Jeff Bezos is worth $122 BILLION dollars, while a market trader selling rice in Uganda makes just $80 monthly. Guess which one of them is taxed at 40%?
In the past few years, the richest 1% of the world have acquired nearly twice as much money as the bottom 99%.
While Elon Musk has paid a true tax rate of about 3% for years, a rice trader in Uganda paid 40%. She makes US$80 each month, while Musk is worth $180 BILLION.
Biden has called for a historic tax on billionaires, and with enough public pressure, he could champion the idea at an upcoming meeting of world leaders. A wealth tax of up to 5% on the ultra-rich could raise enough money to lift 2 billion people out of poverty!
"These arrests are a direct attack on our democracy and the fundamental rights of every person in the country. Each and every police officer involved on the ground should hang their heads in shame. They showed no judgement, no common sense and no basic decency."
"This was a heavy handed action which had the appearance of a pre-determined arrest that would have occurred regardless of the evidence or our actions.
The right to protest peacefully in the UK no longer exists."
Finland has been the happiest country on earth for the past six years due to lower income inequality (most importantly, the difference between the highest & lowest paid), high social support, freedom to make decisions, & low levels of corruption.
In general, when income inequality is larger, money matters more and people are less happy.
Research strongly suggests the importance of accounting for income inequality, as well as national wealth, in understanding the role of money in happiness.
Finland also has other attributes that help people feel happier. It has a highly decentralised publicly funded healthcare system & a very small private health sector. This is far more effective & efficient than many alternatives used in other countries.
Excellent new piece in the (paywalled) @FT from @jburnmurdoch on #diversity, #racism, & #immigration: 'Progressives are winning the immigration debate — but it doesn’t feel like it'.
John Burn-Murdoch explores the data, & possible explanations.
"Remember the rise of the right? First #Brexit, then Trump, then a wave of rightwing populism broke over Europe. There were dozens of news articles on the “rising tide of anti-immigrant sentiment”. Except it turns out that in the west, 2016 was a high water mark for such views."
"The most dramatic shifts have come in the US, Canada and, in particular, Britain, where the share of people saying there should be strict limits — if not an outright ban — on immigration has more than halved from 66% on the eve of the EU referendum to 31% last year." 🇬🇧
'Close friend of King Charles', Jonathan Dimbleby, has suggested Charlie would be horrified by the public pledging allegiance to him, saying the idea was “ill advised” & “I can’t think of anything he would find more abhorrent.”
Dimbleby seeks to pin the blame for the proposal on the archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby.
Dimbleby said Charlie has “never wanted to be revered. He’s never wanted, as far as I know, to have anyone pay homage to him, except in mock terms as a joke.”
“He wants, I think, to feel that people will share in the event – and I don’t quite know how this might have happened. I don’t know for certain but it would seem to me that this was an initiative by the archbishop who, as we know, is strongly evangelical.”
#BREAKING: Four members of the ideologically extreme far-right neofascist group the Proud Boys - including the former leader, Enrique Tarrio - have been convicted of seditious conspiracy.
The conviction follows a seven-day jury deliberation on five members of the proud Boys accused of conspiring against the peaceful power transition between Trump & Biden in January 2021.
The jury was unable to come to a decision on two charges against a fifth co-defendant
Tarrio was not in Washington on January 6, 2021 during the deadly Captiol riots but prosecutors said he organized and directed the attack by Proud Boys who stormed the Capitol which killed 5 people.
The seditious conspiracy charge carries a prison sentence of up to 20 years.