RICH MAN, POOR MAN, THE BACTERIUM AND THE LOONIE
Here’s
an old song for you from the Depression of the 1920’s and 1930’s.
"Every
morning, every evening, Don’t we have
fun!
Not
much money, Oh, but honey, Don’t we
have fun!
The
rent’s unpaid, dear, We haven’t a sou!
But
dreams were made, dear, For me and for
you!
There’s
nothing clearer, The rich get rich,
And
the poor get poorer,
In
the meantime, In between time, Don’t we have fun!”
From
this popular song, it sounds as if people didn’t mind being poor in those far
off days. However, we have a new voice
burst upon the world, talking about the growing gap in today’s society between
the super-rich and the rest of us, with the poorest suffering most . The voice is that of a young Frenchman, he
is in his early forties, and his book is called “Capital in the Twenty-first Century. He has spent his time in the Ecole d’economie
de Paris, most of his career collecting data about economies from the nineteenth century right
up to the present day. According to his
extensive research, the young Professor Thomas Piketty in studying not only
America, UK and Western Europe, but also Russia, China and other countries
emerging from under-development has drawn some startling conclusions. It
seems it is unstoppable that the small elite who are the super-rich all over
the world are getting more and more rich.
Their increase in wealth is happening at a faster rate than the growth
in economic strength of any of the countries studied by Piketty. And
it seems the poor are becoming poorer at the same rate as the rich
are getting richer. Without change of
tactics by governments, the inequality gap must just continue to widen.
Much of the above has been gleaned from The
Observer of 13th April, The New Review Section. In the reporting of an interview of Piketty
by Andrew Hussey, the article is called, “It just doesn’t add up.” One critic, Karl Smith of the Financial
Times is quoted as saying, “The author, an inequality expert, is
distinguished. The work is
acclaimed. The book’s empirical
evidence is already the stuff of legend.”
The
whole matter has set off fierce debates between economists, including the
advisers to Ed Milliband in the UK. It
seems that Piketty proposes tax and more tax of the super-rich. Will this work? The rich have the power. Greed keeps driving up the salaries of
super-managers. They make or produce
nothing. They have broken away from
the markets and reality, just like the bankers in 2008.
Well,
that’s just heavy enough of a subject for an opener from me today. Other little jewels of information. Yes, it seems that evolution has stopped
being of any importance. We have
evolved into beautiful human beings from some one- or two-celled sea
creatures. This has taken 3.6 billion
years. But now scientists can switch
round the DNA of say, a bacterium. You
could re-engineer its genome, perhaps, for example, to make it ingest carbon dioxide
and excrete crude oil. Would you Adam
and Eve it? It seems that the Science
Minister from the government gave a speech at the meeting held in London about the
future of 'synthetic biology', announcing evolution could now be forgotten about,
evolution had now been retired. He even
presented evolution with a gold watch!!
And a geneticist at Harvard stored an entire book on a strand of DNA and
got a DNA sequencing machine to read it back to him. This is our world,
folks! SCARY! (See,
“When humans hijack evolution” by Michael Brooks. The New Statesman 11-17th April,
2014.)
OTHER
THOUGHTS
I’m
sad about the South Korean ship that sank, and the tragic loss of life of young
people on their day out.
I
hope that governments pay heed to the warnings of the United Nations about
Global Warming. With all the problems
facing the populace, it is no wonder so many people nowadays are said to suffer
from depression and anxiety, especially the young, teenagers, young parents,
and all struggling citizens. How can we
effect some changes to make our world a greener place? Does anyone know?
There
was a power cut yesterday evening, it seems that locations all over the
north of Scotland were affected. Suddenly no lights, no television, no
computers, no telephones, no electric blanket in bed, no reading in bed (ah, the Kindle!) What to do?
Darkness inside and outside the house.
With the unexpectedness of the situation, tempers became frayed. “Where are the candles, why aren’t they here?” and the like could be heard in loud tones. How frail and vulnerable we all are! Who do we turn to? Should we ask the stars above to look down
on us and keep us sane!
Joke:
This
man was visiting a mental hospital (loony bin!).
As
the man is leaving the institution, on the driveway he spies an inmate of the
place kneeling down with his ear to the ground. The patient stops the visitor, “Come here,
man, listen to this!” The visitor
kneels and listens, “I hear nothing “,
he says. The lunatic replies in
amazement, “I know, it’s been like that all day!”
