Showing posts with label monopolies. Show all posts
Showing posts with label monopolies. Show all posts

Wednesday, August 06, 2014

My current list of prominent inequality drivers

I do not care about some having much more wealth than others, for instance having Picasso's on their walls that if taken down only had to go up on somebody else’s wall… and I fret where all those jobs which are based on obnoxiously expensive manual procedures would be were it not for the insanely wealthy… and, if there were no accumulation of wealth where would all those savings that can be invested come from?... 

But I do care profoundly when wealth is acquired by ways of opportunities not accorded to everyone... like mothers (and fathers), not getting any direct monetary societal reward, for their extraordinary efforts when staying home to lovingly take care of their children.

 And here are some new non traditional inequality drivers of which I am currently most suspicious.

Intellectual property rights which give way to incredible fortunes… there should be some more explicit limits on these… like a maximum amount of profits covered … a fixed number of units produced protected… or at least that profits derived from intellectually protected activities should be taxed at a higher rate than profits derived from competing naked in the market.

Monopolies… profit derived from monopolies should perhaps be taxed at a higher rate than ordinary profits.

Market shares/globalization… profit derived from activities that have achieved especially large local or global market shares should perhaps be taxed at a higher rate than ordinary profits.

Financial returns produced by the fact that banks because of implicit government guarantees are able to hold less capital than other normal commercial entities should be taxed at a higher rate than ordinary on their profits… something which they could naturally avoid by simply keeping more capital. 

And then there are those regulatory inequity drivers like pushing quantitative easing flows through a banking system with risk-weighted capital requirements, which so much favoring what is perceived as absolutely safe so much discriminates against what is perceived as risky, and something which of course impedes that liquidity and credit gets to where it is needed the most.

And had it not been for bail-outs and QEs Piketty’s book Capital in the 21st Century would not stand a chance to have seen the light as so much wealth would have been wiped out. 

And then there is the wealth tax, which if applied in a system where inequalities like those explained above persist, will only end up concentrating wealth more and more among fewer and fewer Plutocrats.

And, of course, perhaps foremost, all those other sources of discrimination that exist and hinders some from having the same opportunities as others... and all those resulting from the many existing inequalities at the start point.

And the list goes on, and the list goes on.. most likely including the low interests too.

And I also utterly dislike those who are only out to make a buck on the redistribution of wealth. If there is going to be redistribution do it through a system that guarantees that at least 99% goes where it was supposed to go… and that it all does not end in the hands of for equality fighting opportunists

But before ending let me pose the BIG Q.: Professor Thomas Piketty. What’s better, to live in your own inequality, or in somebody else’s equality?

Thursday, April 24, 2014

Let us avoid the merchants of poverty

I admire those who help the poor. Not so those who use the poor to help themselves.

Even though there has been a considerable reduction in the number of poor in the world (not necessarily sustainable), inequality, in terms of differences in income and wealth between the richest and the poorest has increased considerably during the last decades ... and that's not healthy, to say the least.

And accordingly, opportunistically, those who argue that everything is solved redistributing, meaning taking from the rich and giving it to the poor, now appear on the scene. How easy it would be if everything was just that easy. It is not. It is our duty to make sure that merchants of poverty, with their insidious sowing of envy and hatred, makes it even more difficult to help solve the poor’s already sufficient precarious situation.

The proposed solution is based on the illusion that it is possible to take away purchasing power from the rich and hand it over to the poor; and that the poor can then go with that purchasing power to the grocery store. False!

First, the rich have their wealth invested in assets, houses, stocks, paintings, yachts, etc. And so, to transform those assets into money, you have to sell them. To whom? Without wealthy buyers around, the sale would only translates into a reduction in the value of the assets ...resulting in a lower amount than estimated to be delivered to the poor. How does it help the poor that a Picasso valued at $50 million, is then only worth $1 million? 

Second, assuming you could sell the assets and give the money to the poor, will there be sufficient supply to satisfy the needs of the poor? No! The unexpected new demand will result in much inflation.

Does this mean that there is nothing to do? Not at all! What is clear is that instead of attacking the results of the inequitable distribution of income and wealth, we must concentrate on attacking its causes ... especially the artificial ones, those not based on the natural reality that we are not all equal.

What are these artificial causes? Each economy has them, in different degrees, but their most frequent common denominator is state interference. Licenses leading to monopolies (intellectual property rights?), foreign exchange controls, transparent and non-transparent subsidies, corruption, discriminatory regulations, etc. For example, in Venezuela, how much more could you have benefited the poorest if the government had not insisted on giving away gasoline at US$ 4 cents a liter... or selling foreign exchange cheaply to those vacationing abroad?

A seemingly easy way out like re-distribution, is simply not enough, nor is it sustainable, and it is the poor who most need to know that. It cannot be that the final result of the redistribution of wealth and income in Venezuela would be to concentrate even more income and wealth in the hands of our Boligarchs of turn… whatever political color they wear. 

But Kurowski! Have you not for years insisted in distributing all of Venezuela´s net oil revenues to the citizens­? Yes! But with that, much more than a redistribution of purchasing power, I mean the redistribution of powers and opportunities... from petrocrats to citizens.

And if the rich want to help, welcome, but perhaps they better deliver that help directly to the poor, instead of going through the politicians who so often are only acting as the merchants of poverty.

In other countries, where for the .01% plutocrats what the 99% holds seems not to suffice they are now looking for the other 0.99 %. Tax the wealth and, at the end of the day, without further changes, most of it will come back to fewer and fewer Plutocrats.

Translated from El Universal, Caracas Note: You will not find the link. I was censored in my homeland Venezuela 

PS. Legend holds it that when Otelo Saraiva de Carvalho, chief strategist of the 1974’s Carnation Revolution in Lisbon, told Sweden’s Olof Palme: “In Portugal we want to get rid of the rich”, Palme replied, “how curious, in Sweden we only aspire to get rid of the poor” 

Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)