HOME

DOWN WITH ANY ELITE

Contact

Spending 200,000 euro in one year
should be the LIMIT!

For older messages see Archives

  7. The crisis and 200,000 euro a year is the LIMIT!

Making it impossible to manipulate. 

Suddenly the Greek government had to pay 14 percent interest instead of 7 percent the previous day.
Suddenly the Dow Jones index plummeted in one hour by a thousand points.
Is the world changing so fast? Of course not, in one hour or even in one day no new facts can account for such jumps.
In the Greek case the European Union was hesitating to give huge loans but the debt situation of Greece was not worse than the day before.
In the case of the Dow Jones it was suggested that one single trader made a mistake to order the sale of too much shares of Procter & Gamble. He accidently should have added some zero’s. The result was that computer programs started to sell stocks. Are we being governed, guided and controlled by computers?  

No, in both cases some unidentified people wanted to earn huge amounts of money by shady transactions. They have no objections to speculate, manipulate, cheat or bribe to please their greed. They do not care that more than ten million kids die each year before they are five years old. 

The burden of their greed is carried by the shoulders of common citizens. In the USA 10 percent of the workers  are officially unemployed, but the real employment is twice as much. In Spain the unemployment is already 20 percent according to the government and nobody sees any improvement in the coming years.  

The greed, that causes much of the misery of common citizens, has to be stopped.
Governments can be asked to prohibit hedge funds, trading in futures, selling of unclear and often unsafe packets of loans to other banks or other speculative trade. Maybe she could restrict venture capitalists who only want to make money by selling parts of a concern to the highest bidder without even thinking about what happens to the workers or about the impact on the economy of a country. The government can even close the stock exchange, the place where money can be made without caring about social consequences.  

I despise top-down. In the past governments have shown that they want in the first place to please money-makers. They never showed they care in the first place for the People.
People have to be autonomous, free to regulate their own life. We will not live happily ever after when some people up there take the decisions. That happens in fairy-tales, not in real life.  

Why are people greedy?
To spend money on extravagant items that never can be acquired by common people. They distinguish themselves from common citizens by surrounding themselves with special things and living in an environment that is out of bounds for the great majority.
We can care for it that greedy people do not remain greedy by preventing that they limitless can spend their surplus money. Then we will enter another world, a humane society that is not ruled by the quest for money.
Yes, we can, 200.000 euro to spend in one year should be the LIMIT!

Joost van Steenis (downwithelite@gmail.com)

For older messages see Archives

When you want to receive regularly my articles,
please send an empty e-mail with the subject subscribe to downwithelite@gmail.com