Let's wrench power back from the billionaires

["Dave Farber" <farber () gmail com>]

> Begin forwarded message:
>
> From: Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne () warpspeed com>
> Subject: [Dewayne-Net] Let's wrench power back from the billionaires
> Date: January 15, 2018 at 4:23:55 AM EST
> To: Multiple recipients of Dewayne-Net <dewayne-net () warpspeed com>
> Reply-To: dewayne-net () warpspeed com
>
> [Note:  This item comes from friend Mike Cheponis.  DLH]
>
> Let’s wrench power back from the billionaires
> If we stand together against powerful special interests we can eliminate poverty, increase life expectancy and tackle 
> climate change
> By Bernie Sanders
> Jan 14 2018
> <https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jan/14/power-billionaires-bernie-sanders-poverty-life-expectancy-climate-change>
>
> Here is where we are as a planet in 2018: after all of the wars, revolutions and international summits of the past 
> 100 years, we live in a world where a tiny handful of incredibly wealthy individuals exercise disproportionate levels 
> of control over the economic and political life of the global community.
>
> Difficult as it is to comprehend, the fact is that the six richest people on Earth now own more wealth than the 
> bottom half of the world’s population – 3.7 billion people. Further, the top 1% now have more money than the bottom 
> 99%. Meanwhile, as the billionaires flaunt their opulence, nearly one in seven people struggle to survive on less 
> than $1.25 (90p) a day and – horrifyingly – some 29,000 children die daily from entirely preventable causes such as 
> diarrhoea, malaria and pneumonia.
>
> At the same time, all over the world corrupt elites, oligarchs and anachronistic monarchies spend billions on the 
> most absurd extravagances. The Sultan of Brunei owns some 500 Rolls-Royces and lives in one of the world’s largest 
> palaces, a building with 1,788 rooms once valued at $350m. In the Middle East, which boasts five of the world’s 10 
> richest monarchs, young royals jet-set around the globe while the region suffers from the highest youth unemployment 
> rate in the world, and at least 29 million children are living in poverty without access to decent housing, safe 
> water or nutritious food. Moreover, while hundreds of millions of people live in abysmal conditions, the arms 
> merchants of the world grow increasingly rich as governments spend trillions of dollars on weapons.
>
> In the United States, Jeff Bezos – founder of Amazon, and currently the world’s wealthiest person – has a net worth 
> of more than $100bn. He owns at least four mansions, together worth many tens of millions of dollars. As if that 
> weren’t enough, he is spending $42m on the construction of a clock inside a mountain in Texas that will supposedly 
> run for 10,000 years. But, in Amazon warehouses across the country, his employees often work long, gruelling hours 
> and earn wages so low they rely on Medicaid, food stamps and public housing paid for by US taxpayers.
>
> Not only that, but at a time of massive wealth and income inequality, people all over the world are losing their 
> faith in democracy – government by the people, for the people and of the people. They increasingly recognise that the 
> global economy has been rigged to reward those at the top at the expense of everyone else, and they are angry.
>
> Millions of people are working longer hours for lower wages than they did 40 years ago, in both the United States and 
> many other countries. They look on, feeling helpless in the face of a powerful few who buy elections, and a political 
> and economic elite that grows wealthier, even as their own children’s future grows dimmer.
>
> In the midst of all of this economic disparity, the world is witnessing an alarming rise in authoritarianism and 
> rightwing extremism – which feeds off, exploits and amplifies the resentments of those left behind, and fans the 
> flames of ethnic and racial hatred.
>
> Now, more than ever, those of us who believe in democracy and progressive government must bring low-income and 
> working people all over the world together behind an agenda that reflects their needs. Instead of hate and 
> divisiveness, we must offer a message of hope and solidarity. We must develop an international movement that takes on 
> the greed and ideology of the billionaire class and leads us to a world of economic, social and environmental 
> justice. Will this be an easy struggle? Certainly not. But it is a fight that we cannot avoid. The stakes are just 
> too high.
>
> As Pope Francis correctly noted in a speech at the Vatican in 2013: “We have created new idols. The worship of the 
> golden calf of old has found a new and heartless image in the cult of money and the dictatorship of an economy which 
> is faceless and lacking any truly humane goal.” He continued: “Today everything comes under the laws of competition 
> and the survival of the fittest, where the powerful feed upon the powerless. As a consequence, masses of people find 
> themselves excluded and marginalised: without work, without possibilities, without any means of escape.”
>
> [snip]
>
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