Revolution

The post about the $21 TRILLION (minimum!) that the Tax Justice Network estimates is sitting in offshore tax havens is evidence of a very big, very simple reality. The present political-economic system is inhuman and it isn't going to change of its own accord. A revolution is needed. The only lasting revolutionary change must be overwhelmingly peaceful, and based on mass agreement, but the main word is "revolutionary." (I say "overwhelmingly peaceful" because it should be obvious to all that the present ruling class is psychotically attached to their power and won't surrender it without at least a few atrocities. Just look at the level of violence directed at the Occupy Movement (which was essentially nothing more than speeches and camp-sites).

There's a rumor going around that globalization is raising living standards around the world, but I'm going to call bullshit on that. I remember when Indonesia's economy nose-dived during the Asian financial crisis and a lot of observers couldn't understand how a currency crisis could instigate such precipitous drops in nutrition and tax revenues and employment and everything. Turns out that when the World Bank and other assemblers of international economic statistics get their information, they get it from the very same countries that are trying to sell their economic successes to obtain more investment. And those governments make up their figures, sometimes out of whole cloth.

I will admit that inequality between countries is decreasing. Globalization has created Indian and Chinese millionaires and even billionaires. But inequality is increasing WITHIN nations. Poverty is definitely increasing in the developed countries, especially in the USA. This has been masked by doctoring the statistics and by increased household debt. Higher fuel and food prices is definitely wreaking lives in the "developing" countries. As the ecology collapses, things will become more desperate for pretty much everyone, as the wealthy retreat to increasingly threatened and territorially shrinking enclaves.