by Eric Zuesse for The Saker Blog
The annual Credit Suisse Global Wealth Report is the gold-standard for estimates of private wealth around the world. The latest is Global Wealth Report 2018. It’s at:
https://www.credit-suisse.com/
Some aspects of this report (as in previous years) raise more questions than answers, but any informed estimations of where things stand economically within the world’s nations and even globally, has to take seriously what it reports. Following are key excerpts from — and my thoughts about these excerpts of — the current report:
page 6 of 60:
The report’s only mention of “Libya” is here: The “Change in household wealth per adult 2017–18” in Libya was +$22,000 per household, second only to the #1 largest, which was U.S., +$23,000. Unfortunately, no indication is given anywhere in the report as to what the percentage-increase was in either (or any) country. That’s the far more important figure. Though that figure cannot be calculated for Libya, it can be calculated for U.S., the country that was shown here to rank #1. On p. 40 of this report is shown that in the U.S., the “Wealth per adult over time” was rising at the same high percentage during 2012-2018 as it had been during 2002-2006, and is now a bit over $400,000. (The report says nothing whatsoever about Libya except what was just mentioned here, and the figures from which they calculated even that weren’t cited, much less mentioned.) The U.S. Census says that the average U.S. “household” is 2.58 people. If that’s 2 adults and .58 children, then the mean average U.S. household owns around $800,000, which would be the house etc. and other assets minus debts. If the comparable figure in Libya is, say, $80,000 (it’s just a guess, and probably way too high), then in 2018 the average Libyan household’s wealth during 2018 rose around 25%-30%, whereas in the U.S., it rose around 3%. Consequently, either something absolutely stunning happened in Libya during 2017-2018, or else this report made a huge error somewhere. That same page (40) asserts, as perhaps explaining America’s continuing rise: “The United States has a high proportion of assets (72%) reported as financial.” Around 30% of assets were real estate, which typically is comprised of the household’s house. (However, this would be only the value of the real estate that’s in excess of any existing mortgage or other debt upon it.) The assumption that the economists who wrote this report are making is that one of the reasons why the average mean wealth in U.S. is rising a higher dollar-amount than any other country’s is that an unusually large percentage of the privately held wealth in U.S. is in the form of investment securities such as stocks and bonds, and an unusually low percentage of it is in houses. They are assuming that the way to grow an economy is to “financialize” it. They are economists, and that’s the way most economists think, because economic theory supports that viewpoint. But is economic theory itself supported by the empirical evidence in economics? It is not. This was shown, for example, in the crash of 2008. But economists apply that theory anyway.
p. 9:
Wealth inequality [worldwide]
While the bottom half of adults collectively owns less than 1% of total wealth, the richest decile (top 10% of adults) owns 85% of global wealth, and the top percentile alone accounts for almost half of all household wealth (47%). The shares of the top 1% and top 10% in world wealth fell significantly between 2000 and 2008: the share of the top percentile, for instance, declined from 47% to 43%. However, the trend reversed after the financial crisis. The share of the top 10% was little affected. But in 2016 the share of the top 1% rose back above the level we estimate for 2000. The trend in the share of the top 1% partly reflects the trend in the share of financial assets in the household portfolio, which fell during 2000–08 and then began to rise after the global financial crisis, raising the wealth of many of the richest countries, and of many of the richest people.
The share of financial assets peaked in 2015 and has been declining since then. In previous reports, we predicted that wealth inequality would follow suit – possibly with a slight lag – and there is evidence that this is now the case. The share of the top decile and the top 5% remains at the same level as in 2016, while the share of the top 1% has edged down from 47.5% to 47.2% according to our best estimate.
That “edge” “down from 47.5% to 47.2%” is far too tiny to constitute any ‘evidence’ confirming that “wealth inequality would follow suit” from “The share of financial assets … declining since” 2015. The economists who did the report are simply hoping there, that economic theory isn’t trash and can be relied upon for making econmic predictions. But that is hoping upon something that has already been empirically proven to be false, many thousands of times.
Further informative on this page is “Figure 5: Share of top 1% of wealth holders since 2007, [eleven] selected countries, % of wealth”:
Russia has the world’s highest inequality of the eleven countries analyzed: 55% to 65% of private wealth being owned by the nation’s richest 1%
Second-worst is India: 49-54%
Third is Brazil: 38%-45%
Fourth is U.S.: 39%-41%
Fifth is Germany: 29%-34%
Sixth is China: 28%-33%
Seventh is Canada: 24%-26%
Eighth is UK: 20%-25%
Ninth is Italy: 18%-24%
Tenth is France: 17%-23%
Eleventh is Japan: 17%-18%
However, here’s a better indication of these nations’ total inequality, and not merely the top 1% versus everybody: it’s the mean average wealth per adult, divided by the median average wealth per adult. Inequality is shown by the mean even if (as in Germany, for example) the inequality is more the result of the top 10% than of the top 1%. These ratios, of the mean divided by the median, will be shown here as calculated by me from pages 40-54 in this report. The higher this ratio is, the more the given nation is unequal in per-person wealth:
Russia=7.3
India=5.4
Brazil=3.9
U.S.=6.6
Germany=6.1
China=2.9
Canada=2.7
UK=2.9
Italy isn’t shown on these numbers.
France isn’t shown on these numbers.
Japan=2.2
p. 11:
Our estimates suggest that the lower half of the global population collectively owns less than 1% of global wealth, while the richest 10% of adults own 85% of all wealth and the top 1% account for almost half of all global assets. Since the global financial crisis, wealth inequality has trended upward, propelled in part by the rising share of financial assets, and a strengthening US dollar. These underlying factors appear to be waning, so that it seems more likely that wealth inequality will fall in the future rather than rise.
So, here they are saying that in addition to “the share of financial assets in the household portfolio” causing wealth-inequality to rise, a “strengthening US dollar” has also been causing wealth-inequality to rise. The strength of the U.S. dollar, as against all other currencies, is — and ever since the 1970s has been — propped up by the Sauds setting the value of oil in dollars. Consequently, the economists who wrote this report are here alleging that the private agreement, between Nixon and King Saud (and sustained by both governments ever since), has helped to cause the soaring wealth-inequality globally after 1980. This is a very interesting assumption. But one hopes that the report’s data are less unreliable than the report’s assertions (such as that) are.
p. 41:
[China] Growth champion
While the United States is still far ahead in terms of total household wealth and the number of citizens in the top wealth categories, China has advanced so rapidly this century that a wealth gap that once appeared unassailable could vanish within a generation. It is China, rather than the United States or Japan, to which much of the developing world looks for a model, inspiration, and often assistance, in wealth creation.
Whereas financial assets were 72% in U.S., they were only around 35% in China. Would the economists who did this report be therefore assuming that China’s future economic growth will be hobbled by its relatively low percentage of private assets that are financial? If so, might that assumption be based upon flaws in existing economic theory?
p. 43:
[Russia] Changing Fortunes
According to our estimates, the top decile of wealth holders owns 82% of all household wealth in Russia. This is a high level, greater even than the figure of 76% for the United States, which has one of the most concentrated distributions of wealth among advanced nations. Also interesting is that it is higher than the top decile share of 62% in China. The high concentration of wealth in Russia is also reflected in the fact that it is estimated to have 74 adults who are billionaires, despite its modest level of wealth per adult.
(According to Forbes, there are 585 Americans who are billionaires.)
Normally, extreme wealth-concentration is found in kingdoms and other dictatorships. For a nation to depend mainly upon the aristocracy (the extremely wealthy) for growth is to produce an economy that will fail and whose only significant possibilities for growth are conquests of foreign lands. (Of course, for aristocrats to steal more from the public in their own country would be another way to do that, but it wouldn’t increase their country’s growth; and, besides, it would greatly increase the likelihood of a revolution in their country, which might kill them; so, foreign conquest does have an inevitable appeal to any aristocracy — the appeal of “take it from people elsewhere” instead of “take it from your own countrymen.” Ever since at least 1898 in the U.S., foreign conquests by the military or by coups have increasingly been the aristocracy’s chief method for growth.)
Wealth-inequality started soaring in the U.S. when Ronald Reagan became the President in 1981 and has continued soaring ever since, so that the U.S. now is among the least-equal countries. And yet, American growth also continued, despite the growing inequality, and it has continued because increasing portions of that growth are now in financial assets, and also because the U.S. dollar has remained the world’s reserve currency. Being the reserve currency means that the U.S. Government can have huge deficits and soaring debt, and that the economy can have enormous trade-deficits every year, all without the foreign-exchange-rate of the dollar being adversely affected. This globally unique advantage that the U.S. and especially its aristocracy have is the foundation-stone of America’s current leadership in the world. This unique advantage exists because in the 1970s Richard Nixon switched the dollar off the gold-standard and onto the oil-standard, in that agreement with the King of Saudi Arabia — the global oil-champion. That model of national economic growth is dependent upon the world’s wealthiest person’s, the Saudi King’s, continued alliance with America’s aristocracy. It has caused America’s wealth-concentration to soar. And, since virtually only the aristocracy and their millions of hirees (such as lobbyists, bankers, lawyers, accountants, and propagandists) have the wherewithall to ‘invest’ (gamble) in financial assets, the U.S.’s soaring inequality in both income and wealth is the result.
America’s increasing wealth-inequality is unlikely to reverse as the authors predict. Instead, the tendency toward revolution, which has accompanied the increased inequality, can only continue. And any further efforts by America’s aristocracy to extract even more from their fellow Americans will only increase yet further that revolutionary tendency. In fact, this is the reason why America’s billionaires need, even more than before, to conquer foreign lands, and to extract from people abroad even more advantageous terms. It’s safer that way, for any aristocracy which is approaching the limit of what it can extract from its own public without sparking a revolution. This is why the frequency of America’s coups and invasions is likelier to rise, before America’s median wealth will rise (such as the report’s authors assume). Unless America increases its coups and invasions in order to increase its mean wealth, America’s median wealth will, at best, only stay stuck where it is, or else go down (which would produce a revolution here).
The difference between America and Russia, then, is that Russia’s currency, even after the year 2000, isn’t the world’s reserve currency. Russia isn’t even aiming to make it so. However, if the world now is bifurcating into a U.S. bloc and a China bloc, then Russia might serve, at least at the start, as being China’s Saudi Arabia. China would then receive natural resources from Russia, and would pay in its currency, and Russia would buy gold on the open market, with that currency. Beyond this initial period, non-carbon energy-sources might be booming, and gold might again become the world’s natural reserve-currency. Then, at that stage, if not earlier, Russia should be concentrating increasingly upon developing its human capital. And, beyond that human-capital-buildup stage, Russia would then be the high-tech and arts and sciences leader of the world. All of this is, of course, presuming that neither WW III nor global warming will have intervened to prevent it.
The biggest down-side to America’s having the world’s reserve currency is that it has produced an aristocracy of unequalled arrogance. Therefore, in the short term, America is likelier to become increasingly violent and more overtly a police-state than a more equal — and more equal-opportunity — society. Because of America’s aristocracy, America’s glory-days are over. As any sort of “city on a hill,” America’s best days are in its past, rough though those were. America’s long-term future is bleak. It starts that now already with the world’s highest percentage of its people in prison — the highest percentage in prison of any nation on the planet. If this means that it’s a police-state, then it already is leading the world as being that.
—————
Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity.
It is urgent for Russia to reverse that trend and being more equal. It has the biggest potential in the world, dont let that chance slip from your hands.
It’s debatable how much credence can be given to the accuracy of this annual Credit Suisse Global Wealth Report. I will, however, concentrate on three aspects of the article.
It is stated that Russia is not attempting to make the ruble the reserve world currency. Debatable. Both Russia and China are accumulating gold, and analysts are stating that both plan to introduce gold backed currencies. This means that both the ruble and the yuan will, eventually, become reserve world currencies. One analyst has even stated that the US is preparing to introduce a new dollar, intended for domestic use, once the current one crashes.
And yes, America is indeed likelier to become increasingly violent and more overtly a police-state. Today I am reading that Chicago police are recording armed attacks against individuals, where money was not taken, only the winter coats of these individuals.
Tendency towards revolution in America due to inequality ? Not impossible, but unlikely, as most states in the US do not possess European traditions and history. Some analysts are writing about a possibility of a civil war in the US. Again it’s not impossible, but unlikely, as I don’t see the events of 1861-1865 being repeated in the US. Should the US experience a financial collapse, then we shall see severe social unrest and an increase in secessionist demands. In “Dixie Land” there is a saying that “the South will rise again”. This saying is more realistic than people realize, as the old South has kept quite a bit of European traditions and culture as compared to other parts of the US. It is aware of statehood, as it had it in 1861-1865. Personally I do believe that the old South will indeed rise again should the US experience severe social unrest and financial difficulties.
Finally, we have a Russian-Chinese economic partnership. This partnership will most probably last for a considerable period of time. Russia has the high tech and energy, while China has the manufacturing capabilities. Both will introduce gold backed currencies.
(Dixie) “It is aware of statehood, as it had it” – from the time of independence. Much earlier than 1861.
I predict we are currently in a political civil war, their will be no new dollar should the easterners go the gold back route(I also doubt this), it should make the citizens hardship continue upwards and revenge against gvt agents continue in the same direction, interesting times indeed.
So not a word about Russia being the most in-equal country?
Russian oligarchs sailing around in Mediteranian Sea in $billion dollar yachts. Floating around in London, NYC, Tel Aviv and Beach Spain throwing out Russian money as Saudi Princes.
So who are we supporting? A media created Russian reality? An opponent savior who dont exist? 3-4 different International capitalist business groups fighting against each other about the cake.
Perhaps just somebody you can love to hate.
Good point. It is well and good to criticism the obvious evils the US and West perpetrate, but if we ignore the rot in Russia or China, then we are just barracking for the New Boss, same as the Old Boss. Seems there is great wealth disparity in Russia as well, how does that bode for the future? Likewise with China, they now have a President for life and are getting increasingly totalitarian, how is it that they get a free pass on that? Any elite, be it capitalist or bureaucratic, feels most comfortable with its boot over the necks of the peasant class.
I wonder what “rot” you are referring too. The Chinese are teaching their children at a very young age to how to live a healthy life, keep their cost of living down, and to love their elders. Americans have largely admitted that stench mouth and the lack of dental care are common place and if you are not among this majority, you are not part of the in crowd or welcome to debate here. But this phenomenon has detrimental consequences for the rising cost of health care and the health of a nations future and will be looked upon as the straw that broke the western worlds back. Welcome to the new “unhealthy competition”.
It would be the rot, for example, where the Russian people will be increasingly impoverished in their pension years while living in a land of plenty.
I dont quite agree about the land of plenty, 90% of Russia is north of Minneapolis mn, this amount of plenty cant compare to the original land of plenty where the pension system has mostly been eliminated.
Well said. China is a society where the ruling powers are interested in raising the standard of living, material and moral, of the whole population. In the neo-liberal capitalist oligarchies, in contrast, the ruling parasites HATE other people, and the parasites’ unbridled greed and misanthropy have created societies of unprecedented inequality and social sadism and savagery. Yet the Western parasites still possess the gall, the utter effrontery, to hysterically and ceaselessly declare that their vile dystopias represent human perfection, and they retain the right, and practise it, to destroy any society that dares craft any other kind of society but the ‘dog eat dog’ and ‘the Devil take the hindmost (50%, ever increasing)’ sewers that are the USA and much of the West.
I presented two alternative ways of documenting the enormous inequality in Russia. What more would you want? Opinions from me, such as that Putin and the legislature need to take irreversible measures to reverse it? I have no expertise in Russia’s domestic politics, and so I don’t write any opinions about that. Is this inequality due partly to the U.S. regime’s forcing Russia to compete on nuclear weapons? I don’t know. I try to make sure that I write only what I do know and can document.
Hello, Eric: you’ve done a great job in presenting your findings. Thank you very much for your investigative reporting. It is well worth the read.
Thank you to Eric, and Saker for presenting this.
A well written and interesting article until he worshiped the damn global warming hoax, but i guess writers sometimes have to kneel in front of that alter to be able to earn money in main stream narrative media… But i admit it annoy me a tad.
Per, it’s not a “hoax.” You’ve been suckered, by the carbon-fuels aristocracy. I haven’s been fooled by the overwhelming preponderance of climatologists who accept the carbon-gases-buildup-caused-global-warming theory on the basis of the now enormous body of empirical evidence that’s been accumulated on it. It’s not a hypothesis; it long ago passed that phase, and became a theory; and, by now, it is a proven theory in science, not that this would make any difference to you, but it’s a fact. You’ve been suckered, by the aristocracy. You’re like tobacco-consumers long were, who were deceived and suckered by that industry, by its owners. That’s what the aristocracy specializes in and always have — “God save the King!” etc. Beyond a certain point, the suckers deserve some of the blame for remaining such. In the global-warming matter, that point was already reached decades ago.
Here in Austfailure we are in the midst of a record drought. The one big river, the Murray-Darling, is drying up, and fish kills are occurring weekly, although it looks like the fish populations may now have crashed irreversibly. Meanwhile rain deluges of unprecedented fury afflict the north, and Tasmania is burning up, including the wet temperate forests, that will not recover for centuries. Not to forget the death of the Great Barrier Reef from repeated bleachings, unknown there, for hundreds of years at least, before 1998. And we suffered a temperature here, last week, of 46.6 degrees Celsius, a record for capital cities in the country. Yet STILL the Right screeches that it is a hoax, aided and abetted by the Murdoch media cancer, and Rightwing Federal and State regimes attack renewable energy, steal water for irrigators from the rivers and sing the praises (like the morally insane Pence)of coal. Surely a species whose worst specimens are in the grip of some Death Wish. Thanatos rules OK.
“It is strange what weather we have had all this winter; no cold at all; but the ways are dusty, and the flyes fly up and down, and the rose-bushes are full of leaves, such a time of the year as was never known in this world before here. This day many more of the Fifth Monarchy men were hanged”.
Samuel Pepys Diary 21st January 1660/61
How is that relevant?
The love of field and coppice
Of green and shaded lanes,
Of ordered woods and gardens
Is running in your veins.
Strong love of grey-blue distance,
Brown streams and soft, dim skies
I know, but cannot share it,
My love is otherwise.
I love a sunburnt country,
A land of sweeping plains,
Of ragged mountain ranges,
Of droughts and flooding rains.
I love her far horizons,
I love her jewel-sea,
Her beauty and her terror
The wide brown land for me!
The stark white ring-barked forests,
All tragic to the moon,
The sapphire-misted mountains,
The hot gold hush of noon,
Green tangle of the brushes
Where lithe lianas coil,
And orchids deck the tree-tops,
And ferns the warm dark soil.
Core of my heart, my country!
Her pitiless blue sky,
When, sick at heart, around us
We see the cattle die
But then the grey clouds gather,
And we can bless again
The drumming of an army,
The steady soaking rain.
Core of my heart, my country!
Land of the rainbow gold,
For flood and fire and famine
She pays us back threefold.
Over the thirsty paddocks,
Watch, after many days,
The filmy veil of greenness
That thickens as we gaze …
An opal-hearted country,
A wilful, lavish land
All you who have not loved her,
You will not understand
though Earth holds many splendours,
Wherever I may die,
I know to what brown country
My homing thoughts will fly.
**
Dorothea Mackeller
1908
The very bottom of the denialist barrel. You’re not Tony Abbott are you?
My mrs says Crimea over last 20 years the av summer temp has gone up quite a lot…and highest highs are well in excess of those of 20 years ago. Weather is more erratic and volatile these days I am convinced. Polar vortex in Chicago now! -47…..
Mulga, I lived in the Wombat State Forest, near Melbourne, Victoria, for six years, and used to drive a lot in the region, around the Murray-Darling Basin. It was a well known fact that a large part of the river was dead – already! – because the water was used – and abused – by the wine industry. Well watered grapes certainly resulted in more wine and more profit. The vineyards (sorry, Saker…) were to blame for the partial death of the river.
Now, that was in the end of the nineties. So, I would not blame the weather for the death of the Murray-Darling River/Basin before considering the role of the wine industry.
Both climate destabilisation and over-exploitation are to blame. Plus devastation of the woodlands and forests through similar heavy exploitation, and the grazing of alien creatures like sheep, goats and cattle. This is not a catastrophe caused by one factor alone.
Per, it’s not a “hoax.”
Yes it is.
It’s a cynical hijacking of a ridiculous science by the usual suspects.
In the early seventies it was nearly unanimous amongst scientists that we were heading for an ice age.
Global warmists were treated as buffoons. I remember it well.
At some point, those characters who infest every movement saw the potential of global warming as a political weapon.
And so the hysteria began.
And the falsification of data.
And the misinterpretation of the falsified data.
Eric you just claimed that you only write what you know about and can document and then you dismiss a bloke on a science subject you obviously have not studied.
I’m sorry, but you cannot look at the record and conclude anything other than that the climate always changes.
The climate always changes and when it does it is not necessarily scary. It may improve things!
Ever thought of that?
The models they use have already proven to be Wrong with a capital W.
The atmosphere has been fertilised to the great relief of the plant kingdom, most of which evolved when CO2 levels were 1000ppm rather than the 300ppm we had a hundred years ago or the 400ppm we have now.
The plants are now producing more food and oxygen for the animal kingdom.
Mankind represents 0.007% of the worlds biomass and 100% of its hubris.
And 100% of it’s bullshit artists.
And Mulga, I live in the land of plenty myself and if this is a record drought I’ll eat my hat.
I’m sure it’s a record somewhere but that’s the nature of records.
What you should be witnessing is the proof of the zionist occupation of the Australian media, especially the ABC.
“I’m sorry, but you cannot look at the record and conclude anything other than that the climate always changes. The climate always changes and when it does it is not necessarily scary. It may improve things!”
To make money on something that happens cyclically ALL THE TIME in Earth’s existence needs to be dramatized. “We are responsible and WE must do something about it”.
“We” must buy CO2 Credits because the country has old power infrastructure. “We” must buy hybrids or pay increasing auto registrations fees for old vehicles. “We” must …… get shafted paying and paying and paying to Fight Global XXX.
To argue that the current climate destabilisation is merely ‘cyclical’ and ‘happens all the time’ is utterly incorrect. The current rate and extent of climate destabilisation has not been seen since the PETM of 55 million years ago. If that is your idea of ‘all the time’…. If you think that the costs of combating climate destabilisation are great, you will really love the cost of climate destabilisation. They will be infinite.
To say that in the early 70s that it was ‘nearly unanimous’ among scientists that we were heading towards an Ice Age is just plain incorrect. Whether deliberate or the result of brainwashing by the denialist industry-who cares? The assertions of ‘falsified data’ are slanderous lies, the worst type of denialism. The assertion that the climate ‘always’ changes is misguided, because human civilization and the gigantic population have arisen during ten thousand years or relative stability during the Holocene. And it is the rate of climate change that determines whether species can adapt to the new climate regime. Where climate change is rapid and great, as during various previous episodes of greenhouse gas forced change, as at the end of the Permian Age, mass extinctions of species occur, and it takes millions of years before the previous extent of biodiversity can be restored. A sludge of further denialist garbage is beneath contempt, and the closing blame on the ‘zionists’ is to bizarre for words. You are definitely Tony Abbott-or perhaps Andrew Bolt.
Sounds like your an expert Mulga.
I will give you 2 references.
If they don’t sew doubt in your mind and stimulate further research then I’m sorry but I will declare you are not a scientist at all but a shill for the globalist project whether you realise it or not.
This 10,000 year holocene period of stability emerged from what?
An ice age.
A simple glance at a 10,000 year temperature graph informs you firstly that it has been warmer on earth than it is now for 9,700 of the past 10,000 years and secondly that we look very much like we are heading back into an ice age.
If global warming is anthropogenic then it may be saving us from the next great glaciation. A big if.
http://joannenova.com.au/2010/02/the-big-picture-65-million-years-of-temperature-swings/
The second reference is to James Corbett’s video “What is the average global temperature”, which deals with your ‘slanderous lies’ claims about data falsification to my satisfaction.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eL-HyviLy6c
Now a good scientist would absorb this new information and evaluate it. He would not attack the messenger.
Enjoy.
A scientist should rely on vetted and peer-reviewed results, preferably published in a credible journal. Failing that, on the authoritative opinion and judgment of credentialed experts in a given field. Your first reference appears to have no scientific qualifications whatsoever. Anyone can write anything on a blog or on youtube. Perhaps something published in Nature, Science or Scientfic American if not a peer-reviewed journal? To be fair though, Mulga’s arguments would have more force were he also to provide credible references.
Why provide ‘credible references’ when the scientific consensus of all the Academies of Science, all the scientific societies and 99% of actively publishing climate scientists is there for the researching. Do you dare to deny those facts? To make reference to all the evidence for anthropogenic climate destabilisation would fill entire libraries, but your type would simply dismiss it all as some sort of Al Gore-Maurice Strong-Rockefeller ‘conspiracy’ to pollute your Precious Bodily Essences or some other paranoid lunacy.
If you would calm down a bit and read a little more carefully you might realize I am agreeing with your viewpoint. However, it does seem to me that you could advance your own arguments by providing a reference to the consensus opinions on climate change. I could probably find one easily enough myself if I had the interest.
Yes, sorry David. I only read the latter half before getting agitated. Once again, sorry. I mistook you for one of the closed brains.
So, in summary, you attack any opinion which you think disagrees with yours – even if it doesn’t. And then when you realise that the object of your angst doesn’t actually disagree with you, all of a sudden you’re best buddies? Hardly an objective consideration of alternative viewpoints.
The peer review system is corrupted.
This is a highly controversial subject which means it has proponents on both sides.
If I can’t find articles refuting global warming in science journals it tells you more about the journals and their control than it does about the science.
The first reference was to direct you to the 10000 year graph.
The author of the article is a journalist reporting on the work of scientists.
I haven’t read it myself.
No need any more.
The peer review system is NOT corrupted in regard to climate science. The denialists have produced not one iota of evidence of ‘corruption’, whereas evidence of their lies, misrepresentations, distortions and direct links to Rightwing groups and the fossil fuel industry is voluminous.
Using the totally discredited joannanova is quite ludicrous. The problem is that, when one is dealing with closed minds, science, rationality and evidence is irrelevant. Why someone would choose the tiny coterie of denialists with their clear links to hard Right ideology and fossil fuel lucre, in preference to all the Academies of Science and scientific societies on Earth, and 99% of actively publishing climate scientists, is one for the psychologists and moral ponerologists to ponder. The reaction to the Royal Commission findings into the deliberate undermining of the Murray-Darling Plan by business interests and Rightwing political thugs, yesterday and today, ie vehement and hysterical denunciation and outright lying denial, is an example of how we will descend into the pit of ecological collapse- screeching, hissing, spitting and flinging lies and insults, and, no doubt, violence, as we go. Congratulations on what you have wrought. Your Pyrrhic victory is near complete.
I think the closed mind here will be apparent to the reader.
For the record, I despise Murdoch, Abbott, Bolt, etc.
I read a book years ago called Water and the World from memory by A.D. Tweedie.
What I have understood ever since is that water supply is all about demand, infrastructure and management.
The first fleeters were desperate to find fresh water just as Menindee is now.
That they don’t have it is a function of infrastructure and management.
Perhaps some of those scientists wasting their lives on studying climate should apply their minds to water supply.
You claim to despise Murdoch, Bolt and Abbott yet you ape their die-hard denialism in regard to the most vital problem and greatest crisis in human history. Forgive me if I disbelieve you.
I wonder how great the gap is in our world view, Mulga?
After all, here we are at this particularly honest and open website dissecting and analysing the words and actions of the globalist zionist warmonger criminals.
I’ve got to tell you, I’m a total cynic regarding anything these people control. So, just about everything.
They control the media. Surely we agree on this?
They control the world’s money supply and high finance.
They form powerful lobbies which heavily influence all or most western governments to betray their own people for the sake of the elite agenda.
They have set women against men, Christian against Muslim, capitalist against socialist.
They arm and fund our declared enemies.
They sell elicit drugs to fund their nefarious deeds.
Blah, blah, blah.
So why would I believe in what they tell me is the greatest challenge in human history?
In the interests of full disclosure, I also don’t believe in the schmolocaust, the Apollo missions, the lone gunmen, 9/11 or any bloody thing else the bastards want me to believe.
What about you?
I believe in the Nazi Judeocide of four to six million Jews as much as I believe in the Nazi Holocaust of twenty million Soviet citizens, a million or so Roma and Sinti and millions of Poles, Yugoslavs and others. I also believe that the Nazi Judeocide has been foully exploited by the Zionazis to justify their crimes against humanity. I do not believe the ludicrous Oswald lies re. JFK, or the Sirhan lies re. RFK, or the utterly incredible lies surrounding 9/11 etc. But I do believe climate science, in part because the globalist oligarchs have expended far more effort defending their greatest cash cow, fossil fuels, and US petro-dollar hegemony, than they ever did in trying to avert the climate destabilisation and other ecological Holocausts. You have identified the enemy correctly, but are misguided as to their priorities in regard to Life on Earth. They not only do not care whether the ‘useless eaters’ survive or not, but are actively seeking our extermination.
“In fact, this is the reason why America’s billionaires need, even more than before, to conquer foreign lands, and to extract from people abroad even more advantageous terms. It’s safer that way, for any aristocracy which is approaching the limit of what it can extract from its own public without sparking a revolution. This is why the frequency of America’s coups and invasions is likelier to rise, before America’s median wealth will rise (such as the report’s authors assume). Unless America increases its coups and invasions in order to increase its mean wealth, America’s median wealth will, at best, only stay stuck where it is, or else go down (which would produce a revolution here).”
Don’t see any of that in the zpc/nwo american colony. Expanding power and maintaining power, yes in spades. Many assume money/wealth is the end all and be all to the zpc/nwo seeking uncontested dominance over the planet.
It’s not. Such thinking is as vacuous as claiming the 2003 war against Iraq was “all about oil”.
Power is about control, not how much money one stole.
Money is the main form of power. That’s because it is the power to hire agents, such as lobbyists, PR firms, lawyers, etc, and to buy ‘news’-media, etc.
You forgot money power’s taste for buying death-squads.
A financial asset is a piece of paper entitling a collection of rent by whoever owns it; it has no value in itself. The financial system is essentially parasitic on the real value creating economy adding rent overheads to production. Rising stock and bond market valuations are not growth they are asset price inflation based on central bank credit expansion through low interest rates and QE. It is also debatable whether a house is an asset in the true sense; houses are essentially illiquid insofar as they can never be cashed in.
What is counted as GDP growth is actually debt, and debt itself is nothing more than pulling down consumption from the future. What happens when the future arrives. Everything goes into reverse; what we thought was wealth through asset price inflation (fictitious capital) suddenly disappears as quickly as it appears.
Contrary to popular belief the Fed and other central banks have not invented a perpetual motion machine, but just blown up another (super)bubble. The coming crisis will be the moment of truth, when suddenly the plans and claims and expectations which had been formed during the upswing are put to the test. Many of them are found wanting and those responsible for them should face the consequences of the crisis. Bad investments, non-performing debts, hopelessly unrealistic expections, zombie firms in malinvested zombie economy. It always has and always will work out this way, such is the nature of the beast.
Most of the science of ‘economics’ these days is just a echo chamber for Anglo imperial policy. You need to use your mind objectivly and see the Empire for what it is- a criminal scheme.
The Americans and British middle classes benefit from easiest acsess to Credit in the world, therefore they can get shiny stuff that others in India and Russia etc cannot. The Anglo economic model endlessly prints money, pays pensions and writes off debts in a constantly circulating Ponzi scheme. Taxes for corporations and billionares are much lower in USA/UK than other developed countries, so the wealth keeps acumulating in the people already most rich, while the poorest get poorer. Where does the extra money come from, to fund this corrupt system?
It comes from Imperial activity, piracy and theft, such as owning corrupt and dangerous mines in Brazil, diamonds in South Africa, and minerals in former USSR. And most importantly from supporting Color revolutions and civil wars, to enable privatisation of target countries rescources, such as we now see in Venezuela. The money from these stolen wealth goes straight on the New York and London stock markets, paying the next lot of dividends and pensions and backing up the next lot of middle class loans.
Anglo know Saudi will soon turn against the Zionists and Anglo, and already have accepted Russia’s greater role in the middle east, ensuring Assad will remain Syrian leader. Therefore all that Saudi oil that backs the USA dollar has to be replaced with Venezuelan oil. USA and UK citizens will suffer greatly if Venezuela does not fall, and the middle classes who benefit from all this access to credit will stop being able to afford their big SUVs and wall-sized televisions and elephant sized food portions. If enough countries follow Russia and Iran’s lead, and stand up to the Empire, then it will fall without a shot being fired. Stop letting Anglo steal your countries wealth at all costs!
https://www.voltairenet.org/article204928.html
The watchman (Trump) of the renegade nation (US) of Daniel 8 has been 180 degree turned.
Lol. All that private wealth is in the hands of (((International Finance))); so what is Mr Zuesse complaining for?