Why do people wrestle over cheap food? Because we’re desperate !!

The video in this article & the article itself is common in urban cities in all the so-called Western developed world, but we don't normally see it. The world sees the tall shiny business towers of downtown cities of New York, Paris, London, Toronto, & Chicago etc. The world doesn't see how the general public is making much more frequent rounds to the food bank & trying to get cheap food, which is also unhealthy, from supermarkets.

Although, I have personally never seen people scrambling & grabbing cut-price food in supermarkets, I do believe that day is not far. The way capitalism has gone greedy & thanks of continued automation of jobs, people are forced to work for minimum wages, which of course, will force you to fight your neighbour for that last piece of meat & fish.
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http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jun/22/cheap-food-desperate-supermarket-bargains-tesco

People in Britain are battling each other for cut-price food. This is what desperation & poverty does. Video has emerged of customers at a Tesco store in Weston Favell, Northampton, scrabbling around on the floor to reach discounted essential groceries – indicative of increasing & entrenched food poverty.

It might come as a shock to anyone who imagines that writers fly to work in their own helicopter with truffle sandwiches for lunch, but I survive on food found in the supermarket reduced aisle. Occasionally dealings around the cut-price food can turn ugly.

Every day, I see shoppers who desperately need these bargains, since for many, it’s the only possibility of eating properly. After all, a huge pack of reduced mince or chicken is a good source of protein lasting across several days if cooked & eked-out properly. But this level of thriftiness is exhausting, which might explain the frayed tempers of the Northampton food-scrum.

I order my day around the rhythms of the discount hour, which is different at each of the three shops on my circuit. Food is first reduced mid-morning, then again later in the day. Bargain hunters benefit from holding their nerve, as the real reductions are made later on.

There can be a sense of camaraderie, & my fellow bargain seekers acknowledge each other with wry smiles. We even share recipes – I hear familiar voices discussing how to turn slabs of cheap smoked fish into a nutritious & inexpensive chowder. We sometimes help each other out – I reach food for shorter or older customers & in return, they help me read the labels (I have some sight problems).

The Northampton all-in, food wrestle-mania occurred, I suspect, when informal protocols which bring order to the demeaning experience of hanging around trying to look busy while waiting for the soup to be reduced, were ignored. Personally, one vital guideline, & a rule which makes me furious whenever I see it being ignored, is don’t be greedy. If you see massive packs of organic vintage cheddar for 20p (this has happened) please don’t hog them all. I’ve witnessed people loading stacks of gourmet pizzas into the boot of a new BMW, which if owned by the loader seemed to me a little unfair.

The etiquette of poverty-induced budget food-hunting decrees that you don’t barge in & grab stuff over the heads of those too polite to let go of their manners. Around the appointed hour of food reduction, a vague, straggly queue forms. When it’s just one remaining pack of prime steak, then who dares wins, but don’t knock other people over.
...

The main (unwritten) rule of food-bargain club is this: be nice to supermarket workers – they are your friend, & will occasionally give you a sly nod to indicate when they will brandish their supermarket price label guns. Besides, they are doing a hard job for low pay. Some are even on work-for-benefits schemes & privately admit they would appreciate the chance to buy cheap food themselves. So be kind not just to them, but all your fellow bargain hunters.

Millions more have a bank account, but what is the impact on global poverty?

Primary problem is that poverty is not going to end by some poor people, in developing countries, opening a bank account. If merely opening a bank account would alleviate poverty, then there would be no poverty in the developed world at all. But, as you may know already, that's not the case. A walk in urban areas of any metropolitan city of the developed world; Paris, London, New York, Toronto, Vancouver, Los Angeles, Chicago, Frankfurt etc., will show poor people, & the rising poverty, out in the open.

Alleviating poverty requires a much deeper, multi-faceted, radical approach. It will not happen overnight. It may take a generation or two. Social inequality requires a lot more work & participation of other social classes than merely opening a bank account.

For instance, cost of living in the developed world is constantly rising. Affordable housing in major cities from Paris & Frankfurt to Toronto & Vancouver to New York & Los Angeles is reaching out of hand of poor people. All of their other living expenses, i.e. food & utilities, keep rising, too. But, their salaries or wages are not keeping pace. Many are working in low-wage jobs, i.e. in service industry (restaurants, hotels) or retail industry, where minimum wages are way below to a level, which is understood to be required to sustain a living.

So those people are falling below the poverty line & are being classified as poor. They all have the bank accounts, & are actively using those accounts, too, but they are no use against the forces forcing these people pushing them in poverty. Capitalism, without any ethics or morals, are letting the rich get richer, at the brutal expense of making the masses further poor.

Rich keep finding ingenious ways to keep their money in their hands, for instance, loopholes in tax dodging & labour market, or greasing the political wheels with thick wads of cash, while, downloading all the expenses of government social services, infrastructure, education, healthcare etc. on to the poor masses. When the poor masses are getting a meagre salary, from which, they also have to pay rising taxes, education fees, medical bills, rising rents, increasing food prices etc., then how will they ever rise out of poverty?

Opening a bank account may help an abject poor farmer in Uganda to, perhaps, become more effective & efficient in conducting financial transactions, but it won't help alleviate poverty or eliminate social & financial inequality for billions around the world.
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http://www.theguardian.com/global-development-professionals-network/2015/may/28/millions-more-have-a-bank-account-but-what-is-the-impact-on-global-poverty

Chabruma Luhwavi, a Tanzanian merchant, used to end his working day fearing thieves would rob him of his earnings as he drove home through Dar Es Salaam’s dark streets. But that fear vanished once he opened a bank account for his business, which he accesses through his mobile phone.
...

Chabruma’s story is one example of how hundreds of millions of people around the globe are joining the financial system. Put simply, they are getting some type of account in which they can deposit, manage & save their hard-earned money.

Why is that important? Access to banking services – called “financial inclusion” – is increasingly held up as a key tool for pulling the world’s poor from poverty. Without an account, it’s a lot harder to save money, pay bills, receive wages, or operate a business.

In 2014, in partnership with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation & Gallup, we set off on a year-long journey to the heart of the debate on banking & poverty reduction.

We had a long list of questions. How many people around the world own a bank account? How does account ownership vary across gender & income groups? And, perhaps most importantly, are people actually using their accounts – &, if so, how?

Which brings us to today: we recently announced our findings with the Global Findex database, based on interviews with 150,000 adults in more than 140 economies – & there’s plenty to celebrate.

Worldwide, 62% of adults now have an account at a formal financial institution (such as a bank) or a mobile money account, up from 51% in 2011, when we launched the Global Findex. The number of adults struggling to get by without an account fell by 20%, to 2 billion.

Yet we found account ownership doesn’t easily lead to use. Look at India. Under an ambitious new programme, we discovered 125 million new bank account owners there. Account ownership has nearly doubled since 2011; but 43% of them have gone unused for a year. The same is true for one-fifth of all accounts in the emerging world.

Our journey taught us that the poverty-reduction potential of account ownership flourishes when people use their account to save money or send & receive payments. Your account can’t pull you out of poverty – unless you put it to work.

For women, owning an account is doubly important. It means privacy & control over their money & how it is spent. Research shows that giving women their own account increases household spending on food, education, & other necessities – which also means less money squandered by irresponsible family members.

To pay school fees, women, especially, often must travel to the school & take time off from work, thereby losing wages. Children can be barred from class until their mother pays up. Digital payments from an account eliminate these costs. But in developing nations, more than 500 million adults with an account pay school fees in cash.

Using an account to save can also help people weather an emergency such as a job loss or health crisis. In China, more than 40% of adults & in Indonesia, 70%, save at a bank or another financial institution. But fewer than 20% of adults in other developing regions save at a bank or financial institutions – instead, storing their money in their home for the future or for emergencies or as assets, such as gold or livestock, that can be lost or stolen.

The benefits from account ownership are reflected in instances of high account use across emerging economies. In Latin America, 40% of accounts are used to receive wages or government social benefits. More than a quarter of farmers in Kenya & Tanzania receive payment for the sale of their agricultural products directly to an account. Individuals are also using accounts to share money. In Sub-Saharan Africa, more than half of account holders use their accounts to send or receive funds to friends or relatives who live far away. Keeping funds in an account is safer than keeping the money under a mattress.

Our Global Findex database points to a number of opportunities for businesses & governments to help people get more out of their accounts. As financial inclusion takes centre stage in the poverty reduction agenda, international development agencies should focus not only on expanding account ownership, but on improving account use as well.


Leora Klapper is a lead economist at the Development Research Group, World Bank, & one of the authors of the Global Findex 2014.

Snitch fact

This is what the country gets when the justice system gets greedy. Prisons have become for-profit businesses. State & Federal Attorney Generals have aspirations to become governors etc. & hence, their performance is based on how many people, innocent or guilty, get in the prison system. Judges are paid well to hand down harsher sentences for misdemeanors.
 
Result is that prisons are getting filled up. For-profit companies are using those prisoners in those prisons as slave-labour to manufacture products. Judges & AGs are being perceived as increasing safety & security for the ordinary citizens.

 

The losers are people who make one mistake in their life & will pay very dearly for that one mistake until their death; be it financial, social, economical cost (unemployed, discriminated etc.).

 

IMDB          RottenTomatoes          Wikipedia

To move beyond boom & bust, we need a new theory of capitalism

Although, this op-ed piece is a good one, posing an important question to think about in regards to the economic policy of a country & for countries, worldwide, my own view says, regardless of which economic policy we come up with, we will still have these booms & busts.

 

The idea of free markets, capitalism, democracy, social democracy etc are all good & noble, but the problem in them lie in the proper implementation of these ideas. We cannot ever properly implement it ... without religion.

 

Now, people will groan, what religion has to do with free markets or democracy or capitalism?

 

I can't talk about this from other religions since I don't know what other religions say or don't say about the problems the whole world is having by adhering to these ideals. I can, though, talk about economic policy & capitalism from Islamic perspective.

 

Since, this is a very long & deep topic to discuss even from a religious perspective, so I'll talk at a high-level. I will say here that Islam doesn't forbid capitalism. Today's problems are not with Capitalism itself; it's other factors making problems for Capitalism. What are those problems?

 

1. Greed: Islam abhors greed. Even Christianity has greed as one of its 7 deadly sins. One of the 10 commandments, "thou shall not steal," includes greed (when one is greedy, they will steal to satisfy their need).

 

Problem is greed is actually considered good in secular or atheist world. For instance, entrepreneurs are told to be hungry & greedy to achieve greatness or whatever they are trying to achieve. So, if Facebook takes your personal data & sell it to third parties for profits, then you can't complain, because it's part & parcel of free markets. Nothing is right or wrong in free markets.

 

After the 2008 crisis, there was, & still is, a lot of noise about market regulations in US & Europe. Well, the government agencies were made. Regulations were enacted (after they were heavily watered down, thanks to the heavy lobbying efforts from the Wall Street crowd). But, the implementation of those regulations are nowhere near to their initial objective. Why?

 

Because, for every law a human makes, an "anti-law" a human finds. What's an "anti-law"? A loop hole. We can see all around us that for every law, there are loop holes available.

 

We humans, regardless of how hard we try to make the strongest possible law, there will always be a loop hole. That's why, religion stopped it at the spiritual level; no greed. So, if bankers or executives or government leaders turn all devout Muslims, or Christians, or Jews or religious people tomorrow, they can't steal from the public to line up their own pockets. They have to shun greed for the public good.

 

What's that has to do with Capitalism? Capitalism says a society should have private enterprises. That's good & ok. But then, businessmen take that concept & open private companies & then to always earn more money (nobody can satisfy greed), they commit abuses (labour abuses, market abuses, corruption, lies, bribery etc etc) to fatten up their accounts. Of course, the result ends up being a major part of the populations keep becoming poorer & poorer. Inequality & injustice take the rein of society. A few elites take control of the liquidity in the market (money) & start controlling government so it makes policies favouring them (government leaders are paid handsomely). All because of few people became greedy.

 

2. Interest economy: Islam forbade interest because an economy based on interest creates a rich class & a poor class. Since, the money the rich has is making him/her more money, he/she will always make money without putting in that much effort, whereas, the poor does not have enough money, he/she will have to borrow more money (& hence, pay interest to the rich) to survive.

 

Relation to capitalism? As I said earlier, nothing is wrong with Capitalism as an idea, but this is one of the many factors which create problems for a society & its people, & then we blame capitalism.

 

3. Consumerism: It's sort of part of greed; a greed of accumulating / buying more things for yourself. So, of course, Islam abhors consumerism. Modern marketing thrives on this notion. Economy measurement tools, e.g. GDP are dependent on it. The more people buy, the more GDP goes up, the more a country is shown to be developing or doing good, economically.

 

Relation to capitalism? Again, one of the factors adversely affecting capitalism. In the race to sell more, business people abandon all ethics & morals (lying to people to buy houses with ultra-cheap interest rates, even when they know these people can't afford these houses) & people getting greedy to become homeowners at any cost. Result is in front of you all. After the house mortgages, credit card debts are the next mountain of the world. With ultra cheap interest rates around the world, people are on the hunt to load up their houses with things, even at the cost of racking up huge credit card debts. When interest rates are going to increase, & then people unable to pay their credit card bills or even service interests, the market gonna crash.

 

We are ready to blame Capitalism for all our economics ills but capitalism has nothing to do with whatever problem we are having. Capitalism only says private  enterprises. It doesn't say anything about interest economy, consumerism, human greed, or economic measurement tools (e.g. GDP). But these, & other factors, affect how the economy performs, domestically & internationally. Most of these factors can be controlled only through religion.

 

Regardless of how much we think we are intelligent to make laws to control these factors, we can never completely eliminate them (there are always loop holes), & they will always win, & when these factors take over the society, the majority of human population suffers. This is not the first time we have seen human greed destroying the world; be it the Roman emperors pillaging other colonies (& for example, heavily taxing the public) to satisfy their greed or the 1 percenters of the current world keep amassing wealth, at the expense of the other 99%, to satisfy their greed.

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http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/mar/22/to-move-beyond-boom-and-bust-need-new-theory-capitalism

 

 

This is the year that economics might, if we are lucky, turn a corner. There’s a deluge of calls for change in the way it is taught in universities. There’s a global conference at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development in Paris, where the giants of radical economics ... will get their biggest ever mainstream platform. And there’s a film where a star of Monty Python talks to a puppet of Hyman Minsky.

 

Terry Jones’s documentary film Boom Bust Boom hits the cinemas this month. Using puppetry & talking heads (including mine), Jones is trying to popularise the work of Minsky, a US economist who died in 1996 but whose name has become for ever associated with the Lehman Brothers crash. Terrified analysts labelled it the “Minsky moment”.

 

Minsky’s genius was to show that financially complex capitalism is inherently unstable. Under conditions of stability, firms, banks & households will, over time, move from a position where their income pays off their debt, to one where it can only meet the interest payments on it. Finally, as instability rises, & central banks respond by expanding the supply of money, people end up borrowing just to pay back interest. The price of shares, homes & commodities rockets. Bust becomes inevitable.

 

This logical & coherent prediction was laughed at until it came true. Mainstream economics had convinced itself that capitalism tends towards equilibrium; & that any shocks must be external. It did so by reducing economic thought to the construction of abstract models, which perfectly describe the system 95% of the time, but break down during critical events.

 

In the aftermath of the crisis ... Minsky’s insight has been acknowledged. But his supporters face a problem. The mainstream has a model; the radicals do not. The mainstream theory is “good enough” to run a business, a finance ministry or a central bank – as long as you are prepared, in practice, to ignore that theory when faced with crises.

 

That, effectively, describes the situation among the policymaking elite today. They are trying to wrestle the economy back into a state where their models can cope with it again, using measures their theories say are not needed: quantitative easing, bank nationalisations, partial debt defaults & currency devaluations.

 

The radical, pro-Minsky faction is at a disadvantage because it does not possess a complete alternative model of capitalism. Some have generated computer programs showing how financial crises happen. But, by their own admission, they do not have a complete alternative model of how capitalism works.

They are, admits Dutch finance professor Theo Kocken, “roughly right” rather than “exactly wrong”. Kocken’s solution is to concentrate on why we misperceive risk. Behavioural economics has had a field day since 2008, identifying problems for the human brain when faced with complex risks: oversimplification, overconfidence & “confirmation bias”, where we ignore facts that challenge our existing beliefs. But adding behavioural insights to the Minsky model of financial mania does not turn it into a theory of capitalism.

 

Here, the parallels with events in physics are obvious. After Einstein’s big breakthrough, we were left with 2 competing – & mutually incompatible – accounts of the laws of physics. Einstein himself was dissatisfied with this, pursuing from the 1920s a “theory of everything”. It is a laudable aim in economics too. And this is where we come to the turning point. The defenders of orthodox economics & the Minsky rebels are, essentially, asking the same question: “What does capitalism normally look like?” The one answers “stable”; the other “unstable”. But it’s the wrong question. The right question is: Where are we in the long arc of capitalist development? Nearer the beginning, the middle or the end? But that question goes to the heart of darkness.

 

For the mainstream, their convictions about equilibrium & abstract models were always founded on the belief that capitalism is an eternal system: the social arrangement most completely reflecting human nature. Minsky’s followers, as with all followers of JM Keynes, assume that a better understanding of financial mania can stabilise an inherently unstable system. But even physicists, who study a universe that has lasted 13bn years, are prepared to countenance – indeed, are obsessed with modelling – its death.

 

So the pursuit of theory is obligatory in economics. The holy grail is not a new orthodoxy, cobbled together from Minsky & the remnants of mainstream thought so that bankers can construct trading models to iron out problems created by the way our brains work. The aim should be something bigger to model capitalism’s current crisis within an understanding of its destiny.

 

For me, the most fundamental question in economics still concerns the 2008 crisis. Was this event the last in a series of shocks needed to allow a third technological revolution to take off? Or was it evidence that capitalism’s tendency to adapt and reshape in response to technology has stalled, or is even finished? That is the shadow we have to jump over in economics. Amid a mania for “new economic thinking”, it is what we need to think hardest about.


How America's big cities are becoming more unequal

Thanks to interests-based economy, rich keeps getting richer & poor keeps getting poorer. The wealth of the rich keeps increasing because their mountain of money earns money while the poor are dimed & nickled on their wages, & whatever they are left with, they need to service debts, leaving them with nothing much to save, if at all.
 
Another problem is the constant increase in greed. Greed is an animal which never feels satisfied & always needs more. Rich keeps hoarding money to increase their wealth, but what's the point of hoarding all that money.
 
A great movie from 2011, "In Time," explored this phenomenon, in a fictional setting, where people stop aging at 25 but are engineered to live only one more year. However, more time can always be bought. So, the poor masses work & then spend their money to buy more time & the rich have amassed so much time that they could live forever.
 
We can easily replace "Time" in the movie with "Money", & we realize that it is the story of our world. Poor spend whatever they earn on basic needs, so they can live. While, rich have so much money that they don't even know how much money they actually have. There's a saying that if you can count your money, then you are not rich.
 
The developed world is falling back in the age of kings & peasants. The extremely rich elite (Kings) have their own world, while the general public (peasants) work their whole life away & still have nothing to show for all that work.
 
That's why, Islam:
1. Forbade Interest. It only widens the gap between rich & poor in the society. 
2. Ordered to give alms. One of the 5 pillars of Islam to give 2.5% of the annual net income to the poor. 
3. Encouraged to give charity: Give charity to poor as much as you can. 
4. Consider this world as merely a hotel, where you are living for a finite period. There's no eternal life on this planet. 
5. Never hoard money. Money will all be left here in this world for your descendants to squabble over. In the end, a little hole in the dirt is the eternal home of every human being on this planet. 
6. The more you hoard money to increase your wealth, the more you buy assets for yourself (expensive cars, clothes, jewelry, furniture, houses etc), the more you will be questioned on the Judgement Day for what you actually accomplished in your life with all those assets. Did you actually do anything for others?
 
Perhaps, that's why, doing things for others makes a human much more happier & feel satisfied, whereas, increasing wealth never fills that inner hole, because, as I said above, greed is a blackhole.
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http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3002161/Income-gap-wealthy-poor-America-growing-five-years-end-recession.html

The gap between the rich & poor in big cities in the US is widening, according to a new report.
 
Atlanta is the most unequal city with the wealthy taking home nearly 20 times more than low-income households, data from the Brookings Institution revealed.
 
The analysis compared 2013 census data for the top 5% of earners with the bottom 20% to work out the difference in wages.
 
Nationwide the rich took home around 9.3 times more money - approximately $200,234 in comparison to $21,433.
 
But in big cities it was up to 11.6 times more with top earners pocketing $221,700 & lower income households only taking home $19,143.
 
The data showed the average wage for top earners in Atlanta was $288,159 - nearly $274,000 more than the bottom fifth's earnings.
 
The income gap was also large in San Francisco, Boston & Miami, with San Francisco boasting the highest earnings for the wealthy at $423,171. Rich households in Washington were the only others to top $300,000.
 
The nation's most equal city is Virginia Beach, where the rich only take home around 6 times more.
 
Colorado Springs, Mesa & Oklahoma City are also fairly equal.
 
In total 31 of the 50 largest cities had lower incomes in 2013 than they did in 2007 before the recession.
 
But only one city - Albuquerque, New Mexico - saw incomes for the wealthy decline between 2012 & 2013.
 
The report was released amid discussions about minimum wage increases.
 
President Obama called on Congress to raise the federal minimum wage, which has been at $7.25 since July 2009, to $10.10 in his State of the Union address last year.
 
Many states - such as Washington, Massachusetts & Florida - have already put increases in place with more promised in the next two years.
 
But the report concluded: 'These findings confirm that income inequality remains a salient issue in many big cities today.

Rich & Unhappy? You're not alone.

Very important advice in this day & age. If we all adhere to this advice of stopping our mindless consumption & helping others, then our society will become more equal & happy. BUT those people who really need to listen to this advice actually don't listen to this advice.
 
This drive of mindless consumption has very grave & negative consequences for us: on a personal level & on a social level.
Personally, we are tired & never seem to be happy with what we have. We always want more. We then do whatever we need to do, be it illegal or immoral, to achieve what we think we deserve.
 
Socially, this unending drive of earn more to consume more drives our society into more chaos. Inequality & class divisions starts to appear & widen, as can be seen, all over the world. A tiny elite controls most of the resources, even basic ones, like clean water & soon, air.
 
Even environment is suffering from our consumption. This unending drive is creating more garbage in the world, polluting our land, water, & air, & the end result is more suffering for all of us; not just the poor.
 
Islam says exact same; apply moderation in your lives (actually, that's what the article is about ... live in moderation). Always look to the people below you in society, so your heart is satisfied. Always help others. Helping others will immortalize you in this world; not the fountain of youth.
 
I think I read once somewhere that look in any of the obituaries, & you'll see that nobody talks about what they did in 9-to-5 jobs or careers, but what they did outside of that; helping others, volunteering, doing something noble for the people & the society etc.
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Today, he [Tim McCarthy] has a ready answer: Anhedonia. It’s the inability to experience pleasure from activities usually found enjoyable. Now semi-retired, living in his hometown of Ashtabula, Ohio, with more money than he really needs, he has been exploring our relationship to money & things, & what is the proper balance. His ideas have come together in a book whose title sums up many people’s lives: Empty Abundance.
 
After spending many years in advertising, he is familiar with what he calls “the hamster wheel of consumption” that pervades our lives. But he is concerned with the emptiness we can feel after spending.
 
At age 25, he had been moved by Viktor Frankl’s "Man’s Search for Meaning". His mother, who wrote for the Chicago Tribune, always advised him to pursue moderation in all things – including moderation. He had to find meaning & purpose amid great wealth, avoiding empty abundance.
 
He first experienced anhedonia as he was rising up the career ladder, gaining more & more income but not more fulfilment. In the book, he says the notion that money doesn’t buy happiness has been backed by many studies. Gallup poll data show that residents of the US are three times richer than they were in 1950, but the happiness ratings haven’t shifted. A Princeton study in 2010 found that life satisfaction rises with income, but that everyday happiness changes little once a person reaches $75,000 a year.
 
Mr. McCarthy points to 3 non-anhedonians he knows:
 
A teacher who should be tired of kids at the end of the week but still volunteers at Bible school on Sundays.
 
A young executive making $150,000 a year who sits on a volunteer board that requires she invest five hours a week & significant money to their cause.
 
A friend of his wife’s who has a very busy house-cleaning business yet also provides overnight home care for elderly people, often for no pay.

“These 3 people ironically strike me as among the happiest people I know, while my anhedonian friends seem to chase their tails,” he writes. “Over time, I have found that the cure for anhedonia, at least for me, is service. Of equal importance is my work to become present in this moment. This moment, this time, this life – that’s all we have, since there will be no other.”

He has a foundation that pursues issues of importance to him. He also pays attention to warding off 2 other elements of empty abundance: Filling the void through unhealthy addictions, which is commonplace, & despair, which can consume us when robbed of pleasure.
 
He closes by stressing you shouldn’t avoid abundance: “Find your own abundance. Each person has a different view of abundance – it’s very personal. Find what abundance is for you, & enjoy it.”

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/careers/career-advice/life-at-work/rich-and-unhappy-youre-not-alone/article22923479/

Isaac Asimov quote (science & society)

... & that yawning gap between "smarter" science & "stupid" society creates a sense of complacency & faux-superiority in the people. People start to think that society has become modern now & humans have transcended their primal needs & the basic ills & misfortunes, e.g. the 7 deadly sins of Christianity.
 
BUT, therein lies the death sentence for the society. Science may have advanced & improved & the result is the shiny gadgets in our hands & information highway under the ocean, but Humans are still mired in the same habits as our ancestors, for instance, envy, gluttony, lust, greed, pride etc.

 
Even animals kill each other for food, not for pleasure. We humans, as Quran says, is given the status to be better than angels but our own actions can make us worse than animals. (95:4-5)
 
P.S. Isaac Asimov was an atheist but what he said lines up with religious books, & people think religion is the source of all evils.

 

Gandhi on Food for everyone

Especially directed towards those who always say, "curb population growth. There's not enough resources in this world."
 
There are more than enough resources in this world to support everyone, but it's up to us (or perhaps our governments) to decide how best to use our resources to satisfy everyone's needs; be it financial, energy, human, water, or food resources.