One of the World's Top Bankers warns about the now staggering wealth inequalities.

06-12-2016 3:12pm

Yourself isit wrote: »

...... Probably some of those regulations can be overturned. However the problem leading up to 2008 was lack of regulation. The free market under regulated produced 400k houses with pyrite.

That said the state - by bailing out developers and banks, not taxing land, and engaging in demand side fixes for supply side problems is also causing the problem.

The other problem is low wage growth. Inequality very much plays onto that.

True the state has not helped much before or after, but think it was more a failure of applying the existing regulations at the time. Regulations were there. OK, much of our building regulations were grossly outdated and even went back to British Rule.
But even so your €400k pyrite houses should not have happened.

It had a lot more to do with the fact that a little brown envelope fixed all, surprisingly little.

mahoganygas · 06-12-2016 4:25pm

Francie Barrett wrote: »

I don't think Carney is talking about this at all.

He is more likely attacking the ultra wealthy. By this, I mean people who have a net worth of at least $10 million. People who don't have to work for a living and can survive off their assets. Because of QE and money printing, these are the people have seen their assets inflated and their wealth increased.

This is simply not true. Placing $10 million in short term deposits to live off will not inflate your wealth. QE and low interest rates means it would cost money to hold those assets. A net loss.

Yourself isit · 06-12-2016 4:36pm

mahoganygas wrote: »

This is simply not true. Placing $10 million in short term deposits to live off will not inflate your wealth. QE and low interest rates means it would cost money to hold those assets. A net loss.

So the rich use stocks and housing and other assets to inflate wealth.

Broken Hearted Road · 06-12-2016 5:15pm

Earlier this year before the election, FG ran with a slogan 'Keep the recovery going'.

I'd say for a lot of people they didn't see any sort of a recovery and were hard pressed and strapped for cash, me included. In my own locality the local hotel closes for the winter because it's not worth their while remaining open for the winter. Where's the recovery here? Up and down the country as well there are many villages and towns that are gone to the wall and not doing well. Where's the recovery.

So back to the OP, the crash that happened in 2008 and the years that followed, I always thought it was just too great. Too big. Too huge. Not only for us here in Ireland but all around. The UK suffered similar to us with high unemployment and a deficit and a debt problem. Other European countries suffered too. The US suffered in a similar way too. This was too big. I always thought there's more to this. This isn't a recession - it's a depression but Governments aren't calling it a depression because it will cause a panic and a loss of confidence.

Something wasn't adding up for me. Here on online forums in Ireland, you'd always read a reply - 'we're in the mess we are in because we are not paying enough taxes and we must change that now. That never sat well with me. For one, the UK has ingredients for a healthy economy like:
Lower social welfare to encourage work,
Lower minimum wage - also to encourage work,
Broaden tax band with council taxes etc, and yet there they were also in the same position as us - with high unemployment, debt and a deficit.

The US is a cesspit. Very little help when it comes to welfare. Wages that rubbish especially when it comes to the lower end of the scale kind of work like retail, waitressing, etc. Very high taxes. Yet there they were in the same position as us - high unemployment, debt, deficits.

This problem is very very deep and it isn't going to be fixed by chasing ordinary people and hammering their backs for every last cent in new taxes and charges.

ScumLord · 06-12-2016 6:02pm

I think capitalism, or the current form of capitalism we use now just doesn't work these days. It's not so much an attack on capitalism but the fact the environment has changed and we're using the wrong tool for the job. It was fine in the past when we had a smaller population and a lot to learn but now we're fantastic at many things and we have a population that very large. It's getting to the point we're using a hammer to cut a piece of wood in half, it'll work, it just won't be pretty. It's not even that I think capitalism has been a bad thing, I think it's been a pretty good system, we've made many incredible advances, outside of war, which is new. But it's redundant.

Trying to put people back into factory/office jobs is never going to work because robots are just better at it. At some point our technology will just be better at everything, there literally won't be a job left. Do we make up jobs to do just to fill our time?

It's not like there aren't other things the human race could be doing. The potential that comes with free time is incredible, if you look at ancient cultures like the egyptians. 4000 years ago they created a construction so incredible we still have a hard time understanding how they did it. They did it out of pride and because they had the free time thanks to inventing farming. Same for south American cultures, they built their monuments by hand, not because they didn't have the technology but because it was a matter of pride, they wanted to do something spectacular.

That sense of purpose is gone today, we have no direction, no goals, no purpose, we just go to work, to get money, so we can buy essentials and hopefully some unnecessary tat so we can feel like we're part of a soulless consumer group. I think in many ways the people have been broken by capitalism, we got power and fettered it away because they gave us products that would keep us occupied long enough for them to come up with something else we didn't need.

It would be a pretty simple revolution too. Just stop buying stuff. Get spartan with your purchasing.

Mr. teddywinkles · 06-12-2016 7:05pm

The Wolverine wrote: »

You see there's the assumption from some here that it's just what's referred to as low or non skilled who'll suffer from automation when in fact his comments have said he expects the middle classes to be decimated too for example he mentioned how he expects jobs in accountancy to be almost wiped out through hardware and software advances and he's right.

Even in IT with technology advances a company that has 100 IT staff today might only need 20-30 of those staff in 10 years time due to hardware and software advances.

It's not just the poor cabbies, bus drivers, etc who'll be out of a job it will be in fact as many of the third level degree with a master's on top too

The problem is how can you just say "well upskill" to half of the working population which I think was the number he expects to be out of a job?

This universal basic income isn't gonna work as say your country has a 2 million workforce havled, how can you expect that 1 million workers to carry the tax burden of that plus every other service.

This is looking like a waaaay bigger problem that the industrial revolution, at least then it was mostly only the men who worked and there was lots and lots of other manual jobs not taken by tech. Now we face men and women competing for work so obviously way more people needing work and also tech taking a lot of stuff.

I hear this upskill phrase a lot. Upskill to what? Upskill to what everyone else is upskilling to?

elperello · 06-12-2016 7:33pm

ScumLord wrote: »

It would be a pretty simple revolution too. Just stop buying stuff. Get spartan with your purchasing.

http://lifehacker.com/how-to-program-your-mind-to-stop-buying-crap-you-don-t-1690268064

Not spending is the new earning!

jmayo · 06-12-2016 7:44pm

ScumLord wrote: »

I think capitalism, or the current form of capitalism we use now just doesn't work these days. It's not so much an attack on capitalism but the fact the environment has changed and we're using the wrong tool for the job. It was fine in the past when we had a smaller population and a lot to learn but now we're fantastic at many things and we have a population that very large. It's getting to the point we're using a hammer to cut a piece of wood in half, it'll work, it just won't be pretty. It's not even that I think capitalism has been a bad thing, I think it's been a pretty good system, we've made many incredible advances, outside of war, which is new. But it's redundant.

Trying to put people back into factory/office jobs is never going to work because robots are just better at it. At some point our technology will just be better at everything, there literally won't be a job left. Do we make up jobs to do just to fill our time?

It's not like there aren't other things the human race could be doing. The potential that comes with free time is incredible, if you look at ancient cultures like the egyptians. 4000 years ago they created a construction so incredible we still have a hard time understanding how they did it. They did it out of pride and because they had the free time thanks to inventing farming. Same for south American cultures, they built their monuments by hand, not because they didn't have the technology but because it was a matter of pride, they wanted to do something spectacular.

Ehh you do know they used slave labour and also were into some not so nice human sacrificing type of stuff ?
Some sources reckon up to 80% of population in ancient Egypt were servants and slaves.

ScumLord wrote: »

That sense of purpose is gone today, we have no direction, no goals, no purpose, we just go to work, to get money, so we can buy essentials and hopefully some unnecessary tat so we can feel like we're part of a soulless consumer group. I think in many ways the people have been broken by capitalism, we got power and fettered it away because they gave us products that would keep us occupied long enough for them to come up with something else we didn't need.

Oh and the great unity of purpose you attribute to them was down to often building these great monuments to honour their leaders who they considered to be Gods.
When we tried that in recent times we got Hitler, Stalin and Mao.
Three of the greatest mass murderers in history.

Oh and lately we got North Korea which being honest is a shytehole par excellence.

ScumLord wrote: »

It would be a pretty simple revolution too. Just stop buying stuff. Get spartan with your purchasing.

This I agree with.
Hell some of the world biggest corporations are based on being the best marketers rather than providing the best product.
It is the triumph of the marketers convincing people they want something they do not need.

And one of the more recent developments I hate has been planned obsolescence.
The duration of a particular phone model from some manufacturers is now down to about 6-9 months and the ultimate lifespan is 4.5 odd years.
The software industry has a lot to answer for because anything now with software is starting to adopt the same approach taken in the computer industry where it was up to end user to do final testing and there was an incessant need for continous patching.

ScumLord · 06-12-2016 8:00pm

jmayo wrote: »

Ehh you do know they used slave labour and also were into some not so nice human sacrificing type of stuff ?
Some sources reckon up to 80% of population in ancient Egypt were servants and slaves.

The egyptians didn't use slaves to build the pyramids. The pyramids are actually signed by the workers who built it, egyptian farmers. Once the food situation was sorted they spent their time building pyramids for their leaders and gods. It was not only an honer for them to work on the pyramids it allowed a fairly good standard of living with free food and beer supplied. I don't think slaves would have been considered good enough to work on the pyramids.

We also view their social makeup as bad with hindsight but it was a very different lifestyle back then and we can't really judge them by our standards. To someone living at the time they were probably delighted to be part of any powerful community because the alternative was roaming the land looking for food and hoping you wouldn't be killed or turned into a slave by anyone you came across.

And one of the more recent developments I hate has been planned obsolescence.
The duration of a particular phone model from some manufacturers is now down to about 6-9 months and the ultimate lifespan is 4.5 odd years.
The software industry has a lot to answer for because anything now with software is starting to adopt the same approach taken in the computer industry where it was up to end user to do final testing and there was an incessant need for continous patching.

I don't really have a problem with that. They are meeting the demands of the market. We the consumer have bought into planned obsolescence, it means we get to buy a new one every so often which suits us down to the ground. The fact is people don't want to pay for a phone that will last 10 years because they know once the new shiny phone comes out and it's within their budget they'll want that one instead. So, you can see straight away, there's no point in the phone company putting a lot of effort into making a phone no one will be able to afford and that they'll throw away around the same time as the cheap phone.

The consumer is the problem. In every way the consumer is the route of all our problems.

ChikiChiki · 06-12-2016 8:06pm

jmayo wrote: »

Ehh you do know they used slave labour and also were into some not so nice human sacrificing type of stuff ?
Some sources reckon up to 80% of population in ancient Egypt were servants and slaves.

Oh and the great unity of purpose you attribute to them was down to often building these great monuments to honour their leaders who they considered to be Gods.
When we tried that in recent times we got Hitler, Stalin and Mao.
Three of the greatest mass murderers in history.

Oh and lately we got North Korea which being honest is a shytehole par excellence.

This I agree with.
Hell some of the world biggest corporations are based on being the best marketers rather than providing the best product.
It is the triumph of the marketers convincing people they want something they do not need.

And one of the more recent developments I hate has been planned obsolescence.
The duration of a particular phone model from some manufacturers is now down to about 6-9 months and the ultimate lifespan is 4.5 odd years.
The software industry has a lot to answer for because anything now with software is starting to adopt the same approach taken in the computer industry where it was up to end user to do final testing and there was an incessant need for continous patching.

And cars aswell. Newer cars are not as reliable.

ancapailldorcha · 06-12-2016 9:09pm

Yourself isit wrote: »

Crony capitalism is though, I agree, mostly the problem. Probably some of those regulations can be overturned. However the problem leading up to 2008 was lack of regulation. The free market under regulated produced 400k houses with pyrite.

Have you considered the idea that much of the regulation in existence in 2008 was simply unenforced as no politician wanted to stop the credit gravy train.

K-9 · 06-12-2016 9:22pm

ancapailldorcha wrote: »

Have you considered the idea that much of the regulation in existence in 2008 was simply unenforced as no politician wanted to stop the credit gravy train.

Was just going to post similar. The regulations often were on the books, just nobody bothered to enforce them.

the_syco · 06-12-2016 9:33pm

Oodoov wrote: »

It's all going to end in tears if the establishment don't realise the present path is broken.

The establishment are borrowing time from tomorrow to pay for today, in the realisation that people aren't prepared to pay what things are worth but at the same time think that increasing the workers wage will not lead to an increase in price of everything.

the_syco · 06-12-2016 9:37pm

hmmm wrote: »

We need to figure out a way to create good jobs in a world that doesn't rely on low skilled labour. Answers on a postcard if you know how.

War. It gives people jobs, whilst decreasing the population.

Yourself isit · 06-12-2016 10:57pm

ancapailldorcha wrote: »

Have you considered the idea that much of the regulation in existence in 2008 was simply unenforced as no politician wanted to stop the credit gravy train.

It's largely irrelevant where the regulations were there and unenforced or not there. Same difference.

K-9 · 06-12-2016 11:36pm

Yourself isit wrote: »

It's largely irrelevant where the regulations were there and unenforced or not there. Same difference.

Not really. Politicians can keep on legislating to be seen to do something, but if they aren't actually enforced it's a pointless exercise.

Skommando · 07-12-2016 12:41am

Yourself isit wrote: »

It's largely irrelevant where the regulations were there and unenforced or not there. Same difference.

Unfortunately, it's more complex than that.

As with most areas of governance that fail in Ireland, they fail due to a combination of two things. Incompetency, combined with politicians/civil servants being pressurised / controlled by special interests that are not in the common good. A recipe for problems.

In the case case of regulations, like a lot of things in Ireland, we swing completely from the extreme of having zero regulations, to the extreme of having a plethora of regulations.

Then the next classic mistake in Ireland, as usual, is now having plethora of regulations (to politically pretend that does something about the problem) but we have almost zero enforcement of said regulations.

That's bad enough, but what is the net effect ? It means that any legitimate enterprise that tries to stay legal and comply with everything, in a climate with almost no enforcement whatsoever, cannot hope to compete in any shape or fashion with the cowboy setups, who couldn't care less what regulations are in place, but only what regulations are enforced. (Who would abide by speeding regulations if they were never enforced ?)

In general, white collar crime/incompetency in Ireland in a lot of sectors, is generally either completely unregulated, or completely unenforced, which makes it extremely hard for professional legitimate businesses to compete and make an honest decent profit.

Then add the complication that the construction industry in Ireland dreamed up the term "self certification" when it comes to complying with building regulations, and the government happily went with that. Can you imagine if car dealers could self certify that any car they sell passes the NCT regulations ? and they could issue their own NCT disks ? How would that work out for any legitimate garages, and how long would they be able to stay in business ? That's the situation with construction in Ireland. Madness.

Again this may be grand for some interests, but all this is against the common good and not in the interests of society as a whole.

I say this not just for the sake of it, but because the first thing that must be done to deal with a problem, is be honest enough to admit there actually is one, and to correctly identify it. If enough people realise what is going on, there is a chance that it might be addressed. And I think Ireland is still worth fixing in the areas where it needs to be fixed.

jmayo · 07-12-2016 1:10pm

ScumLord wrote: »

The egyptians didn't use slaves to build the pyramids. The pyramids are actually signed by the workers who built it, egyptian farmers. Once the food situation was sorted they spent their time building pyramids for their leaders and gods. It was not only an honer for them to work on the pyramids it allowed a fairly good standard of living with free food and beer supplied. I don't think slaves would have been considered good enough to work on the pyramids.

And what were the slaves doing ?
Were they the ones working on the farms which then allowed the farmers go build the pyramids ?

Or were the slaves just hanging around giving the beer and food to the farmers who were building ?

ScumLord wrote: »

I don't really have a problem with that. They are meeting the demands of the market. We the consumer have bought into planned obsolescence, it means we get to buy a new one every so often which suits us down to the ground. The fact is people don't want to pay for a phone that will last 10 years because they know once the new shiny phone comes out and it's within their budget they'll want that one instead. So, you can see straight away, there's no point in the phone company putting a lot of effort into making a phone no one will be able to afford and that they'll throw away around the same time as the cheap phone.

Maybe phones are a bad example.
Phones have become a status symbol and there is a craze to be seen with the latest.

Think washing machine or fridge freezer maybe.
Hell even think computer.
As someone working with computers for last 25 odd years, the thing that never fails to amaze me is how cr** the quality of final product offered by the software industry.
Computer hardware has increased by magnitudes of thousands yet computers can be as slow as ever to do some basic tasks.

ScumLord wrote: »

The consumer is the problem. In every way the consumer is the route of all our problems.

The consumers are people and thus can be manipulated.
They sometimes behave irrationally and that is targeted by marketeers.

ChikiChiki wrote: »

And cars aswell. Newer cars are not as reliable.

Include tractors in that as well.
I have heard of a few guys who reckoned their new tractor was down in power and hey presto the mechanic arrives and does a software update.

Actually a very worrying trend is we are being forced down the route of paying ongoing subscriptions for use of products rather than being able to buy outright.
Before you know it we will only get the use of devices as long as we pony up and we will forever be tied to the manufacturer.

the_syco wrote: »

War. It gives people jobs, whilst decreasing the population.

There is the answer someone should have given Edwin Starr and Bruce years ago.

ScumLord · 07-12-2016 1:46pm

jmayo wrote: »

And what were the slaves doing ?
Were they the ones working on the farms which then allowed the farmers go build the pyramids ?

Or were the slaves just hanging around giving the beer and food to the farmers who were building ?

Probably a bit of both. When we think of slaves we think of recent African slavery in America. In ancient cultures slavery was varied and an integrated part of society. We don't tend to think of serfdom as slavery but it would have essentially had the same quality of life as an ancient egyptian slave, depending on how they entered slavery. there were captured slaves and even people who covered their debt by selling themselves into slavery.

The thing to remember though is that making the pyramids was a religious act. The workers who built the pyramids were buried on site, they wouldn't do that for slaves. The construction workers were in an elevated position.

Maybe phones are a bad example.
Phones have become a status symbol and there is a craze to be seen with the latest.

The same can be said about TVs. The TV in your house is a cheap disposable model compared to the commercial models, which can have an LCD panel that has a life span at least twice that of a consumer TV and run non stop 24/7.

As someone working with computers for last 25 odd years, the thing that never fails to amaze me is how cr** the quality of final product offered by the software industry.
Computer hardware has increased by magnitudes of thousands yet computers can be as slow as ever to do some basic tasks.

I've been using computers since the BBC micro and the 10 year old PC I'm sitting in front of now is light years ahead of that green text machine.

Software back then was a lot simpler because the hardware couldn't do anything and it could depend on the user having some knowledge of the PC. Better hardware may have allowed some laziness, but the fact is software has become so complex to make up for the fact that the majority of users today have no clue what's going on, their PC may as well run on magic as far as they know. Now a phone has to be able to correct a human "Did you mean networking? Because you typed nnmqriubnqk".

The consumers are people and thus can be manipulated.
They sometimes behave irrationally and that is targeted by marketeers.

Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me. We know what they're up to at this stage, we're just playing along by being wilfully ignorant. We've bought into the lifestyle completely and have accepted they manipulate us. We want the life and do everything to avoid thinking about what has to be done to provide that lifestyle.

Wanderer78 · 07-12-2016 2:59pm

jmayo wrote: »

The consumers are people and thus can be manipulated.
They sometimes behave irrationally and that is targeted by marketeers

ScumLord wrote: »

Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me. We know what they're up to at this stage, we're just playing along by being wilfully ignorant. We've bought into the lifestyle completely and have accepted they manipulate us. We want the life and do everything to avoid thinking about what has to be done to provide that lifestyle.

ive always liked this chomsky quote:

“The advertising industry's prime task is to ensure that uninformed consumers make irrational choices, thus undermining market theories that are based on just the opposite.”

never underestimate the power of marketing, the industry employs some very intelligent people who are masters of manipulation. all of us are susceptible to this wide scale manipulation including myself, somebody who's well aware of its power and control.

jmayo · 07-12-2016 3:22pm

ScumLord wrote: »

Probably a bit of both. When we think of slaves we think of recent African slavery in America. In ancient cultures slavery was varied and an integrated part of society. We don't tend to think of serfdom as slavery but it would have essentially had the same quality of life as an ancient egyptian slave, depending on how they entered slavery. there were captured slaves and even people who covered their debt by selling themselves into slavery.

The thing to remember though is that making the pyramids was a religious act. The workers who built the pyramids were buried on site, they wouldn't do that for slaves. The construction workers were in an elevated position.

I defer to your superior knowledge on the building of the Pyramids.

Whilst you may admire their unity of purpose I think it was a waste of time and resources building tombs for some inbred knobend who happened to be lucky in his birth.
I would have more admiration for other achievements such as irrigation systems which added to quality of life of ordinary people.

ScumLord wrote: »

I've been using computers since the BBC micro and the 10 year old PC I'm sitting in front of now is light years ahead of that green text machine.

I will see your 10 year old and raise you a 14 year old.

Touch wood it stays running now.

I am not trying to say that a modern computer is not better than Spectrum, Micro, C64, a 486 or a pentium 4 based computer.

ScumLord wrote: »

Software back then was a lot simpler because the hardware couldn't do anything and it could depend on the user having some knowledge of the PC. Better hardware may have allowed some laziness, but the fact is software has become so complex to make up for the fact that the majority of users today have no clue what's going on, their PC may as well run on magic as far as they know. Now a phone has to be able to correct a human "Did you mean networking? Because you typed nnmqriubnqk".

The above phrase is massive understatement.
The memory leaks in modern software can often equal multiple of the entire memory of a computer from 20 years ago.
You are old enough to remember the 512 or 640k limits when conciseness was a major criteria.
Now memory and disk space is massive so who cares if their product leaks like a sieve and takes 7 GB disk space.
Besides the end users are used to getting shyte quality where they have to update every other day in order to keep it working or not being hijacked by some kid in an ex Soviet republic.

And don't get me started on modern printers.
Yep they are cheap, but they are unfixable.
HP will tell you sorry we don't do repair manual for that, just go buy another one.
Yep that may be great for HP's share price, but it is cr** for the environment and a waste of resources.
And there is not really any massive leap forward in the technology in this years model compared to last years.
They still eat toner or ink, but of course the new cartridges will be different to the old ones. :mad:

ScumLord · 07-12-2016 3:41pm

jmayo wrote: »

I defer to your superior knowledge on the building of the Pyramids.

Whilst you may admire their unity of purpose I think it was a waste of time and resources building tombs for some inbred knobend who happened to be lucky in his birth.
I would have more admiration for other achievements such as irrigation systems which added to quality of life of ordinary people.

I think it's all related though. If nothing else the Pyramids where a research project in how to build something impossible. We still can't say how they managed to move all that material to such heights, we have loads of theories but we can't say for sure how they did it. It's possible they used water to elevate the stone which would play into their mastery of irrigation techniques.

It would also create a huge sense of pride in the society. But we do have to take into consideration that society was just incredibly different back then. Their leaders were gods, as far as the common man was concerned it was in everyone's best interests to get their god into the afterlife so he could watch over them and secure egypt's future. It's probably not the case that pharaohs had a life of leisure where they could do what they want. They had obligations that meant they had a very restricted lifestyle. If you take the modern Queen of England as an example, she didn't want to be queen, she had to give up her life and become a figurehead that couldn't do anything she personally wanted to do. She basically had to just stand there and look queeny.

Besides the end users are used to getting shyte quality where they have to update every other day in order to keep it working or not being hijacked by some kid in an ex Soviet republic.

It's a different environment though. Back in the day our computers were islands that had no real contact with the outside world. Today it's much different. It's almost taken on an organic evolution with viruses forcing changes to code to make it stronger, just like real viruses force organisms to evolve.

And don't get me started on modern printers.
Yep they are cheap, but they are unfixable.
HP will tell you sorry we don't do repair manual for that, just go buy another one.
Yep that may be great for HP's share price, but it is cr** for the environment and a waste of resources.
And there is not really any massive leap forward in the technology in this years model compared to last years.
They still eat toner or ink, but of course the new cartridges will be different to the old ones. :mad:

There is a reason for that, it's more to do with their business model. Printers are actually subsidised by the ink. Most printers cost more to manufacture than they sell them for, because they make their profit on the ink.

The cheaper the printer the more you'll end up paying for it. Making a recall complex device as cheaply as possible is also going to encourage failures.

There are printers sold to offices that have a guaranteed output of so many thousand pages. The ink is generally more expensive but the printers are much more robust.

One of the World's Top Bankers warns about the now staggering wealth inequalities.

Comments