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Where Has All the Wealth Gone?
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ynys
Posted: 22 September 2011 22:37:07(UTC)
#1

Joined: 21/10/2010(UTC)
Posts: 45
Down which plughole has it descended?
Has it really evaporated into thin air?
Or has someone got it and if so who?

We are told we can't fix things, stimulate growth, because that requires spending money and er ... there isn't any.
Me, I'm baffled.
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Recently Redundant and Retired
Posted: 23 September 2011 04:23:39(UTC)
#2

Joined: 08/03/2011(UTC)
Posts: 334
When I worked for a blue-chip company and traded my first share option in the 80s taking the equivalent of 2 years' salary in profit, I wondered where the money came from , who worked to generate it ? Over the 15 year course of the scheme, the average £50k p.a. employee made about £300k by doing nothing more than their job and managing CGT efficiently.
My house was valued two years ago and now I try to sell it for £200,000 less than that valuation I wonder where the money has gone, maybe into the past to pay for the share options. Perhaps now we pay for the indulgences of the past.
Fact is, in both cases it's all smoke and mirrors, value through confidence, there and gone, not real money at all, one big Ponzi scheme to keep the ball rolling.
Back in the real world.....I read that the poverty line in India has been set at 34p per person per day in rural areas, I'm wondering how I can sponsor some families without lining the pockets of bureaucrats and war lords.
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Anonymous Post
Posted: 23 September 2011 07:12:19(UTC)
#3
Anonymous 1 needed this 'Off the Record'

All the wealth has been consumed in an orgy of eating too much ice-cream!

When it comes down to it 'money' should be related to something tangible.

I was going to write that a good, strong pound should equate to a 'standard' loaf of bread, but then I haven't been in the UK for a while and maybe a pound doesn't even buy you a loaf these days.

As a kid I could buy an ice-cream for 6d (sixpence).

The same ice-cream parlour is still around.

By 1984 the 6d ice-cream was something like 24 new pence.

It finally broke the £1 barrier a couple of years back and I believe is now over £1.20 for that same sixpenny cone.

£1.20 = 24 shillings = 48 sixpences; therefore my ice-cream inflation is 4,800%

By my reckoning that 2.5 new pence ice-cream will cost at least £57.60 in the year of our Lord 2,063

I doubt I'll be around to give a cone a good licking in 2063, but my son should be.

No worries, your property should be worth several millions more by then and a paltry £200,000 should just about pay for a nice weekend break!

:)

~R~
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xmfclick
Posted: 23 September 2011 07:29:55(UTC)
#4

Joined: 02/03/2011(UTC)
Posts: 3
There is a school of thought that says there never really *was* "all the wealth" -- it was indeed smoke and mirrors, thanks to Fractional Reserve Banking, which allows banks to create money out of thin air.

I remember thinking, when I was a youth, that surely the only real way to create new wealth was to either grow something or to dig something out of the ground (I was keen on Physics at the time, so the idea probably came from the concept of Conservation of Energy). Otherwise, if somebody is going to pay me for doing something (that they either couldn't do or didn't want to do for themselves), where does the money come from to compensate me for my time, over and above the cost of the raw materials? The person who pays me must get it from somewhere, presumably by himself doing something for somebody else -- and so on, ad infinitum. But that would be a closed loop, and as far as I could see the only way to break the loop would be for someone, at some stage, to create something "out of nothing" -- i.e. by growing it or by digging it out of the ground. Could any economists out these tell me if (and where) my youthful thinking was in error? Because if it wasn't, then we are indeed living in one enormous Ponzi scheme.
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Rose G
Posted: 23 September 2011 08:45:53(UTC)
#5

Joined: 26/11/2009(UTC)
Posts: 112
Dust to dust, ashes to ashes - at least we leave something behind when we leave this planet!

The original scheme to create this mirage was based on nothing (or credit/debt) if you like but we seem to have forgotten that - nothing to nothing is no bad deal, but off course we have all bought into the whole consumerism deal with little question - now its pay back time.

I am ever so glad that I own very little, therefore with the little pot I am supposedly guaranteed to get in a few years time, I can go anywhere - I am not tied down by bricks & mortar, in a land that has provided me with a job, but at what cost to my dreams of settling somewhere quite & peaceful, in touch with nature, coping with the daily travails that may bring & feeling utterly at peace with myself.

In the meantime, I am part of a system created for boom & bust; a system intent on using up all of the earth's resources at whatever cost, just so we can think of ourselves as progressive; part of a system that still divides us, that explores our deepest fears & uses these insecurities to make lots of money for someone somewhere; part of a system that still sees honour in selling arms & ammunitions, with nuclear weapons proliferating rather than being sent down the tubes, a world as uncertain as ever in which death & more taxes are the only guarantees, but which politician has the balls to spell it out, so our gullibe electroate can elect the neck lot of idjeets to make our next lot of regulations so more taxes can be conned out of us?
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Lets Face It
Posted: 23 September 2011 09:08:11(UTC)
#6

Joined: 15/06/2010(UTC)
Posts: 7
Great comments you lot.

Justa one cornetto...give it to meeee
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P L
Posted: 23 September 2011 09:30:18(UTC)
#7

Joined: 10/08/2008(UTC)
Posts: 356
xmfclick I think what your are missing from your model is credit , or rather credit that is not used to improve but to simply consume. ie I do some work and get paid an apple, which I eat - I'm still hungry so I borrow some money (ie against future work) to get another. I'm hoping that when it comes to pay back the debt I'm not hungry as I'm going to have to be working for free. Alternatively I don't eat all of the first apple but instead eek it out and plant the other (or, and this will never catch on I just plant the one I've got and go hungry), when it comes to pay up I'm a bit hungry but I've got a whole tree full of apples to pay back the original debt, to eat, to plant and to swap for other things - I have wealth. The rub being to get the 2nd apple on loan I had to work hard to build up trust and then put in more hard work to get it to grow.

Thanks to Governments of all colours in making credit so easy, everyone could suddenly have everything they wanted without the rather annoying problem of having to put in any effort to get it - I have an illusion of wealth. The magic being that their consumption artifically supports those that do actually create.

Well unfortunately the time has come to pick some apples from the tree and pay back the debt - except most have no trees!

And the simple answer of course is to dig up and redistribute the trees of those that decided to do it all the hard way - A real boost to the view that the only way is the hard way you'll agree
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Anonymous Post
Posted: 23 September 2011 09:53:34(UTC)
#8
Anonymous 1 needed this 'Off the Record'

It's like this:

God created the birds and provided them with food to pluck out of the air (i.e. insects).

Human beings, however, do not have wings.

Human beings can only gorge themselves on the rotting carcasses of other human beings if they have lost the desire to physically prove we are the top of the food chain.

We have become cannibalistic - having conquered the animal kingdom we now eat off everybody else wherever possible.

We find it a lot easier to create wingless chickens, shove them in cages to be fed and swilled out by robots and dispatched to provide the basic ingredient to instant food chains so we don't have to hunt, pluck or even cook our own food.

We got what we asked for - an easy life as far away from nature as possible even though we cannot, as yet, escape our biology or instinct to kill and destroy as much as possible.

Soon we'll be able to genetically modify ourselves so that we can just plug ourselves into a wall socket for energy and then we'll be the new mutated race of real couch potatoes.

We can't have our cake and eat it, but we are bound to die trying!

'Perpetual peristalsis for the masses' is all that a political party needs to provide to be elected.

It is every individual's duty to:

'Eat, crap, die and be recycled for your country''

What a wonderful world! :)

~R~

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Anonymous Post
Posted: 23 September 2011 10:09:28(UTC)
#9
Anonymous 1 needed this 'Off the Record'

PL

My girlfriend has olive trees in her garden and ends up with lots of jars of 'cured' olives, but not enough to make more than a few litres of olive oil.

I had an almond tree that died.

I replaced it with a lemon tree; unfortunately the lemon tree also died and so would I if I'd tried to live off my own home grown lemons.

It's a sad thing to admit but I doubt I could survive without the help of millions of other human beings directly and indirectly catering to my every need.

The truth is I can't even produce my own electricity as yet - though the solar water heating is a great help even though I have to import drinking and washing water as I can't use the water from the well for anything more than watering the garden.

The flowers in the garden provide a wealth of beauty, but I doubt I'd survive long eating them either!

Yes - wealth IS an illusion..... unless you have a positive attitude and a stale loaf of bread hidden away somewhere to keep you going just one more day!

My financial 'wealth' has dropped by over 100k in the last few months but I'm hoping the income generated is 'secure' and if not 'tough luck' and I'm going to die one day so why worry? :)

Now to find that loaf of bread I hid away for a rainy day - how I LOVE a little mould! Ha!
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Peter Johnson
Posted: 23 September 2011 10:13:37(UTC)
#10

Joined: 27/05/2009(UTC)
Posts: 3
Liked you article.

You asked how you can sponsor some families without lining the pockets of bureaucrats and war lords?

A very good question I often wonder how much of the aid given actually filters down to the people it was intended for.

I believe the answer would disappoint us, whilst many good people work for charitable purposes many others see it as a business opportunity to make money.

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