Festivals, Gorillas and Macroeconomics
December 28, 2007 -- Festivals and Gorillas and Macro Economics
Howdy
all. Happy upcoming new years to all those reading if I don't get a
chance to say so before the big night. 2008...wow. Time flies and it
certainly seems to be flying faster. Recieved some good news that I
will be playing a showcase at the Canadian Music Week festival in
Toronto in early March along with the Islands Folk Fest in my neck of
the woods on Vancouver Island in late July. I'll put the dates up on my
Dates page so you can check the shows out if you are around.
I
had a really interesting conversation with a friend of mine the other
night...one that made me take pause and really reconsider how we think
about our individual roles in the world. My friend was telling me how
he became directly involved with one of the two remaining Silverback
gorilla populations in the world. One population lives in Rwanda, the
other in the Congo. While these populations are not huge, they have
been stable over the past while.
My friend was telling me that the guards watching over the park where the gorillas live get paid a mere 2 dollars per month to
guard these last remaining areas. When I heard this, it took a moment
for my brain to register what this exactally meant...2 dollars per
month, not per day, per month. Two dollars...you can barely buy a
coffee at Starbucks for that price.
The gap that exists between the rich and the poor is incredible.
I
think it is important to question our global priorites. In most
industries today, massive companies dominate the economic landscape. In
the music industry for example, four companies control much of the big
music out there. Further, Sony BMG is just but one arm of the far
larger corporation of Sony International. Super companies such as
Wal-Mart also dominate. The size and scope of these companies is a
result of a general trend towards mergers and away from direct
competition. Fewer companies means fewer people to argue over the
prices...it also means that fewer individuals can set trends for global
business.
Through this, it becomes possible to create a
general trend away from a more equal distribution of wealth to a more
concentrated, unequal balance of wealth. In recent years, and in many
sectors, both the CEOs of major corporations and corporations
themselves have been posting record profits. Below are a couple brief
quotes that highlight this
"[In 2007] Royal Bank reported a Q4
profit of $1.32 billion and its best-ever annual profit as its Canadian
retail banking operation helped it overcome hits from shaky credit
markets." (Source: CBC News)
A
typical chief executive at a U.S. company earned 262 times the pay of a
typical worker in 2005, according to a recent report. With 260 workdays
in a year, that means that an average CEO earned more in one workday
than a worker earned in 52 weeks. That pay gap is the second-highest in
the 40 years for which data are available, reports the Economic Policy
Institute, a Washington-based think tank. American CEOs fared even
better in 2000, when they made an average of 300 times the salary of
their workers. Executive pay has become a hot-button issue with
shareholders around the country. (Source: MSN News)
There
are two ways to approach the unequal balance of wealth in my opinion.
One can target this on an economic level or on an ethical level. The
ethical approach would state that it is simply not fair that there is
such an unequal distribution. What does a CEO do 300 times greater than
your average worker to merit such exhorbitant wages? An ethical
discussion would also involve asking whether or not it is fair to have
people making such crazy wages when so many in the world are making so
little, going back to our guards in the Congo who make 2 dollars per
month.
The economic approach would state that unequal
distribution of wealth is bad for business. Shareholders do not recive
the dividends they might recieve if the CEOS were not paid as much.
Also, workers and people who are paid more participate more in the
global economy. If you are poor, you can't buy consumer goods,
therefore, spending in local, national and international economies is
reduced.
In my opinion, both approaches are valid. Ethics cannot
be ignored in any discussion. Where are we going in the world...how
will we get there? Will we get there together or divided? What are the
environmental ramifications to our spending? What does one person
really need at the end of the day?
Below are some statistics that I came across. What do you think after reading them?
Half the world — nearly three billion people — live on less than two dollars a day.
The
GDP (Gross Domestic Product) of the poorest 48 nations (i.e. a quarter
of the world’s countries) is less than the wealth of the world’s three
richest people combined.
Nearly a billion people entered the 21st century unable to read a book or sign their names.
Less
than one per cent of what the world spent every year on weapons was
needed to put every child into school by the year 2000 and yet it
didn't happen.
The wealthiest nation on Earth has the widest gap between rich and poor of any industrialized nation.
20% of the population in the developed nations, consume 86% of the world’s goods.
The
top fifth of the world’s people in the richest countries enjoy 82% of
the expanding export trade and 68% of foreign direct investment — the
bottom fifth, barely more than 1%.
In 1960, the 20% of the
world’s people in the richest countries had 30 times the income of the
poorest 20% — in 1997, 74 times as much.
An analysis of long-term trends shows the distance between the richest and poorest countries was about:
3 to 1 in 1820
11 to 1 in 1913
35 to 1 in 1950
44 to 1 in 1973
72 to 1 in 1992
The developing world now spends $13 on debt repayment for every $1 it receives in grants.
A few hundred millionaires now own as much wealth as the world’s poorest 2.5 billion people.
“The 48 poorest countries account for less than 0.4 per cent of global exports.”
“The
combined wealth of the world’s 200 richest people hit $1 trillion in
1999; the combined incomes of the 582 million people living in the 43
least developed countries is $146 billion.” source 16
The
richest 50 million people in Europe and North America have the same
income as 2.7 billion poor people. “The slice of the cake taken by 1%
is the same size as that handed to the poorest 57%.”
The
world’s 497 billionaires in 2001 registered a combined wealth of $1.54
trillion, well over the combined gross national products of all the
nations of sub-Saharan Africa ($929.3 billion) or those of the oil-rich
regions of the Middle East and North Africa ($1.34 trillion). It is
also greater than the combined incomes of the poorest half of humanity.
A mere 12 percent of the world’s population uses 85 percent of its water, and these 12 percent do not live in the Third World.
These statistics came from the Globalissues.org website. Here's the link.
Thanks for reading.