【Article/ Observer Network Columnist Hou Feng】
Why is it too urgent to force donations and raise taxes?
David Beasley, director of the United Nations World Food Programme, said in an interview with CNN on October 26, 2021, that Musk donated 2% of his personal wealth, or $6 billion, to solve the problem of world hunger, "the rich need to stand up and provide such a one-time assistance, $6 billion can help 42 million people, if we don't help them, they will die." ”
Musk responded: "If the World Food Programme can describe in detail how to solve global hunger with $6 billion through transparent and open accounting, I will sell Tesla stock now." "Sounds reasonable and sounds grandiose.
Is Musk really willing to help solve global hunger? The tweet on November 2, Beijing time, may be his real thoughts.
"The world's richest man", Tesla CEO Elon Musk, posted a Chinese poem on his personal Twitter , Cao Zhi's "Seven Steps Poem".
He tweeted: "Humankind (human)", and then attached Cao Zhi's "Seven Steps Poem": "Boiling beans burn beans, beans cry in the kettle, originally born from the same root, frying He Is too anxious." ”
Obviously, Musk misinterpreted the artistic conception of ancient Chinese poetry. U.N. officials are only calling on the super-rich to take out a little bit of their wealth, 2 percent of their personal wealth, to help hungry people living on the brink of death, not to the point of seven steps to life and death. Musk's tweet reflected his reluctance to say so.
Wave after wave, who makes you the richest man in the world?
Half a month later, 80-year-old U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders "raised his arms" and raised the heat: "We must demand that the super-rich pay fair taxes, there is no negotiable." ”
Musk, 50, responded to the tweet by saying, "I kept forgetting you were alive. "Want to make me sell more stocks?" Bernie, just say it. ”
Musk's thoughtless and spontaneous response was too bad and attracted widespread attention from the media and netizens. Although it can be seen that the "world's number one capitalist" has a deep prejudice against this veteran who is known as a "democratic socialist" in American politics, everyone may grow old one day, and the curse to death is obviously not of high taste.
"Super rich people pay fair taxes" is the common voice of the vast majority of people. However, the appeal is not the law, when will the US Parliament and the government as legislative and law enforcement departments turn the will of the people into law, and promote the equalization of the rich and the poor from the system, Musk and others will not be so righteous and fearless.
During the Cold War, when institutional competition was most intense, it once promoted fairness and justice in human society, including capitalist countries
The growing gap between rich and poor is clearly a big problem facing the whole world.
Looking back at history, Marx said that "capitalism came into the world, and every pore was dripping with blood and dirty things." Early capitalism was cruel and dark, thus spurring the rise of Marxist theory and socialist revolutions.
With the Cold War, institutional competition intensified, and winning the hearts and minds of the people was the most fundamental strategy of the two camps. Compared with the socialist public ownership system, the capitalist system of distribution according to capital itself has a huge shortcoming in fairness and justice. During the Cold War, in order to show the humanization of capitalism and the degree of fairness was no worse than that of socialism, the United States obviously took greater care of the interests of the middle and low income classes when dividing the cake, and better compensated for this shortcoming.
Source: "Wealth of 26 rich people in the world = 1.9 billion poor people's property What is the solution to the problem of the gap between rich and poor? 》
As can be seen from the above chart, the period when the gap between rich and poor in the United States was at the peak of the Cold War. This shows that even the United States, the beacon of capitalism, still has the means to adjust the gap between the rich and the poor, and the key is whether the government is willing to speak for the people.
The Socialist System of the Soviet Union once better solved the social problem of the gap between the rich and the poor, but with the formation and solidification of bureaucratic privileged interest groups, as well as the blind arms race with the United States regardless of the people's livelihood, the military expanded abroad, and eventually dragged down the economy and gradually lost the people's hearts. The situation in which financial and material resources lag behind the West by a large margin also affects the judgment of those in power, who have not made a wise judgment between people's livelihood and military, between practicing internal skills and competing for global hegemony.
During the Gorbachev period, the Soviet Union was already accumulating deep shortcomings, but after Gorbachev monopolized power, instead of striving to improve the driving force of development and reform the socialist economic system, he completely lost institutional self-confidence, superstitiously believed in the Western road, and adopted the wrong line. A mistake was hated for thousands of years, and in the end, the mistake easily buried the socialist cause of the Soviet Union.
The rich, who make up most of society's wealth, pay almost no taxes
After the Cold War, without the pressure of the Soviet Union as a system competitor, the nature of American capitalism rekindled, and it was possible to exploit workers with impunity, and the gap between the rich and the poor was increasing day by day.
From Reagan to Trump, most of the tax reforms in the United States have used tax cuts as gimmicks to cater to the taste of the public, but in fact, through the legislative manipulation of capital spokesmen, that is, the legislative manipulation of the legislature and the endorsement of the government, the result of subtraction is that the middle class bears a heavy tax burden, and the rich who occupy most of the wealth in society almost do not pay taxes.
According to data disclosed by the US news website ProPublica on June 8, from 2014 to 2018, the 25 richest Americans on the Forbes list paid a total of $13.6 billion in federal personal income tax, while their accumulated wealth in the past five years reached a total of $401 billion, equivalent to an effective tax rate of only 3.4%.
Among the 25 wealthy Americans whose tax payments were disclosed, the investment guru Buffett had the lowest effective tax rate of only 0.1%. Bezos, Bloomberg founder Bloomberg and Musk followed, with no more than 3.4% of their personal income tax rates.
Former President Trump's tax record is poor. The New York Times reported on September 28, 2020, "Trump's tax bill is revealed again: more than ten years have not paid taxes, and in 2017, taxes were paid $750" in 2017. The New York Times obtained more than 20 years of tax return data from President Trump and his company, showing that in the 18 years of data reviewed, Trump did not pay federal income taxes for 11 years. After he was elected president, his 2017 tax bill was only $750.
Can "Nipple Music" quell any "Occupy Wall Street" anger?
Democracy is kidnapped by finance capital, and after the 2008 financial crisis, a protracted "Occupy Wall Street" movement that swept the United States broke out, with slogans against the power and money transactions of American politics, bipartisan strife and social injustice, 1% of the rich control 99% of social wealth, the rich are richer, the poor are poorer, the middle class has shrunk sharply, and the people have no hope.
One of the direct triggers of the protests was that during the most difficult time of the financial crisis, Wall Street tycoons paid huge bonuses with government bailouts from enterprises, and even the tycoons and executives who broke down financial institutions could still receive tens of millions or even hundreds of millions of severance payments according to contracts. And ordinary people because of the financial storm they have created, many people have lost their jobs and can only struggle on the food and clothing line.
The strategy adopted by the US government in response to the 2008 financial crisis is to protect the big and abandon the small, and for the "too big to fail" enterprises, the US government will not hesitate to pay for the rescue, and ordinary people can only ask for more blessings.
The strange thing is that the impact of the epidemic has seen a completely different phenomenon.
Since the late 1980s, most middle-class U.S. households have seen slow income growth, lagging far behind economic growth. The New York Times reported: "But surprisingly, the last two years have been an exception. In the context of the global COVID-19 pandemic, most U.S. households are in better financial shape than they were in 2019," and "local governments have so much money that they don't know how to spend it." According to a November 15 Pew Research Center report, many states achieved their largest fiscal surpluses in FY2021 due to a surge in state tax revenues, investment revenues, and federal grants for COVID-19. For example, Iowa's fiscal surplus was $1.24 billion, equivalent to 16 percent of the full-year 2021 budget. Virginia has a surplus of $2.6 billion, equivalent to 11 percent of its full-year fiscal 2021 budget. ”
How is this possible? The COVID-19 pandemic has caused a large number of illnesses and deaths, disrupting the normal rhythm of life... It triggered a brief sharp stock market plunge, a recession.
The biggest advantage of the US government, which can have the hegemony of the US dollar, is that it can kidnap the world economy and print dollars with unrestrained quantitative easing. Since the COVID-19 pandemic, the United States has signed three economic stimulus and bailout bills. In the past two years, the total appropriation of the United States has exceeded 7.1 trillion yuan, accounting for about 30.6% of last year's GDP. If Biden's $1.75 trillion Rebuilding a Better Future Act passes this year, it could boost the U.S. government's total appropriations over two years to $8.85 trillion, or 42 percent of last year's total GDP.
The level of US money printing this time is more unscrupulous than the last financial crisis. The United States is increasingly arbitrarily raising the debt ceiling, which means printing as much as you want, going its own way, or breaking the jar. For the sake of immediate interests, it does not matter what international morality, dollar credit, or national bottom line.
Harvesting the world's wool with printed green money, especially from the world's factory China in exchange for material wealth, real money and silver, and enriching the physical economy of the United States, is the top priority to ensure "America First".
On March 25, 2021, Biden said at his first press conference after taking office that "China will not be allowed to surpass the United States to become the number one power during his term of office." As for what means? In the past few months, there is no trick to the operation. Whether it is xinjiang, hong kong or Taiwan, whether it is in the South China Sea or the East China Sea, the United States has not picked up the bargain, and even threatened to boycott the Beijing Winter Olympics.
On March 26 last year, the U.S. Congress passed the largest emergency stimulus bill in history: the $2 trillion stimulus bill. The bill injects a total of $2.143 trillion into the U.S. bailout. This includes $1,200 per American on low- and middle-income Americans and $500 in cash for their children (under 17 years of age). The U.S. government's cash payments to the population totaled $301 billion.
Last December, then-US President Donald Trump signed a second $900 billion pandemic assistance package. The bill provides for $600 per person to be paid to people earning less than $75,000 a year in the United States.
On March 6, the U.S. Senate passed a $1.9 trillion COVID-19 bailout bill by a vote of 50 in favor and 49 against. Under the bill, all Eligible Americans (who earn less than $80,000 a year) will receive an additional $1,400 per person.
Since the epidemic, low-income people in the United States have received more than $3,000 in subsidies, which has boosted the U.S. economy to some extent and helped low-income people. In fact, the total income of Americans in 2020 increased by $1.205 trillion, and 1.102 trillion of it came from government subsidies labeled as "personal mobility transfer income", accounting for 91.5%.
In addition, the comprehensive epidemic relief for small and medium-sized enterprises in the United States and all unemployment assistance have made many low-income people receive unemployment benefits higher than normal work income.
In addition to regular unemployment insurance benefits that vary from state to state, unemployed people receive an additional $600 a week in federal benefits. California's unemployment benefits, for example, amount to $450 a week, plus $600 a week under the federal government's unemployment benefit program, result in more than $4,000 a month in income. As a result, many low-income earners prefer to lie flat and receive unemployment benefits from the U.S. government rather than to find work after the pandemic eases. Although the federal unemployment benefit program ended in September 2021, the impact on the employment intentions of some people is likely to continue for some time.
Such a comfortable little day, some people print money and some people spend, hungry and thirsty stuff a pacifier, and then it is difficult to ignite the enthusiasm of Occupy Wall Street. But can this game really be played forever?
Where is the milk, how long can the days of high consumption, high welfare, high standards of pampering and superiority in the United States continue?
"Nipple music" is considered to have been proposed by Brzezinski, a former national security adviser to the President of the United States. It first appeared in the book Die Globalisierungsfalle: Der Angriff auf Demokratie und Wohlstand, which refers to the fact that rising productivity is accompanied by increased competition, and 80% of the world's population will be marginalized, they do not have to and cannot participate in the production and service of products, and 80% of the wealth is in the hands of the other 20%. In order to comfort the "abandoned" people in society and avoid class conflicts, one way is to let companies mass-produce "nipples" - let addictive entertainment and sensory stimulus products (such as: internet, television, short videos) fill people's lives, divert their attention and dissatisfaction, and make them immersed in "happiness" and unconsciously lose the ability to think about real problems.
Although its original meaning does not refer to bailout, the current bailout is to a large extent to play a role in maintaining stability of "nipple music".
The U.S. government's unprecedented relief program since the outbreak of the epidemic has greatly helped the poor through the most difficult period, alleviating the class tensions that have increased as the gap between the rich and the poor has widened further with the outbreak.
However, although relying on printing money can alleviate the temporary difficulties, it has brought serious inflation to the United States and the world, especially the sharp increase in the price of commodities denominated in dollars, and the consequences are endless.
With the outsourcing of industries in recent decades and the hollowing out of the real economy, the Ability of the United States to Create Material Wealth is diminishing. What mass production of "nipples" in the United States relies on to soothe voters is the core issue that fundamentally ensures that Trump remembers "America First" in Zhejiang.
Despite Trump's exhaustive tactics, including a trade war, a blockade of sanctions against Chinese high-tech companies, punitive tariffs, and a deliberate incitement to various geopolitical pretexts to contain China's development and force manufacturing to return to the United States. However, four years later, none of Trump's strategic goals have been achieved.
In the last century, the United States used to be the world's factory, and it was easy to obtain high profits from the world through technological leadership and market monopoly, in order to maintain the high standards of luxury life in the United States. Twenty or thirty years ago, China needed to export hundreds of millions of shirts to the United States to change for a Boeing plane.
What the United States never expected was that in just thirty years, China now not only has the world's most complete industrial chain, but also in many high-end manufacturing industries such as 5G communications, smart phones, high-speed rail, shipbuilding, new energy vehicles, nuclear energy, hydropower, wind power, solar energy, digital economy, satellite navigation, space stations, artificial intelligence, quantum computing, military products and so on are at the forefront of the world. China's large transport aircraft Y-20 is in service, the regional airliner ARJ21 has been commercialized, the C-919 is just around the corner, and the C-929 is also under development.
China has risen as a whole industrial chain, as the world's factory, the production of high-quality and inexpensive, high-tech goods exported to the rest of the world, why should the United States and the West harvest the world's wool to maintain its high-level life of pampering?
The nipple music crisis will inevitably reappear in the "Occupy Wall Street" movement, which will fundamentally shake the hegemony of the United States. As a businessman, Musk can pursue profits around the world, but a group of American politicians are worried about many more problems than he is.
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