Look.
I never listen to Rachel Smalley because why would I do that? If you want Kate Hawkesby, you go listen to Kate Hawkesby, you don’t buy the Warehouse budget version of Kate Hawkesby do you?
Choosing to listen to Kate Hawkesby in the first place removes the sweat shop knock off version with the same passion as people who go to Polo clubs declining to wear crocs or buy housing in a suburb next to a suburb that has one social housing tenant in it.
However, the odd column pops out that demands a level of scrutiny, and Rachel’s post this week on TodayFM where she cheerleads Billionaires reads more like a Tinder profile for Corporate CEOs.
It’s weird.
She’s shitting on Oxfam’s latest report showing that inequality is soaring and demands a basic tax on wealth to pull billions out of poverty…
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- Since 2020, the richest 1% of people have accumulated close to two-thirds of all new wealth created around the world, a new report from Oxfam says.
- Taxes must be increased for the ultra-rich as a “strategic precondition to reducing inequality and resuscitating democracy,” Gabriela Bucher, executive director of Oxfam International said.
…making the Plutocracy (who have benefitted from the collective stability of our society and economy to amass huge wealth) pay more tax to lift every person on the planet out of poverty is apparently unacceptable to Rachel…
What’s unfortunate about Oxfam’s report is the tone in which it’s delivered. Its solution is to tax the rich. Tax, tax, tax. That’s how Oxfam believes you will address skyrocketing inequality all over the world. It wants governments to introduce a one-off wealth tax and a windfall tax to end profiteering. It wants a permanent increase in tax for the richest 1 percent of the world’s population – taking at least 60 percent of their income, and an even greater percentage for multi-millionaires and billionaires.
…what?
She doesn’t like the tone and thinks feckless dumb countries will waste the resources a wealth tax would generate???
In 2010, the 388 richest individuals owned more wealth than half of the entire human population on Earth
By 2015, this number was reduced to only 62 individuals
In 2018, it was 42
In 2019, it was down to only 26 individuals who own more wealth than 3.8 billion people.
And in 2021, 20 people owned more than 50% of the entire planet.
And last year the richest man on Earth bought one of the most important social media platforms.
But Rachel wants to tone police the way we demand the Billionaire class pay to end the consumer culture misery they have built their Empires of Suffering upon?
The Big Tech Tzars have manipulated our collective fear, ego, anger and insecurities through social media in a way that has led to the largest psychological civil war ever launched against one another.
We are but meat bags secreting hormones addicted to dopamine rewards for fat, sugar, salt and sex in a cultural landscape of individualism uber alles where we sing sweet secret lies to ourselves to make sense of a world around us that is frightening and in constant entropy.
Meanwhile, the planet burns and every aspect of our existence is monetarised for big data to sell us more stuff we can’t afford. We are alienated and anesthetized by a consumer culture that keeps us neurotic and disconnected. Our work, our existence, every move we make are all built to suck money to a minority class that sits above us while under neoliberalism, globalization, financialization, and automation, our existence as individuals has only become more disposable.
If Elon Musk can afford to lose $200billion, he can afford a fucking wealth tax!
Why am I reading Rachel Smalley?
Why?
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She has a point, what would a corrupt government – or for that matter a neoliberal government – actually do with all that tax money? But her alternative is.. magical thinking, it falls flat.
The second one starts to reach for the old “but we can’t control what governments do with the money” malarkey, we know we’re listening to a rusted on colonial drone… That particular arguement has been used by every colonial/conservative government since there was such… This is just blatant bigotry masquerading as “concern”… I call total bullshit on that..
Governments are elected by the populations of their countries, and as mature, thinking humans, we must assume at the outset that the the majority of those governments will do the best they can with any extra money.. Those who don’t???? Well, then it’s either a job for that country to replace that government, or not, but to squash what is a logical, and entirely fair approach simply because they (from the knowledge of their own parties dishonesty over the decades of it’s existence) wish to appear morally superior, is disingenuous, to say the least..
Why indeed is anyone reading Rachel Smalley? Her infamous “Lardos & Heifers” comment she made on kiwi women’s appearance has gone down the memory hole I guess.
Thanks for putting the bucked down and pulling up essential iconic pieces which should neer be allowed to rot away.
When its down to just 2 individuals owning everything.
Right wing dullards like Hoskings and Smalley will still be arguing that it is unfair that those same individuals pay all the tax.
If not – when does the stupidity of their argument dawn on them ?
It’s quite simple.
Media form part of the 9%. The 9% that enables the 1%. The 9% is largely made up of government (and local government) bureaucrats, corporate upper and middle management, and the media.
The 1% need the 9% to ensure no burden falls on them. The media (MSM at least) is their mouthpiece used to soothe the sheeple. The fact most in the Western World can’t or don’t want to recognize this dynamic is staggering…….
Take a side then Frankus, we live in a class society like it or not.
Who is Rachel Smalley?
Property of right win Inc.
Beautifully articulated MB.
bought and paid for
So you’re picking up on a pattern. The rich getting richer. The policies you’ve been advocating for over the last few years are no different to hers – large corporates working with big government and big media to screw over the public. Wake up, buddy.
ow which is the exact definition of italian fascism(not german nazism-people tend to lump them together) but the ‘corpratist state’ was the theory of italian fascism
2.5 years with a 51% majority and nothing was done to reduce inequality. Labour did that.