GETTING SOME PERSPECTIVE ON INEQUALITY

The example below is not a sports article, but an example of the inequality and what perspective we have lost in the terms of understanding our global economic crisis.  We need perspective and this is just a good example, I love golf and it has nothing to do about the game.

“If a player had competed in the PGA Tour’s six sanctioned no-cut events, then added the unofficial CIMB and HSBC stops and finished last at each, his take-home tally for 2011 would have spiked to $386,410.

Mind you, that’s for remembering to breathe and beating exactly nobody“. cbssports.com

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I just thought I’d shoot you a little rhetoric on the world of zero’s.  We went from Millions to Trillions with a short stop over for Billions in our monetary jargon.  What is a comma and 3 zero’s worth these days?  To us and most people at lot, but for the Powers that Be that need the zeros to back their monopoly game, it means inflation goes into another sphere.
As you see the same people coming through your door at the Ritz, there are those whose comma’s are all in the right places, and those who you don’t see this year, whose “cusp” of fringe comma taking has burst, they couldn’t keep up with the Joneses.

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We live in a world of “almost”.  Who is the guy sitting on the 98th percentile?  Is he out the door in the lobby while the 1%er’s are making a get-a-way?  Is he getting the insiders receipe after the troops have already made their calls?  How about the have’s and have nots?  Who is on the bubble of either falling from or climbing to the haves?  Can your head be in the Have’s and your Wallet be in the Have Not’s because you USED to be one of THEM?  How frustrating to live on the cusp, eh?  Does the 98th percent guy vote along with the other 99% or will he lose his place in line if he goes against the wishes of the 1%.  And all the way down the line, 97%…, the 89%er’s want into the 10% bracket, etc.  When do you say it’s them against us?

WHERE does the money come from to pay a loser almost four hundred thousand dollars?  That is a lot of dough, enough to make 13 households stay out of the poverty income levels for a YEAR at around $30,000, based on a $15 per hour job.  And in reality, how many workers make UNDER $15 hours( McDonalds, WalMart, Best Buy, etc.)?
To get perspective, if it takes 5 hours to play round of golf and this example above plays in 6 tournaments of 4 rounds each, that’s about 120 hours hitting a golf ball around some of the choicest real estate in the world.  It works out to a little over $3,220 per hour!
Now that is equal for the 13 households, that have 1.9 kids and rent (can’t afford a home), to work at an 80 hour work week, 50 weeks for a year, or over 25,760 hours of working somewhere that is not as nice as a world class golf course, and doing something much less enjoyable (for most) than hitting a golf ball.

That’s the perspective I am looking at when I am visualizing in my head when the topic of inequality arises.  This represents the throw away money the 1%-10% can cast out there with out a ripple of worry or dent in their pocket book.  Paying someone $3,220 per hour plus numerous “bennies” (1st class everything; food, lodging, transportation, etc) is the “cost” of doing business, and that is the “losers” share!

That represents a lot of “man hours” that goes into making a living and much of that income to make ends meet eventually ends up in the 1% coffers, to be thrown away or around like chicken feed.

As I said earlier, this is just an example with this golfing fact, it is just one of a multitude of examples of how money or wealth has separated the worlds populace.  If you remember only the “elite” got the majority of seats at the original Colliseum, the masses got a simple separate section, if at all.  Today’s Colliseums are like that today, only the “elite” can afford the tickets.

The golfers example tells me that that person gets all this “money” for, in reality, producing nothing.  Even if the above workers worked at McDonalds flipping burgers(and they don’t make $15 hr. either) and they make 50 burgers an hour that at least produced almost 1.3 MILLION burgers.  That, my friend, is inequality in a nut shell.  You add up all the non productive income derived by persons in corporations/governmental employees/military personnel, financiers/bankers, etc. and you have a world wide mess that we have now.  Inequality isn’t taking from one group and giving it to another who hasn’t worked for it, it is the inbalance of getting something for nothing and doing something for nothing. 

For a corporation like BP Oil that can create a catastrophe for millions of people and a threat for years (Gulf “spill”) to come to environment and others incomes to still be able to turn a profit in the BILLIONS tells me that BP and others like them charge too much for their product or services, thus “gouging” the masses of consumers.  In all of the 1%er’s arena are mass quantities of wealth accumulated by “gouging” consumers, making an unfair amount of exchange of product or services for what is rendered. 

Unfair=Inequality.  Who is to decide what is too much is the question that the world has to come to grips with.  A person or corporation that is worth a billion dollars would have to spend $274,000 a day 365 days a year to not grow the principal if they made a 10% return on investment, and that’s if it isn’t compounded.  And when we are talking about nearly every single person or corporation in the 1% being in that category, that to me is too much, it is reasonably impossible to not live beyond any expected means without gluttony.  If you have to draw a line somewhere, right?  There has to be a “wealth” fulcrum that tips towards equality, the demarcation point from the haves and have-nots, the excess that brings the percentage of have-nots into the “have” category without deprivation.  That 1% has excess to the excess, that is what the Occupy Movement is all about, having is a good thing, that’s what the movement is all about, giving the excess to those who deserve to be a “have”.

When a baseball player makes over $30,000 per at bat even if he plays or not is chump change to the 1% percent that pays the ball player that much.  The 1% gets an equivalent of $1,000,000,000 per at bat and does little or nothing for it.  This again is just perspective, sports and entertainment are the Gladiators that the 1% put into the Coliseum for amusement.  The stands are filled to the rafters with the “haves” and all the masses outside are the have-nots, and those own the stands have too much.  When you can spend as much as gluttonously possible and still grow wealth derived by others production, that is too much.  Energy (gasoline), commodities could be 1/3 or less expensive and the 1% would probably still be the 1%, but the percentage of “haves” would dramatically increase.

Again, I bring you these tells of tales from the International Travelers meeting place where we all come together in a paradise setting and sharing our world views from around the world.  This weeks majority of guests outside of Nicaraguans have been from Holland, last week was from the US, the week before was Germany.  Come share your thoughts from the worlds stage with us at the Playa Roca Beach Hotel on the great Pacific Ocean in Nicaragua.

http://www.nicaliving.com/node/17414