The Elite: It's a Big Club and You're Not in it

Rambo said:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/may/12/lax-private-terminal-rich-people-celebrities

At LAX's new private terminal, the rich are pampered while normal people suffer
LA airport’s mega-exclusive terminal is a whole new way for the wealthy to separate themselves from others. But the manager denies it’s about inequality
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I think that's been open for a while.now?

I actually agree with the guy it's a tax. Most F passengers already bypass the unwashed masses as it is, paying 10 grand more is kind of nonsensical.
 
Kingstonian said:
The late Duke of Westminster was ahead of the game. Owned half of London and paid not a penny inheritance tax.
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For all his wealth, it didn't do him any good when the Grim Reaper came to call. And he looked after all those who were loyal to him and served in the T.A.

His precinct in Chester isn't doing so well these days.

Two of my ex-colleagues moved in his social circles, one extremely close, which is odd, because back in the day, my work mate use to drink in the spit and saw dust pubs of the north end of Birkenhead. Which I can assure you, is as far removed from royalty as you can get.
 
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For when a superyacht just isn’t enough . . .
Gabriella Swerling


May 16 2017, 12:01am, The Times

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A Dutch company has designed a support vessel that allows superyacht owners to take aircraft on their travelsDAMEN
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You’ve built your £100 million superyacht and filled it with all the essentials, including an underwater bar, a spa and an array of gadgets. What really cramps your style, though, is the lack of a helicopter landing pad and all your staff running around while you’re sunbathing on the top deck.

Thankfully, the superyacht support vessel is on the market to solve such problems.

The Game Changer is a 227ft vessel that allows superyacht owners to take aircraft, submersibles, fuel and staff on their travels without burdening the luxury vessel carrying their guests. Built by the Dutch firm Damen, it is believed to cost €40 to €50 million and can travel at 22 knots. Although there are only about 20 such vessels in the world, the niche market is developing rapidly.

Rose Damen, 32, chief executive of the yachting division of Damen, which was founded by her grandfather, explained: “You can take more toys on superyacht support vessels, and while we have always seen people enjoying their yachts, in the last couple of years people have become much more active. People like to carry submarines and if they go to colder areas, they want helicopters and most yachts don’t have decks.”

The support vessels may appeal to Roman Abramovich, 50, the Chelsea owner, who owns the £1.5 billion Eclipse, which is often spotted in glamorous ports, and Sir Philip Green, 65, chairman of the Arcadia Group, owns the £115 million Lionheart. Those leading the trend are believed to come from as far afield as Russia, the Middle East and New Zealand.

The Game Changer arrived in London on Sunday and will be moored by HMS Belfast on the Thames until Thursday in the hope of wooing buyers and brokers. It was completed in March and tested in the North Sea before being offered to clients. It has 250 square metres of open deck space, a submarine, a crane to hoist on toys such as seaplanes, and has accommodation for 22 crew and staff.

Matt Albert, a senior yacht broker at Monaco-based Yachting Partners International, pointed out: “It’s basically like having two yachts.”
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A World Without Poor People (Sort of)
2017 JULY 27
tags: a world without poor people, Housing prices
by Ian Welsh

Because the last time it was done, it was not forbidden, because good jobs cluster in only a few regions now and because of vast influxes of foreign money, we have charts like this:

SoCalMedianHousePrices.png


So, almost a 100% increase in five and a half years. (People living in Vancouver wish housing prices had only risen this much.)

Meanwhile, the Fed is muttering to itself about how there is almost no inflation, because they don’t measure housing price increases as inflation and consider the most important inflation that which does not include energy and food.

In other words, if the price of having a home, staying warm in your home or cool, driving your car and feeding yourself is going up, well, that’s just not very important.

A lot of people got very rich in real estate speculation and mortgages and downstream securities last time, and the vast majority of the rich ones got to keep the money they made. Even those who lost it, were mostly made whole by government. (Ordinary home owners were, uhhh, not made whole.)

Given it worked last time, given there was no real penalty for doing it and that the Fed and other central banks proved they were willing to bail out the rich to the tune of trillions of dollars, why not run the play again? The profits are privatized, the losses at the end will be socialized. Heck, with a bit of luck the Fed will print money pre-emptively to make sure that there is never a crisis for rich people ever again, just every increasing asset prices.

(This applies to the stock market as well.)

There is, mind you, a real economy buried under all the money being funneled to rich people somewhere, and at some point that economy may just collapse. After all, all the people who own these fancy condos and houses expect a servant class to take care of them.

But perhaps that can all be turned over to robots, as Silicon Valley wants, and the poor can just be expelled from places like SoCal, DC, New York, Vancouver and Toronto entirely, to slowly drug themselves to death, or perhaps just starve, in the vast interior wastelands of the continent where “real” people don’t want to live.

This is, fairly explicitly, what Silicon Valley tech bros want, to not need surplus people.

I wonder, though, how many of them will find that they too, are surplus, when AI becomes able to code and write ads.

It will, at least, be amusing.
 
That guy kind of contradicts himself. It seems like he's saying that lawyers and bar associations aren't liberal enough or anti-business enough. Which is not born out by statistics, review of headlines, or personal anecdote.
 
John Lee Pettimore III said:
That guy kind of contradicts himself. It seems like he's saying that lawyers and bar associations aren't liberal enough or anti-business enough. Which is not born out by statistics, review of headlines, or personal anecdote.
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I think it was about wielding political power and then using that for corporate ends rather than a particular political bent.
 
Rambo said:
I think it was about wielding political power and then using that for corporate ends rather than a particular political bent.
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Yeah, so not being anti-business enough. Which is only rational from an extremely liberal viewpoint, one of those that's so far to the left that it shares a lot in common with the far right.
 
Rambo said:
A World Without Poor People (Sort of)
2017 JULY 27
tags: a world without poor people, Housing prices
by Ian Welsh

Because the last time it was done, it was not forbidden, because good jobs cluster in only a few regions now and because of vast influxes of foreign money, we have charts like this:

SoCalMedianHousePrices.png


So, almost a 100% increase in five and a half years. (People living in Vancouver wish housing prices had only risen this much.)

Meanwhile, the Fed is muttering to itself about how there is almost no inflation, because they don’t measure housing price increases as inflation and consider the most important inflation that which does not include energy and food.

In other words, if the price of having a home, staying warm in your home or cool, driving your car and feeding yourself is going up, well, that’s just not very important.

A lot of people got very rich in real estate speculation and mortgages and downstream securities last time, and the vast majority of the rich ones got to keep the money they made. Even those who lost it, were mostly made whole by government. (Ordinary home owners were, uhhh, not made whole.)

Given it worked last time, given there was no real penalty for doing it and that the Fed and other central banks proved they were willing to bail out the rich to the tune of trillions of dollars, why not run the play again? The profits are privatized, the losses at the end will be socialized. Heck, with a bit of luck the Fed will print money pre-emptively to make sure that there is never a crisis for rich people ever again, just every increasing asset prices.

(This applies to the stock market as well.)

There is, mind you, a real economy buried under all the money being funneled to rich people somewhere, and at some point that economy may just collapse. After all, all the people who own these fancy condos and houses expect a servant class to take care of them.

But perhaps that can all be turned over to robots, as Silicon Valley wants, and the poor can just be expelled from places like SoCal, DC, New York, Vancouver and Toronto entirely, to slowly drug themselves to death, or perhaps just starve, in the vast interior wastelands of the continent where “real” people don’t want to live.

This is, fairly explicitly, what Silicon Valley tech bros want, to not need surplus people.

I wonder, though, how many of them will find that they too, are surplus, when AI becomes able to code and write ads.

It will, at least, be amusing.
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Sorry I missed this the first time. I agree with a lot of what they're saying. California is well on it's way to becoming a state where only rich people and public assistance dependents can live. The working poor and middle class are leaving. They'll need to constantly accept more immigrants from Central America in order to do the dirty jobs.

Highest state income tax in the nation.

Worst state to do business in 12 years in a row (goodbye small business owners)

Housing costs

Crumbling infrastructure while the state builds a multibillion dollar train to nowhere

The state is absolutely beautiful but no way I'd ever live there.
 
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LelandJ said:
Lumpen and Shooey will appreciate this:

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There are many things l could say but choose not to in public anymore.

Anyway, here we go. This goes a long way to discussing the pedophilia in hollywood imo, and it also makes a case about the rumours surrounding Mk ultra. This video is telling on a number of levels.
 
Why Income Inequality in the US Is Way Worse Than in Europe



The charts show the divergence over the last 40 years between the bottom 50 percent and top 1 percent of Europeans and Americans when it comes to share of income. In 1980, the top 1 percent took in about 10 percent of income in both Western Europe and the US. In 2016, that number was 12 percent in Europe and 20 percent in the US. Americans in the bottom 50 percent also saw their share of income drop from over 20 percent in 1980 to 13 percent in 2016. And this is only income—it doesn’t count assets like real estate or inherited wealth, where the rich hold much of their money.

The report, by economists Facundo Alvaredo, Lucas Chancel, Thomas Piketty (author of the popular book Capital in the Twenty-First Century), Emmanuel Saez, and Gabriel Zucman, explains why this stark difference has appeared:

The income-inequality trajectory observed in the United States is largely due to massive educational inequalities, combined with a tax system that grew less progressive despite a surge in top labor compensation since the 1980s, and in top capital incomes in the 2000s. Continental Europe meanwhile saw a lesser decline in its tax progressivity, while wage inequality was also moderated by educational and wage-setting policies that were relatively more favorable to low and middle-income groups. In both regions, income inequality between men and women has declined but remains particularly strong at the top of the distribution.​
Basically, tax cuts for the rich combined with our failing public school system (which can also be largely traced back to tax cuts) are the main culprit of this staggering divide. Trump’s tax cuts will only worsen this dynamic, according to Vox:

According to estimates from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the top fifth of earners get 70 percent of the bill’s benefits, and the top 1 percent get 34 percent. The new tax treatment for “pass-through” entities — companies organized as sole proprietorships, partnerships, LLCs, or S corporations — will mean an estimated $17 billion in tax savings for millionaires in 2018. American corporations are showering their shareholders with stock buybacks, thanks in part to their tax savings, and have returned nearly $700 billion to investors this year.​
Perhaps this is why young people in the US are drawn to social democratic programs in European countries. Just a thought.
 
Rambo said:
Why Income Inequality in the US Is Way Worse Than in Europe



The charts show the divergence over the last 40 years between the bottom 50 percent and top 1 percent of Europeans and Americans when it comes to share of income. In 1980, the top 1 percent took in about 10 percent of income in both Western Europe and the US. In 2016, that number was 12 percent in Europe and 20 percent in the US. Americans in the bottom 50 percent also saw their share of income drop from over 20 percent in 1980 to 13 percent in 2016. And this is only income—it doesn’t count assets like real estate or inherited wealth, where the rich hold much of their money.

The report, by economists Facundo Alvaredo, Lucas Chancel, Thomas Piketty (author of the popular book Capital in the Twenty-First Century), Emmanuel Saez, and Gabriel Zucman, explains why this stark difference has appeared:

The income-inequality trajectory observed in the United States is largely due to massive educational inequalities, combined with a tax system that grew less progressive despite a surge in top labor compensation since the 1980s, and in top capital incomes in the 2000s. Continental Europe meanwhile saw a lesser decline in its tax progressivity, while wage inequality was also moderated by educational and wage-setting policies that were relatively more favorable to low and middle-income groups. In both regions, income inequality between men and women has declined but remains particularly strong at the top of the distribution.​
Basically, tax cuts for the rich combined with our failing public school system (which can also be largely traced back to tax cuts) are the main culprit of this staggering divide. Trump’s tax cuts will only worsen this dynamic, according to Vox:

According to estimates from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the top fifth of earners get 70 percent of the bill’s benefits, and the top 1 percent get 34 percent. The new tax treatment for “pass-through” entities — companies organized as sole proprietorships, partnerships, LLCs, or S corporations — will mean an estimated $17 billion in tax savings for millionaires in 2018. American corporations are showering their shareholders with stock buybacks, thanks in part to their tax savings, and have returned nearly $700 billion to investors this year.​
Perhaps this is why young people in the US are drawn to social democratic programs in European countries. Just a thought.
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The disparity depends on whether it is only relative or represents a real wealth and poverty gap. Otherwise who cares what the top 1% earn? Some of the problems in European countries are very real: extremely high youth unemployment including graduates. Some of these ''social democratic programs'' (what exactly does that mean?) may be job creation schemes hiding structural unemployment with jobs that are not well paid. There's a lot of that over here.

I also notice a tendancy for people in the UK to look at Europe through rose tinted spectacles and those that lean towards the Left often consider it a socialist paradise. When I tell them places like The Netherlands it is a private health care paid through Insurance companies they are quite shocked. I wonder if some Americans have the same way of looking at Europe.
 
Pimpernel Smith said:
Some of these ''social democratic programs'' (what exactly does that mean?) may be job creation schemes hiding structural unemployment with jobs that are not well paid. There's a lot of that over here.
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Very popular in Germany to manipulate unemployment statistics. In particular in election years. Several million people with a job that makes them less than benefit payouts don't show up in the unemployment statistics as well.

Pimpernel Smith said:
I also notice a tendancy for people in the UK to look at Europe through rose tinted spectacles and those that lean towards the Left often consider it a socialist paradise. When I tell them places like The Netherlands it is a private health care paid through Insurance companies they are quite shocked. I wonder if some Americans have the same way of looking at Europe.
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They'd be even more shocked if they knew how much of their monthly income goes to health/ unemployment insurance and pension.
Plus, lets not forget that the system only works as long as you have more people paying in than taking out.
Which is why Western European countries are going to collapse soon. High unemployment, low income jobs (little to no income tax for the state) and mass immigration are killing the welfare system.
It sometimes get mentioned that Germans have saved up a lot of money, but I now wonder how much of that money belongs to working or middle class people?
 
^Holy crap - that's a stark illustration of a significant socio-economic problem.
 
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