The concept of “Philanthropy” is a disguise, & an insult. Of course we all love (phil) man (anthropos). It’s not just the hyper wealthy who “love man”. But they are that vain and stupid, and semantically challenged, that they don’t even know that they insult us all, the 99%, while gorging themselves on their moral superiority, being, that way, like all ridiculous tyrants of old…Or then maybe as the main dish? Verily, the word “philanthropy” hides the reality of the .1% preying on the rest of the planet!
From the World Economic Forum, in other words, “Davos”, today:
World Economic Forum Verified account @wef
The impact that the global age of #philanthropy is expected to have on the world https://wef.ch/2G0lndz
This is an amazing graph, but the comment of the WEF, not perceiving that they implicitly and unwittingly identify “philanthropy” and gross inequality, is even more priceless!Something has to be done to stop the evil philanthropists: Global Laws
Quoting from the WEF:
“As the rich get richer, the world has entered an “age of philanthropy”, with education the most popular focus of some 260,000 foundations globally, researchers said on April 26.
Increasing numbers of rich individuals, families and corporations are setting up foundations for social investment amid persistent inequality, said study author Paula Johnson of Harvard University’s Hauser Institute for Civil Society.
“(Due to) the rapid growth of wealth around the world, more individuals and families (have) the ability to create philanthropic capital,” she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
The richest 1 percent of the world’s population owns half of its wealth, up from 43 percent in 2008, propelled in part by gains in financial assets, like stocks and bonds.
Many super rich Americans have set up foundations which run their own programmes or give grants, including Bill Gates of Microsoft, Warren Buffett, who heads the Berkshire Hathaway conglomerate, and the industrialist Koch brothers.
There are more than 15 million millionaires and close to 2,000 billionaires in the world, while 10 percent of the population live on less than $1.90 a day, said the report, which was funded by the Swiss bank UBS.
Globally, foundations have combined assets of $1.5 trillion – slightly more than the U.S. federal government’s 2018 budget – the report found in an assessment of 39 countries around the world, including in Asia, Latin America and Africa.
The sector is notable for its youth and recent growth. Almost three-quarters of 80,000 foundations that gave their age were started in the last 25 years, the report said.
“We indeed live in a ‘global age of philanthropy’,” it said.
“If this trajectory continues, philanthropy will be poised to have an increasingly significant social and economic impact.”
What could go wrong? When what is already wrong is viewed as the ultimate friendliness to the human genus?
Foundations pay no taxes. Does that ring a bell? The definition of super rich, nowadays means: little taxes paid, plenty of wealth and power (like free travel for “business”).
Want to fight inequality?
North Korea, Iran, Trump: time to get global! Time to enforce civilization globally. France arrested one of her most famous plutocrats, for violating, corrupting, bleeding dry, two African countries. A good first step towards the refugee crisis! All plutocrats violate. If not local laws, or their spirit, then decency and civilization.
Meanwhile, Trump nominated Gina Haspel a 33 year veteran of the CIA, to head the agency (she was second in command under Mike Pompeo, now Secretary of State, visiting Pyongyang, North Korea), Gina is a woman, first of her gender nominated as head of CIA. “Democrats” are giving her a hard time, especially the billionairess Feinstein (yes, billionairess, with a b, although she pretends she is not, by committing her husband fortune, acquired when she negotiated with China, while he traded there…)
Kamala Harris, Verified account a young chick who is the ever cute “junior” Senator of California now endowed with gigantic powers, is proud of her own moral cluelessness:
@KamalaHarris: “Earlier today I asked CIA director nominee Gina Haspel if she believed enhanced interrogation tactics like waterboarding were immoral. It was a yes or no question. She refused to answer.”
I made an effort to educate unsophisticated Kamala… Although I don’t think gigantically powerful people, such as our elected and selected “representatives” can be educated, they are too full of themselves, they are too unequal in powers to ours, and they are there because they are ambitious for the sort of money political power can bring… And when to live the high life, as Obama does! So I wrote:
Was 9/11 moral or not? Why not ask CIA Haspel that? For Sheikh Mohammed, who planned 9/11, 9/11 was moral. CIA “waterboarded” him. Real question is not whether “enhancement” was “moral”, but whether it was smart. Middle Ages stopped using torture because it was very ineffective!
No doubt Ms. Haspel is the most qualified nominee to the CIA in ages. And she is a woman! Quit the sexism, and confirm!
Patrice Ayme
Tags: Inequality, Philanthropy, plutocracy, WEF
Patrice Ayme's Thoughts 
May 10, 2018 at 3:41 am |
Why the love for Haspel? If she was part of the torture program as claimed, whether she is “most qualified” would seem besides the point. The enhanced interrogation is another stain on the US reputation and those who were running it should face consequences. Just because she is a woman doesn’t make it sexist.
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May 10, 2018 at 3:54 am |
I don’t think Patrice loves Haspel. It is just that Dems are total hypocrites
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May 10, 2018 at 5:30 am |
Yeap
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May 10, 2018 at 5:30 am |
Oooppss… As GMax said, not a perfect essay. I had no time for something thorough. The torture program was ordered by BUSH. I know, I remember. Above Haspel, there were guys like Brennan, setting inner CIA policy. She was just taking orders. She said she didn’t consider it moral, won’t do it anymore now that she gives orders. She was clear on that, Harris played dumb, to pose… Haspel WILL BE confirmed.
I just got exasperated when I heard and saw the hypocrisy of Feinstein and her ilk (long ago, I was pro-Feinstein, before she became Senator, although she became Mayor of SF through assassination, and was daughter of her rich surgeon father…) Feinstein loved to invade Iraq in 2003…
Now on torture: personally I opt for torture (within bounds, ha ha ha) rather than death. So I think the “moral” opprobrium attached to torture is exaggerated. Simply, sophisticated police interrogation techniques work better. Also lots of ways ARE torture (say incarceration in a cage… I saw that from all too close…) but not reputed as such…
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May 10, 2018 at 4:03 am |
I think philanthropy is a smokescreen for plutocracy. You mentioned it in the past!!! Care to mention it again?
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May 10, 2018 at 6:15 pm |
Patrice,
The emergence of plutocracy is inherent in the capitalist system. You cannot rage against plutocracy while embracing capitalism, in much the same way that you cannot rage against the dukes, lords, and barons and kings and princes of feudal Europe while at the same time embracing the feudal system.
Plutocracy and capitalism goes hand in hand.
That is especially true for the latter day iteration of capitalism. It used to be that capitalism holds a lot of promise in fulfilling the ideals of liberte’, egalite’, and fraternite’ of the French revolution – the idea of democratizing wealth and, for that matter, democratizing society.
All that promise and all that hopes went up in smoke when the predator class, the plutocrats, took over the system. Today they are essentially represented by global bankers and corporate fat cats including, but not limited to, the scums of Wall Street.
Forget about the rich doctors, and rich engineers; they are merely servants of the plutocratic lords, mostly the private bankers who have co-opted the money creation ability of the state.
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May 10, 2018 at 8:10 pm |
What would “capitalism” be? What sort of ideology? The ideology of using capital? Leveraging it? We ALL use MASSIVE amounts of capital. It turns out the impact of MASS tourism, using MASSIVE amounts of CAPITAL (planes, fuel, airports, etc.) is extremely disastrous for the environment: so not all usage of capital by the masses is innocuous, far from it.
So what is “capitalism”? The ideology to use capital? When the Achaemenid empire or the Roman Republic built enormous networks of Rome, and Chinese states started to build an amazing network of canals, 38 centuries ago, they were deploying human work to build up capital: many modern German autobahns follow the Old Roman road. The Chinese canals are still in use.
Yes, capitalism enables plutocracy: hand in hand. Yes, capitalism enables socialism: hand in hand. Yes, capitalism is pretty much synonymous with civilization: cities are capital.
Capital is unavoidable. By targeting it, all of it, in discourses, and aiming at destroying it, we aim at destroying civilization: nobody serious will take our aims seriously, and they would be right to do so…
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May 10, 2018 at 11:59 pm |
In today’s highly financialized economic system, capital simply means money.
The land, the natural resources, and the structures we build on it can be had and can be bought with money. Even some petty third world millionaire owns an islet in the Pacific. I heard Jeff Bezos too bought an entire island somewhere in Hawaii.
Roads and bridges, dams and airports can be built in a flash after signing a Goldman Sachs loan contract.
The idea that land and the resources in and on it can be considered capital is more true in the feudal system of old.
In a way though, with the accumulation of wealth, that is to say, money, in the hands of the very few, capitalism has become the new feudalism. Plutocrats have become the new feudal masters. Money became power.
And in the context of today’s post-Bretton Woods global monetary system, the dollar is the default global standard. Well, the euro and the sterling are in there too but that’s another story.
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May 12, 2018 at 3:03 pm |
See my answer to SDM: The plutocrats I know use their reputation capital. They don’t give money directly. That’s how they transmit their power. Pleasing them gives the hope of building a serious, profitable career, from the reputation credits they confer…
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May 12, 2018 at 3:11 pm |
It is Larry Ellison, from Oracle, who disgustingly bought the island of Lanai in Hawai’i. And it’s not an “islet”. It is a gigantic, mostly flattish island, one would think, until one sees it for real, towering more than a kilometer above the sea, in a vast plateau covered with forests…
I maintain my definition of “capital”. It’s not so easy to build bridges: California struggled for decades to replace half of the Bay Bridge, and refurbish the other side against quakes… Goldman Sachs and company are just good to buy opinion. On paper they are rich, but financial derivatives are NOT real capital, precisely. Musk is boring a tunnel in LA… But that is happening ONLY because of STATE support…. Same California just passed a law MANDATING solar PV installations on new homes, an excellent idea… To build real capital…
Personally, I would OUTLAW most derivatives… China does this, and that’s excellent… And it shows.
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May 11, 2018 at 8:23 am |
Addendum:
In the Treaty of Paris of 1898, Spain agreed to sell the Philippines to the United States for the sum of $20 million. An illustration of how money can buy almost anything, superseding the romanticized notion of capital.
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May 12, 2018 at 2:46 pm |
Well, that was not a serious sale: Spain pretended to sell, the USA pretended to buy. Actually Spain clearly couldn’t hold the Philippines anymore, having been defeated by the US. In the case of Alaska, “Stewart Folly”, Russia didn’t even try to fight off the US. Just “sell” and be done. The “capital” gestures were just to try to legitimize a bit more, for those who believe in “capital” the exchanges of masters.
The Philippines are squarely in the US empire right now, although not a dime is exchanged, and only insults are traded. Philippines know, as does everybody else in the region, that the best defense against Xi, or nuclear instability, is the USA. (This is also why Australia is equipping itself with a fleet of French submarines, doubly nuclearizable, with th full support of the Pentagon…)
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May 12, 2018 at 9:38 pm |
I don’t think Patrice disagrees with you, she has pretty much said this four a long time. She even said that Jackson understood the nastiness of banks better than Marx
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May 13, 2018 at 5:13 am |
Yes, Marx says nearly nothing about banks…
Reason? Banks used to be secondary actors in the economy (Jackson was just hyper-sensitive…)
In the 1880s, total UK bank assets were equal to 5 per cent of UK gross domestic product. At the financial bubble peak, in 2007, they were 500 per cent.
The assets of the UK’s three biggest banks at the start of the 20th century were 7 percent of GDP. By the end of it they were 75 percent, and by 2007 – unsurprisingly, after the financialization of the economy by Clinton – 200 percent.
Leverage climbed from 3-4 times in the 19th century to 30 times in the 2007 financial derivatives bubble. And return on equity – unsurprisingly – went from modest single figures to 30 per cent at the peak… And bankers got rewarded for leverage…
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May 10, 2018 at 8:15 pm |
The establishment Democrats are by and large hostage to the donor class, the same for GOP. There is a lot of theatrics in DC for sure. Mock outrage, etc. Until the money is no longer calling the shots we will continue to see this play out.
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May 12, 2018 at 3:00 pm |
I actually know Plutos, I talk to them, they are on first name basis with the most famous ones. Plutos go around the world, stay in 5 stars hotels, and tell (through “Foundations”) local government officials what to do. All this, paid by world taxpayers… The same Plutos are equally at ease with Dems as with Reps. Only a few (Koch brothers) are partisan… even then, just a show…
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