deal with our disagreements. It’s called the Constitution. We trust our system of government enough that we abide by its outcomes even though we may disagree with them. Only once in our history – in 1861 – did enough of us distrust the system so much we succumbed to civil war.

But what happens if a president claims our system is no longer trustworthy?

The esteemed opinion columnist for The New York Times, Thomas Friedman, recently weighed in on the matter of a possible civil war,

The American Civil War, Part II
Thomas Friedman, New York Times October 3, 2018 https://lasvegassun.com/news/2018/oct/0 ... r-part-ii/

The nation is deeply divided, with each side seeing the other as “the enemy.”

I began my journalism career covering a civil war in Lebanon. I never thought I would end my career covering a civil war in America.

We may not be there yet, but if we do not turn around now, we will surely get where we are going — which was best described by Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., on Monday: “Tribalism is ruining us. It is tearing our country apart. It is no way for sane adults to act.”

What stops it? When a majority of Americans, who are still center-left and center-right, come together and vote only for lawmakers who have the courage to demand a stop to it — now, right now, not just when they are leaving office or on their death beds.

But even this notion is under attack,

Daily Kos
Thomas L. Friedman Acknowledges "The American Civil War, Part II" - but omits a key element.
xaxnar Community
Wednesday October 03, 2018 https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2018/1 ... ey-element

Friedman calls on the center-left and the center-right to come together and vote for politicians to put a stop to this. The problem with that is that there is no center-right any more, just an increasingly extreme minority consolidating power by every means they can get away with, whether it’s rigging FBI investigations, stealing a Supreme Court seat, or colluding with Russia to steal an election. They are openly looting the country, trashing the rule of law, and using racism and worse to energize their base.

So often we now read the words partisanship, tribalism, polarization, divided, fractured, and the like, all pointing the momentum going in the same direction, so much so that we need to ask the question,

Quora
Is the US going to have a second civil war?
Jim Moore, Journalist https://www.quora.com/Is-the-US-going-t ... -civil-war

With an enormous disparity in wealth distribution, with immigration anxieties and xenophobia burrowing into even the smallest towns, with political divisiveness at or above the boiling point, with tax, education, and healthcare issues threatening the middle class at every turn—pitting the haves against the barely haves against the have-nothings—it is apparent to me that we are seeing incivility and conflict running rampant across the American landscape. There is a fire growing, and it is fueled by the very dry and apparently plentiful tinder of unethical, irresponsible, and careless behavior of national leadership.

Such uncivil conflict may not rise to the bar of armed aggression between states and countrymen, but the background noises caused by rising personal and community frustrations, blustering moral position-taking and righteous chest beating, Macedonian cries from many corners of the country, and the steady uptick of almost fascistic executive orders from a president who appears soulless to many, and outright dangerous to many others…that noise is, to my mind, the drumbeats of a war-in-the-making.

As I have stated previously,

Revolutions, as in the colloquial sense of overthrowing a government or economic system, are many times rapid, explosive, bloody, and with unpredictable results. Yet I hear many people calling for revolution in this manner without really thinking about the real consequences. For example, the Civil War here the USA caused approximately 750,000 deaths. This accounted for about 2.5% of the population at that time being lost. In today's terms, with a USA population of nearly 320 million people, this percentage is equivalent to the loss of 8.13 million people. To put this into perspective, nearly all of our largest city, New York City with its 8.5 million people, would be annihilated. It would mean a massive amount of suffering and this does not even account for the associated morbidity.

From our discussions, Dr. Heetun has expressed to me her desire not to invoke this type of radical revolution. Rather it would be the nature of the non-violent type of revolution. This involves creating change more in line with the philosophy of Gandhi's non-violent resistance. Bye the way, this resonates well with my own philosophy of how change should take place.

The first American Civil War was based in large part upon slavery; a second Civil war will be based in large part up New Age Slavery,

Under the FRC topic of New Age Slavery I wrote in post #2,

Most assuredly Wage Inequality causes slavery, just not the type stereotypically portrayed on television or in the movies. When many people think of slavery they think of modern day Blacks or ancient Jews in the days of the Pharos. The slave, bound with ropes or iron shackles, was restrict in their freedom and forced to perform tasks they otherwise would not do. The conditions caused by Wage Inequality are still slavery but with the physical restraints now being replaced by economic constraints. This type of loss of freedom is slow and insidious but nevertheless real and debilitating in a physical sense. If your parents are poor, there is a greater likelihood you too will be poor. If your parents are uneducated, there is a greater likelihood you too will be uneducated. Those relegated to poorer neighborhoods are many times bound by the chains of drug addiction, poverty, crime, loss of medical attention, and the like. The fence of days gone by that restricted a servants movements is now replaced with a financial barrier of similar impenetrability. Both circumscribe the free will of the individual.

This is now slavery and on a grand worldwide scale. No longer is it restricted to small regions but rather large swaths of society are affected. Arguably one could say there are more slaves now than ever before because of population growth and the economic chains of Income Inequality encircling the planet. The resentment this is causing is growing. A ratio of 335:1 is better reserved for the gods, not CEOs who put their paints on one leg at a time like the rest of us mortals. Sooner or later merely expressing outrage will not be sufficient; it will be replaced with the fury of action.

I also wrote in post #20,

So what is this, "fury of action," to be? How will it be expressed now that we have been shackled and crammed into an unfair cage?

We know with certainty the new Tax Plan will dramatically increase economic inequality. With this comes the inevitable worsening of negative outcomes regarding health and social problems in near lockstep. Listed below are some of these inevitable outcomes as referenced from the research shown in Richard Wilkinson's video:

Life expectancy (decreased)
Math and Literacy (decreased)
Infant Mortality (increased)
Homicides (increased)
Imprisonment (increased)
Teenage births (increased)
Trust (decreased)
Obesity (increased)
Mental illness (increased) including drug addiction and alcoholism
Social mobility (decreased)

When combined in a synergistic manner, these negative outcomes will create a toxic stew of combustible grievances mostly in the poorest communities with some parts of the middle class also being impacted. We also know how people respond to such stressors with the resultant physical and emotional suffering manifesting predictably. Eventually the community pressure cooker will explode with fragments of rage and violence in an attempt to lash out at those who have done them wrong; the wrong doers being those who have treated them unfairly as per the example of the monkey in the video. This is "the fury of action" I talk about.

"Freedom's just another word for nothin' left to lose" are the lyrics from the 1969 song, Me and Bobby McGee as sung by Janis Joplin. There is a lot of freedom gained when you have nothing left to lose. Just ask any anyone who has ever been pushed to the brink.

But "the fury of action" does not necessitate the use of force, armed insurrection, or bloodshed. Let us accomplish our goals by using our minds rather than our fists and take a cue from Gandhi as he said,

In a gentle way, you can shake the world.

And shake we must, but do it in a gentle way.

[Doctor A]

New technology is creating income inequality and economic inequality. This technology is being developed at ever increasing rates with the wealthy reaping the lion's share of the wealth and power from its production. Wealth and power beget more wealth and power. This then ultimately creates an upward spiral of more new technology with further generation of wealth and power for the elites. The real problem is weak governance and not technology per se. We must wake up to the fact this is our dilemma; if we continue to play by the old rules we risk annihilation. This is why the community business venture as a means to fund the Economic Inequality Rating App matters so much.

A review of the four following articles hammer this view of technology as the main culprit of inequality with the caveat it is not the technology in and of itself producing the inequality, but rather the wealthy elite individuals who manipulate their power to a political and financial advantage on their behalf.

1) Financial Times
Blame technology not globalisation for rising inequality, says IMF
Advanced-economy workers feeling effect of technological change, study finds
By Gemma Tetlow in London April 10, 2017

Policymakers in advanced economies should look to technological change, rather than globalisation, for the main explanation of why workers have failed to benefit fully from past economic growth, according to the International Monetary Fund.

Across the majority of advanced economies, workers have received a declining share of national income since the early 1990s, while a growing share of productivity gains has been captured by the owners of capital. About half of this decline can be attributed to the impact of technological progress, which has made it easier to automate routine tasks, according to new analysis from the IMF. This has been more important than globalisation in affecting how much workers have benefited from economic growth.

Because capital tends to be concentrated among the wealthy, a falling share of income for workers and vice versa for capital owners is likely to lead to rising income inequality, the study concludes.

2) United Nations University
Is Technological Innovation Making Society More Unequal?
2016•12•21 by Wim Naudé and Paula Nagler https://unu.edu/publications/articles/i ... equal.html

Are robots to be blamed?

Why is inequality rising? The main narratives connect higher within-country inequality to institutional and governance weaknesses, especially in the US and Europe. These have allowed policy and regulatory capture by an entrepreneurial elite, resulting in a greater share of GDP accruing to the owners of capital.

In recent years, though, technological innovation has been receiving increased attention as another possible cause. In particular, information and communication technology (ICT) advances — such as in robotics, automated processes, machine learning, the Internet of Things (IoT), “big data”, and artificial intelligence — are being blamed for making workers (primarily those with mid-level skills in medium-wage jobs) redundant.

Weak governance, weak entrepreneurship

The conclusion from these considerations is that while technological innovation may have contributed to rising inequality, its actual contribution has probably been dwarfed by the institutional-governance weaknesses. The rise in the income share of the top 0.1% of income earners has been fueled by reductions in social security, an unravelling of the power and rights of the labour union movement and collective bargaining, and regulatory capture by the rich. This has resulted in reductions in taxation and transfer payments, and in lower regulations on globalisation and the activities of multinational enterprises.

3) Future Of Life Institute
Artificial Intelligence and Income Inequality
March 16, 2017/by Ariel Conn https://futureoflife.org/2017/03/16/sha ... principle/

Income inequality is a well recognized problem. The gap between the rich and poor has grown over the last few decades, but it became increasingly pronounced after the 2008 financial crisis. While economists debate the extent to which technology plays a role in global inequality, most agree that tech advances have exacerbated the problem.

In an interview with the MIT Tech Review, economist Erik Brynjolfsson said, “My reading of the data is that technology is the main driver of the recent increases in inequality. It’s the biggest factor.”

Which begs the question: what happens as automation and AI technologies become more advanced and capable?

Artificial intelligence can generate great value by providing services and creating products more efficiently than ever before. But many fear this will lead to an even greater disparity between the wealthy and the rest of the world.

AI expert Yoshua Bengio suggests that equality and ensuring a shared benefit from AI could be pivotal in the development of safe artificial intelligence. Bengio, a professor at the University of Montreal, explains, “In a society where there’s a lot of violence, a lot of inequality, [then] the risk of misusing AI or having people use it irresponsibly in general is much greater. Making AI beneficial for all is very central to the safety question.”

In fact, when speaking with many AI experts across academia and industry, the consensus was unanimous: the development of AI cannot benefit only the few.

4) Techcrunch.com
Is technology contributing to increased inequality?
Christoffer Hernæs https://techcrunch.com/2017/03/29/is-te ... nequality/

However, the increase in inequality is affecting high- and middle-income countries, as labor-saving technology has replaced many blue-collar jobs that paid well. Those workers have had to switch to retail and home healthcare jobs, where the pay is typically lower.

The disparity between the rich and everyone else is larger than ever in the United States, and few places is this skewed wealth distribution more visible than in and around Silicon Valley. The chasm between tech multi-billionaires and the rest of the population in Northern California — where an estimated 31 percent of jobs pay $16 per hour or less and the median income in the U.S. today is about the same as it was in 1995 — has led to the conclusion that the tech sector is greatly contributing to increased inequality.

While it is tempting to name technology as one of the main culprits for the rise in inequality, blaming technology is merely an excuse to abdicate responsibility. Technology does not cause income disparity, but enables increased efficiency and wealth creation. The problem is how we choose to distribute the wealth and benefits of increased efficiency. So far, we are not really doing a good job in this department.

Frankly, people are the problem, not the technology.

From my previous post #6,

"A Trump presidency now tips the scale in the direction of a conservative ideological domination with the wealthy elites determined at all costs to control the technological Singularity. This is why your ideas and solutions are so important now, not later. In Singularity time, later is always too late. It is a now-or-never moment with the outcome of humanity hanging in the balance. Clearly, the FirstRateCrowd community business venture gives us a means to tip the scale back in our direction."

[MaureenCarter]

From my previous post, I have have decided to add food insecurity (increased) to my list of the detrimental effects of income and economic inequality. Here is the updated list. Seems everything in the world I do not like is related to these concepts.

Wars (increased)
Terrorism (increased)
Life expectancy (decreased)
Math and literacy (decreased)
Climate change (increased)
Infant mortality (increased)
Homicides (increased)
Imprisonment (increased)
Teenage births (increased)
Trust (decreased)
Obesity (increased)
Mental illness (increased)
Drug addiction (increased)
Alcoholism (increased)
Social and work mobility (decreased)
Impact of money in politics (increased)
Pollution (increased)
Women's rights (decreased)
Racism (increased)
Food Insecurity (increased)

[Sterling Volunteer]

I will also add an increase in loneliness to the list of detrimental items caused by income and economic inequality. Basically, loneliness varies according to the level of a persons wealth with poorer people being more lonely.

Campaign To End Loneliness
Guest Blog: Is loneliness an issue of inequality?
This blog was adapted from a version published at the Centre for Research on Environment, Society and Health (CRESH).
Written on August 15, 2016 https://www.campaigntoendloneliness.org ... nequality/

In our latest guest blog, Dr Claire Niedzwiedz discusses results from a new piece of research, published in Preventive Medicine, investigating how older people’s loneliness varies according to their level of wealth and how those with the least experience more loneliness than the wealthiest.

Loneliness is understood to be a result of the deficit between the actual and desired number (and/or quality) of social interactions and relations. It is increasingly recognised as an important public health issue and is related to a number of health conditions including coronary heart disease and dementia, and may increase chances of early death by around 26%.

From the Guardian:
Loneliness is not a private matter. In our market society, isolation is the price people pay for being on a low income, and having lots of face-to-face contact is a new form of privilege
Author Emily White,
Fri 6 Nov 2015 https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... ion-income

One factor that’s been consistently linked to loneliness is income. Here’s how it works: as your income falls, you get lonelier. An Australian study showed that people earning less than $600 a week were significantly lonelier than those earning over $1,000 per week. A large Dutch study came to the same conclusion: people with low incomes were twice as likely to be lonely and six times more likely to be socially isolated.

We live in a culture where it’s increasingly difficult to find ways to connect for free. We devalue and underfund libraries, parks and community centres. We commodify neighbourhoods, and then ask those who can no longer afford them to leave. We pull away from traditional sources of inclusion such as unions, places of worship, and groups such as the parent-teacher association (PTA). You might celebrate the death of the PTA – but that still leaves you with the prospect of people riding buses all day because they have no other way to connect.

It’s not just low incomes that cut people off from increasingly market-oriented sociability. My local paper, the Toronto Star, just introduced readers to the word “precarity”, or unsteady employment in all its forms: freelance work, flipped contracts and jobs with constantly changing shifts.

I’ve come to think that, when it comes to loneliness, precarious employment may be worse than having no job at all. If you’re not working, you might be able to rally yourself to volunteer at a community garden or animal shelter. If your schedule is constantly changing, or if you’re in a panic about landing your next freelance gig, you might be too anxious to do anything.

The London School of Economics sociologist Richard Sennett calls this “economically induced withdrawal” – you’ve got so much uncertainty in your life that your appetite for going out and meeting new people is basically nil.

Experts have been linking economic inequality and social inequality for a long time, arguing that healthy social networks and a lot of face-to-face contact are new forms of privilege – with the rich having more of them and the rest of us having less. At a policy level, though, we’re still not connecting the dots. An old church near me was just converted into condos without anyone asking if there was a way of relocating the communal space. Welfare is discussed without any reference to people’s ability to cook for others or meet a friend for coffee.

Socialising is increasingly seen as a “perk” – if you have the resources for that pilates class, then by all means enjoy it; if you don’t, then deal with feelings of isolation on your own. But loneliness and sociability are not private issues. Even if you have a steady job, you’re not going to see much of your friends if they’re maxed out searching for work.

Here is the new updated list:

Wars (increased)
Terrorism (increased)
Life expectancy (decreased)
Math and literacy (decreased)
Climate change (increased)
Infant mortality (increased)
Homicides (increased)
Imprisonment (increased)
Teenage births (increased)
Trust (decreased)
Obesity (increased)
Mental illness (increased)
Drug addiction (increased)
Alcoholism (increased)
Social and work mobility (decreased)
Impact of money in politics (increased)
Pollution (increased)
Women's rights (decreased)
Racism (increased)
Food Insecurity (increased)
Loneliness (increased)

[Doctor A]

The non-profit agency Oxfam states this year that the top 26 wealthy people have the same wealth as the bottom half. Much of this increase in economic inequality has to do with the disruptive role technology plays and a lack of institutional-governance weakness. This weakness allows the masses to suffer while the rich get progressively richer. One author suggests this suffering of the poor can be ameliorated to a certain extent by allowing them to use pods of free and endless virtual reality of beautiful worlds to live in. Move over The Matrix, there is a new prison in town we can live in.

CNN Business
The top 26 billionaires own $1.4 trillion — as much as 3.8 billion other people
By Tami Luhby, January 21, 2019, https://www.cnn.com/2019/01/20/business ... index.html

The world's billionaires are growing $2.5 billion richer every day, while the poorest half of the global population is seeing its net worth dwindle.
Billionaires, who now number a record 2,208, have more wealth than ever before, according to an Oxfam International report published Monday. Since the global financial crisis a decade ago, the number of billionaires has nearly doubled.
The annual study was released ahead of the yearly World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, which brings together some of the wealthiest and most influential people on Earth. The 106-page report is meant to call attention to the growing gap between rich and poor.
The combined fortunes of the world's 26 richest individuals reached $1.4 trillion last year — the same amount as the total wealth of the 3.8 billion poorest people.

Most of these mega-wealthy are American, according to the Forbes list of billionaires used by Oxfam. The names include Amazon's Jeff Bezos, Microsoft's Bill Gates, Berkshire Hathaway's Warren Buffett and Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg, who collectively are worth $357 billion, according to Forbes.

As I stated in my previously referenced post #16, from The Future Of Life Institute,

Income inequality is a well recognized problem. The gap between the rich and poor has grown over the last few decades, but it became increasingly pronounced after the 2008 financial crisis. While economists debate the extent to which technology plays a role in global inequality, most agree that tech advances have exacerbated the problem.

In an interview with the MIT Tech Review, economist Erik Brynjolfsson said, “My reading of the data is that technology is the main driver of the recent increases in inequality. It’s the biggest factor.”

We can expect to see more economic inequality as the tech industry grows.

Inc
Why Silicon Valley Income Inequality Is Just a Preview of What's to Come for the Rest of the U.S.
Sometimes what happens in one startup hub also happens in every other startup hub.
By John Boitnott, Oct 18, 2018, https://www.inc.com/john-boitnott/why-s ... of-us.html

Silicon Valley companies continue to pump out disruptive technology that's fueling regional and national economic growth. But according to a new report, they're also producing income inequality.

A team of researchers at the Everett Program at UC Santa Cruz studied federal and regional income statistics and found that in Silicon Valley, wages are sliding backwards rather than following the rise in the cost of living.

The just-released report showed that wages for 90 percent of Silicon Valley workers (all levels of workers except for the top 10 percent)are lower now than they were 20 years ago, after adjusting for inflation. That's in stark contrast to the 74 percent increase in overall per capita economic output in the Valley from 2001 to 2017.

Basically, it looks like business owners are keeping more of the profits from growth, at workers' expense.

in other words, the system is rigged to make the rich richer.

Silicon Valley is a canary in a coal mine.

You may think this is just San Francisco or Silicon Valley's problem. You'd be wrong. Research shows this is happening everywhere innovation is taking place - all over the country in fact. Silicon Valley is just a canary in a coal mine. As a longtime resident, I can see that the Bay Area is just facing these issues more intensely because there's a greater concentration of technology firms here.

Brookings' Metro Analysis of 100 urban areas proves the point. It examined income inequality and found it's in every major city where entrepreneurship thrives. New York City, Los Angeles, Austin, Seattle and Raleigh are just some of the cities facing the issue. In some cases, those in the top five percent of the income spectrum were making more than 18 times what people in the bottom 20 percent made.

This is not too minimize the role of weak governance as a tool of the elite to willfully increase economically as I point out in my previous post from United Nations University,

Weak governance, weak entrepreneurship

The conclusion from these considerations is that while technological innovation may have contributed to rising inequality, its actual contribution has probably been dwarfed by the institutional-governance weaknesses. The rise in the income share of the top 0.1% of income earners has been fueled by reductions in social security, an unravelling of the power and rights of the labour union movement and collective bargaining, and regulatory capture by the rich. This has resulted in reductions in taxation and transfer payments, and in lower regulations on globalisation and the activities of multinational enterprises.

What could be the outcome of this continually progressing inequality?

Cathy O'Neil paints a possible outcome for giving the masses virtual hamster cages as a way to minimize the inequality when she writes in,

Bloomberg Opinion
Are You Poor? Here’s Your Virtual Hamster Cage
Technology could erase the limits of inequality.
February 21, 2018 https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/artic ... inequality

there’s the middle ground. Society sees to the most basic needs of people considered “eligible” -- a category that would probably exclude citizens of other countries, felons and political extremists. The lower rungs get relegated to what I would call deluxe virtual-reality hamster cages -- pods in which they can freely and endlessly experience virtual lives in which they’re beautiful, sexy and admired, in which they have access to any book ever written or any 4chan post or conspiracy theory they want to explore (opioid drip optional). Addictive, but in endless supply. The artificial nature of their existence differentiates them from the more privileged, who actually interact with each other. The wealthy gallivant around on private jets, having real rather than virtual sex.

Would such a society be stable? It’s entirely possible, if the technology is good enough.

[Jessica]

The economic inequality noose is tightening around the necks of the 99%, squeezing the life out of us while economists such as Paul Krugman and others predict a recession at the end of this year or early next year. The system is rigged against us.

I see in the previous post,

Basically, it looks like business owners are keeping more of the profits from growth, at workers' expense.

in other words, the system is rigged to make the rich richer.

Even a mental midget can figure out the outcome of this equation. The rich are getting a greater percentage of the pie.

Today I read,

A record 7 million Americans have stopped paying their car loans, and even economists are surprised

Business Insider
Author Tanza Loudenback Feb. 12, 2019 https://www.businessinsider.com/auto-lo ... fed-2019-2

Millions of Americans are struggling with their car payments, and even economists are surprised.

According to a new report from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, more than 7 million Americans have reached serious delinquency status on their auto loans, meaning they're at least 90 days behind on payments.

Fed economists said this is "surprising" considering a strengthening labor market and economy.

"The substantial and growing number of distressed borrowers suggests that not all Americans have benefitted from the strong labor market and warrants continued monitoring and analysis of this sector," Fed economists wrote in a blog post dissecting the report.

"Surprising?" Really?

To quote, Yogi Berra once said, "You better cut the pizza in four pieces because I’m not hungry enough to eat six."

No matter how you cut the pie, we are getting screwed.

The forgoing post talked about a virtual reality hamster cage of the poor. Maybe it will come to this after all.

Also, here is a short video on Krugman's prediction about the coming recession. [/url] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=degD0lWoI-w[/url]