Growing acceptance of “Spending 200,000 euro in one year is the LIMIT!”

The idea of a spending limit of 200,000 euro is in the first place a guidance for action.

It is not right to say that the rule should be implemented. Implementation is done by governments or other institutions not by The People.
Implementation of a credit card with a maximum of 200,000 euro demands an  controlling apparatus and leads to more bureaucracy and corruption.
New rules do not make the world better. The crisis showed that any rule can be changed by the same people who implemented the old ones. The People have no influence on these decisions. New fundamental ideas are needed. 

The new idea becomes accepted when The People prevent that the tiny group greedy grabbers that can spend more than 200,000 euro in one year can use their surplus money.  

In the present situation the activity of The People is restricted by boundaries set by people who are hardly influenced by elections.
It is even worse as one of my contacts wrote:  “By elections you are asked to choose sides in false conflicts. We are given the illusion of choice but as long as those in power do not lose their control, the choice we made only influences our life and not the life of the people in power”. 

I propose to block the possibilities of the very rich to spend their surplus money. Their private living sphere will also be disturbed and the idea will grow that money is not the ultimate driving force, the ultimate goal of life. People will start to accept the “Spending Limit” with the background idea that we may get another world.

One of the advantages of my idea is that small people can become active on the time, the place, the method and the subject they want.
The spending limit only touches people in power and actions will not disturb the life of common citizens. Only the Happy Few are targeted. The sale of petrol, the use of public transport, the possibilities to buy the first amenities of life etceteras, must not be disturbed.  

Most current actions influence only the life of common people.
I applaud that so many people actively support Wikileaks. But actions around Wikileaks touched only the financial system while the opponents directly targeted the private life of the initiator of Wikileaks.
In Nigeria more than seventy percent of the population live below the poverty line in spite of the billions earned in the oil industry. Sometimes the Nigerian government is accused but the top of Shell continues to live its luxurious life while Shell has a vice-like grip on the country’s oil wealth. Shell and the government of Nigeria are two sides of the same coin. 

Whatever action should be undertaken, it should always be directed at top people and hardly touch common people. 

There will be unexpected partial results but real change only occurs when the right situation is created by the activity of many people as I described in my last letter about jumps in society. http://members.chello.nl/jsteenis/200,00017..htm. Jumps are an important part of my proposal. An athlete can train a lot to become better. But he will never know when he will break the world record. Only when all conditions are right, the record will arrive. We can make the right conditions to enter a new phase in the development of mankind.  

A New Humane World will not be created overnight, it demands active common people. Actions connected to the Spending Limit will give unexpected results in the present time. The idea is a guideline for people where, how and who to put under pressure. It brings the chance for a fundamental change closer. Attackers and attacked change because the dominating position of money starts to disappear when it becomes inconvenient to have too much money. When you cannot spend money anymore why should you strive to get more.

That can never be achieved when people let themselves be represented by other people who are under the decisive influence of the elite that is neither bothered by elections, nor by common people.  
When all energy of common people put into elections or in actions against dead buildings and institutions is used in actions against powerful people, change is around the corner. That is still an illusion. I propose different actions that give better results than past actions of which results can be turned around by powerful people. 

When you are dreaming of a New World, do not let reality disturb your dreams. Try to influence reality and refrain from doing anything that does not bring your dreams closer.
That is not easy because you have many dreams that are sometimes conflicting. But let your dreams decide what must be done. And do think sometimes about that New Humane World in which even dreams will be realised that can hardly be dreamed of in the present world.

Humanity will jump when “Spending 200.000 euro in one year becomes the LIMIT!

The gradual way to improve life of all people is failing.

When in the next fifty years improvements remain slow and gradual, millions of kids will still die before they are five years old. Other misery as hunger, poverty or wars will continue to exist.
A big change, a sudden jump in the development of humanity is needed.

Jumps are highlights that make life worthwhile. They are necessary to reach higher planes that cannot be achieved on a slow and gradual way. 

Revolutions are political examples of jumps.
The idea that another world is possible was implanted in the Chinese minds during the Revolution. It is an important reason why Chinese society is advancing much faster that the Indian one where no jumps occurred.

Inventions and new ideas can also cause jumps. Electricity, aeroplanes or internet became in a few years common items that changed life.
On a small scale, birth and death, marriage and divorce, getting diplomas or emigrating to other countries suddenly change life in an unexpected way.
Life may not be better but is certainly different. 

Jumps are often caused by the efforts of a single human. In science Copernicus is a striking and splendid example how a relatively small contribution (the earth is turning around the sun instead of the sun turning around the earth) has had a deep impact.
But new inventions and ideas do not fall from the sky. Einstein could not have developed his Theory of Relativity in the time of Copernicus. Many people contributed to the development to reach the jumping point by working out existing ideas, increasing general knowledge and wondering what should be possible. When the situation was ripe Einstein gave the last contribution that caused a jump in science.  

“The flapping of the wings of a butterfly over Brazil can cause a hurricane over Mexico” is one of the basic ideas of the Theory of Chaos.
You cannot predict when a jump takes place and what happens after a jump. But many small efforts of many humans can improve the conditions for the opening up of the road towards a new, unseen and advanced world.

The French mathematician René Thom invented the Theory of Catastrophes in which jumps and the conditions that can lead to a jump play a crucial role.Especially in our chaotic world jumps can be brought about.
One of the most important conditions that holds the present world together is the existence of an elite of privileged people. When this binding force is weakened jumps become possible. That was proven by the Russian and Chinese Revolutions that took place in a time when the binding force of the elite was weakened by World Wars.

Also in more peaceful times The People can undermine the binding power of the elite to bring a jump closer. One of the means is the implementation of the idea that “Spending 200.000 euro in one year is the Limit!”. When the idea that money rules the world withers away because the elite cannot spend its surplus money, new chances on a sudden fundamental change will arise.
When the reason to be active is not anymore the acquiring of as much money as you can, when human values are starting to get the upper hand, the world will be at the brink of a jump.

New possibilities will arise and misery will disappear because greed and misery are two sides of the same situation. Greed of the Few causes the misery of the Many.  

WE can break down the possibility that the elite uses our money for its own benefit. Then suddenly the happiness of all people will become the driving force to advance humanity. 

SPENDING 200.000 EURO IN ONE YEAR IS THE LIMIT!

Greedy rich are put under pressure by “Spending 200,000 euro in one year should be the LIMIT!”

Not dead entities but living humans cause the misery in the world.

Microsoft had to pay an enormous sum of money for violating anti-monopoly laws.
WRONG. Directors of Microsoft signed the orders and should be fined. 

Western armies are attacking civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan.
WRONG. Generals give the orders and should be called to account.  

Nike and Adidas should be paying too low wages for too long work.
WRONG. The directors of these multinationals are the culprits.  

Governments decide to lower the pensions of old people.
WRONG. Ministers sign the laws that rob people of a well-earned comfortable old age. 

The government gave billions to the banks.
WRONG. Directors of the FED proposed, Obama and his team endorsed and the directors of the banks pocketed all that money. 

The FED must be abolished because it takes wrong decisions.
WRONG. The leaders of the FED take decisions that hurt common citizens. 

Banks pay their directors too high bonuses and too much money.
WRONG. The CEO of a bank signs the cheques for the greedy bankers.  

Multinationals, factories, armies, governments, banks don’t do anything, it are dead entities.
Decisions are taken by powerful greedy humans who are very much alive.
Those people act in the wrong way, therefore they should be targeted.

It is not the system that is wrong, the fault lies fully with elitepeople who use the system (any system) to enrich themselves.
The greedy top acts fundamentally wrong. They want in the first place to fill their own pockets disregarding the plight of the vast majority of common citizens. (and they have made a system that makes it easier for them, to amass lots of money).
The arrows of dissatisfied and frustrated citizens should not be directed at dead entities. Any damage caused to buildings, institutions, installations, factories, army camps or government property will be repaired by money that in the end comes out of the pockets of common people.
The same is valid for all these efforts that want to change the system without changing the power and the mentality of those people who now use the system for there own benefit. 

I repeat the central question:
Why do these already very privileged people do what they are doing?
And I repeat once again the simple answer: FOR MONEY!! 

The solution is simple. Let we care for it that they cannot use their ill gotten money. Then leaders will not anymore be dominated by money but by the idea that all people should have the same status – in the first place a decent life.  

SPENDING 200,000 EURO IN ONE YEAR SHOULD BE THE LIMIT!

--October 17 2010 --

Analysis, comment, criticism, where is the action? Spending 200,000 euro is the Limit!

Analysing without action leads to nowhere.

The American bankers get this year more than 100 billion euro. Many writers will again comment, analyse or criticise this fact but that will not stop the money flow to a few privileged people.  

Often I am fed up with articles that analyse what is wrong in our society. I want to do something with these facts!
I propose a guiding slogan Spending 200,000 euro in one year is the LIMIT! Too much money is the deeper cause of too much misery.

Maybe criticism contributed to the end of the Vietnam War but the top hardly listened. History repeated itself in Iraq and Afghanistan. Fundamental change did not come any nearer and new wars are around the corner – about water, oil, Iran or Korea – wars that must continue the dominance of the West. Hunger, poverty and misery have also not disappeared.

Only analysing what leaders do is not sufficient. The central question should be: What can we do to increase the chance to get a better world.
Spending 200,000 euro in one year should be the limit! forces leaders to listen. Then we advance on the road to another world without interference from people up there who have their own agenda.  

What WE CAN DO is a difficult question. It is connected to the central problem why the elite continues to rule the world.
All proposed solutions have failed.
Revolutions occurred in many countries but only brought a new elite in power.
Some people try to get new leaders but these new forces always have more interest in their own life than in the life of common citizens.
Sometimes new political parties are founded but the past shows that all these parties hardly changed our wretched world.
Still others want people to write to elected representatives – though this has not given much positive result in the past.
Many good-willing people want to demonstrate, boycott, sign petitions, feed and teach poor people etceteras though again the results have been very meagre.
Then there are people who are building their own better society though in the past the big world often invaded these happy enclaves.

All these activities only soften the harsh sides of the present world. A fundamental change from a world dominated by money to a world where people are the most important beings will never occur. The centre of power is analysed but never attacked.

All activities are based on the idea that when enough people ask leaders to change their decisions it will indeed happen. But people at the top do not read the analyses and comments and are protected from the masses by politicians, the media and in the end by security forces.

Critical articles undermine the trust in political leaders. Still less people vote for parties in the centre of the political power. In The Netherlands the parties who had been in power since the masses got the right to vote got twenty years ago 80 percent of the vote, in 2010 it was hardly 50 percent. 

The mentality of The People is changing, it is a first step to realise that we have to take power in our own hands.
But The People still have to take new steps on the road that leads from the present miserable world to a New Humane World.

I read hardly anything about what YOU AND I CAN DO. The road to a New Humane is not opened.
Writers do not wonder if leaders listen to The People.
They do not question if their analysing and criticizing has results.
They do not have any idea how to implement their criticism. 

Many wise words have been written about the causes of the financial crisis but the greedy grabbers are still on top. I have not seen any action against people who were the cause of the misery. Not from trade-unions, not from political parties, not from juridical powers, not from sympathetic analysts. The creators of the crash have remained untouched.

To change our world something new is needed.
SPENDING 200,000 EURO IN ONE YEAR SHOULD BE THE LIMIT!
I ask all good-willing analysts and commentators to include in their articles what common citizens can do.
Do write about what WE CAN DO to stop the greed and the wish to get still more money at the cost of the life of other people. 

ONLY DIRECT PRESSURE ON THE LIFE OF THE HIGHEST LEADERS WILL BRING CHANGE.
200,000 EURO IS THE LIMIT!

-- June 9 2010 --

A limit of 200,000 euro in one year, earning or spending?

To eradicate damaging greed,
To prevent future financial and economic crises,
To give 10,000,000 kids dying each year before they are five years old the chance to have a decent life,
To unite the safe and prosperous world of the Happy Few with the often harsh world of the masses,
I PROPOSE that 200,000 euro in one year should be the limit for anyone!

But … how can The People prevent that the Happy Few earn more than 200,000 euro in one year?
They could not prevent it in the past, they neither can do that in the present and they will also not be able to do that in the future.
The People do not pay these ridiculous salaries. Those decisions are taken by people who also earn (too) much.
The People have hardly influence on the process of ever rising incomes for the top, they can hardly prevent that a Few get a lot  and the rest may fight over the crumbles that fall from the well-supplied table of the affluent top of the world.

 To achieve an income cap is nearly impossible.Then you are dependent on CEO’s, politicians and other people who to a very great height cannot be trusted. Autonomous humans should not be dependent on what other far-away people could regulate.

 What do rich people do with so much money? How and where are they spending more than 200,000 euro in one year? There The People can become autonomously active. They must attack the Achilles Heel of the Greedy, Money and Extravagance.

When it becomes more difficult to spend more than 200,000 euro in one year, the necessity to earn 200,000 euro starts to wither away and the world becomes friendlier and less dominated by money.

When anyone wants a Mercedes of one million euro The People can think of ways to stop the use and the production of this exaggerated spending.
The People possess sufficient fantasy, creativity and freedom to prevent that a Few can use extravagances that are only reserved for a tiny minority of all humans.

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

-- May 17 2010 --

The crisis and 200,000 euro 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!

The idea “200,000 euro a year is the LIMIT!” does not strive to improve our present world a little bit, does not want that only five million kids die each year before they are five years old in stead of the present ten million, does not concentrate on getting a few cents more each month, less racism or slight improvements of basic human rights. It is neither left nor right, it is autonomous, it promotes the freedom to do what you want to do without hurting other humans. 

200,000 euro is the LIMIT! wants a humane world by attacking the fundamental motivation of nearly all activity. Our society is restricted by the paradigm that everything has to be expressed in terms of money. This money paradigm must be replaced by a driving force that puts the well-being of humans first. Only then all ten million under-five kids that die each year get a chance on a decent life. 

This change cannot be reached by elections. You may vote but don’t expect much from newly elected leaders. Their first goal is the preservation of a society based on money and not based on the well-being of humans. 

200,000 euro is the LIMIT! aims to prevent the use of surplus money. In this process the creativity, initiative and activity of common citizens is activated. They free themselves from restrictions imposed by (very well-to-do) leaders who appreciate money more than a decent life for all people. Only when society is guided by the idea that the life of all humans is important the way will open to a society with more freedom.  

200,000 euro is the LIMIT! has nothing to do with old politics based on the pursuit of money. The basic idea is that the People prevent the Happy Few amassing too much money for the own group at the cost of the life of the vast majority.
A Van Gogh belongs in a museum and not in a private house where only a few will get the pleasure to see this unique piece of our World Heritage. Anyone should have the freedom to see all Van Goghs.