And of course the supreme irony is that UN employees (and probably also 'Special Rapporteurs' and 'High Commissioners') themselves do not even pay tax "Tax exemption
Salaries, grants and allowances paid by the United Nations are normally exempt from income tax."
I've heard of anger management classes, but it seems we need envy management classes as well (Now that Thomas Aquinas et al are no longer read on the subject of capital sins).
Such classes should contain a good dose of economics about how markets work. J K Rowling is rich because nearly every family with children will have a Harry Potter book and it's nothing to do with the zero sum economics of those who stoke the idea that 'billionaires' are extractive, the idea that you are down because they are up.
Such classes should also explain how innovation works in capitalist societies, to be kept in mind when benefitting from high tech medicine and surgery. A modern operating theatre, if you follow the supply chains behind its array of equipment, is something to behold. Many of the envious will have benefitted from or one day need laparoscopic surgery (a huge advance on the old way of slicing you open from top to bottom) unaware of the mix of technologies and engineering behind it that no command economy has ever produced.
The internet and social media are implicated in our envy infused societies as glimpses of the lives of the rich and famous have become ubiquitous. When I was a lad information was obtained through newspapers and a limited range of television and radio. We were aware of the existence of millionaires, but comparisons were geographically local in the main. Status anxiety, so far as it existed at all, was mainly local and unaffected by the far off. Now internet consumers compare globally.
Perhaps this diffusion of envy among populations underpins the support for a certain type of envious middle class that governs us. (They are also becoming vainglorious and unaware of how that is limiting support for them. But then it is rare to succumb to only one sin.)
I've heard of anger management classes, but it seems we need envy management classes as well (Now that Thomas Aquinas et al are no longer read on the subject of capital sins).
Such classes should contain a good dose of economics about how markets work. J K Rowling is rich because nearly every family with children will have a Harry Potter book and it's nothing to do with the zero sum economics of those who stoke the idea that 'billionaires' are extractive, the idea that you are down because they are up.
Such classes should also explain how innovation works in capitalist societies, to be kept in mind when benefitting from high tech medicine and surgery. A modern operating theatre, if you follow the supply chains behind its array of equipment, is something to behold. Many of the envious will have benefitted from or one day need laparoscopic surgery (a huge advance on the old way of slicing you open from top to bottom) unaware of the mix of technologies and engineering behind it that no command economy has ever produced.
The internet and social media are implicated in our envy infused societies as glimpses of the lives of the rich and famous have become ubiquitous. When I was a lad information was obtained through newspapers and a limited range of television and radio. We were aware of the existence of millionaires, but comparisons were geographically local in the main. Status anxiety, so far as it existed at all, was mainly local and unaffected by the far off. Now internet consumers compare globally.
Perhaps this diffusion of envy among populations underpins the support for a certain type of envious middle class that governs us. (They are also becoming vainglorious and unaware of how that is limiting support for them. But then it is rare to succumb to only one sin.)
The vaingloriousness is incredible. Imagine thinking that it is in your capacity to completely rewire the global economy on the basis of a pet theory of your own invention. 'Hubris' is too mild a word for it.
Just a footnote regarding those billionaires spending money on Think Tanks and the like which do 'research' aimed at depriving said billionaire fund givers of their money: those billionaires ought to be told about a sentence by V. I. Lenin who remarked that inevitably the last capitalist would sell the rope to the communists with which they'd then hang him ...
Poverty is always relative. If the inequalty of income/resources were to be eliminated then we would all suffer poverty and come to think of it affluence!
I'm not sure what the difference is between Turk and De Schutter and the average Substacker, except that the former get paid a lot more for writing a great deal less sense.
As for the UN, whatever its founding principles were, it is now simply a forum where states like Iran, Russia and China can come together and say that the biggest problem in the world today is the existence of a Jewish state. If the purpose of a system is what it does, then that is what its purpose is. That it has other bourgeois dinner party preoccupations too is no surprise. Although it is quite amusing to imagine De Schutter being humiliated at dinner by someone with a more advanced iphone and thinking to himself, "I'll fix him with a bit of degrowth."
When all you believe in is the physical world and this life, then it’s natural that material concerns and social status become paramount. Hence the obsession with consumerism and envy. It comes from a spiritual vacuum.
Thank you for a very funny essay which nails the envy, snootiness and self-interest. I suspect much of the UN's sudden concern over inequality stems from António Guterres' announcement in January 2026 that the UN faced a $1.57 billion financial crisis which was "deepening, threatening programme delivery" and that money could run out by July. That gravy train won't fund itself.
This 'crisis' emerged after the USA sensibly refused to contribute to the UN's regular and peacekeeping budgets and withdrew from several agencies it called a "waste of taxpayer dollars". Other member states were in arrears or simply refusing to pay. I hope the rival Board of Peace replaces it because the UN and its Agenda 30 seem to be at the root of most of our current problems. Ironically, the UN was established by billionaires.
The Rockefeller Foundation and Carnegie Corporation funded the Council of Foreign Relations' War and Peace Studies project during WW2, in which recommendations were made that led to the founding of the UN, IMF and World Bank as tools for internationalist (globalist) control. Vice Chairman of the project was Allen Dulles, Swiss director of the US Office of Strategic Services (OSS), who was heavily involved in Operation Gladio and the stay-behind units, clandestine anti-communist guerrilla resistance groups including former Nazis and fascists, funded by Mafia drug money laundered via the Vatican Bank. The OSS was dissolved in autumn 1945 but its personnel, records, and clandestine capabilities were preserved, leading directly to the creation of the CIA in 1947 by Dulles who became its director.
Rockefeller: Controlling the Game by Jacob Nordangard and Paul Williams' Operation Gladio are both well-researched, non-conspiratorial histories of these organisations which provide solid evidence of the engineering of central control.
I'd like to see a forensic audit of where our money really goes, especially payments to the UN, NATO, WHO, Foreign Aid, government funding for charities and NGOs, the Chagos deal and Ukraine.
People with 6 digit incomes who still rack up 7 digit debt feeding on those who think billionaires have swimming pools filled with cash a la Scrooge McDuck. Unfortunately, both are in extreme oversupply.
I think that these topics are so ill-defined that it is easy to get different ideas mixed up. Envy is certainly unattractive and perhaps unproductive - although it may sometimes motivate hard work and success.
But surely it is indisputable that the many billionaires who now exist have progressively sucked more and more money out of circulation so that there is not enough left for ordinary people - whether workers or the despised "bourgeois" - to get by. Every year, with horrible predictability, ordinary people face higher overheads. Taxes go up, rents go up, medical insurance goes up, student debt goes up, even the price of food and energy goes up - and meanwhile governments make sure that the value of money goes down through systematic inflation.
This is what Michael Hudson calls "debt deflation" - which coexists with currency inflation, as it involves "rents", including interest on debts, vacuuming up more and more of what used to be discretionary spending money until there is none left at all.
As for constant growth, that is obviously impossible in the long run. As Dr Hudson points out, if something cannot continue then it will stop. We have already overshot the ideal stopping point for growth by a very long way, and the consequences are beginning to bite.
The fundamental problem is an inability to grasp the difference between the economic view of the world and the ecological view. Economics has always been a severely stunted, artificially limited discipline, crippled since the 18th century by a Procrustean policy of ignoring everything that might inconvenience the super-rich. Debt, for instance, as Dr Hudson points out, plays no part in the currently fashionable economic theories. Even more seriously, economics assumes - with absolutely no justification - that the world will continue to give us all the raw materials and other conditions to keep growth going. But obviously, as even a child can see, nothing can grow for ever. That can be tested by blowing up a toy balloon - so far, so good, and then BANG.
“the many billionaires who now exist have progressively sucked more and more money out of circulation” Billions can be ‘sucked’ in the case of tax-funded projects that are corrupt or ill advised, or by corrupt politicians, but billions are not “sucked” by billionaires who create wealth by innovating and creating employment through their innovations. As a thought experiment, line up the countries with the most/least billionaires and compare the wealth and wellbeing of their societies (a point made by Thomas Sowell). Further, it is wrong to equate growth entirely with more physical product (more steel, more plastic). Much innovation involves using resources more cleverly and efficiently - how many physical devices (radios, stopwatches, cameras…) are now made virtual by our smartphones? A pill that cures hepatitis can avoid many expensive hospital stays, cars are much more fuel efficient now than in the 60s and cause less injuries when they crash, farmer’s fields produce more food per hectare etc., Who would deny that all this “growth” benefitted mankind? In what way do you believe a child’s balloon a good model for a modern economy?
I agree with much of what you say. Rent-seeking, as identified by Michael Hudson, is a massive problem, and worse than it used to be.
Rent-seeking is actually contrary to any sane conception of a free market - one in which you get rewarded for discovering/inventing/improving something and working away at it. Rent-seekers simply sit on (or occupy) an existing asset or service and increase the price.
A proposed wealth tax (presumably on individuals) is the worst starting-point possible to analyse _that_ problem; that's not what David is doing in the article above, I think. My own criticism of a wealth tax would be that it would hit individual rich people - who are perhaps more likely to have made their money through genuine innovation - but not touch the massive, institutional rent-seekers, who have all kinds of techniques to prevent anyone from actually locating their wealth in a particular jurisdiction.
I think it's a pity that billionaires like Gates are mentioned, because they present yet another, distinct problem: through their funding of "worthy causes" they enormously distort the market, according to their own (not so) hidden ends. I actually prefer someone like Musk who's openly in it for himself (and his openly espoused view of e.g. free speech), to Gates and all other the charitable foundations which claim to "do good" but actually prop up the existing system.
I doubt I could name any individual "rent-seekers"; because they are not people, but bland, corporate entities with meaningless names. The distinction between them and rich individuals who have genuinely "made their own fortune" needs to be sustained: I think your critics below are missing this point.
Who's to blame? Possibly not on rent-seekers themselves, because "rent-seekers gonna rent-seek", but on our ludicrously weak governments and institutions which allow them to without the slightest objection. The appointment of an ex-Amazon VP as head of the Competition and Markets Authority grotesquely sums this up.
I rather doubt that the super-rich got that way by “innovation” - when you think about it, a rather slippery word that vaguely suggests brilliant invention. Although I have not studied the matter, I am inclined to think that when someone gets extremely rich from some “innovation”, it is usually because they have used superior wealth, legal trickery, or downright theft to exploit the discoveries of real inventors - who are usually too busy, preoccupied, and poor to afford the time and money required.
Take a look, if you have time, at “Inventors & Impostors: How history forgot the true heroes of invention and discovery” by Daniel Diehl and Mark P. Donnelly.
Thanks for providing one of the best and clearest examples of what I was referring to!
The Swedish engineer Erik Wallenberg invented the Tetra Pak in 1944 while working for the firm of Akerlund & Rausing. The Rausing family became billionaires as a result; Wallenberg, the actual inventor, got 300 pounds and a medal. You can credit the Rausings with being "wealth creators" if you like; but all Ruben Rausing did was to order Wallenberg to look for a better way of storing milk than in glass bottles.
'Wallenberg did not get due recognition for the invention until 1991, when he was awarded the Grand Gold Medal by The Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences for "his ideas and efforts in the development of the packaging system Tetra Pak"'.
"DAD'S TETRA PAK INVENTION MADE BILLIONS..HE GOT pounds 300; How the man who created revolutionary milk carton missed out on a fortune".
"Today, the family has amassed a stock portfolio worth around US$9 billion and spanning more than 100 companies in Europe and the United States, according to a Bloomberg analysis of regulatory filings".
Thank you for summarising so well the position that is so effectively refuted by David’s post. The Left generally assume that all wealth creation is just theft from others, as do you. And that Malthus was right that the world would self-destruct through lack of resources, which doesn’t seem to be happening despite centuries of such predictions. You clothe your envy in concern for the exploited millions and the environment, as David says. Or maybe I just missed your irony?
“The Left generally assume that all wealth creation is just theft from others, as do you. And that Malthus was right that the world would self-destruct through lack of resources, which doesn’t seem to be happening despite centuries of such predictions”.
“Wealth creation” is a magnificent weasel phrase, suggesting that the brilliant billionaire has hatched a wonderful new invention or technique by his sole imagination and hard work. The deception relies on the ambiguity of “wealth”, which to most people means simply “money”, although real wealth always takes the form of goods, services, or knowledge. A single person cannot create any significant amount of goods and services without the help of many others. And knowledge cannot be applied without similar help.
When people speak of “making money”, they usually mean “getting money from others”. Those who actually make money are imprisoned (or worse) for the crime of counterfeiting. One can get money from others in various ways: by threats or direct force, by deception, or (most usually) by persuasion. The person who is lauded as a “wealth creator” is often a successful confidence trickster.
As for Dr Malthus, his “Essay on the Principle of Population” was first published in 1798, 228 years ago. The 6th and last edition appeared in 1826, exactly two centuries ago. He said nothing about the world “self-destructing”; merely that all animal populations tend to grow until they press against the means of subsistence. The key perception, which is childishly obvious, is that population tends to increase geometrically while resources can grow at best arithmetically.
That has actually happened, although too many people have been encouraged to relax and stop worrying since the “Green Revolution” increased crop yields starting about 50 years ago. The higher yields, however, depend critically on generous supplies of artificial fertiliser, herbicide, and insecticide - all of which are made from oil and gas. The current trouble in the Persian Gulf has already reduced supplies of fertiliser alone enough to put a big dent in world food supplies.
In short, if you are one of those who enjoy a sense of superiority by mocking Dr Malthus - stick around.
I find it interesting how those on the Left think that making money in a market economy doing something that people value enough to voluntarily pay for is tantamount to theft but the state actually taking property away from people under threat of prison is so virtuous.
Why do you mention "those on the Left"? I have no political alignment. I just try to understand what is going on, using facts, figures, and logic.
Sometimes I am called a leftist, sometimes a rightist. As all such directions are relative, it is equally valid to suppose that those who see me as to the left are themselves on the right - and vice versa.
Or we could discuss the facts in a calm, respectful way without calling anyone names.
I'm astounded that debt plays no part in economic theories since the perpetual debt system that developed under William III in the late 1600s is one of the foundations of the modern debt-based financial system. Elephants in rooms spring to mind.
I agree. But I have never pretended to understand modern (i.e. after 1800) economic theories; I studied for Economics A-Level at school, but couldn’t understand the relevance of the isolated equations and models to the real world in which we live.
Dr Hudson has written a number of books, all good and easy to follow. But you can find a lot of his writing absolutely free of charge on his Web site. I regret that I cannot cite the URL because of Substack rules, but it is the obvious one. Or just search for his name.
I was particularly struck by his statement that Mesopotamian kings and priests 5,000 years ago understood the workings of debt better than modern politicians and bankers seem to. (Or maybe it was just that the kings and priests identified their interests more closely with those of the people than modern politicians and bankers do.
They understood that the rich lent to the poor partly for the interest, but mostly because they knew that many debtors would not be able to keep up payments. Then the creditors foreclosed, acquiring land, houses, animals, servants, and even the bound service of debtors’ family members - or even themselves.
Thus, if the kings let matters take their course, eventually almost everything would belong to the few super-rich. There would be too few free citizens left to serve the king for public works such as irrigation, building roads and walls, etc. - or to defend the city in time of war. Thus the Mesopotamian kingdoms survived for thousands of years. In Greece and Rome, however, the wealthy creditors overthrew the kings (whom they called “tyrants”) and in due course acquired the land and enslaved many of the people.
Hence the fall of the Roman Empire. And it’s happening again today, all around us.
I really like Hudson's ideas about debt, rent-seeking and the ancient Jubilees. Partly because the historical phenomena he's talking about are such an accurate reflection of what's going on now.
This is what I have against wealth: not the fact that that person over there has their own swimming pool and I don't, but that wealth just won't _leave me alone_ to become as wealthy (or not) as suits me. It has to insinuate itself into my household budget - through privatised utilities and monopolistic supply-chains, all in alliance with Government (and this is where free-market theory is a useful critical tool) - more and more to satiate its insatiable need, at my expense.
You'll notice that the word "wealth" I chose is deliberately vague - we've drifted far far away from precise meanings such as "people who earn >£200k pa" or "people with net worth >£2million": criteria which (with whatever numbers pasted in) would qualify someone for a "wealth tax". People like that don't bother me; they should be taxed at a higher rate than I am (but watch out for the Laffer curve), but they're no threat to my life or anyone else's.
"Wealth", in my sense, is a threat. It eliminates competition through monopoly and oligopoly; it rent-seeks; it allies with and distorts supposedly democratic government; it encourages barriers to entry through more and ludicrous regulation. It's the enemy not just of the people, but of the free market; it sucks away not just people's money but their dynamism - because why bother trying to do anything if the market is already saturated by players with more marketing, regulatory and legal power than you can ever hope to accumulate?
I think a "wealth tax" exploits people's justified resentment against "wealth" in this sense, but actually targets the wrong actors.
"...more and more to satiate its insatiable need, at my expense".
Exactly so. Plato has Socrates say similar things about "philarguria" and “pleonexia" at the beginning of "Politeia" ("The Republic"). He observes that the appetite for everything decreases as it is satisfied - except wealth and power, which are insatiable.
It's not the accumulation of money itself that is most objectionable, but the power it buys. You cannot have a democracy when some individuals can command governments and corporations, while the rest of us are completely ignored.
I like the Chinese government's policy. As far as I can make out, government (representing the people) sets strategy, then leaves private enterprise free to decide tactics.
When a person becomes very rich - perhaps a billionaire, or some other level - the government gets in touch and suggests that now the rich person should start taking into account their duty to the nation. If the power of wealth is compared to nuclear energy, China takes care to enclose it in suitable lead shielding and concrete buildings - whereas the West just leaves it to its own devices.
Thank you for recommending Michael Hudson, Tom. That missing relevance of the isolated equations and models to the real world in which we live is another example of the left-brain granular focus David wrote about in The Justice, Stupid which fails to connect with the right brain awareness of impacts in the world. I haven't read McGilchrist yet but it's on my list.
As Musa al-Gharbi and Neema Parvini have pointed out, the PMC reside within the top 10-15% of the elite, not the top 1%, and therefore perceive a significant disparity in wealth and power. They use virtue-signalling social justice narratives to support their mission to gain power, prestige and agency. This is evident in their advocacy of DEI, ESG, managerialism and intervention.
"The spectacle of foundations funded by billionaires funding projects designed to work against the interests of billionaires is itself curious, of course, but I think is readily explained by the fact that these people either don’t have the foggiest clue what their money is going towards or else simply do not themselves understand the underlying issues."
Another explanation might be that those philanthropic billionaires need to enable the schools of useful idiots to continue railing toothlessly against them in order to prevent much more dangerous groups from doing it. If the anti-billionaire market space is already full, then there's no point in trying to compete.
Shades of "The Limits to Growth": it is up to certain wealthy elites to determine how the poor shall live since the poor are too busy earning a living to know what's good for themselves. In Canada I think it's pretty clear that there is a growing disparity between rich and poor owing to the sort of corruption one expects of a banana republic. A false housing market is being used to prop up the economy: a recent scandal involving unsold condos in Vancouver makes the case plain. The opposition described the sort of bailout (for developers and banks) employed as capitalizing gains and socializing losses; otherwise stated, it's making Canadians compete with their own tax dollars for housing, since it prevents a market adjustment (or worse). The scheme is to make these empty condos affordable as rent-to-own homes, i.e. socialized housing. As usual, there are real problems that folks like your UN apparatchik are pointing to, but they're not focused enough to address them.
There's an argument that there are 'natural processes' that emerge when large numbers of people (more than 150) are gathered together. These natural processes are not necessarily good or acceptable but they are inevitable.
So there is the 'wealth pump' natural process where wealth is taken from the poor and ends up in the hands of the more wealthy. There is the centralised control natural process where (say) the NHS is organised to offer only approved and rationed health services to people waiting in a queue.
If you are envious of wealthy people or intent on building a Utopia built on equality you are necessarily inclined to stifle the wealth pump and necessarily inclined to impose centralised control. Since these inclinations cut across the natural processes that emerge with large numbers of people then it is almost certain that your Utopia will collapse.
And of course the supreme irony is that UN employees (and probably also 'Special Rapporteurs' and 'High Commissioners') themselves do not even pay tax "Tax exemption
Salaries, grants and allowances paid by the United Nations are normally exempt from income tax."
https://careers.un.org/payandbenefits?language=en
Antonio Guterres' remuneration package is circa $418,348 pa. His benefits package includes a chauffeur-driven car and an official Manhattan residence.
He's not a billionaire though, so he can still call himself a socialist...
And feel the envy :D
I've heard of anger management classes, but it seems we need envy management classes as well (Now that Thomas Aquinas et al are no longer read on the subject of capital sins).
Such classes should contain a good dose of economics about how markets work. J K Rowling is rich because nearly every family with children will have a Harry Potter book and it's nothing to do with the zero sum economics of those who stoke the idea that 'billionaires' are extractive, the idea that you are down because they are up.
Such classes should also explain how innovation works in capitalist societies, to be kept in mind when benefitting from high tech medicine and surgery. A modern operating theatre, if you follow the supply chains behind its array of equipment, is something to behold. Many of the envious will have benefitted from or one day need laparoscopic surgery (a huge advance on the old way of slicing you open from top to bottom) unaware of the mix of technologies and engineering behind it that no command economy has ever produced.
The internet and social media are implicated in our envy infused societies as glimpses of the lives of the rich and famous have become ubiquitous. When I was a lad information was obtained through newspapers and a limited range of television and radio. We were aware of the existence of millionaires, but comparisons were geographically local in the main. Status anxiety, so far as it existed at all, was mainly local and unaffected by the far off. Now internet consumers compare globally.
Perhaps this diffusion of envy among populations underpins the support for a certain type of envious middle class that governs us. (They are also becoming vainglorious and unaware of how that is limiting support for them. But then it is rare to succumb to only one sin.)
I've heard of anger management classes, but it seems we need envy management classes as well (Now that Thomas Aquinas et al are no longer read on the subject of capital sins).
Such classes should contain a good dose of economics about how markets work. J K Rowling is rich because nearly every family with children will have a Harry Potter book and it's nothing to do with the zero sum economics of those who stoke the idea that 'billionaires' are extractive, the idea that you are down because they are up.
Such classes should also explain how innovation works in capitalist societies, to be kept in mind when benefitting from high tech medicine and surgery. A modern operating theatre, if you follow the supply chains behind its array of equipment, is something to behold. Many of the envious will have benefitted from or one day need laparoscopic surgery (a huge advance on the old way of slicing you open from top to bottom) unaware of the mix of technologies and engineering behind it that no command economy has ever produced.
The internet and social media are implicated in our envy infused societies as glimpses of the lives of the rich and famous have become ubiquitous. When I was a lad information was obtained through newspapers and a limited range of television and radio. We were aware of the existence of millionaires, but comparisons were geographically local in the main. Status anxiety, so far as it existed at all, was mainly local and unaffected by the far off. Now internet consumers compare globally.
Perhaps this diffusion of envy among populations underpins the support for a certain type of envious middle class that governs us. (They are also becoming vainglorious and unaware of how that is limiting support for them. But then it is rare to succumb to only one sin.)
The vaingloriousness is incredible. Imagine thinking that it is in your capacity to completely rewire the global economy on the basis of a pet theory of your own invention. 'Hubris' is too mild a word for it.
Just a footnote regarding those billionaires spending money on Think Tanks and the like which do 'research' aimed at depriving said billionaire fund givers of their money: those billionaires ought to be told about a sentence by V. I. Lenin who remarked that inevitably the last capitalist would sell the rope to the communists with which they'd then hang him ...
Poverty is always relative. If the inequalty of income/resources were to be eliminated then we would all suffer poverty and come to think of it affluence!
This is, in a way, Hayek's point in The Road to Serfdom. You can all be equal if you want, but you'll be extremely poor and also unfree.
I'm not sure what the difference is between Turk and De Schutter and the average Substacker, except that the former get paid a lot more for writing a great deal less sense.
As for the UN, whatever its founding principles were, it is now simply a forum where states like Iran, Russia and China can come together and say that the biggest problem in the world today is the existence of a Jewish state. If the purpose of a system is what it does, then that is what its purpose is. That it has other bourgeois dinner party preoccupations too is no surprise. Although it is quite amusing to imagine De Schutter being humiliated at dinner by someone with a more advanced iphone and thinking to himself, "I'll fix him with a bit of degrowth."
When all you believe in is the physical world and this life, then it’s natural that material concerns and social status become paramount. Hence the obsession with consumerism and envy. It comes from a spiritual vacuum.
No doubt!
Outstanding, once again!
Thank you for a very funny essay which nails the envy, snootiness and self-interest. I suspect much of the UN's sudden concern over inequality stems from António Guterres' announcement in January 2026 that the UN faced a $1.57 billion financial crisis which was "deepening, threatening programme delivery" and that money could run out by July. That gravy train won't fund itself.
https://www.reuters.com/world/un-chief-guterres-warns-imminent-financial-collapse-2026-01-30/
This 'crisis' emerged after the USA sensibly refused to contribute to the UN's regular and peacekeeping budgets and withdrew from several agencies it called a "waste of taxpayer dollars". Other member states were in arrears or simply refusing to pay. I hope the rival Board of Peace replaces it because the UN and its Agenda 30 seem to be at the root of most of our current problems. Ironically, the UN was established by billionaires.
The Rockefeller Foundation and Carnegie Corporation funded the Council of Foreign Relations' War and Peace Studies project during WW2, in which recommendations were made that led to the founding of the UN, IMF and World Bank as tools for internationalist (globalist) control. Vice Chairman of the project was Allen Dulles, Swiss director of the US Office of Strategic Services (OSS), who was heavily involved in Operation Gladio and the stay-behind units, clandestine anti-communist guerrilla resistance groups including former Nazis and fascists, funded by Mafia drug money laundered via the Vatican Bank. The OSS was dissolved in autumn 1945 but its personnel, records, and clandestine capabilities were preserved, leading directly to the creation of the CIA in 1947 by Dulles who became its director.
Rockefeller: Controlling the Game by Jacob Nordangard and Paul Williams' Operation Gladio are both well-researched, non-conspiratorial histories of these organisations which provide solid evidence of the engineering of central control.
I'd like to see a forensic audit of where our money really goes, especially payments to the UN, NATO, WHO, Foreign Aid, government funding for charities and NGOs, the Chagos deal and Ukraine.
People with 6 digit incomes who still rack up 7 digit debt feeding on those who think billionaires have swimming pools filled with cash a la Scrooge McDuck. Unfortunately, both are in extreme oversupply.
I think that these topics are so ill-defined that it is easy to get different ideas mixed up. Envy is certainly unattractive and perhaps unproductive - although it may sometimes motivate hard work and success.
But surely it is indisputable that the many billionaires who now exist have progressively sucked more and more money out of circulation so that there is not enough left for ordinary people - whether workers or the despised "bourgeois" - to get by. Every year, with horrible predictability, ordinary people face higher overheads. Taxes go up, rents go up, medical insurance goes up, student debt goes up, even the price of food and energy goes up - and meanwhile governments make sure that the value of money goes down through systematic inflation.
This is what Michael Hudson calls "debt deflation" - which coexists with currency inflation, as it involves "rents", including interest on debts, vacuuming up more and more of what used to be discretionary spending money until there is none left at all.
As for constant growth, that is obviously impossible in the long run. As Dr Hudson points out, if something cannot continue then it will stop. We have already overshot the ideal stopping point for growth by a very long way, and the consequences are beginning to bite.
The fundamental problem is an inability to grasp the difference between the economic view of the world and the ecological view. Economics has always been a severely stunted, artificially limited discipline, crippled since the 18th century by a Procrustean policy of ignoring everything that might inconvenience the super-rich. Debt, for instance, as Dr Hudson points out, plays no part in the currently fashionable economic theories. Even more seriously, economics assumes - with absolutely no justification - that the world will continue to give us all the raw materials and other conditions to keep growth going. But obviously, as even a child can see, nothing can grow for ever. That can be tested by blowing up a toy balloon - so far, so good, and then BANG.
“the many billionaires who now exist have progressively sucked more and more money out of circulation” Billions can be ‘sucked’ in the case of tax-funded projects that are corrupt or ill advised, or by corrupt politicians, but billions are not “sucked” by billionaires who create wealth by innovating and creating employment through their innovations. As a thought experiment, line up the countries with the most/least billionaires and compare the wealth and wellbeing of their societies (a point made by Thomas Sowell). Further, it is wrong to equate growth entirely with more physical product (more steel, more plastic). Much innovation involves using resources more cleverly and efficiently - how many physical devices (radios, stopwatches, cameras…) are now made virtual by our smartphones? A pill that cures hepatitis can avoid many expensive hospital stays, cars are much more fuel efficient now than in the 60s and cause less injuries when they crash, farmer’s fields produce more food per hectare etc., Who would deny that all this “growth” benefitted mankind? In what way do you believe a child’s balloon a good model for a modern economy?
I agree with much of what you say. Rent-seeking, as identified by Michael Hudson, is a massive problem, and worse than it used to be.
Rent-seeking is actually contrary to any sane conception of a free market - one in which you get rewarded for discovering/inventing/improving something and working away at it. Rent-seekers simply sit on (or occupy) an existing asset or service and increase the price.
A proposed wealth tax (presumably on individuals) is the worst starting-point possible to analyse _that_ problem; that's not what David is doing in the article above, I think. My own criticism of a wealth tax would be that it would hit individual rich people - who are perhaps more likely to have made their money through genuine innovation - but not touch the massive, institutional rent-seekers, who have all kinds of techniques to prevent anyone from actually locating their wealth in a particular jurisdiction.
I think it's a pity that billionaires like Gates are mentioned, because they present yet another, distinct problem: through their funding of "worthy causes" they enormously distort the market, according to their own (not so) hidden ends. I actually prefer someone like Musk who's openly in it for himself (and his openly espoused view of e.g. free speech), to Gates and all other the charitable foundations which claim to "do good" but actually prop up the existing system.
I doubt I could name any individual "rent-seekers"; because they are not people, but bland, corporate entities with meaningless names. The distinction between them and rich individuals who have genuinely "made their own fortune" needs to be sustained: I think your critics below are missing this point.
Who's to blame? Possibly not on rent-seekers themselves, because "rent-seekers gonna rent-seek", but on our ludicrously weak governments and institutions which allow them to without the slightest objection. The appointment of an ex-Amazon VP as head of the Competition and Markets Authority grotesquely sums this up.
I rather doubt that the super-rich got that way by “innovation” - when you think about it, a rather slippery word that vaguely suggests brilliant invention. Although I have not studied the matter, I am inclined to think that when someone gets extremely rich from some “innovation”, it is usually because they have used superior wealth, legal trickery, or downright theft to exploit the discoveries of real inventors - who are usually too busy, preoccupied, and poor to afford the time and money required.
Take a look, if you have time, at “Inventors & Impostors: How history forgot the true heroes of invention and discovery” by Daniel Diehl and Mark P. Donnelly.
Tetra Pak?
Thanks for providing one of the best and clearest examples of what I was referring to!
The Swedish engineer Erik Wallenberg invented the Tetra Pak in 1944 while working for the firm of Akerlund & Rausing. The Rausing family became billionaires as a result; Wallenberg, the actual inventor, got 300 pounds and a medal. You can credit the Rausings with being "wealth creators" if you like; but all Ruben Rausing did was to order Wallenberg to look for a better way of storing milk than in glass bottles.
'Wallenberg did not get due recognition for the invention until 1991, when he was awarded the Grand Gold Medal by The Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences for "his ideas and efforts in the development of the packaging system Tetra Pak"'.
"DAD'S TETRA PAK INVENTION MADE BILLIONS..HE GOT pounds 300; How the man who created revolutionary milk carton missed out on a fortune".
https://www.thefreelibrary.com/DAD%27S+TETRA+PAK+INVENTION+MADE+BILLIONS..HE+GOT+pounds+300%3B+How+the...-a070299705
"Today, the family has amassed a stock portfolio worth around US$9 billion and spanning more than 100 companies in Europe and the United States, according to a Bloomberg analysis of regulatory filings".
https://www.businesstimes.com.sg/wealth/wealth-investing/secretive-family-behind-tetra-pak-bets-bulk-us9b-stocks-singapore-entities
Thank you for summarising so well the position that is so effectively refuted by David’s post. The Left generally assume that all wealth creation is just theft from others, as do you. And that Malthus was right that the world would self-destruct through lack of resources, which doesn’t seem to be happening despite centuries of such predictions. You clothe your envy in concern for the exploited millions and the environment, as David says. Or maybe I just missed your irony?
“The Left generally assume that all wealth creation is just theft from others, as do you. And that Malthus was right that the world would self-destruct through lack of resources, which doesn’t seem to be happening despite centuries of such predictions”.
“Wealth creation” is a magnificent weasel phrase, suggesting that the brilliant billionaire has hatched a wonderful new invention or technique by his sole imagination and hard work. The deception relies on the ambiguity of “wealth”, which to most people means simply “money”, although real wealth always takes the form of goods, services, or knowledge. A single person cannot create any significant amount of goods and services without the help of many others. And knowledge cannot be applied without similar help.
When people speak of “making money”, they usually mean “getting money from others”. Those who actually make money are imprisoned (or worse) for the crime of counterfeiting. One can get money from others in various ways: by threats or direct force, by deception, or (most usually) by persuasion. The person who is lauded as a “wealth creator” is often a successful confidence trickster.
As for Dr Malthus, his “Essay on the Principle of Population” was first published in 1798, 228 years ago. The 6th and last edition appeared in 1826, exactly two centuries ago. He said nothing about the world “self-destructing”; merely that all animal populations tend to grow until they press against the means of subsistence. The key perception, which is childishly obvious, is that population tends to increase geometrically while resources can grow at best arithmetically.
That has actually happened, although too many people have been encouraged to relax and stop worrying since the “Green Revolution” increased crop yields starting about 50 years ago. The higher yields, however, depend critically on generous supplies of artificial fertiliser, herbicide, and insecticide - all of which are made from oil and gas. The current trouble in the Persian Gulf has already reduced supplies of fertiliser alone enough to put a big dent in world food supplies.
In short, if you are one of those who enjoy a sense of superiority by mocking Dr Malthus - stick around.
I find it interesting how those on the Left think that making money in a market economy doing something that people value enough to voluntarily pay for is tantamount to theft but the state actually taking property away from people under threat of prison is so virtuous.
Why do you mention "those on the Left"? I have no political alignment. I just try to understand what is going on, using facts, figures, and logic.
Sometimes I am called a leftist, sometimes a rightist. As all such directions are relative, it is equally valid to suppose that those who see me as to the left are themselves on the right - and vice versa.
Or we could discuss the facts in a calm, respectful way without calling anyone names.
I'm astounded that debt plays no part in economic theories since the perpetual debt system that developed under William III in the late 1600s is one of the foundations of the modern debt-based financial system. Elephants in rooms spring to mind.
When everyone fails to notice the elephant in the room, it is rarely because it is invisible or behind a screen.
"There are none so blind as they who will not see".
I agree. But I have never pretended to understand modern (i.e. after 1800) economic theories; I studied for Economics A-Level at school, but couldn’t understand the relevance of the isolated equations and models to the real world in which we live.
Dr Hudson has written a number of books, all good and easy to follow. But you can find a lot of his writing absolutely free of charge on his Web site. I regret that I cannot cite the URL because of Substack rules, but it is the obvious one. Or just search for his name.
I was particularly struck by his statement that Mesopotamian kings and priests 5,000 years ago understood the workings of debt better than modern politicians and bankers seem to. (Or maybe it was just that the kings and priests identified their interests more closely with those of the people than modern politicians and bankers do.
They understood that the rich lent to the poor partly for the interest, but mostly because they knew that many debtors would not be able to keep up payments. Then the creditors foreclosed, acquiring land, houses, animals, servants, and even the bound service of debtors’ family members - or even themselves.
Thus, if the kings let matters take their course, eventually almost everything would belong to the few super-rich. There would be too few free citizens left to serve the king for public works such as irrigation, building roads and walls, etc. - or to defend the city in time of war. Thus the Mesopotamian kingdoms survived for thousands of years. In Greece and Rome, however, the wealthy creditors overthrew the kings (whom they called “tyrants”) and in due course acquired the land and enslaved many of the people.
Hence the fall of the Roman Empire. And it’s happening again today, all around us.
I really like Hudson's ideas about debt, rent-seeking and the ancient Jubilees. Partly because the historical phenomena he's talking about are such an accurate reflection of what's going on now.
This is what I have against wealth: not the fact that that person over there has their own swimming pool and I don't, but that wealth just won't _leave me alone_ to become as wealthy (or not) as suits me. It has to insinuate itself into my household budget - through privatised utilities and monopolistic supply-chains, all in alliance with Government (and this is where free-market theory is a useful critical tool) - more and more to satiate its insatiable need, at my expense.
You'll notice that the word "wealth" I chose is deliberately vague - we've drifted far far away from precise meanings such as "people who earn >£200k pa" or "people with net worth >£2million": criteria which (with whatever numbers pasted in) would qualify someone for a "wealth tax". People like that don't bother me; they should be taxed at a higher rate than I am (but watch out for the Laffer curve), but they're no threat to my life or anyone else's.
"Wealth", in my sense, is a threat. It eliminates competition through monopoly and oligopoly; it rent-seeks; it allies with and distorts supposedly democratic government; it encourages barriers to entry through more and ludicrous regulation. It's the enemy not just of the people, but of the free market; it sucks away not just people's money but their dynamism - because why bother trying to do anything if the market is already saturated by players with more marketing, regulatory and legal power than you can ever hope to accumulate?
I think a "wealth tax" exploits people's justified resentment against "wealth" in this sense, but actually targets the wrong actors.
"...more and more to satiate its insatiable need, at my expense".
Exactly so. Plato has Socrates say similar things about "philarguria" and “pleonexia" at the beginning of "Politeia" ("The Republic"). He observes that the appetite for everything decreases as it is satisfied - except wealth and power, which are insatiable.
It's not the accumulation of money itself that is most objectionable, but the power it buys. You cannot have a democracy when some individuals can command governments and corporations, while the rest of us are completely ignored.
I like the Chinese government's policy. As far as I can make out, government (representing the people) sets strategy, then leaves private enterprise free to decide tactics.
When a person becomes very rich - perhaps a billionaire, or some other level - the government gets in touch and suggests that now the rich person should start taking into account their duty to the nation. If the power of wealth is compared to nuclear energy, China takes care to enclose it in suitable lead shielding and concrete buildings - whereas the West just leaves it to its own devices.
Thank you for recommending Michael Hudson, Tom. That missing relevance of the isolated equations and models to the real world in which we live is another example of the left-brain granular focus David wrote about in The Justice, Stupid which fails to connect with the right brain awareness of impacts in the world. I haven't read McGilchrist yet but it's on my list.
As Musa al-Gharbi and Neema Parvini have pointed out, the PMC reside within the top 10-15% of the elite, not the top 1%, and therefore perceive a significant disparity in wealth and power. They use virtue-signalling social justice narratives to support their mission to gain power, prestige and agency. This is evident in their advocacy of DEI, ESG, managerialism and intervention.
Yes, this is a very compelling class-based analysis that makes perfect sense to me.
"The spectacle of foundations funded by billionaires funding projects designed to work against the interests of billionaires is itself curious, of course, but I think is readily explained by the fact that these people either don’t have the foggiest clue what their money is going towards or else simply do not themselves understand the underlying issues."
Another explanation might be that those philanthropic billionaires need to enable the schools of useful idiots to continue railing toothlessly against them in order to prevent much more dangerous groups from doing it. If the anti-billionaire market space is already full, then there's no point in trying to compete.
Shades of "The Limits to Growth": it is up to certain wealthy elites to determine how the poor shall live since the poor are too busy earning a living to know what's good for themselves. In Canada I think it's pretty clear that there is a growing disparity between rich and poor owing to the sort of corruption one expects of a banana republic. A false housing market is being used to prop up the economy: a recent scandal involving unsold condos in Vancouver makes the case plain. The opposition described the sort of bailout (for developers and banks) employed as capitalizing gains and socializing losses; otherwise stated, it's making Canadians compete with their own tax dollars for housing, since it prevents a market adjustment (or worse). The scheme is to make these empty condos affordable as rent-to-own homes, i.e. socialized housing. As usual, there are real problems that folks like your UN apparatchik are pointing to, but they're not focused enough to address them.
One day the définition of poverty will include people living healthy lives for 150 years never having taken a trip to Mars.
There's an argument that there are 'natural processes' that emerge when large numbers of people (more than 150) are gathered together. These natural processes are not necessarily good or acceptable but they are inevitable.
So there is the 'wealth pump' natural process where wealth is taken from the poor and ends up in the hands of the more wealthy. There is the centralised control natural process where (say) the NHS is organised to offer only approved and rationed health services to people waiting in a queue.
If you are envious of wealthy people or intent on building a Utopia built on equality you are necessarily inclined to stifle the wealth pump and necessarily inclined to impose centralised control. Since these inclinations cut across the natural processes that emerge with large numbers of people then it is almost certain that your Utopia will collapse.