January 2011 – Page 22 – Public Intelligence Blog

Dear friends,

Below are the final three relatively short articles I mentioned earlier this week in my “Rise and Role of Concentrated Wealth” post.

1. Twenty-two Statistics That Prove The Middle Class Is
Being Systematically Wiped Out Of Existence In
America – http://t.co/lNFYiK6

2. A Modest Proposal to Transition to a “Cater to the Rich”
Economy (satire) – http://bit.ly/f7En8D

3. The Surprising History of Federal Taxes on Wealthy
Americans – http://bit.ly/TopTaxHistory

Many people are aware of the growing gap between rich and poor, and the struggles of the American middle class. But few people realize the vast extent of this gap. The monumental wealth held by the top 20% — and even of the top 1% — of Americans beggars description. The existence of this vast resource side by side with the erosion and collapse of human and natural communities — and the increasing vulnerability of both the Earth and humanity's future — should give us pause. Real pause. Pause for reflection.

Continue reading “Philosophy: Eye of the Needle, the Rich, & Community”

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Astonishing Facts: America’s Economy & Society

Uncategorized

22 STATISTICS SHOWING THE MIDDLE CLASS DYING

* 83 percent of all U.S. stocks are in the hands of 1 percent of the people.

* 61 percent of Americans “always or usually” live paycheck to paycheck, which was up from 49 percent in 2008 and 43 percent in 2007.

* 66% of the income growth between 2001 and 2007 went to the top 1% of all Americans.

* 36 percent of Americans say that they don't contribute anything to retirement savings.

* A staggering 43 percent of Americans have less than $10,000 saved up for retirement.

* 24% of American workers say that they have postponed their planned retirement age in the past year.

* Over 1.4 million Americans filed for personal bankruptcy in 2009, which represented a 32 percent increase over 2008.

* Only the top 5 percent of U.S. households have earned enough additional income to match the rise in housing costs since 1975.

* For the first time in U.S. history, banks own a greater share of residential housing net worth in the United States than all individual Americans put together.

* In 1950, the ratio of the average executive's paycheck to the average worker's paycheck was about 30 to 1. Since the year 2000, that ratio has exploded to between 300 to 500 to one.

* As of 2007, the bottom 80 percent of American households held about 7% of the liquid financial assets.

* The bottom 50 percent of income earners in the United States now collectively own less than 1 percent of the nation’s wealth.

* Average Wall Street bonuses for 2009 were up 17 percent when compared with 2008.

* In the United States, the average federal worker now earns 60% MORE than the average worker in the private sector.

* The top 1% of U.S. households own nearly twice as much of America's corporate wealth as they did just 15 years ago.

* In America today, the average time needed to find a job has risen to a record 35.2 weeks.

* More than 40% of Americans who actually are employed are now working in service jobs, which are often very low paying.

* For the first time in U.S. history, more than 40 million Americans are on food stamps, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture projects that number will go up to 43 million Americans in 2011.

* This is what American workers now must compete against: in China a garment worker makes approximately 86 cents an hour and in Cambodia a garment worker makes approximately 22 cents an hour.

* Despite the financial crisis, the number of millionaires in the United States rose a whopping 16 percent to 7.8 million in 2009.

* Approximately 21 percent of all children in the United States are living below the poverty line in 2010 – the highest rate in 20 years.

* The top 10% of Americans now earn around 50% of our national income.

Full Source Online….

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Journal: Defense Theatrics & One-Two Star Flag Agonizing?

02 China, 10 Security, 11 Society, Advanced Cyber/IO, History, Military, Misinformation & Propaganda, Officers Call, Peace Intelligence, Policy, Strategy, Threats

Worth a look….coincides with what Chuck Spinney has been saying.

Defense Budget Debate:

SAME OLD GAME: JUST NEW PLAYERS

January 13, 2011 Harry C. Blaney III

Rethinking National Security

(Center for International Policy)

Among the first security issues of the year is the release of information about China’s military capabilities and the recent release of the U.S. defense budget request, which is not coincidental . Each year, when key decisions are made about the coming annual DOD budget, we see media reports about China’s new potential and physical military ambitions and weapons programs. They arise from statements by U.S. military commanders, anonymous Pentagon sources and conservative think tank pundits. The intent is to create a “boogeyman,” to depict the Chinese as nine feet tall and America as a “Lilliputian.”

I remember this same bizarre scenario took place during the Cold War. At that time, I had a bit of responsibility from time to time looking at these issues and especially the bureaucratic warfare between the military establishment and the intelligence community analysts who had to provide assessments about how far the Soviets were ahead of America and who in reality were behind us. The interagency fights were often fierce with billions of dollars at stake along with real command over new resources, programs and especially planes and ships – whether needed or not. There was the prospect of a nice rich job in the defense industry if your program won out.

Today, the kabuki is not much different but the reality of today’s security challenges is dramatically different in substantive ways.

Read rest of article….

Continue reading “Journal: Defense Theatrics & One-Two Star Flag Agonizing?”

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Chinese View of Internet + Internet of Things = Wise Earth aka World Brain and Global Game

02 China, Advanced Cyber/IO, Commercial Intelligence, Communities of Practice, Earth Intelligence, Geospatial, Key Players, Maps, Methods & Process, Policies, Real Time, Threats

GeoWeb and the “Internet of Things”

Written by shughes on Dec-3-09 4:51pm

From: galdosinc.com

In a recent trip to China, I discovered something of the direction of the national policy of that country towards the development of the Internet. In a speech in Wuxi, the Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao spoke of the drive to build the “internet of things” and provided the interesting equation:

Internet + Internet of Things = Wisdom of the Earth

geoweb-and-the-internet-of-things

The parallels between this statement of policy and the GeoWeb are striking. The GeoWeb has been viewed from a vareity of perspectives, a few of these are:

As the integration of all business processes that deal with the physical world, i.e. that deal with our understanding of, and action in/on, the physical world.
As a Web of interconnected documents that describe the physical world.
As a Web of systems by which we control and manage our actions and interact with the physical world.
As a planetary accounting system that helps us all understand the “state of things” at the local, regional, and global level – whether that be the state of arctic polar bear habitat, or that of crowding in the city of Mumbai.
As a sort of Digital Nervous System for the planet that alerts us to changes in the state of our world.

Reference: Cost of US Force Projection to Middle East

10 Security, Articles & Chapters, Budgets & Funding, Military, Peace Intelligence

This reference strives to demonstrate that the “true cost of oil” to the USA between 1976 and 2007 should include the cost of the aircraft carriers and related forces to the Middle East. The author has two major flaws in his argument, stating that each forward-deployed carrier requires eight others (vice two more, one down, one training up), and that Army and Air Force units are virtually never deployed without supporting carriers. We draw three take-aways from this:

1. The US Government is going to have to start doing strategic holistic “true cost” analysis or it will be bombarded with this kind of analysis in the future that is both flawed and constructive–we do need to know the “true cost” of everything and the military costs borne by the taxpayer are a part of that.

2. Academics such as this author are well-intentioned but deprived of robust access to military analysts and budget specialists. The war colleges could play a very constructive role in bringing various parties together, both to improve government development of “true cost” models, and to improve academic understanding of how military power projection is structured.

3. The time has come for the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to get back into the Management side, and particularly to begin evaluating Return on Investment (RoI) across the board. This should lead to a substantial increase in the budget for diplomacy & development, while requiring some meaningful realignments within both the military and the secret intelligence worlds.

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Reducing Afghan Corruption Through Mobile Payments to National Police

08 Wild Cards, Budgets & Funding, Commerce, Corruption, Ethics, microfinancing, Military, Mobile, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Non-Governmental, Open Government, Technologies, Waste (materials, food, etc)

M-Paisa: Ending Afghan Corruption, one Text at a Time

Monty Munford Oct 17, 2010

Afghanistan supplies 92% of the world’s opiates. According to the latest available figures, the country produced 8,200 tons of heroin in 2008, more than double the the amount three years earlier.

But even being the heroin capital of the world, bringing in more money than most Afghans can dream of, the on-going war and rampant corruption means the money goes to the wrong people and the country has no infrastructure. There are no decent roads, no railways… But they do have mobile phones.

Four months ago, the Afghan National Police began to pay salaries through mobiles (using a text and Interactive Voice Response system), rather than in cash. The platform used was based on the M-Pesa service that has become highly successful in Kenya. Branded M-Paisa in Afghanistan, it was introduced by the operator Roshan in partnership with the Ministry of the Interior (MOI) and had an immediate effect.

Full article

Thanks to Vinod Khosla via his Twitter feed.

Also see: Afghanistan War Wealth + Corruption Cycle (Opium, Hashish, Minerals, Past Pipeline Attempts)

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