One might immediately think that it was somebody in the US who said that, right? After all, here I am in the US where wage stagnation has been a puzzle to experts, leave alone the regular people.
But, that was from Norway. From a 49-year old man in Oslo.
His lament resonates far beyond Nordic shores. In many major countries, including the United States, Britain and Japan, labor markets are exceedingly tight, with jobless rates a fraction of what they were during the crisis of recent years. Yet workers are still waiting for a benefit that traditionally accompanies lower unemployment: fatter paychecks.
Why wages are not rising faster amounts to a central economic puzzle.
What is going on, right?
The reasons for the stagnation gripping wages vary from country to country, but the trend is broad.
Same trend, different reasons. Yet, the experts pretend that economics is a science, and they even managed to set up a prize (ab)using Nobel's name!
On the other hand, unlike the working stiff who have not seen a wage increase in years, there are quite a few who profit phenomenally from the same system. As F. Scott Fitzgerald put it,:"Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me." How different is their life? Here's one example: If you have enough money, you can buy yourself a citizenship in quite a few countries!
Between 30 and 40 countries have active economic-citizenship or residence programmes, says Kälin, and another 60 have provisions for one in law. Some demand a straight cash donation, others investment in government bonds or the purchase of property. Some take a longer-term view of the potential economic benefits, offering passports to entrepreneurs who will set up a local company and create a minimum number of jobs. The required investment ranges from upwards of $10,000 (Thai residence, for instance) to more than $10m (fast-track residence in Britain). In some countries the original investment can be withdrawn after several years.
Do not forget that the fascist campaigned about the welfare of the middle class for whom his heart supposedly bleeds, but has a son-in-law who peddles this passport for sale:
The use of EB-5 by Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, to lure Chinese investors into his family’s development projects has also tainted the programme. Some senators want it scrapped. Congress is due to decide soon whether to extend it.
Ahem, if you believe that Congress will scrap this passport-for-sale program, then I have a bridge to sell you for a million dollars!
The typical passport buyer is unlikely to settle, will care little about her new country’s politics and will have no interest in defending its values. Unless her new citizenship is American – the United States is particularly hot on extracting taxes from all its citizens – she may well pay her new nation no taxes. The normal means of acquiring citizenship acknowledges that there is a cultural component: naturalisation typically takes years and requires an applicant to establish a real connection to their new country. An industry whose main purpose is to allow people to skip those queues does not.
So long, losers; eat your damn cakes!
2 comments:
Yeah - the citizenship for sale is a joke. But a sentence in your post caught my eye. "naturalisation typically takes years and requires an applicant to establish a real connection to their new country". I disagree. Very few establish connections. They are economic migrants full stop. The next generation may build connections, having been born there. But otherwise the vast majority move for money and just money.
I have a theory on how to participate in the wealth creation if you are just an ordinary worker. Save everyday. Invest in mutual funds. Then you partake of all the benefits of capital being rewarded higher than labour. In fact all American workers benefit immensely from 401 K - a fact I somehow don't see the leftists complain about. The trouble is that very few people save. I repeat my comment which I make ad nauseum - save just $5 a day for all your working life 21-60 and you'll retire a millionaire.
Even if it is all "economic migrants" it is fascinating that we roll out the red carpet for one type of economic migrants, but build walls and put up all kinds of restrictions against the, ahem, wrong type of economic migrants.
You can keep saying all you want about saving a dollar a day. But, if it is so simple for people to understand and implement it, we won't have the old time fables like "the ant and the grasshopper," right? Further, by looking at how people can save for themselves, we then also conveniently bypass the other discussions like, oh, why we collectively spend money on a whole bunch of other things ...
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