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When will we reach the tipping point where there’s no longer any doubt that economic scarcity among humanity exists wholly by the choice of an elite few, and not actual economic necessity?
Or, in other words, when will existing knowledge, wealth, and technology become sufficient to completely eliminate poverty in terms of basic sustenance, comprehensive education, and healthcare for everyone worldwide?
Or have we reached that point already?1
Are the non-rich worldwide being played for fools by a tiny fraction (perhaps just a couple dozen families) of the super-rich?2 Could it be that we might ALL enjoy more-than-adequate living standards, via little more than a change in modern society’s rules and policies and priorities?
And-- perhaps most importantly-- who gets to be the ultimate judge of whether the tipping point has been reached or not? Surely not the handful of families who already sit atop 99% of humanity on the pyramid! For it’s in basic human nature to want to retain a definitive edge in power over others, merited or not.3 If we allow the same people who’ve always been on top to make this decision, it’s likely they’ll never formally recognize such a tipping point-- even when it’s far, far past.
Or worse, they may actively try to prevent the tipping point from arriving (by squandering vast sums of humanity‘s wealth, rather than allowing a more just and practical application), or hide its arrival entirely, with some grand campaign of distraction-- such as unnecessary wars, or the hyping of tiny actual threats into monstrous hypotheticals-- the meat and potatoes of TV shows like "24", and the Bush-Cheney Administration. Or perhaps take all these actions simultaneously.4
"Hardly anyone seems to realize it, but we're on the threshold of an era of unbelievable abundance."
-- The Sorcerer's Apprentice; THE WORLD QUESTION CENTER 2007 — Page 10; edge.org
"The rich are already rich enough to be able to end poverty."
-- Economist Jeffrey D. Sachs, director of Columbia University's Earth Institute
-- Science to Save the World By David Appell; Scientific American; December 16, 2002
-- Media conglomerates manipulate our views By Nick Bayard; browndailyherald.com; February 10, 2003 vol. CXXXVIII, no. 14
According to Republican Congressman Ron Paul, all Americans should be very worried by the mainstream US media's recent practice of mostly unquestioning support of present US foreign policy.
"...the growing concentration of wealth has reshaped our political system: it is at the root both of a general shift to the right and of an extreme polarization of our politics"
-- Paul Krugman
-- Plutocracy by some other name; thoughts on the eve of the apocalypse; October 20, 2002; citing this New York Times article
Murdoch's News Corp, offering TV media like Fox News in the USA, is said by some to possess sufficient influence to affect elections and effectively pick and choose the governments of nations otherwise regarded as sovereign and developed democracies.
-- Yahoo! News - Media mogul Murdoch backs Bush in US election ["http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=1521&ncid=703&e=7&u=/afp/20040407/pl_afp/us_vote_australia"]; Apr 7, 2004; AFP; story.news.yahoo.com
-- Rupert Murdoch's Digital Death Star By Jeffrey Chester, AlterNet; May 20, 2003; alternet.org
-- Yahoo! News - Mega Media Mergers: How Dangerous? ["http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=66&ncid=66&e=1&u=/bw/20040213/bs_bw/b3871001mz001"]; BusinessWeek Online; Feb 13, 2004
-- Turner: Murdoch Is World's 'Most Dangerous Man'; May 18, 2003; newsmax.com
If a single mega-corporation controlled all the news and entertainment media you ever experienced, wouldn't it effectively control you too?
-- The Five Sisters By WILLIAM SAFIRE; New York Times; February 16, 2004; nytimes.com
"The American fascist would prefer not to use violence. His method is to poison the channels of public information. With a fascist the problem is never how best to present the truth to the public but how best to use the news to deceive the public into giving the fascist and his group more money or more power."
-- The Ghost of Vice President Wallace Warns: "It Can Happen Here" by Thom Hartmann; Published on Monday, July 19, 2004 by CommonDreams.org
"...the middle class is essentially being wiped out."
"It almost seems like we’re turning the population in the U.S. into economic serfs..."
-- America's Black Budget & Manipulation Of Markets by Catherine Austin Fitts; 27 May 2004; scoop.co.nz
-- High-status monkeys ignore the interests of riff-raff; eurekalert.org; 21-Feb-2006 Contact: Heidi Hardman hhardman@cell.com 617-397-2879 Cell Press
-- Money can buy you happiness but only relative to your peer's income; eurekalert.org; 14-Aug-2005 Contact: Johanna Olexy or Lee Herring pubinfo@asanet.org 202-247-9871 American Sociological Association
"...the chief executives of 11 of the largest companies were awarded a total of $865 million in pay in the last two years, even as they presided over a total loss of $640 billion in shareholder value..."
-- CEOs earn 262 times pay of average worker ["http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/financial_pay_dc;_ylt=AgxXle_m8VZbKiCmQG1ocqQDW7oF;_ylu=X3oDMTBhcmljNmVhBHNlYwNtcm5ld3M-"]; Jun 21, 2006; Reuters; news.yahoo.com
"11,600 minimum-wage workers could be paid for an entire year from the Yahoo CEO's 2004 compensation."
-- By the Numbers ["http://news.yahoo.com/s/thenation/1561415;_ylt=Ai307OFp1lK8TaWE_664xYcDW7oF;_ylu=X3oDMTBiMW04NW9mBHNlYwMlJVRPUCUl"]; The Nation; Feb 18, 2006; news.yahoo.com
“If there's even a 1% chance that WMDs have been given to terrorists, we need to treat it as a certainty, not in our analysis or the preponderance of evidence...but in our response.”
-- US vice president Dick Cheney, November 2001
-- The One Percent Doctrine Journalist Ron Suskind on the Deliberate U.S. Bombing of Al Jazeera, Losing Bin Laden and More; July 14th, 2006; democracynow.org
-- Cheney's One Percent Doctrine Vice President Said to Feel That If There's a 1 Percent Chance, Then Act By JOHN ALLEN PAULOS July 2, 2006; abcnews.go.com
"...a far larger number of Americans die each year from poverty, hunger, pollution, dangerous jobs or poor access to high-quality health care than terrorism."
-- Yahoo! News - Nader: Social Ills Deadlier Than Terror ["http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=694&ncid=703&e=4&u=/ap/20040912/ap_on_el_pr/nader"] By DAVID B. CARUSO, Associated Press; Sep 12, 2004; story.news.yahoo.com
"...$3.3 trillion of undocumentable adjustments at DOD..."
-- The Great Incompetency Heist by Catherine Austin Fitts; 23 May 2006; scoop.co.nz