Will Germans embrace or shun refugees?

I see quite a few people are enthusiastically sharing videos & news of Canadian PM, Justin Trudeau, welcoming Syrian refugees in Canada. They are all saying that this is what humanity is all about, & Syria's neighbouring Arab countries should learn a thing or two from Canada (please keep in mind that Syria's neighbouring Arab countries have taken in millions of refugees, while Canada is only taking in 25,000, even though, Lebanon is not militarily involved in Syria but Canada is).

If I recall correctly, social media was abuzz with similar praises, & rebukes for Arab countries, a few months ago, when Europe, & especially Germany, was welcoming refugees.

As this article shows, the world is full of either stupid people or extremely naive people. Europeans & German public was never, & still is, not so enthusiastically welcoming refugees as the media portrayed.

As the Toronto Star article from November 20th shows, a majority of general Canadian public also is not in favour of Canada welcoming refugees. Even though, Canada is only accepting 25,000 Syrian refugees who will be spread around all over the country, so their effect will be minimal on Canadian labour market, if any. Ironically enough, Canada got this idea of welcoming refugees from Germany, & Germany now has instituted border controls & German public has started to dislike Merkel ("Merkel's approval rating slipped to 54% in December - down from 71% in January.") We do have to keep in mind that Germany is smaller in land mass than Canada but then Germany has a better economy than Canada, which is suffering from a recession, which is also predicted to last long.

However, just like Germans, Canadians are torn apart between wanting to help people in their time of need, but then also looking at their own dire future. As the article states that policy makers in Germany are discussing lowering the minimum wages so employers can hire them (of course, low minimum wages will affect all & not only refugees). Although, German government is providing funds for German language classes for refugees, the funds are only available for basic classes. Of course, one cannot perform better in his/her job, if they are not fluent in the language of their adopted country. At the same time, the refugees in Germany are educated & coming with a dream to have similar jobs in Germany as they had back in their homeland, but they won't get those jobs. Germany needs, & welcoming, these refugees to get the jobs that German public doesn't want; the proverbial "low paid & dirty" work.

Canada is welcoming refugees who are family members, & no single men. Family / married men are usually educated & since they need to earn enough money to support their families, they will be looking for similar jobs they had back in their homeland. Problem is that Canada cannot provide those kinds of jobs, since its economy is in shambles, & even Canadian educated grads are having an extremely hard time in securing those kinds of proverbially "high paid & good" jobs. So, in a few months, these refugees will be forgotten, since the media will move on to the next sensational story, & the refugees will be left to fend for themselves in the labour market.

One more point comes out of this article is what is democracy, then? As I blogged earlier, the general public loves "democracy" as long as the government's decisions benefits it. Do you think that is it democratic that the majority of Canadians dislike Trudeau's plan of welcoming & settling refugees but he went ahead with it, anyway? Do you think that is it democratic that Merkel's welcoming refugees doesn't coincide with what the German public really wants? Do you think is it democratic that US, & Republican party's leadership front runner, Donald Trump, is being embraced by millions of Americans, even after his extremely xenophobic comments against refugees & Muslims?
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http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-35062438

In a crowded market square in Gera, poets & performers take to the stage. Above them is a banner that has become a familiar sight at train stations across Germany. "Refugees Welcome," it reads in big letters.

Die Linke, a left-wing German political party, has set up a stall to welcome the newcomers, alongside a local charity.
...

Nearby, supporters of AfD - Alternative for Germany - a right-wing group which is cynical about the entry of so many refugees, have gathered.

It's Saturday afternoon in late October & Dirk Heinze has come with his wife Daniella Bruhnke & their 3 children, Sophia, six, Turina, two, & 10-month-old Pierre to hear what both groups have to say.

Dirk, 40, works in care for the elderly & has lived his whole life in Gera. I'm following them as well as some of the refugees to see how they & the city adapt to the changes brought about by the influx of asylum seekers.

Gera was once part of the former German Democratic Republic. It is small, with a population of 95,000, &, until recently, only had 2,000 foreign residents.

Dirk views the groups with scepticism, saying that they are both trying to capitalise on the refugee crisis.

Dirk & Daniella explain that they are frustrated at being excluded from decisions that have affected their town. Many residents feel the same, according to Daniella, because the decision to admit so many refugees was made by politicians, without consultation.

The couple haven't been involved in any protests, although they understand why others have. "So many other people are coming. They [the protesters] fear for their jobs. They fear, well, yes for their lives," says Daniella.

In August Angela Merkel said all Syrians could apply for asylum, & wouldn't be sent back to the first safe country they landed in. Germany was already taking a substantial number of refugees.

This week it was reported that the influx of asylum-seekers in Germany has reached the one million mark - four times the total for 2014. About a half of the new refugees are from Syria.

Refugees are being bussed across the country. ...

Gera is receiving fewer refugees than other cities. Many of them are currently living in the former hospital, converted in mid-October into a refugee centre for up to 2,000 new arrivals.

Someone tried to flood the centre before it opened, so security is very tight. There was also an attack on a refugee by two German men with five dogs in tow. Injuries were minor but news quickly spread around the centre that it may not be safe to go out at night.

The recent influx has caused a mini-political earthquake in Germany. Merkel's approval rating slipped to 54% in December - down from 71% in January.

There have been high-profile & large Pegida (Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamisation of the West) demonstrations against the arrival of Muslim refugees. These have mostly been held in Dresden - about an hour from Gera.

In Gera itself there have been smaller protests known as "Thugida" demonstrations (the name combines Pegida with Thuringia, which is the state in which Gera sits).

It's far from one-sided, though. Germans have been filling train stations to welcome refugees - handing out sweets to children & clothes to their parents.

Dirk & Daniella's concerns are always couched with sympathy for those truly in need. "Regardless of which country they come, what religion they are - if someone needs help, they have to receive help," says Daniella.

But she maintains that people shouldn't be allowed to come "just because they want a better life, and because it is better here in Germany".

Dirk is sceptical of Merkel's "Wir schaffen das" ["We will make it"] pronouncements. ...
...

The recent attacks in Paris are on everyone's mind - particularly since at least two of the attackers entered Europe posing as refugees. New arrivals in Germany tell me they worry that Germans will come to fear all refugees & that everyone will end up too scared even to communicate, resulting in a segregated city.

"I do believe that the opinion of many people has now changed, because many are afraid now that terrorists will mix themselves among the refugees," says Daniella. "Who knows who is a terrorist and who is a refugee? They don't have it written on their forehead."

They tell me of other concerns, too. There has been debate for months about lowering the minimum wage in Germany for refugees. It is a controversial idea that, as Dirk puts it, "will keep the big bosses happy", but he fears may lower wages for Germans.

Jobs are on everyone's minds here. I spend some time at a German language school. Classes are growing every day because of the arrival of refugees. I meet a language teacher who, though enthusiastic about the potential of the refugees, is not hopeful about their chances.

Sandy Mazur tells me that German is being taught, funded by the government, to a basic level - but after that the money stops.

"These refugees who come from Syria are very ambitious," she says. "They want work - and here in Germany we have so many free work places because we don't have so many young people."

But she says the German provided is not enough to get a job, & certainly not a job in anywhere near in the same professions the refugees worked in back home. Some are teachers, IT professionals & engineers.

As I leave in early December refugees are more visible on the streets of Gera.

Residents are undoubtedly nervous, but many of their foreign neighbours hope they can bring new life to this quiet city.

This endless quest for growth will see Greece self-destruct

Although, this article is focused on Greece & its financial & economic woes, I really liked the author's view on how there is an "inherent contradiction of capitalism". I, myself, don't have a problem with capitalism, but the modern capitalism in itself does have a problem of continuously trying to make profits (which are essentially, surpluses -- gross revenue less costs = profits), which are not being re-invested in the economy but are being filtered up to few wealthiest individuals. Profit then stops there & more profits have to made for the other 99% to survive. Of course, since, the other 99% are making minimum wage or barely scraping by in life, the economy will eventually grind to a halt. Paragraphs 6 & 7, in the opinion piece below, very succinctly summarize this.

Think of it like a machine (for example, your car engine). If you keep driving your car for longer & longer distances & keep trying to extract as many kilometers (or miles) you can extract out of it before you need to service your car, or try to slowly reduce your frequency of regular car maintenance, you will eventually destroy your car engine & its related machinery, because your car's machinery is working harder for fewer servicing. It's the same case for human labour.

Anyway, so then the government is faced with only 2 choices (kind of being stuck between rock & a hard place) that it either try to juice up the "dead" economy through stimulus (like US did) or try to save billions through harsh austerity programs like Southern European nations did or are still doing. These two solutions are interlinked & become sort of a catch-22 problem. Government's primary source of revenue is taxes, but it can't really tax the public which in itself is not earning enough to survive. So tax revenue falls off the cliff. If tax revenue is insufficient for the government to institute stimulus programs, then it's only option is to bring more money from outside; either print more or borrow more. Either of these options will reduce the value of the national currency (assuming it's not part of a regional monetary bloc), & the price of everything essential in the marketplace for the public will rise, which will cause the general public to save more, instead of spend, which is required to revive the dead economy. Hence, we are back at the start of the problem, where the economy is still dead, & neither austerity nor stimulus is working to their full potential.

However, while the government is either cutting social spending or reducing the value of the currency, few individuals in its country are still becoming wealthier by the minute. That's why, the recession didn't hit the hardest all those wealthy 1-percenters. Heck, in their own little world, they didn't even feel it. Their wealth actually grew multiple folds during the recent recession.

Problem is that this inherent problem of modern capitalism & the social inequality it causes is only going to grow until there's chaos & anarchy on the national & global levels. There's no way to resolve this problem since the governments are now controlled by those same wealthy individuals who love this "inherent contradiction of capitalism," since it makes them wealthier & wealthier, & frankly, why would they care if a few millions of the general public suffers because of inequality. Prepare yourself for much more pain & suffering if you are one of those 99%.
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http://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2015/jul/07/this-endless-quest-for-growth-will-see-greece-self-destruct

...
For many following the crisis for ... months, it has become clear that it is not just about Greek debt. Beneath the cultural tensions & ugly stereotypes, an ideological war is taking place. This battle is happening because the current economic system has only 2 answers to debt crises, recessions & slow economic growth: stimulus & austerity.

Stimulus is about the government pumping money into the economy to encourage consumer spending, which will theoretically lead to economic growth. In recent times, stimulus efforts have taken the form of the government spending money on infrastructure & other socially beneficial projects (think the New Deal) & quantitative easing. Austerity is a set of measures that aim to cut government spending & shrink the public sector to make the economy less dependent on it, which in theory should make room for & encourage a burgeoning free market (ie neo-liberalism).

The argument against government-led stimulus asks how the economy can grow if the government has to keep expanding its debt &/or money supply in order to start new projects & stimulate the economy. Surely the stimulation it provides will never compensate for growing levels of debt? Anti-austerity advocates, on the other hand, ask how the economy can grow if people make less money & taxes are higher – people will save, not spend, & economic growth is based on consumer spending.

The issue of austerity versus stimulus is often framed as the entire debate – if you don’t support one, you must support the other, because there are no alternatives. This is the same binary debate that has been going on for more than 100 years between the state versus the market. Yet, these dichotomies distract people from thinking about what’s really important – the goal of these policies, which is to grow the economy.

No analysis I’ve read thus far has questioned the damaging role that the endless quest for economic growth plays. Neither austerity nor government stimulus will ever be able to address the debt crises & recessions of the twenty-first century because what we’re dealing with here is an inherent contradiction of capitalism.

This contradiction comes from the surplus of the system (profit) being taken out of the real economy (the economy of physical goods and services) and put into the financial sector to generate more wealth for people who are already wealthy. This requires the economy to continually grow to compensate for the extraction of profit, which is essentially the extraction of the economy’s surplus.

However, this extraction of profit is the same mechanism at the root of soaring levels of inequality. A recent Oxfam report estimates that, by 2016, the richest 1% of the world’s population will own more than the other 99%. If the average person is making relatively less every year, or struggling just to maintain the same financial state, they can’t afford to buy ever more products & services, so the economy can’t grow as it did when we had more financial equality. Thus capitalism has always carried the seed of its own demise.

We are seeing this self-destruction in Greece. The ... Syriza government wants to go back to the negotiating table & create a new bailout agreement that will cut the debt to a more manageable size & reform the public sector in ways that won’t affect the most vulnerable. This would still be austerity, albeit a much milder version than that of the past 5 years. ...

If an agreement can’t be reached, Greece might well go back to the drachma. However, the government has no clear plan for this & an unplanned exit from the euro would be painful, with the poorest hit the hardest.

In all of these scenarios, the government’s goal would still be to re-start economic growth, even at the cost of creating more inequality. None of these options gets to the roots of capitalism’s inherent contradiction. There’s no way to grow ourselves out of this crisis; not for Greece, not for the rest of the world. What we are witnessing is the beginning of the collapse of capitalism.

So what is a sustainable path forward for Greece? If the Greek government could see that it won’t be able to re-start growth, and that GDP growth is a means to an end, not an end in itself, there are steps it could take to start paving a new path to prosperity for its people.

In addition to the basics – restructuring the Greek debt, deep reforms in the public sector to make it more transparent & accountable, & the strengthening of the solidarity economy – I suggest the following:
...

2.The government should nationalise the banks & encourage people to start credit unions. This will re-align the banking sector with the needs of citizens & make the banks more resilient. Credit unions would empower people to take financial matters into their own hands.

3.Greece should keep for-profit interests from buying up its common wealth. This could be done via land trusts, not-for-profits & amending the constitution to make it unconstitutional for the government to sell off the commons.

4.The Greek government should start using a wellbeing or happiness index to measure success, as Bhutan does. In this age of inequality, working class people & the unemployed can easily slip through the cracks of GDP growth.

5.Businesses & the government should shorten the working week & encourage job-sharing, so more people can have part-time employment. This would counter the current problem of some having no work while others work 50 hours a week.

6.Finally, the government should create legislation & encourage not-for-profit enterprise in every sector to prevent the extraction of profits from the real economy & encourage social entrepreneurs & innovators to start up their own not-for-profits. These enterprises would help alleviate the humanitarian crisis in Greece, create a more stable economy & keep the financial surplus in the real economy. By building an economy around social purpose, Greece could usher in the post-capitalist era, rather than fall victim to the unavoidable collapse of capitalism we are witnessing.


Jennifer Hinton is the co-author of How on Earth: Flourishing in a Not-for-Profit World by 2050, which will be published in October 2015.

World War Z quote

 IMDB          RottenTomatoes          Wikipedia

So true. That's the same problem people have, for instance, with understanding the problem of climate change or cloning or economics or finance or any number of problems, on a micro or macro level. Regardless of how much an expert tells them that it will become a problem later on, people will hold on to their beliefs until that given event has happened. Watching it by their own eyes is the only way for them to believe. BUT, by that point, it's already too late for those people to save themselves from whatever that problem or calamitous event it is.

It's the same problem Quran mentions multiple times. Several prophets came & told the same thing to their people, but until & unless, God's punishment came down upon them, the public didn't believe those prophets. And by that time, it was already too late for any repentance. Be it Noah's people or Lot's, Shelah's (Saleh's) or Eber's (Hud's), they all didn't believe their prophets until God's punishment came down upon them.

"Shrinking Middle Class income" by Bob Englehart

"Shrinking Middle Class income" - Bob Englehart, Hartford Courant, Hartford, Connecticut, US

Tenant evictions reach six-year high amid rising rents & benefit cuts in UK

This is what's happening with English residents & citizens in their own country, in UK, that not only government has cut down on the social benefit payments the public used to receive, but they are also now evicting tenants who can't pay rents, due to a hardship has fallen upon them.

Developing countries don't have the social safety net which can help residents & citizens when they fall upon hard circumstances, but it seems like that developed countries are going the same way.

If you are thinking it's just the story of one country, UK, then you are sorely mistaken. Although, you should realize that London is considered one of the financial hubs of the world, right beside New York. The cruel irony is that the number of homeless people in New York City has also doubled in the past decade (2004 - 2014).

I believe it's safe to assume that a homeless Briton looks no different from a homeless American or a homeless Pakistani or a homeless Syrian or a homeless Nigerian or a homeless Iraqi or a homeless Somali. I think you get the picture.

Who do we blame for this rising inequality in this "modern" world of 21st century? Governments, economy, financial systems, businesses, elites, corruption, immigrants, terrorism etc.?
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http://www.theguardian.com/money/2015/may/14/tenant-evictions-reach-six-year-high-rising-rents-benefit-cuts

The number of tenants evicted from their homes is at a six-year high, according to new figures, as rising rents & cuts to benefits make tenancies increasingly unaffordable.

County court bailiffs in England & Wales evicted more than 11,000 families in the first 3 months of 2015, an increase of 8% on the same period last year & 51% higher than 5 years ago.

The increase in the number of tenants losing their homes means 2015 is on course to break last year’s record levels. Nearly 42,000 families were evicted from rental accommodation in 2014, the highest number since records began in 2000.

Rental prices have soared in many UK cities but wages failing to keep pace with rising costs & caps to benefits have left many poorer tenants unable to make payments.

Separate figures also ... showed almost 59,000 households have had their benefits capped in the past 2 years. Nearly half of those families were in London, where the average monthly rent for a two-bedroom home is £2,216.

Housing charities said the figures were a glaring reminder that many tenants were struggling to maintain a roof over their heads, & they called on the ... government to do more to tackle a housing crisis in the UK.

The latest repossession statistics, published by the Ministry of Justice, reveal the highest number of evictions in a single quarter since 2009, when comparable records began, with nearly 126 families forced out every day.

Between January & March, 11,307 tenants & their families were evicted by bailiffs, compared with a figure of 10,380 between October & December last year, & 10,482 in the first quarter of 2014.

The record figure comes as the number of landlord repossession claims ... also rose. Claims were up 10% on the last quarter, but at 42,226 they remained below a six-year high of 47,208 in the first quarter of 2014.

Claims by both private & social landlords were up, the figures showed, although most of the rise was explained by claims by the latter. Social landlords were behind nearly 5 times as many attempts to recover properties than private landlords, the figures showed. These landlords are typically housing associations providing homes at lower rents than the market rate, often to tenants who receive housing benefit.

In the first 3 months of the year, 64% of possession claims were made by social landlords. These 27,204 court actions came alongside 5,551 made by private landlords & 9,741 accelerated claims, which could have been by either social or private landlords.

In May 2014, when the threat of evictions reached its highest level for a decade, the National Housing Federation, which represents housing associations across England, told the Guardian the bedroom tax was causing problems for social landlords. The policy cuts the amount of housing benefit paid to social housing tenants whose homes are deemed too large for their requirements. Benefit sanctions were also thought to be causing problems.

But many housing associations, particularly in London & the south-east, have turned out tenants as they have sought to redevelop generations-old estates to take advantage of the big rise in property values. This has in turn led to an increase in the number of grassroots campaigns to oppose evictions, such as the Focus E15 mothers.

The MoJ figures came on the same day as the Department for Work & Pensions revealed that 58,690 households across the UK had their benefits capped to a maximum of £26,000 a year since April 2013. Londoners were the worst affected, with 26,636 families facing a cut in benefits over the period to February 2015, followed by 5,953 in the rest of the south-east.

DWP proposals to meet the Conservatives’ pledge to cut £12bn from the welfare budget, in documents leaked to the Guardian last week, included barring under-25s from claiming housing benefit, increasing the bedroom tax on certain categories of tenants, limiting welfare payments by family size & freezing welfare benefits at current levels.

Responding to the eviction statistics, Campbell Robb, chief executive of Shelter, said: “Today’s figures are a glaring reminder that sky-high housing costs & welfare cuts are leaving thousands of people battling to keep a roof over their heads.

“Every day at Shelter we see the devastating impact of a housing market at boiling point, with the cost of renting so high that many families are living in fear that just one thing like losing their job or becoming ill could leave them with the bailiffs knocking at the door.

“The new government must make sure people aren’t left to fall through the cracks & hurtling towards homelessness by preserving, if not strengthening, the frayed housing safety net to protect ordinary families desperately struggling to make ends meet.”

Betsy Dillner, director of the campaign group Generation Rent, said: “These record eviction figures & signs that they are accelerating are a stark reminder of the housing crisis that the government must urgently start taking seriously now they’re back in power.

“Whether it’s an inability to pay expensive rents or a landlord’s desire to take back their property, the fact that more than 40,000 families were forced out of their homes last year is a symptom of the government’s failure to create a sustainable housing market.”

The housing minister, Brandon Lewis, defended the government’s performance, pointing out that mortgage repossessions had fallen drastically, keeping owner-occupiers in their “hard-earned homes”.

He said: “Mortgage repossessions continue to fall at 56% lower than this time last year, & the lowest annual figure since the series began in 1987. Meanwhile, numbers of county court mortgage possession claims continue to fall to the lowest quarterly number since records began. This is thanks to our work to tackle the deficit & keep interest rates low, helping more families to stay in their hard earned homes.

“There are strong protections in place to guard families against the threat of homelessness. We increased spending to prevent homelessness, with over £500m made available to help the most vulnerable in society & ensure we don’t return to the bad old days when homelessness in England was nearly double what it is today.”

"Global Perspectives 2015" by Paresh Nath

"Global Perspectives 2015" - Paresh Nath, India

"Stupid Voters" by Milt Priggee

"Stupid Voters" - Milt Priggee, WA, US

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.

Pope Francis attacks throwaway culture of world economy

All 3 major Abrahamic religions are essentially very similar. I liked one of the statements Pope made: "When money becomes an idol, it commands the choices of man. And thus it ruins man & condemns him. It makes him a slave." Sounds a lot like what Islam also says.

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Pope Francis has launched a fresh attack on economic injustice, condemning the 'throwaway culture' of globalisation & calling for new ways of thinking about poverty, welfare, employment & society.

 

In a speech ... he pointed to the 'dizzying rise in unemployment' & the problems that existing welfare systems had in meeting healthcare needs.

 

For those living 'at the existential margins' the current social & political system 'seems fatally destined to suffocate hope & increase risks & threats,' he said.

 

The Argentinian-born pope said people were forced to work long hours, sometimes in the black economy, for a few hundred euros a month because they were seen as easily replaceable.

 

''You don't like it? Go home then. What can you do in a world that works like this? Because there's a queue of people looking for work. If you don't like it, someone else will,' he said ... .

 

'It's hunger, hunger that makes us accept what they give us,' he said.

 

But his overall message was that economic rationale had to be secondary to the wider needs of human society.

 

'When money becomes an idol, it commands the choices of man. And thus it ruins man & condemns him. It makes him a slave,' he said.

 

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2973570/Pope-Francis-attack-throwaway-culture-world-economy-financial-inequality.html

"Global Business" by Paresh Nath

"Global Business" - Paresh Nath, India

"Hanging on" by Olle Johansson

"Hanging on" - Olle Johansson, Norra Vasterbotten, Sweden

Avg. American household is WORSE off than in 1983

Everywhere Rich getting richer & Poor keeps getting poorer. Inequality keeps increasing. A tiny portion of the population (in a country & in the world) keeps increasing its wealth w/o regard to any thoughts of how the majority will survive. This sense of entitlement of money will further increase the wealth gap between rich & poor, up to a point, when the majority poor will violently take over the reins of the financial, political, & judicial systems, which in turn, can mean bad times for the rich.
 
This economic injustice & social inequality is already causing lots of rift & chaos in European societies (austerity measures & unemployment giving rise to far-right political parties, which in turn, giving rise of hatred & discrimination in the society for minorities; religious, ethnic, racial etc.). Greece is threatening to exit EU, & we all have seen the protests in Athens, Madrid, Rome, & of course, who can forget the worldwide occupy movements.
 
Governments already angling to quell that chaos & before a large section of the society take up arms against the elites, by bringing in "anti-terror" legislation, in which, the definition of word "terrorist" has been deliberately kept vague, so anybody rises up against the elites of the society will be swiftly put down.
 
Be it international or domestic terrorism, one of the primary reasons is not any religion or power grab. The primary reason is this social inequality. ISIS keeps increasing in numbers because youth unemployment is so high all over Europe & North America. Youths are not seeing a bright future in front of them. They are burdened with education debts & no future with good, secure, permanent employment. On an international scale, whole continents like Africa are still largely undeveloped & have bleak futures.
 
This hoarding of wealth by a small minority of the world also causing some worldwide problems, like water, food & energy. There is enough wealth in this world that if that wealth had been used appropriately, instead of being hoarded & hidden away in tax havens, our society would have found innovative solutions to water conservation, growing food for the growing population, & new & sustainable ways to power our homes & factories. But much more severe problems like pollution, food shortages, & water shortages will not only becomes much more severe in our future (they already are with whole continents like Australia & US state, California, suffering severe droughts) but much more violence & chaos is awaiting us when a huge majority will finally grows tired of their respective governments & take arms against rich themselves. It will be the French revolution on a worldwide scale.
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The wealth of the average American household declined between 1983 & 2013, according to a leading economist.
 
Writing in a paper entitled Household Wealth Trends in the US, 1962-2013: What Happened over the Great Recession?, Professor Wolff claimed that America's worth rose partly because technology has improved & productivity has increases.
 
This means that society as a whole has become better & generating wealth.
 
The issue, for many, is that this extra wealth has been funnelled into the top 20% of the population, with the top 1% finding themselves 82% better off. However, the bottom 60% has become poorer, Vox.com reported.
 
Wolff found that the median wealth figure for middle-income families - that means it's been adjusted for inflation - for 1983 was $78,000 & the median wealth figure for 2013 was $63,800.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2931509/Average-American-household-WORSE-1983-study-claims-bottom-60-population-suffering-super-rich-82-CENT-better-off.html

Picking sides in the fight for France

But some do follow the call. Often it’s people who feel some affinity, Muslims born or converted, often with, at first, only a shaky grasp of the Quran’s content.
 
Economic conditions may also have some effect. Long-term unemployment has been high for a generation in France, has increased sharply since 2009, & hits hardest in the largely Muslim “zones urbaines sensibles” (ZUS), hundreds of problem neighbourhoods targeted for special government intervention. Successive studies ...of these ZUS neighbourhoods show that their populations are shrinking only very slowly, while economic conditions rapidly deteriorate. It’s hard to escape the feeling, living in these desolate neighbourhoods on the outskirts of big cities, that France has no interest in seeing you get out.

 
One 2011 survey of ZUS residents found that almost 90% of descendants of immigrants living there agreed with the statement, “I feel French.” But when the question was whether they were perceived as French, the number fell to 67%. Among descendants of Moroccan & Tunisian immigrants the number shrinks to 40%. It’s a big problem when many thousands of a country’s most economically vulnerable citizens feel their affection for France is unrequited.
 
Of course, money doesn’t explain everything. “The socio-economic correlation is valid for many,” Amellal said, “but it has its limits.”

What binds them loosely together is a blanket rejection of everything modern societies seem to value. Amellal calls them “electrons that become free, that completely break with society. It’s not hate, it’s a rejection of everything that makes the system: elites, politics, but also values, the Republic, secularism. Of course, Charlie Hebdo was an extraordinary symbol of all of that. Extraordinary.”

The Muslims of France are there. They have spent their lives in France, learned its history & its pop culture, & in most cases want nothing more than to participate in France’s still sorely unrealized potential.
 
The polarizing effect of the attacks isn’t over. The murders forced everyone in France to pick a side. Most—not all but most—French Muslims are happy & eager to pick freedom’s side. It would be tragic if nobody in power dared listen to them.

http://www.macleans.ca/news/world/picking-sides-in-the-fight-for-france/

 

Killing Them Softly Quote

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