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	Sacrifice is for the little people by New York Times & agencies USA   Oct 2010   Americans want a more Equal Distribution of Wealth.   Americans vastly underestimate the degree of wealth inequality in America, and believe that the distribution should be far more equitable than it actually is, according to a new study.   "All demographic groups-- even those not usually associated with wealth redistribution desired a more equal distribution of wealth than the status quo.   The report "Building a Better America" by Dan Ariely of Duke University and Michael Norton of Harvard Business School shows that across ideological, economic and gender groups, Americans thought the richest 20 percent of society should own only 32 percent of the wealth, rather than the real current number of 84 percent.   The respondents were presented with unlabeled pie charts representing the wealth distributions of the U.S., where the richest 20 percent controlled about 84 percent of wealth, and Sweden, where the top 20 percent only controlled 36 percent of wealth. Without knowing which country they were picking, 92 percent of respondents said they"d rather live in a country with Sweden"s wealth distribution.   Studies have estimated that the tax breaks and services that benefit the wealthy add up to $400 billion a year, compared to the $116 billion spent on programs for the poor.   One of the richest Americans, Warren Buffett says: “There’s class warfare, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.”   Richard Thaler, a professor of economics at the University of Chicago, wrote in a recent New York Times op-ed: “The question comes down to whether we want a society in which the rich take an ever-increasing share of the pie, or prefer to return to conditions that allow all classes to anticipate an increasing standard of living.   “Demanding that the rich get a tax cut as a condition for tax relief to others is simply elitist.”   Sep, 2010   The Super Rich get Richer, Everyone else gets Poorer, by Robert Reich.   The super-rich got even wealthier this year, and yet most of them are paying even fewer taxes to support the eduction, job training, and job creation of the rest of us.   According to Forbes magazine"s annual survey, just released, the combined net worth of the 400 richest Americans climbed 8% this year, to $1.37 trillion. Wealth rose for 217 members of the list.   For example, Charles and David Koch, the energy magnates who are pouring vast sums of money into sponsoring tea partiers all over America, each gained $5.5 billion of wealth over the past year. Each is now worth $21.5 billion.   Wall Street continued to dominate the list; 109 of the richest 400 are in finance or investments. From another survey we learn that the 25 top hedge-fund managers got an average of $1 billion each, but paid an average of 17 percent in taxes (because so much of their income is considered capital gains, taxed at 15 percent thanks to the Bush tax cuts).   The rest of America got poorer, of course. The number in poverty rose to a post-war high. The median wage continues to deteriorate. And some 20 million Americans don"t have work.   Only twice before in American history has so much been held by so few, and the gap between them and the great majority been a chasm - the late 1920s, and the era of the robber barons in the 1880s.   And yet the Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003, which conferred almost all their benefits on the rich, continue.   Democrats seem to have given up on showing the biggest story of the last three decades - the accumulation of almost all the gain from economic growth at the top - and to make a start at reversing it. When will they ever learn?   Sept 2010   The Angry Rich, by Paul Krugman. (NYT)   Anger is sweeping America. True, this rage is a minority phenomenon, not something that characterizes most of our fellow citizens. But the angry minority is angry indeed, consisting of people who feel that things to which they are entitled are being taken away. And they’re out for revenge. No, I’m not talking about the Tea Partiers. I’m talking about the rich.   These are terrible times for many people in this country. Poverty, especially acute poverty, has soared in the economic slump; millions of people have lost their homes. Young people can’t find jobs; laid-off 50-somethings fear that they’ll never work again.   Yet if you want to find real political rage — the kind of rage that makes people compare President Obama to Hitler, or accuse him of treason — you won’t find it among these suffering Americans. You’ll find it instead among the very privileged, people who don’t have to worry about losing their jobs, their homes, or their health insurance, but who are outraged, outraged, at the thought of paying modestly higher taxes.   The rage of the rich has been building ever since Mr. Obama took office. At first, however, it was largely confined to Wall Street. Thus when New York magazine published an article titled “The Wail of the 1%,” it was talking about financial wheeler-dealers whose firms had been bailed out with taxpayer funds, but were furious at suggestions that the price of these bailouts should include temporary limits on bonuses.   When the billionaire Stephen Schwarzman compared an Obama proposal to the Nazi invasion of Poland, the proposal in question would have closed a tax loophole that specifically benefits fund managers like him.   It’s one thing when a billionaire rants at a dinner event. It’s another when Forbes magazine runs a cover story alleging that the president of the United States is deliberately trying to bring America down as part of his Kenyan, “anticolonialist” agenda, that “the U.S. is being ruled according to the dreams of a Luo tribesman of the 1950s.” When it comes to defending the interests of the rich, it seems, the normal rules of civilized (and rational) discourse no longer apply.   At the same time, self-pity among the privileged has become acceptable, even fashionable.   Tax-cut advocates used to pretend that they were mainly concerned about helping typical American families. Even tax breaks for the rich were justified in terms of trickle-down economics, the claim that lower taxes at the top would make the economy stronger for everyone.   These days, however, tax-cutters are hardly even trying to make the trickle-down case.   It has become common to hear vehement denials that people making $400,000 or $500,000 a year are rich. I mean, look at the expenses of people in that income class — the property taxes they have to pay on their expensive houses, the cost of sending their kids to elite private schools, and so on. Why, they can barely make ends meet.   And among the undeniably rich, a belligerent sense of entitlement has taken hold: it’s their money, and they have the right to keep it. “Taxes are what we pay for civilized society,” said Oliver Wendell Holmes — but that was a long time ago.   The spectacle of high-income Americans, the world’s luckiest people, wallowing in self-pity and self-righteousness would be funny, except for one thing: they may well get their way. Never mind the $700 billion price tag for extending the high-end tax breaks: virtually all Republicans and some Democrats are rushing to the aid of the oppressed affluent.   You see, the rich are different from you and me: they have more influence. It’s partly a matter of campaign contributions, but it’s also a matter of social pressure, since politicians spend a lot of time hanging out with the wealthy. So when the rich face the prospect of paying an extra 3 or 4 percent of their income in taxes, politicians feel their pain — feel it much more acutely, it’s clear, than they feel the pain of families who are losing their jobs, their houses, and their hopes.   And when they have won the tax fight, one way or another, you can be sure that the people currently defending the incomes of the elite will go back to demanding cuts in Social Security and aid to the unemployed. America must make hard choices, they’ll say; we all have to be willing to make sacrifices.   But when they say “we,” they mean “you.” Sacrifice is for the little people.
	The World should change its perception of Africa by Cheick Sidi Diarra AllAfrica & agencies   Sept 2010   Interview with Cheick Sidi Diarra, from Mali, the UN Special Adviser on Africa. His job description includes increasing international support for Africa"s development and security, especially for the New Partnership for Africa"s Development (NEPAD).   In this interview with Africa Renewal, he reflects on the continent"s progress and challenges, 50 years after independence.   Fifty years on, how independent African economies are?   This is one of the more sensitive parts of the evaluation of African independence. Intra-African trade represents a dismal 9 per cent of the overall trade of Africa with the international community. And Africa"s trade represents only 3 per cent of global trade. We have not made progress in that area. Africa has even lost ground because the values of Africa"s commodities have dropped since independence. The prices of commodities are not fixed by Africans themselves. They are fixed elsewhere.   The financial system has not been developed in a way that allows the integration of Africa into the international financial mechanisms. Africa"s financial transactions represent a dismal 0.87 per cent of global financial transactions, which is nothing.   This lack of economic progress has its social implications. In the [UN Development Programme"s annual] Human Development Report, you will see that among the 20 countries which have performed the least in terms of human development, most are African countries.   The current situation has many origins. There is the lack of diversification of the economy. Although these countries are commodity producers, they don"t process the commodities. All the value that is added to these commodities is added elsewhere. And there is a lack of any kind of link between the extractive industries that prevail in many countries and the rest of the economy. So there is no spill-over effect.   On average 80 per cent of the workforce is in the rural areas. And infrastructure is lacking.   But there are a lot of reasons to be optimistic about Africa. The first one is the human capital that Africa has. Africa has reached a billion people. The young population represents a minimum of 60 per cent. These young people are yearning for exactly the same well-being as anybody else on the face of this planet. African young people have been trained in the best universities around the world. Africa just has to develop policies to retain them, to create a suitable environment for them to stay home and help build Africa.   The natural resources, thank God, are still there. Now we have to develop intelligent policies for sharing in the value-added. So a few things have to be done: adjustment of institutions, creation of infrastructure, good policies. But what we need more is good leaders. Once we have good leaders, the young people will follow.   To what extent does the New Partnership for Africa"s Development (NEPAD), designed by African leaders, represent a new turn for the continent?   The first break is ownership, with its corollary, the sense of responsibility. As long as the international community was developing programmes for Africa, sometimes without even substantive input from African countries, they didn"t have much result. The situation even worsened, leading us to structural adjustment in the 1990s.   The advantage of NEPAD is that its ownership is with African leaders themselves. If they fail, it will be their own responsibility. If they succeed, which I wish, it will be praised and supported by the international community.   Africans are rolling out sectoral policies and specific sectoral projects. For example, on agriculture. The rate of growth of agriculture should be a minimum of 6 per cent on a yearly basis. There should be an investment of 10 per cent of the national budget in agriculture. The goals are there.   The means have been identified. Now they"re moving from the stage of continental projects to country specifics. They are doing exactly the same thing in health. They are doing exactly the same thing in infrastructure.   NEPAD priorities are inspired by the Millennium Development Goals. When you bring these two together, you have something very strong, a programme that has been initiated by African countries, but also supported by the United Nations. So at least at the policy level, there has been a change. It"s home grown and fully conceived by African leaders.   What has Africa learned about the kind of leadership it needs?   There are three types of leadership that Africa has known.   The first was the "fathers of independence." Their role was to keep the nation together, because most African countries are multi-ethnic. Community, tribes, ethnic groups sometimes prevailed above the notion of nation. They did what they had to do: consolidate national integrity and push forward the agenda for the independence of the rest of the African colonies.   The second group of leaders are those who have come to power by infringing national constitutions and taking advantage of the social discontent that the structural adjustment programmes provoked. Most of the time, these people are military. History has demonstrated that almost all of them have failed.   Then there is a third generation of leaders. This is a new generation that is coming up in some African countries. They have vision. They are young. They are strong. And they know how to mobilize their people. I will name one, who is not in power anymore: Alpha Oumar Konaré [former president of Mali and former chairman of the African Union Commission]. They need strong support from the international community.   On the international community, how can it better support Africa?   There is just one thing. The rest of the world has to change its perception of Africa. It has to see Africa not only as a continent which is forever leaning on international aid and support. It has to see Africa as a continent of huge potential.   In the 1970s, if you remember, China was seen as a threat to the rest of the world. Slowly, but surely, investors have changed their perception and attitude, and see China as a land of opportunity and potential.   This needs to happen in Africa. To not see Africa only as a burden, but to see Africa as a potential: consumers, good producers, of commodities but also possible transformation and processing. Visit the related web page
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