From football to property and beyond, inequality is the mother of all crises

Inequality does indeed affect us all, both physically & mentally. It's foolish to say that the poor people are happier than wealthy people. No, poor people are not happy because they have to work that much more to earn just enough to fill theirs & their children's stomachs. Then, there are education costs, housing costs, utilities, healthcare costs, & now, even the clean, drinking water costs money. Add the social exclusivity of poor people & their families due to their poverty & the life of the poor person is just hellish.

To develop & provide sustainable resources to everyone equally, the wealthy & the poor, every country needs to invest in its infrastructure & economic policies. Although, the writer of this opinion post takes a simplistic view that if Netherlands can increase taxes, & also spread its tax net, to help out the vulnerable sections of its own populations, then everyone else can, it is pretty much impossible to do that without proper practice of faith & religion.

How will religion help in alleviating poverty & instituting equality among the populace? Netherlands is a small Scandinavian country with a much smaller population than many developing countries, like Pakistan, India, Brazil, Argentina, Nigeria, Kenya, Thailand etc. It is also a pretty much a homogeneous population, very much unlike many other developing countries around the world. Still, it's impossible to eradicate inequality because the rich control the political policy-making machine.

This eradication, or at least, alleviation of inequality, can only happen through ethical people in governments & policy-making area. Increasing taxes or spreading the tax net far & wide may help in increasing the government coffers but won't help much if that money is once again ends up in the pockets of rich executives & wealthy citizens of the country, or politicians loot that money. So, how does the general public ensure that government is full of good, ethical people? And even after identifying such honest people, can the general public act rationally enough to bring them to power & stick by them, while, they increase taxes on rich people, & use those taxes to upgrade the horrible situation the general public is living in? Remember, all this will take time, whereas, the general public will want to see substantial major changes as soon as possible.

Only ethics can help there, & ethics comes through religion. Ethical & religious people will need to become leaders & consider government coffers public money & hence, need to be spent on them.

Besides ethics & religion, huge changes in electoral policies need to be implemented. These kind of substantial changes to alleviate poverty & inequality need a good & long time frame, like a decade or more, easily. But, in most democracies, even when they are stable, a government & leader has about a few years, anywhere from 8 to 10 years to finish his / her work. Of course, that has to be done, if & when, opposition parties are silent & happy with what the government is doing (then, what's the point of the opposition party?). But, these fundamental economic & social changes can easily take couple of decades to meaningfully show any changes in the system.

So, inequality indeed adversely affects a major portion of the general populace, but alleviating or eradicating inequality requires a lot more work than simply changing the tax system (even that is huge work in itself).

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2016/feb/08/football-property-prices-beyond-inequality-mother-of-all-crises-tax-lilianne-ploumen

Inequality affects all of us. I live in Amsterdam, where house prices are now rising so sharply that ordinary, hard-working people don’t get a look-in. In London, it’s been like that for years. Whole neighbourhoods are unaffordable. Century-old football clubs have become the playthings of billionaires.

And the trend continues. More and more of the world’s wealth is in the hands of fewer and fewer people. I believe that tolerating this growing inequality will go down in history as humanity’s biggest mistake since communism.

People are essentially social animals. They can inspire each other, but they can also frustrate and discourage each other. And that’s what gross inequality does. It unravels the very fabric of our societies. It robs people of decent jobs and decent pay. And it robs them of their sense of purpose and self-worth.

In developing countries, the gap between rich and poor is far bigger. And it isn’t merely a technical issue, it is the result of political choices. Inequality is truly the mother of all crises. Whether it is conflict, climate change, economic stagnation or migration flows, inequality is always a major underlying cause.

Last autumn, the UN adopted new global goals. One of the main targets is to eradicate extreme poverty by 2030. To achieve that, economic growth must stay at the level it had for the past 10 years and its benefits must be far bigger than average for the poorest 40%.

The challenge we face is summed up in the slogan: “Leave no one behind”. The smartest policy here is to invest in the poorest of the poor. If we don’t, there is no way we will defeat extreme poverty by 2030. Which means we won’t generate the economic growth needed to achieve the other global goals. And we won’t reach our climate goals either.

“Leave no one behind” is also a moral imperative. In the past 25 years, globalisation has helped the world make spectacular progress on poverty. But at the same time we’ve allowed large groups to lag behind, and an even larger group to fall by the wayside completely. One of the main causes is exclusion. Whether it is on the basis of gender, religion, disability or sexual orientation, entire groups are being left out.

The mantra that no one should be left behind offers hope of a much-needed correction. It means managing globalisation properly. It means ending the unbridled power of elites. If realised, it would mean everyone could finally benefit from – and participate in – global development.

We know how to make this happen. Last year, we analysed Dutch policy to see how we could contribute more to inclusive development. It resulted in a plan of action worth €350m (£269m) that we are now putting into practice.

The plan consists of 20 measures across two areas. The first involves generating work and income for African women and young people with poor future prospects. The second consists of 10 measures to prompt robust political dialogue with developing countries on inclusive growth and development.

That dialogue is crucial, because resistance to change is often strongest precisely where change is needed most. In many poor countries, elites cling stubbornly to wealth and power until conflict, death and destruction are inevitable.

But the most powerful weapon against inequality is tax. Governments have to fight tax avoidance and tax evasion. My country has initiated the renegotiation of 23 tax treaties. We’ve proposed anti-abuse provisions to ensure that the Netherlands is no longer an attractive option for companies that want to avoid taxes. And we now forgo tax exemptions on goods and services provided under official development assistance.

At the same time, we need to broaden the tax base in the developing countries, which often rely on consumption taxes that make the poor pay a higher proportion of their income in tax than the rich. These countries need a progressive tax regime. And for that they need assistance in administering and collecting more complex forms of taxation, such as income and wealth taxes.

Taxation is not a popular subject for politicians. But it deserves far more attention. A recent study, by Jan-Emmanuel De Neve and Nattavudh Powdthavee, brings further proof that higher taxation equals more happiness.

For many developing countries, the tax burden is still 10-15% of gross domestic product. According to the UN, they’ll have to raise collection to about 20% just to be able to finance their share of the global goals. In Scandinavia, the average tax burden is more than 45%. I wish the same for every country! Provided the money is spent well, of course.

So we have our work cut out. To the super rich, I say: trickle-down is dead. To the elites and the kleptocrats in poor countries, I say: there’s a limit to how high you can build the gates around your communities. The time has come to pay. Make sure the payment is in taxes.

Years after Enron, business is still behaving badly

This is a good opinion piece on how ethics was the word-du-jour at the turn of the 21st century after the bankruptcies & crises of Enron, Tyco, WorldCom etc., but nowadays, it seems that the ship has not sailed much since then.

The corporate behaviour & corporate governance were supposed to improve & become much more ethically driven in the new century. However, that dream is not coming to fruition. Unscrupulous business leaders are abound & ethics & morality are out the window at most corporations around the world. Why is this so?

Here, the author of this opinion piece & I differ, as to the reasons of these unethical practices in the business world. Mr. Stern, the author of this opinion piece, takes the secular view that punishments have been feeble & lacking for those unethical business leaders, & if the punishments become stronger, then businesses would become much more ethical.

However, those punishments can only be made tougher by the judiciary branch of the government. Ironically, that branch is indirectly controlled by those same unscrupulous business leaders, who are supposed to be severely punished for their unethical practices. Business leaders make friends, lobby, & perhaps, fund the political leaders who they think will further their views & agendas in the political fields. Those political figures then pick & choose the judiciary, who are then supposed to be making new rules & punishments. Since, everyone is connected politically, nobody is going to stab anyone in the back.

Problem is that ethics & morality are arbitrarily measured in the secular world. Everyone has a different yardstick to measure them. One's ethics on a matter can be quite different from another's. This creates huge differences of opinion. For instance, one would think that a living wage for all employees should be ethically driven idea & every senior manager should lobby for it in its organization. However, that can reduce the net profits, which in turn, can affect the Earnings-Per-Share (EPS) firgures, which in turn, will reduce the value of the shares. I don't think that wealthy shareholders & institutional shareholders would be very happy with that.

Ethics & morality can only be same, when everyone, in a specific society, believes in a religion. Religion sets the same bar for ethics & morality for everyone in the society. Ethics & morality cannot exist without religion, regardless of what that religion is. Essentially, all religions preach the same basic values, so the same basic ethical guidelines would come to fruition when the society, & the business people, look to religion for their ethical compass, instead of human made laws.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/dec/11/enron-business-behaving-badly-volkswagen-sports-direct

Respect, integrity, communication and excellence. Those were Enron’s core values, which, the energy company said, guided its behaviour as a “global corporate citizen”. We know how that story ended: bankruptcy, court cases and (unusually for the business world) custodial sentences. The once-mighty accountancy firm of Arthur Andersen was also brought down.

Over a decade later bad corporate behaviour – the stuff we find out about, anyway – continues to make front page news. That dependable, “clean diesel” Volkswagen turns out not to be so clean after all. Thomas Cook takes an age to come up with a decent and civilised response to human tragedy. And now Sports Direct is revealed to be conducting business in a brutal fashion. Boardroom practices at the company may be comically bizarre, but life in their Shirebrook warehouse is not funny at all.

The public have noticed. A survey (pdf) this week for the Institute of Business Ethics found that 39% of people think business is behaving unethically. The three biggest causes for concern are tax avoidance, executive pay and exploitative labour practices. Two-fifths of the public have given a vote of no confidence in British business. That is, potentially at least, a lot of customers.

Why, apart from the headline-grabbing scandals, is business seen in such a poor light? To some extent this represents a failure of the “corporate social responsibility” (CSR) movement. Bad CSR deserves to fail and be seen for what it is – a flimsy public relations exercise. Good companies don’t need CSR programmes. They think hard about their activities and the impact they have on the world. They worry about how they make their money. Good companies make sustainable profits, and don’t externalise the costs of doing business on to the world around them.

But why does bad corporate behaviour still exist? The chances of getting found out are much higher than in the past. Everyone carrying a smartphone is equipped with a vital tool of investigative journalism.

Fearlessness, or shamelessness, may have something to do with the “risk/reward relationship”, as it is called in the financial world. The rewards for breaking the rules can be high. But the punishments are often feeble – fines (merely another cost of doing business) and loss of reputation (cushioned by a healthy bank balance and lifetime financial security).

Very few business leaders have ended up behind bars on account of their actions. “You’re going to jail!” screamed angry protesters at Dick Fuld, the former chairman and CEO of Lehman Brothers, in 2008. But he isn’t going to jail. He is going to his midtown Manhattan office to work for his new business, Matrix Advisors.

Perhaps bad corporate behaviour is explained by the fact that, whether they realise it or not, some senior executives are still coming to terms with the post-financial-crisis world. Deep down they fear it could all go wrong again, any time. They are in a hurry and are cutting corners. They also seek extravagant pay packages to cushion their ultimate, inevitable fall.

So, yes, sanctions have to get tougher, and the fear of punishment for wrongdoing has to increase sharply. One encouraging sign is that some responsible business leaders have had enough of the opprobrium brought on their heads by others. Simon Walker, director general of the Institute of Directors, said this week: “IoD members share the public’s outrage… I urge people to remember that Sports Direct is categorically not a representative of British business.”

He is right about that. And we as customers cannot complain if we continue to shop with businesses that at other times we might denounce loudly as unethical. We are all in this together.

My friend Steven Gauge has written a lovely play about taking up rugby again in middle age, called (perhaps inevitably) My Life as a Hooker. In one scene he is nervously running out on to the pitch for the first time in decades, and confesses to a team-mate that he is probably a bit rusty about the rules. Don’t worry, his fellow paunchy sportsman tells him: “Just cheat until you get caught.” This would have made a more accurate mission statement for Enron. Sadly, it appears to be the guiding ethos for too many people in business today.

"Belle" movie quote

Wikipedia          RottenTomatoes          IMDB

US states score poorly on cronyism & corruption test

It's quite surprising to me that the whole world thinks that corruption & cronyism don't exist in the Western world. Somehow, white skin means fairness, equality, merit, compassion etc. International organizations, like Transparency International, deride governments of Brazil, India, South Africa, Nigeria, Russia etc. for their unaccountability, corruption, & no ethics, but governments of UK, Canada, US, Australia, Japan etc. get a free pass. Why?

The latest election of Donald Trump, & then his appointments of his own son-in-law & daughter, in the White House posts are great examples of nepotism & cronyism (yes, his daughter doesn't have an official post, but she is sitting in on all presidential meetings.) Government lawmakers keep threatening that Trump could be in serious legal trouble if he doesn't divest of his personal business while he is the President of US, but they all seem to be empty threats. Some might say here that that's because he is a Republican, & Republicans / Conservatives are corrupt. But, as the article states, that even Democratic states have the same level of corruption as Republican states. So, the corruption is bipartisan. Ironically, corruption is one thing which unites every stateperson, all over the world, regardless of ethnicity, race, religion, etc.

As I always say that the colour of the human blood is red. Every human is same. Corruption in the government exists everywhere; be it in Pakistan, or UK, or US, or Canada or Madagascar. Politics has become the playground of the rich & corrupt. Ethically conscientious people are never given a chance to prove their mettle in the highest office in the land. Corrupt people in the government don't want an ethically conscientious person in charge of their affairs because then they will need to straighten themselves up. As Mr. Stern says in the last paragraph of the article that, "it’s very, very difficult for legislatures to focus on these things and improve them because they don’t want these laws, they don’t want to enforce them, and they don’t want to fund the people enforcing them."

Furthermore, what does it say about the democracy in the West. Democracy is supposed to mean that the general public not only freely chooses its own leaders but also keeps a tab on its leaders, & if & when, they seem to be not working for the general public, then the the public has the full control to remove that leadership. Well, in the absence of accountability of opaque state records, wouldn't you say that it would be a little hard to keep an eye on what the government is actually doing, & hence, harder still to remove them if they don't follow what the general public wants them to do. So, if the general public doesn't have any control on the government, then is this democracy? May I kindly remind you here that merely voting is not democracy. Voting takes place in many places. That doesn't mean that there's democracy.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

https://www.rt.com/usa/321359-state-governments-ethics-integrity/

The majority of state governments are hotbeds of cronyism, with the public shut out from true accountability by loophole-ridden open-records laws, according to a new report on the integrity of statehouses throughout the US.

Eleven of the 50 US states received failing grades for transparency and accountability, while only three earned a score about 70%. Alaska, with a score of 76, a "C" grade, was rated highest by the Center for Public Integrity, which just released its 2015 State Integrity Investigation, "a data-driven assessment of state government." Michigan came in dead last, with a score of 51.

"The State Integrity Investigation assesses the existence, effectiveness, & accessibility (i.e. citizen access) of key governance & anti-corruption mechanisms through a qualitative & indicator-based research process," the Center for Public Integrity and its partner, Global Integrity, explained their comprehensive probe of state laws & political cultures from coast to coast.

The investigation's findings are a cavalcade of embarrassing revelations about the overall climate of government transparency in the United States. From states that exempt entire branches of their government from open-records laws to states that absolutely refuse to seriously investigate ethics violations, the report's findings are “disappointing but not surprising,” said Paula A. Franzese, a state government ethics expert at the Seton Hall University School of Law.

In New Mexico, for instance, legislators passed a resolution – without needing the governor's approval – to exempt their emails from public records inquiries. "I think it’s up to me to decide if you can have my record,” one New Mexico representative said of the 2013 effort.

Delaware's Public Integrity Commission, the state's lobbying & ethics watchdog, has just two full-time staff members, the probe revealed. In 2013, a special state prosecutor found that the agency was so shorthanded, it was not able “to undertake any serious inquiry or investigation into potential wrongdoing.”

In 70% of states, part-time state lawmakers can vote on bills that present a clear conflict of interest with their private dealings. Such was the case in Missouri this year, when a legislator introduced a bill barring municipalities from banning plastic bags at grocery stores. The lawmaker – the director for the Missouri Grocers Association – claimed he was standing up for shopper rights. The bill eventually passed, overriding the governor's veto.

The investigation included assessments of 13 categories within all 50 state governments. Those categories included: public access to information, political finance, electoral oversight, executive accountability, legislative accountability, judicial accountability, state budget processes, state civil service management, procurement, internal auditing, lobbying disclosure, ethics enforcement agencies, & state pension fund management.

For each state, the Center for Public Integrity & Global Integrity contacted numerous state-level organizations & experts involved in government transparency & accountability to weigh-in on a host of questions pertaining to state government operations. The report, then, is a result of a "blend of social science and journalism" with an "aim to assessing the most salient corruption risks in each state."
...

Many lowest-ranked states are bastions of American conservatism, where politicians champion limited government. Yet those states, such as Nevada & Wyoming, were joined at the bottom by the likes of Pennsylvania & Delaware, East Coast states that are considered politically liberal compared to the rest of the US.

“It’s very, very difficult for legislatures to focus on these things and improve them because they don’t want these laws, they don’t want to enforce them, and they don’t want to fund the people enforcing them," said Robert Stern, former president of the Center for Governmental Studies, a now-defunct organization dedicated to ethics & lobbying laws in local & state governments.

State of the World: In Search of Leadership

A good opinion piece on ineffectiveness of world leaders on leadership. Although, this piece is from last year's UN General Assembly, I have no doubt that this year's gathering will once again yield no concrete solutions but a lot of empty promises to improve the world.

A little search on Google or Amazon will get you millions of titles on the topic of leadership. Corporate world can't get enough of "leadership". But the one place the world needs leadership the most, it has the least leadership there.

Today's world leaders have big mouths but short on actually doing something about resolving several problems the world is suffering from. Today's leaders are more of "yes-people" / "butt-kissers" of the general population. Their words & actions are there to appease the general populations, just so they can be elected & money can be rolling in their bank accounts. Only difference between these so-called leaders is that some force their way in such a leadership role (dictators, for instance) & some hold so-called "elections" in so-called "democratic" countries.

Perhaps, then, we should blame the general populations of countries & even the whole regions. Today's leaders are essentially elected on the results of lofty campaign promises, not on the actual substance of their past achievements. General populations around the world have resorted to choosing their leaders based on physical attributes (Justin Trudeau of Canada, for instance) or how many lies a candidate can spew, as long as, those lies confirm the general population's own biases (Donald Trump, for instance, has been proven to state outlandish lies in his campaign speeches but millions of Americans still love him & ready to elect him their leader).

On top of that, leadership, nowadays, can be bought. Money has become the defining factor for a person to be leader, instead of, ethics, morals, empathy, conscientiousness, social responsibility, a strong sense of accountability for its own actions etc. These traits are sorely missing for today's world leaders. Instead today's leaders are the ideal definition of hypocrites. As the writer in his opinion piece says that they "preach that which they don’t practise, cause tensions, & create more problems than they solve." Furthermore, the secretary-general for Amnesty International, Salil Shetty, correctly accused the world leaders of hypocrisy "as they lecture about peace while being the world's largest manufacturers of arms, & how they rail against corruption while allowing corporations to use financial & tax loopholes."

The world indeed needs strong leadership to resolve its many problems, but, perhaps, it needs an educated & informed citizenry which chooses that kind of leadership in the first place.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2015/09/state-world-search-leadership-150927053354263.html 

Here they go again. And here I am: once again in New York as world leaders pose for photographers & deliver lofty speeches at the UN's "new year" party gathering.

Judging from the attendance, the opening of the 70th session of the UN General Assembly promises to be no less of a tedious ritual than previous years.
...

The problem as I see it as I look around: There are many world leaders, but no leadership.

Spiteful and pathetic

Instead of leading by example among the "Family of Nations", world leaders are acting like toxic in-laws. They come into town to preach that which they don’t practise, cause tensions, & create more problems than they solve.
...

Obama and Putin will talk about Syria and Ukraine, but I doubt they will listen.

Such is the poor state of affairs among the UN in-laws. Political & diplomatic expediency dictate their communication, just as narrow interests hamper their cooperation.

When they do meet, as in last week's US-China summit, much of the preparation is centred on protocol, which apparently prompts other important or meaningful issues. Greetings, toasting, & playing national anthems are as - or perhaps more - important than dealing with dying Syrians or persecuted Rohingya.

What does the G-2 stand for?

Presidents Obama and Xi seemed to have decided, out of domestic concerns, that they can't or won't do much for each other, &, therefore, ensured that their summit included all the trappings of success but without any concrete achievements.

The Washington Post reported that ... there was little or no progress to report on currency manipulation & cyber espionage, etc, let alone Asian security & world poverty. ...

All of which dampens the hopes (wrongly) pinned on the new dynamics between G-2 powers - US & China - to responsibly manage the global economy, especially following the last international financial crisis.

Alas, they proved that they couldn't even act responsibly in Southeast Asia, where they're further complicating the security & economic landscape instead of improving it.

And while the US, Russia, & China fail the test of leadership, those in their shadows are incapable of coordinating among themselves or making the leap towards more meaningful roles.

Even Europe, which is presumably more capable than the rest to act globally, has been either terribly divided or playing catch-up with the US & Russia.

When was the last time you heard of Japan, India or the UK taking an international initiative of any sort? How effective is the group of G-20 when the leading G-2 fail to lead?

Brazil, India, & Germany might seek a permanent seat at the UN Security Council, but how will that lead to better world governance?

Ever since the world moved away from bipolarity of the Cold War, it's been torn between the unipolarity of US leadership, the new bipolarity of the US & China, & multipolarity of various world powers & groupings.

In other words: The old world order is no more, but there's no new world order either.

The confusion allows all to blame all, & in the process, everyone escapes accountability for their lack of international responsibility.

Lessons in leadership

For all practical purposes, world leaders have set themselves up to be lectured like amateurs on the rights & wrongs of leadership by an unlikely mentor.

Pope Francis, the head of the Catholic Church, lectured his audience at the UN with clarity, boldness, & conviction that is lacking in great power politics.

Among other reprimands, the pope rebuked world leaders for failing to put an end to the many conflicts in the world, particularly in the Middle East, & for putting partisan interests above real human beings ...

The pontiff even scolded the global financial institutions that subject countries to oppressive lending systems & subject people to mechanisms, which generate "greater poverty, exclusion, and dependence".

The secretary-general for Amnesty International, Salil Shetty, also accused the powerful leaders of hypocrisy as they lecture about peace while being the world's largest manufacturers of arms, & how they rail against corruption while allowing corporations to use financial & tax loopholes.
...

Yes, the world is better off when leaders act in their nations' best interests. But civilisation is best served when leaders also act in the best interest of their region & that of the community of nations.

That requires leadership.


Marwan Bishara is the senior political analyst at Al Jazeera.

Private companies profit from pay-to-play phone calls in US prisons

This is one of the examples of what happens when ethics & religion are disconnected from the general public's everyday life. Ethics is a by-product of faith & religion, regardless of which religion one believes in. But, then the general public is told that religion & ethics has no room in their daily lives.

Businesses do make a big show of conducting their businesses with ethical principles, but then everyone's ethics is different. A robber thinks that the society has done him/her wrong & is liable to pay reparations to him/her. In the same vein, the owner of a company thinks he/she has worked hard to build this business, & hence, cutting costs & increasing profits, at the expense of increasing social misery is all ethical. He/she thinks that as long as he/she is following the minimum law required of him/her, he/she is all good.

Here, the companies are extracting, or a better word would be, "extorting" money out of criminals, alleged & proven, alike. Now, some may think that since these people are criminals, & perhaps, don't have any morals & ethics, of themselves, it's all right to "extort" money out of them for their phone calls to their families. If that's the case, then perhaps, the Pope Francis should not make a habit of visiting prisons on his continental tours.

Regardless, however, as I've blogged in my prior blog posts, most criminals don't want to become criminals in the first place. Their extraneous circumstances made them criminals. Every human wants to put food on the table, clothe themselves & their families, & put a secure roof over their heads. But the unending greed of wealthy individuals to hoard as much money as they can, while keeping the government officials in their pockets, too, leave the poor out in the cold. Then, some people out of that poor public resort to violence & wrong means to support themselves & their families.

Heck, one can see the corruption of these phone companies in that they are offering latest tablets & signing bonuses (or in other words, "bribes") to prison individuals to secure these lucrative phone contracts. Is that exactly ethical or moral from any point of view?

Furthermore, the discrimination at all levels; racial, ethnic, linguistic, & regional etc. creates more misery for members of that poor public. For instance, several laws in US are considered quite harsh for African-Americans, e.g. getting arrested for not paying parking tickets or even sleeping out in park benches. The people who are getting those tickets or fines are not exactly earning 6-figure salaries but struggling to pay for their food, clothes, & rent.

Coming back to this article, these companies are earning exorbitant profits from the misery of people who are put in the so-called prison & justice system. They are essentially making money off of someone else's misery. Those people are of poverty-ridden backgrounds themselves & every nickel & dime they need to spend to talk to their loved ones, who may help them in not becoming further violent, are not going towards their loved ones' food, clothes, & rental payments.

To add insult to injury, company CEOs are actually fighting government laws, which is doing something good for a change, to keep "extorting" the poor.

So, who is the real criminal here? The one who might have been forced by his/her extraneous circumstances to forgo all ethics & morals & resort to violence or someone who is making a 6-figure salary (investors included) & has a complete control of his/her decision to not "bribe" government officials & not only reduce these calling fees but help the government come up with laws in support of reducing such high calling fees?

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

https://www.rt.com/usa/312403-prison-phone-call-fees/

Private phone companies are making a pretty penny by nickel-and-diming prison inmates & their families, sometimes to the tune of $2 a minute for in-state phone calls. Yet the exorbitant fees keep taxpayers from footing the bill.

The prison phone industry has been booming since the 1990s. It’s grown to a $1.2 billion-a-year industry dominated by a few private companies, as people made some 500 million calls totaling more than 6 billion minutes both to & from prisons & jails in 2014 alone, the New York Times reported.

RT’s Lindsay France called Global Tel*Link (GTL), which contracts with Los Angeles County, to set up an account to call a fictional friend at the Twin Towers Correctional Facility.

“The nice lady on the phone told me that first off, I’d be hit with a nearly $5 sign-up fee, a possible service fee, possible facilities fee depending on where I wanted to call into,” France said. “And when my fictional friend or loved one gets out and I ask for a refund on the money left inside my account, I get hit with a fee then too.”

On top of those fees, France learned that there was no way to determine the per-minute rate of a call until it had been made & paid for.

Anthony Graves spent 18 years on death row accused of a crime for which he was later exonerated. He struggled to maintain communication with his support network at home by phone.

“That was very expensive. It was like 15 dollars for 20 minutes, 30 minutes. So very expensive all the way around. It’s like I said, at the end of the day everyone’s making a dollar now,” he told RT. “The whole rehabilitation thing is going out the window with private industries coming in and making a lot of money.”

Graves isn’t alone in paying such a high price to keep in touch. The Prison Policy Initiative reported that a call from California’s La Verne City Jail to an in-state number requires a connection fee of $12.59 & a per-minute charge of $1.15, amounting to nearly $30 for a 15-minute call.

After a decade of complaints from prison-rights groups & families of inmates, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is slowly attempting to rein in the telecom companies.

In August 2013, the FCC instituted interim requirements for interstate long-distance calls, capping rates at $0.21 per minute for debit & pre-paid calls & $0.25 per minute for collect calls. A revised version of the rules went into effect last February. Typical commercial rates ‒ those not involving the prison system ‒ cost a mere $0.04 per minute, according to the NY Times.
...

Those rules didn’t affect the cost of in-state calls, however, which the Prison Policy Initiative says comprise 92% of prison phone calls. The agency began focusing on lowering the cost of all calls between prisoners & their loved ones last fall, noting that “the cost of in-state calls remains high, calling fees have mounted, and payments to prisons unrelated to the cost of providing service have escalated, driving up rates.”

The same month that the FCC rules went into effect, Securus Technologies & GTL both offered incentive-laden contracts to one Georgia county, France reported. Securus offered a little over a million-dollar signing bonus for a five-year contract with 110 free tablet computers thrown in, while GTL proposed $1.5 million upfront for a seven-year deal & threw in 150 tablets.

In response to the offers ‒ & knowing that more FCC regulations were likely in the pipeline ‒ the jail’s administrator told the companies: “Since it is highly likely that the FCC will be eliminating all inmate phone commissions in the near future, in lieu of a (MAG) Minimum Annual Guarantee, please discuss alternatives” that “would provide to supplement the loss of jail phone revenues.”

In October [2014], the FCC opened up comments on “a comprehensive, market-based approach to achieving just, fair & reasonable rates for all inmate calling – local, in-state long-distance and out-of-state long distance.” It is also looking at banning so-called “site commissions,” which are payments that prisons demand of the inmate calling service providers & are often used by prisons to pay for services & facilities not related to the cost of hosting calling services. The agency is also seeking to impose permanent rate caps on all of those services, replacing the current, interim ones.

Prison phone call providers are fighting the FCC’s rules, saying that the rate caps have forced them to lose money on those calls.

“We think some of the new rates are below our cost,” Richard Smith, president & CEO of Dallas-based Securus, told Time last February. He said his company handles 120 million calls per year at an average rate of $3.50 per call, & that, while some inmates may have paid $17 per call, those cases were “outliers” made by inmates he believed were pushing an agenda.

“This is a public policy issue,” Smith added, noting that vendors like Securus will end up paying prisons less in site commissions, which totaled $460 million in 2013 ‒ money that cash-strapped facilities will have to make up elsewhere. “Taxes are going to go up,” he said.

Prisoner advocates argue, however, that there’s another public-policy issue involved ‒ that of recidivism.

“If you are an inmate and you have strong ties to your family, the less likely you are to reoffend,” Diane Goldstein, an executive board member of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, told RT. “If you are an inmate that has rehabilitation opportunities inside prison and you get an education and you walk out with a skill the less likely you are to reoffend.”

With 6,000 new warehouse jobs, what is Amazon really delivering?

It is simply common sense that a person doesn't get rich while paying living wages to its workers. You have to have "slaves" to increase your own wealth. After all, that's how the Western world became rich; with the work of millions of slaves in Australia, Europe, & North America.

The billionaires we see on the Forbes list every year didn't become multi-billionaires by caring for their fellow human beings by paying them good wages, so their fellow human being can also enjoy life. Oh, hell no !!! They became billionaires by forgoing every inch of ethics & humanity from themselves & becoming the cause of poverty in modern world by paying government-mandated minimum wages. If the government removes that wage floor, then you will see how soon those wages go down to mere pennies. Ironically enough, all those billions help them control the government, too.

Irony on top of all this is these multi-billionaire entrepreneurs are celebrated in the business community. They are invited to give talks & reinvigorate the young minds of university students. Internet is flushed with tips & tricks of doing business gleaned from these unethical & inhumane execs. Some of these famous business people include Steve Jobs (let's take the jobs out of North America & put them in Asia, & pay those workers minimum wages, which will drive them to suicides.), Jeff Bezos (well, this article pretty much lays out what he pays to his employees & how he treats them), Mark Zuckerberg, Jack Dorsey & etc.

Then, we cry foul over how bad this world has become. Well, what kind of world you were expecting when you & a majority of world population is learning how to treat their fellow human beings from multi-billionaire sharks. I am even humiliating sharks by calling these people "sharks".

Anyway, so some people will counter me by saying that well, these multi-billionaires pay higher taxes or they generously donate to charities. Well, as for the taxes, you should look into what is their real tax rate is. After all the deductions & such, it is usually far less than your average taxpayers' tax rate; these billionaires pay around 10-15% tax in US, while an average taxpayer pays around 30%.

Now, as for donating to charities, what would be a better way of doing things? Not paying a living wage & treating your employees like they are not even humans & after hoarding all that money, donating like a few percent to a charity to help a few people. Heck, those donations are also tax-deductible, & hence, there is a financial incentive to donate a little. Or, paying a living wage to your employees, so they can look after their families in a good way, & raise the standard of living of your employees & their communities. Heck, if the salaries are good enough of those employees, they will donate to charities themselves, anyway. So, charities will get their donations, but on a much larger scale & scope.

Another thing our society is looking at is more chaos in our communities in the near future. Since, these entrepreneurs can only squeeze out enough blood & sweat from their employees, now they are turning to tech to squeeze out more profits out of their operations. After robots & AI (Artificial Intelligence) has been improved or perfected over the next few more years, human employees will be laid off en masse. Why? Because robots will cost a lot less than having a human employee around.

But, hey, since these multi-billionaires achieved what every one of us want for ourselves, let's learn from them in TEDx conferences, university graduation convocations, & international conferences how much worse to treat your fellow human being, so someday I can be one of these tyrants, too.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/06/17/idUS199953413420150617#tRwbKHDomj1zlGzi.97 

Some people showed up before dawn. Others spent an hour waiting on a line that stretched out the door. That was the scene ... when hundreds of job seekers converged on an Amazon hiring event in Chattanooga, Tennessee. All hoped for full-time work picking, packing & shipping orders at the online retailer’s local distribution center, a warehouse the size of 28 football fields. “I’m blessed to be here!” one smiling 23-year-old applicant told television reporters.

... On May 26th, Amazon announced 6,000 new full-time job openings at 19 of its distribution centers. Many are in communities that doled out generous tax credits & other incentives — including $10.3 million in Kenosha, Wisconsin, alone — to bring Amazon jobs to town.

So it’s a good time to ask: Are Amazon’s warehouse jobs worth lining up for? Should they be subsidized with taxpayer dollars? And what do they mean to the long-term economic health of their host communities?

On his 2013 jobs tour, President Barack Obama stopped to deliver a speech at the aforementioned Amazon warehouse in Chattanooga. The audience cheered when he called for restoring the middle class through “good jobs with good wages.” But today that same warehouse is hiring at $11.25 an hour. That’s $23,400 annually, or $850 below the poverty line for a family of four.

Hourly wages at the other warehouses listed in Amazon’s recent hiring announcement range from $11 in Jefferson, Indiana to $12.75 an hour in Robbinsville, New Jersey & Windsor, Connecticut.

Even by industry standards, those are some thin paychecks. Wal-Mart pays distribution center employees an average hourly wage of $19, said a spokesman for that company.

Meanwhile, Amazon’s treatment of warehouse workers has been under scrutiny since 2011, when an investigation by the Allentown Morning Call newspaper revealed what were — quite literally — sweatshop conditions. When summer temperatures exceeded 100 degrees inside the company’s Breinigsville, Pennsylvania warehouse, managers would not open the loading bay doors for fear of theft. Instead, they hired paramedics to wait outside in ambulances, ready to extract heat-stricken employees on stretchers & in wheelchairs, the investigation found. Workers also said they were pressured to meet ever-greater production targets, a strategy colloquially known as “management by stress.”

Amazon declined to answer the newspaper’s specific questions about working conditions in the warehouse but, 8 months after the story was released, company officials announced that they’d spent $52 million to retrofit warehouses with air conditioning.

In my own interviews with dozens of Amazon warehouse workers, I’ve heard reports of repetitive stress injuries, pain & exhaustion. (Some called themselves “Amazombies.” Others said they tried to think of the job as a free fitness program.)

Those issues relate to job quality. What about job quantity?

On the same day Amazon announced 6,000 new hires, teams from around the globe competed in the first-ever “Amazon Picking Challenge” in Seattle. Their goal? Build robots that can “pick” shelved items — in this case, the objects ranged from rubber ducks to The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn – with enough dexterity to someday replace human hands. (Amazon already has some 15,000 Kiva robots that transport shelves of merchandise to human “pickers,” but the act of picking has proved much harder to automate.)

Amazon maintains a very low headcount for its sales volume, which rose to $89 billion last year. Amazon creates just 17 jobs for every $10 million in sales, according to figures in its annual report. Compare that with traditional brick-and-mortar retailers, which create jobs at more than twice that rate: 42 positions for each $10 million in sales, according to an analysis of census data by the non-profit Institute for Local Self-Reliance.

“From a regional perspective, this is clearly not a path to greater employment & more economic activity,” said Stacy Mitchell, the organization’s director. “Your particular community may come out a bit ahead in terms of job numbers, but it comes at the expense of your neighbors.”

She & other community development advocates worry that, with its low-cost merchandise & expanding same-day delivery service, Amazon will eviscerate smaller businesses that put more of their earnings into hiring workers. (The company is already famous for pursuing massive growth while accepting razor-thin profit margins.) Amazon already has an edge over traditional brick-and-mortar retailers in the 25 states where it pays no sales tax. And local governments have also strengthened its advantage, lavishing Amazon with more than $430 million in tax credits & other incentives since 2000, according to Subsidy Tracker, a database created by the economic watchdog Good Jobs First.

Tossing out tax incentives for Amazon jobs might be good short-term politics, but when it comes to lasting employment, let the buyer beware. In 1999, the city of Coffeyville, Kansas showered Amazon with more than $4 million in infrastructure improvements & cash incentives for a 1 million-square-foot distribution center. Soon Amazon was one of the area’s largest employers. But its sales strategy kept changing. Since same-day shipping requires distribution hubs that are closer to urban centers, Amazon grew out of Coffeyville. Executives announced in October that the warehouse would shut down.

Jim Falkner, then Coffeyville’s mayor, created a Facebook page pleading for help. “Please leave suggestions concerning the Amazon job-loss recovery effort,” he wrote. 5 days later, he added, “Amazon is the straw that broke the camel’s back when it comes to unemployment in the community.”