Thanks, boys, for giving a hard look at the massive inequity on the planet…..

So, must congratulate our billionaire astronauts on accomplishing something really important with their brief junket up above the clouds – they managed to draw massive attention to the massive inequity on the planet and how stupid it’s really getting….if the social media platform I’m part of is any indication, Mssrs. Bezos and Branson had an enormous amount of ridicule and contempt directed their way for such a wanton waste of cash while so many of their fellow passengers on Spaceship Earth are living in squalor and misery without the basic necessities for life….while I appreciate that humanity would like to travel out into space and it might turn out to be a worthwhile endeavour, space travel and exploration is something that will take the resources of a planet not a couple of rich boys…..

You know, my wife and I often get talking about the vast unfairness in life and how many, many people on the planet have enormously difficult lives - while others, a hugely smaller number, are wealthy beyond belief and could not spend all of their money in several hundred lifetimes. And the only real way to fix any of this is to somehow share or spread the wealth around. And it would be really pleasant and nice if the really rich folks would willingly share and spread the wealth around, but they clearly don’t. Instead, they buy 500 foot yachts, diamond-encrusted Rolls Royces, gold plated bathrooms – I mean the stupidity never ends and gets worse and more grotesque with each passing generation of really rich folks – because they just keep getting richer and richer and richer and richer…..

It’s interesting – I heard Janet Yellen (sp.), who I think is the Treasury Secretary in the U.S. government, and she has suggested an international corporate tax rate, so that large multinational corporations can’t keep avoiding paying fair taxes by continually moving to the jurisdiction with the lowest corporate tax rate. This, of course, is a brilliant idea but getting all the countries on the planet to sign on seems a bit of a tall order. Of course, there should be an international wealth tax on the planet as well – one that would prevent the rich folks from avoiding paying their fair share of taxes by doing the same thing as the corporations. It is completely and totally galling to me that both corporations and wealthy folk refuse to simply pay what is fair for everyone and are constantly trying to evade what is really their responsibility to the societies that have made them wealthy and successful.

You know, I always keep coming back to the story of Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR), who assumed the American presidency at the height of the Great Depression. FDR knew there was only one way to get out of the Depression and that was for government to get involved and put the country back to work. So, he levied huge taxes on the richest people in American society – he really put it to them to the point where he would receive death threats for the rest of his life. And with all the money he gathered up through these taxes, he created the “New Deal”, which was mostly about huge government make-work projects and infusing significant amounts of cash into the economy at key places to get things going again. It worked.

Taxes on the wealthy and large corporations were at extremely high levels right after the Second World War as countries struggled to get their economies back on track after years of war spending. But, sadly, shortly after the end of the war, governments started a slow but steady assault on the middle class in society, gradually raising taxes on it, while slowly, but equally steadily, cutting the taxes of rich folks and corporations. This is well documented and happened under both the so-called liberal and conservative governments and has continued to happen for about 75 years. To the point where today, the really rich and the really poor pay virtually no taxes while the folks in the middle – you and me – are holding up the whole damned system. I told my son the other day that he works likely to mid-July to early August just to pay the government its pound of flesh…..

The only way we can even begin to fix the myriad of problems we face on Planet Earth is to somehow share the resources among everyone. And if we don’t start to willingly share some of the loot, it’s only a matter of time before it will simply be taken. I was saying that back in high school. It’s already happening – check out the migrants arriving at the Mexico-U.S. border or the people flooding into Europe across the Mediterranean…..if we don’t share it, they will eventually just take it. Even sharing our stuff with the poor people in our own societies isn’t enough. The whole world’s watching…..