Dutch historian Rutger Bergman stunned the super-elite at the World Economic Forum at Davos by telling them that the biggest problem in the world today is the refusal of the richest to pay their fair share of taxes. He said that listening totheir discussions was akin to a fireman’s conference that never mentioned water.
He became an instant folk hero for his bold truth telling.
Davos is an annual gathering of world leaders, CEOs, and billionaires from all over the world.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Here is my letter that was published in The Times of NW Indiana on Sunday, Jan. 27, 2019.
The Times deleted this part: “The super-rich and corporations are paying lower rates of tax than they have in decades,” the Oxfam report said, pointing out that “the human costs – children without teachers, clinics without medicines – are huge”.
……………………………………
I grew up in a household of poverty. Until the third grade, I lived in a tar paper shack which had been a chicken coop on my grandfather’s 40 acre farm in Meridian, ID.
There was an outhouse and I received baths in a small round steel tub inside a well house that had running cold water. We had a coal burning stove for heat that was in the middle of the living area.
Americans view the poor as sinners who must be punished with drug tests and work requirements. Government-imposed hunger fits American contempt for poverty and those who suffer it. We punish them as if lack of funds is a communicable disease.
The world’s 26 richest people own the same wealth as the poorest half of humanity, Oxfam said on Monday, Jan. 21, 2019, urging governments to hike taxes on the wealthy to fight soaring inequality. One Percent of Jeff Bezos’s wealth was the equivalent to the entire health budget of Ethiopia, a country of 105 million people.
A new report, published ahead of the World Economic Forum in Davos, also found that billionaires around the world saw their combined fortunes grow by $2.5 billion each day in 2018.
The 3.8 billion people at the bottom of the scale saw their wealth decline by 11 per cent last year stressing that the growing gap between rich and poor was undermining the fight against poverty, damaging economies and fueling public anger.
Poor people are the same as everyone else. They just don’t have money. Once you are on the street it is impossible to exist in a manner fitting for humanity yet many middle class people are only a dire emergency away from loosing their homes.
The laugh’s on us: How the Trump-radical Republican tax cut broke the economy
written by David Cay JohnstonFebruary 1, 2019
Donald Trump’s tax cut for the rich and the corporations they control is turning out to be a bust for the American economy.
It will, however, burden taxpayers with at least $1.5 trillion more federal debt because, instead of boosting tax revenues through increased economic activity as promised, it has caused a sharp drop in revenue….
We call the 2017 tax law the Trump-Radical Republican tax law because not one Democrat voted for the bill in the House or Senate. It was also passed without a single public hearing. It is a terrible law that benefits the richest among us at the expense of the many—and needs to be fixed.
The Trump-Radical Republican tax law not only cut the corporate tax rate from 35% of profits to 21%. It also allowed corporations to immediately deduct 100% of capital expenditures instead of writing them off on their tax returns over periods from three years to decades.
This kind of corporate tax timing trick has been employed several times since the John F. Kennedy administration in 1962. The effect each time was to create a brief surge in corporate investment, called capital expenditures, followed by a slump.
https://www.alternet.org/2019/02/the-laughs-on-us-how-the-trump-radical-republican-tax-cut-broke-the-economy/#.XFRzIh5pShE.gmail
But some other blogger just exposed Rutger Bergman as just another money grubbing fraud trying to make his riches from data.
Truth. It’s all part of the show.
My last post was sent to moderation and it had a link to the blog post? The person exposing Rutger Bergman is the “wrench in the gears” blogger.
LisaM,
Nothing is in moderation, and no post of yours was deleted.
Your site won’t let me post the link because it says it is a duplicate post
Hope this helps.
AlwaysLearning: I got to the part where people who have traveled a lot and are educated get low scores. Think I’ll throw up.
……………………….
Adoption of 1:1 devices eroded teacher autonomy until students were spending most of their day with volunteer aides, eyes glued to screens. The teachers that remained were left evaluating student data. In classes where teachers were still allowed to lecture, movement, vibrations and sounds were monitored through sensors embedded in seats. The aim? Supposedly to provide continual feedback regarding student engagement and quality of instruction, but everyone knew it was really to keep track of the content delivered and how students responded. It was chilling.”
That’s happened to me a few times. Just won’t post.
What is this link, AlwaysLearning, about? Was it written for comprehension?
In any case, I do like the idea of BIG, Basic Income Guarantee.
Robert Reich Breaks down the Trump Tax Plan with great talking points:
http://robertreich.org/post/168596241350
“This is about saving capitalism’: the Dutch historian who savaged Davos elite says…
It really IS about saving capitalism, but they’re too blinkered to see it. I don’t think people object to them making lots and lots and lots of money. People object to 1500 at the top grabbing the lion’s share and commandeering our political and civic institutions, and they should object to that.
What they are saving is PREDATORY CAPITALISM…wehre the ‘markets’ ( which they create) drive everything…over the cliff.
yes; I often think of a deregulated predatory capitalism as being a great example of that childhood parable — the one about the dangers of selfish greed killing off the goose which has been laying predictably regular golden eggs
Not talking about taxes to the wealthy is “like talking to firefighters without being able to talk about water.” That summarizes the many years of trickle down economics that have been imposed on the country from both conservatives and corporate Democrats. All the while the rich get richer, and the working class start losing members to the poor class.
Sen. Sherrod Brown- Medicare for all not, “practical”. He’s got to keep his bona fides with the richest 0.1%.
The elites at the Gates-funded Center for American Progress can’t help themselves. In their 1-10- 2019 paper about what states can do to improve education, there were these gems (1) “A healthy teacher pipeline is critical”. fyi- CAP, inanimate objects move in pipelines, not human beings. And, is “healthy” the right descriptor for a pipeline? (2) What’s needed is “a high school experience that is more authentic…” The citation for that gem was XQ Institute- expected.
CAP managed to include the required hackneyed verbiage, “to scale”, “career and college readiness”, “ill-equipped to meet the needs of the 21st century”. fyi CAP, how much can America’s workforce expect to be paid and how financially secure will they be if they don’t find jobs at CAP, the think tank of billionaires?
Bregman’s March 2017 article [linked via Twitter in the Guardian article] is well worth a read: https://amp.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/mar/30/wealth-banks-google-facebook-society-economy-parasites?__twitter_impression=true
https://www.forbes.com/sites/petergreene/2019/01/26/denver-another-strike-against-the-backdrop-of-bad-education-reform/?fbclid=IwAR1RPXmo312HuR6YRFp1y_kW7XJSI5EWW21rCuyTrrvh-d_WoFZZ1F-Ashc#1980d2986783
On a related topic – great article on potential Denver teacher strike.
Hopefully, all the best veteran teachers will unite together with grandparents, parents and students of genedration X, Y, and Z TO FOCUS ON THIS TOPIC
“” the refusal of the richest to pay their fair share of taxes””
Forget about all distractions such as SIB, philanthropy, “smart givers” with “high impact” non-profits, etc…Back2basic
A ‘Fundamentally Inhuman’ Economy: 26 Billionaires Own as Much as World’s 3.8 Billion Poorest People
While the wealth of billionaires increased by $900 billion last year, or $2.5 billion a day, latest Oxfam report on inequality shows “this bonanza has not been felt by the poorest half of the world, which saw its wealth decline by 11 percent. https://www.oxfamamerica.org/explore/research-publications/public-good-or-private-wealth/ “Public good or private wealth?
Universal health, education and other public services reduce the gap between rich and poor, and between women and men. Fairer taxation of the wealthiest can help pay for them.
Our economy is broken, with hundreds of millions of people living in extreme poverty while huge rewards go to those at the very top. The number of billionaires has doubled since the financial crisis and their fortunes grow by $2.5bn a day, yet the super-rich and corporations are paying lower rates of tax than they have in decades. The human costs – children without teachers, clinics without medicines – are huge. Piecemeal private services punish poor people and privilege elites. Women suffer the most, and are left to fill the gaps in public services with many hours of unpaid care. We need to transform our economies to deliver universal health, education and other public services. To make this possible, the richest people and corporations should pay their fair share of tax. This will drive a dramatic reduction in the gap between rich and poor and between women and men.”
“Industry had to “stop talking about philanthropy and start talking about taxes”, he said, and cited the high tax regime of 1950s America as an example to disprove arguments by businesspeople at Davos such as Michael Dell that economies with high personal taxation could not succeed. “That’s it,” he says. “Taxes, taxes, taxes. All the rest is bullshit in my opinion.””
Rings true, doesn’t it? And we could use the language and attitude too: when we hear yet another billionaire’s warm and fuzzy plan to save poor kids and make things better for all, we can just interrupt and say “Shut up, and start paying taxes. When you got to pay 80% for 10 years, you can open your mouth again. “
Davos Men have been using their forum to create all roads to Rome. DATA CENTRAL is Rome.
Reformer platitudes over the lack of data collection became the excuse to demoralize teachers and students. Administrators who’ve been seated (seeded) by the Billionaires never intended to use good data to fix problems. This data is overlooked for the selective and weaponized data activated to create a compliant and unquestioning cradle to grave teacher and student workforce.