Cementing the powers of the super-rich

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Prior to Trump the rich and the big corporations got their way by paying the election expenses of the Congressmen or hiring expensive lobbyists.  Now a new age has dawned – they don’t have to pretend any longer.  Only in America, new stats show, could packing an incoming administration with gazillionaires be so easy.

People holding personal fortunes worth over $5 million this year make up less than one-tenth of 1 percent of the world’s adult population.  People worth over $5 million may also this year make up nearly 100 percent of the picks Donald Trump chooses for his cabinet and inner circle.

President-elect Trump’s choices for top slots so far include at least two billionaires, two former Wall Street executives at Goldman Sachs, and assorted other mega-millionaire heirs and corporate honchos. Donald Trump, notes the Washington Post, “is assembling the richest administration in modern American history.”

The Trump choice for commerce secretary, Wilbur Ross, has ten times more personal wealth than the entire cabinet George W Bush appointed back in 2001.

This assemblage of awesomely affluent may not reflect the America most Americans experience in their everyday lives. But these Trump deep-pocket picks absolutely do reflect the core reality of our contemporary worldwide distribution of income and wealth: The United States currently hosts more really rich people than any other nation on Earth.  No other nation comes close.

The United States, new 2016 Credit Suisse numbers show, has 582 billionaires who currently call the United States home, more billionaires than Japan, the UK, Germany, France, China, Italy, Canada, Australia, Switzerland, and South Korea combined. (adapted from an article on Inequality.org)

So what can we do about it?  There is Bernie’s continuing revolution, bless him, and may he prosper.  But as a start could we finally stop calling the United States a “democracy”.  It is all too silly.  Epicureans believe in moderation.  There appears to be not a smidgeon of moderation in the Trump picks.  They will be busy unpicking all the pesky regulations that protect our individual rights, the health of the environment, and indeed, the health of the poor who voted for Trump in the first place.

The harvest of privatization

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A recent surrvey by Action for Rail in the UK found that a commute into London by rail costs an average of 13 % of average monthly pay. Travelling the same distance into Rome costs only 2% of an Italian salary. Even in costly Paris a commute is 30% less than the equivalent British cost.
British price rises are pegged to the retail prices index, rather than the consumer price index, which results in higher rises. Thus, privatisation has left the country with sky high ticket costs, overcrowded trains and an aging infrastructure.  And now Southern Railway, which brings tens of thousands of commuters into London every working day, is on strike, as I understand it, because the company want to dispense with the train guards, thus making even more profit.  The government, they that originally privatised a public utility) stands – by – doing – no- thing.

In every privatised industry you find the same thing, with the possible exception of airlines. the traveller is left paying for the profits of private companies and the exorbitant salaries of the CEO’s, and are worse off than ever before. I don’t like accusing people of scams; however,the beneficiaries of this purely political privatising are friends and contributors to a particular party. As they say in the army, “no names, no pack drill”.

Were Epicurus alive today he would spot corruption in an instant. Corruption is un-Epicurean because there is no level playing field and the ordinary citizen pays the price.

Telling the genuine from the false

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Researchers at Stanford’s Graduate School of Education have spent more than a year studying how well students across the country evaluate online sources of information. Middle school, high school and college students in 12 states were asked to evaluate the information presented in tweets, comments and articles. More than 7,800 student responses were collected.

In exercise after exercise, the researchers were “shocked” — their word — by how many students failed to effectively evaluate the credibility of that information. The students displayed a “stunning and dismaying consistency” in their responses,  being duped time and time again and again. They weren’t looking for high-level analysis of data but just a “reasonable bar” of, for instance, telling fake accounts from real ones, activist groups from neutral sources and ads from articles. A professional appearance and polished “About” section could easily persuade students that a site was neutral and authoritative, the study found, and young people tended to credulously accept information as presented even without supporting evidence or citations.

– Most middle school students can’t tell “sponsored content” from genuine articles.

– Most high school students accept photographs as presented, without verifying them.

– Many high school students couldn’t tell a real and fake news source apart on Facebook, even though the genuine articles had a blue checkmark. Over 30 percent of students argued that the fake account was more trustworthy than the verified one with the mark!

– Presented with a tweet from MoveOn about gun owners’ feelings on background checks ,  less than a third of undergraduate students cited the political agenda of MoveOn.org as a reason it might be a flawed source.  More than half of the students didn’t even click on the link within the tweet before evaluating the usefulness of the data.

– Most Stanford students couldn’t identify the difference between a mainstream and fringe source.

-Faced with articles from the American Academy of Pediatrics  (65,000 members and around since 1930) and the American College of Pediatricians (ACPeds) (which objects to parenting by same-sex couples, claims homosexuality is linked to pedophilia, and is  classified as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center) more than half of the undergraduates concluded that the article from ACPeds was ‘more reliable,’ the researchers wrote. Even students who preferred the entry from the American Academy of Pediatrics never uncovered the differences between the two groups.  (NPR News item)

Schools and universities are still teaching students to read vertically when they should be instructing them to read like fact checkers, that is, looking for other evidence, for other sources of similar news or information.  You cannot rely of Google or others to rank things by reliability, zap the liars , the crude and the crass.  Nor should you accept as correct a site that is well designed, easy to navigate and confident in its approach.  Unfortunately, you have to be skeptical at all times: “what is the agenda of this organisation, who  are its backers, what are the antecedents of the writers (if possible)”.  But then this is what a proper education should do – to encourage you to ask questions, and take nothing for granted, and to think for yourself.  In this we seem to be failing.

Cicero on history

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“To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child . For what is the worth of human life, unless it is woven into the life of our ancestors by the records of history? “(Cicero, Orator, 46 BC)

The basics of Epicureanism

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From time to time I re-post information about the ideas behind Epicureanism.  With our world in turmoil this seems a good moment to do it again:

1.  The principal objective of life is happiness or pleasure. Happiness is peace of mind and body. It is tranquillity or undisturbedness (ataraxia), the quiet of a mind free from fear (or anxiety) and a body content with natural satisfactions.

2. Mental pleasure is better than bodily pleasure.

3.  Mental pain (anxiety) is worse than bodily pain.

4. Quality of pleasure is more important than quantity of pleasure.

5. Fear causes mental disturbance.

6. Do not fear the gods: They do not concern themselves with human problems; nor do they reward or punish.

7. Do not fear death: Life is feeling or sensation; when life ends, there is no feeling (no pain); death does not hurt.

8. Do not fear physical nature: Nature is indifferent; the universe is but the motion and the mingling of atoms.

9. Exercise prudence: Although every pleasure in itself is good and every pain is evil, some pains should be endured for the sake of future pleasure and some pleasures should be forgone since they may lead to future pain.

10. Live simply and prudently (with self-control and moderation). Seek simple pleasures, those that satisfy natural and necessary desires. By nature we need food, drink, clothing, shelter, prudence (reason), and friendship.

11. Seeking luxuries (extravagant food, excessive drink, sexual love, and the like) creates anxiety in our minds and disturbance in our bodies.
12. Avoid excess of all kinds; simple pleasures (with a gentle motion of atoms) are preferable to painful excesses (with a violent motion of atoms).
13. Make friends: They provide security and pleasant conversation.

14. Avoid disturbing people. Stay in the Garden with your friends.

15. Make agreements with others (laws), so that you will not disturb one another.

16. There is no right or wrong (justice or injustice) outside of these agreements. Agreements (and justice therefore) differ from community to community. [cultural relativism]

17. Live justly (obey the laws), so that you will not have the anxiety of wondering if you will be caught and punished.

18. When you are old, think about the good times you have had. That will make up for bodily pain.
19. When you are young, think about the good that lies ahead. Do not fear the future. We can control some things, but we cannot control everything.

20. Dread (anxiety or fear) is worse than present bodily suffering. Present suffering soon passes; anxiety lasts a long time.

21. When enough security against other people is achieved, if one has enough power and material wealth as a base, then one can have the safety of a quiet life in solitude apart from the crowd. (after Principal Doctrines, XIV)