Appealing to the consciences of CEOs who rob their businesses dry is futile. They have no conscience!
The World Wide depression we are having is simply caused by thievery— the siphoning of the common wealth of our nation into thieve's (rich CEOs) pockets. Thievery is now quite legal, thanks to CEOs persuading our gormless politicians to change our tax system about 50 years ago so that they practically pay no tax at all. What then happened, even Blind Freddie could have predicted. CEOs robbed their companies of every penny possible, then when they couldn't wring another penny, sold their company to overseas buyers who stripped the assets and established their overseas companies as the sole importer of the same goods that we used to manufacture.
So we're having the inevitable depression and our gormless politicians are proposing "stimulus packages" so that we pay even more to the thieves to give us employment because they own the means of production and the resources. How masochistic can we get?
What was different before corporate thievery became legal? Answer— wealthy people used to pay tax that was appropriate for their incomes, like everybody else did!
Back in the early 1950s we had an exponential income tax, where the more money you got, the more tax you paid. Then we had a democratically-elected government which was in control of our economy and we had the highest standard of living in the world. Company tax was practically non-existent which allowed big companies to prosper and it was OK to get a high salary, because since CEOs would have had to pay a lot of income tax, they could avoid this by ploughing the profits back into their companies making them bigger and more valuable for themselves and the shareholders. A win-win for everybody. We had big companies like BHP, QTF, SPC, Commonwealth Engineering, Qantas, ANA, Actil Victa, Telstra and many other big Australian-owned companies as well as our own Australian-owned small manufacturing firms. Then share-holders owned a share of the company— now shares are merely a means of allowing CEOs to get all the shares for themselves. As comedian W.C. Fields said "It's immoral to let a sucker keep his money".
Now Australia has practically no industry at all because of the tax burden is now falling on production and you and I. Even "The Big Australian" is a London owned and controlled company and QTF (Queensland Tropical Fruits) imports fruits. And the thieves, who now own all of our money and resources pay practically no tax at all!
Our witless politicians are now squandering the family jewels — our mineral wealth — practically giving it away to these CEOs in return for a lot of manufactured goods from countries who use and demonstrate their intelligence. While our politicians are universally recognised as being lame brained for letting the CEOs do this, what does it say about the Australian public who allows this pathetic quality of leadership?
When our minerals have gone, we will have no manufacturing, no energy, no metals or plastics, and envying the standard of living of the poorest Asian country.
Why are we allowing a depression to happen when we needn't?
Share values have plummeted, but instead of challenging why they have plummeted, shareholders are running around like headless chooks complaining about the miserable value of their shares. Shareholders just don't yet get it, their so-called shares don't matter, the thieves have stolen so much of the company's wealth and have used it to buy the majority of shares with their heist— their obscene salaries and bonuses! We have allowed to exist a whole economy that even extends to universities where there are now higher degree courses, based on the premise that this system is sustainable, and blaming rises and falls— including this profound depression— on the need for a few tweakings of the system here and there. No wonder they call university "The shop". However, nothing's new— only a few hundred years ago, universities had higher degree courses, based on the premise of the existence of God, and blaming poverty and prosperity on the need for a few tweakings of the celestial system here and there. Tweaking the IMF catechism here and there by these "stimulus packages" is destined to fail. It will only drive us further into debt to the thieves.
Getting back to basics, the type of growing economy we used to have is simple to do, just re-implement an exponential tax. Of course the CEOs will threaten to take their loot, our common wealth, out of Australia and leave us penniless, and they will try to argue that we can't stop them. But of course we can and we must. However, I would willingly personally pay their fare for a one-way ticket out of Australia, if for no other reason, to raise the average IQ of Australians. But do we have the integrity of politician to implement it. Are they too much in thrall to the thieves? I’m not optimistic about that.
We must call the depression a depression, thieves thieves and loot loot, to put the parts of the jigsaw into perspective so that we may see the big picture, so as we can formulate guidelines for steering economics so that they can be argued from rational premises rather than contemporary mantra.
Capitalism is a well bred cow that has a proven aptitude to provide good milk and should be tended well, milked appropriately and controlled by government. It needs to be provided with adequate, but limited domain to remain contented growing and fat. But the aptitudes required for capitalism are inimical with democratic governance and have even less beneficial for humanity. The aptitudes that CEOs need to be successful are few and primitive— greed, preservation and a persuasive spiel. For instance, try finding any intellectualism or logic within the spin of CEOs. Their spiel is always a formulaic sprinkling of fact with bald lies— a very persuasive technique that unfortunately normally goes unchallenged. Why don't our politicians challenge it— that's what they are paid to do? Need you ask?
Is Obama big enough to change the big issues to make justice just and create a sustainable and democratic tax system, or is he just another cog in a glitzy patched up machine of governmental irrelevance? Americans would like to think that this great man, perhaps the most intelligent and able person ever to come to the presidency, will be able to rescue them from their economic and social woes. They also would like to think that he “can do” it. I wonder? Don't expect that level of intellectualism from the Canberra sheltered workshop.
The real value of everything, money, goods and services is still there for the people to take back— it hasn't been devalued by one iota. Until we force politicians to seize back control of government from this oligopoly, this depression will hand everything to rich CEO warlords on a plate, each one of them girding for a government-less world, and each one of them far more dangerous and far more inhumane than Bin Laden.
