Capitalism. Where anyone can become rich, but not everyone.
Why the rich get richer and the poor get poorer:
It’s not exclusively the governments fault:
Not exclusivley I said!
Yes its a fact, a frustratingly sad fact that a lot of the richest people in the world pay little to no taxes. I agree this is absolutely not ok and should change so they start giving their fair share!
However, we - and I include myself in this - are also at least partly to blame. We are the ones who keep throwing money at the billionares! What do people do when there’s a new iphone out? “OH MY GOD TAKE MY LIFE SAVINGS NOOOOWWWWWWW!!!!”
People literally camp outside of Apple stores waiting like members of a cult (it’s actually frighteningly similar to a cult the way Apple operates) to be the first people to buy whatever product Apple is releasing.
How many of us sign up to things like Netflix, Amazon Prime, Microsoft Office 365, Audible (another Amazon company)? How many of us shop at Tesco’s, Sainsburys, Asda, Aldi or Lidls instead of small, family run corner shops? How many of us buy our clothes from those same stores or from Topman, JD Sports, Sports & Soccer, River Island or Primark instead of buying second hand clothes from charity shops?
I’m not having a go at anyone, I do these things myself, I mean it’s rediculously hard to beat the value that you get from Aldi or Lidls!
But everytime we buy from or subscribe to these services from big companies we’re contributing to the wealth of the owners and executives of those companies. I mean in 2020 there were over 10 million amazon prime members in the UK alone! That’s roughly a Hundred million a month going to Amazon, just from the UK and that’s only including the prime subscription not anything people actually buy on Amazon!
£100,000,000 per month just from the UK! Yes they should pay there taxes and it’s disgusting and discracefull how the government’s let them off with paying so little or in some cases nothing at all! But we can’t exclusively and explicitly blame their wealth on that factor alone.
Yes, things need to change drastically in many areas, perhaps to something completely different but if we’re going to create any change we first need to be honest an unbiased about the root causes of the issues were fighting.
In alot of cases it really is to do with the way the system is designed but at least when it comes to the aqusition of wealth by megacorporations like Apple, Google and Amazon, we - again, I’m including myself in this - are at least partly to blame.
So what the hell can we do about it?!:
A lot! A damn lot!
Should we stop shopping and sending our money to these megacorps? Maybe, but how practical would it be to do that? A big part of the reason so many people subscribe to these companies in the first place is the sheer convenience of it all. At what other point in history could you order something and have it delivered within a matter of hours or by the next day? Maybe there were exceptions but could we say it was the norm?
One thing everyone should find a way to do is to preassure the govenments to get these companies to pay their fair shares of taxes. That raises another problem though, so many of the politicians care only about themsleves and the rich and couldn’t care less (I’m not american, I’m never going to say ‘could care less’ that just doesn’t make any sense! XD) about the poor and working classes.
But there are other ways that the system and the cards are stacked against us. The education system is not set up to teach us financial education or how to become financially secure, indipendent and self reliant. It indocrtinates people into thinking, ‘Get a job, stay loyal to the company and do the best you can and you’ll have job security, work you ass off until you’re too old and weak to be usefull to the company anymore and then you can ‘retire’ to ’enjoy’ the rest of your life.
If it wasn’t so saddening it would be laughable just how much the education system manipulates us into thinking not only that this is the way things are, but that this is the way things should be. IT’S NOT!!!! NOT IN THE ABSOLUTE LEAST!!! And that brings me to my next point…
The rich will always get richer no matter what we do:
This is because the way rich people think about money, manage their money and mangage their lives is fundamentally different to the way that the majority of people do. Whenever you or I subscribe to things like Netflix, Amazon Prime or Audible. We’re not just sending money to these big companies and makeing them richer; we’re deliberately punching a hole through the bottom of the boat that is our finances.
We’re creating a leak that, month after month and year after year, slowly but surely takes money away from us making us poorer in the long run, whilst at the same time making the rich richer. Like I said earlier, 10 Million Prime members in 2020 in the UK alone, roughly £100,000,000 a month in Amazons pocket which means the company earns an extra billion pounds every ten months! That’s not the government thats sending them money, that’s us!
In it’s most basic form, people like you and me, tend to buy things that take money out of our accounts making us poorer. The rich minimise the degree to which they do this and instead spend the bulk of their money on things that make them more money. In the begining they might start businesses for example. Then those businesses turn a profit, not overnight but often taking years or decades to do so, and once they do start turning a profit they repeat the process.
They spend only a fraction of the money on themselves and invest the rest of it into things that will make them more money.
This is just a fact of how money works, if you buy things that take money out of your account, netflix, amazon prime always buying the latest iPhones or designer clothes, those new trainers or that new watch that you ‘just have to have!’ etc, you will inevitably end up with less money over time.
If you by stuff that makes you more money in the long run, investing in stocks or cryptocurrencies for example or by starting your own business, you’ll get more and more money over time and therefore richer and the more you do that the richer you’ll get. It will grow, literally exponentially.
But here’s where I disagree with them (the rich).
Most of them have a head start. A very big head start!:
Millionare influencers will often point out on social media that anyone can become rich if they change their money habits and lifestyles, pointing out that companies like Amazon, Apple, Paypal, Disney and others started off in garages. They overlook however, just how much money these people started off with.
Yes it’s true that Jeff Bezos founder of Amazon once used to work at mcdonalds, but he also worked on wall street before he had his hundred billion dollar idea that we all know of now.
Before starting Amazon he was a senior member of staff at a wall street investment bank. He also had 20 family members, friends and investors contribute $50,000 each to start the company.
I don’t think I’ve seen £50,000 since I started working at the age of 15! At least not in net income. With such big head starts it’s no wonder these people can build wealth so quickly. But there is yet another problem… (sorry, it gets better at the end, I promise!)
Why everone becoming rich won’t fix the problem:
Millionares and Billionares like to say - whilst sitting on their 50 acre private yatchs complete with built in docks that contain even more boats! - “It’s not the rich peoples fault that they’re rich, it’s all about the financial education and the way people handle their money. Anyone who handles their money like a rich person does will eventually become rich.”
Now that is technically true as I’ve alrady explained buying things that constantly take money out of your bank account without ever saving and putting any money into things that will turn a profit and put more money into your account will only ever make you poorer in the long run.
Even if you can’t afford to invest in any large assets right now, for most of you it is still possible to cut down on expences and save up enough money over the course of a few months to at least get started on the journey to financial freedom and security.
But what would happen to economies if everyone were to get rich? Inflation, that’s what!
And I believe that because of this, no matter how rich or wealthy the majority of people get, the people at the top will always be significantly wealthier. Instead of billionares we would have trillionares and cent-trillionares and the rest of the poor and working class would on avarage, only be millionares.
That might sound like a better world than what we have today but let me tell you one simple fact that proves why it wouldn’t be better.
As peoples avarage earnings go up, the prices of products and services go up too. Instead of houses costing hundreds of thousands or millions of pounds on avarage, they would cost hundreds of millions or billions on avarage so the people like you and me in the poor, working and middle classes would essentially be no better off than we are now.
This is one of the many ways in which I think our current model of capitalism fails society and works in favour of the people at the top. Yes, it is technically possible for people to get to the top from humble beginnings but that won’t end poverty, homlessnes or necaserily make the world a better place.
There has to be a better way!:
I had an idea a while ago for what a hypothetical utopian society could be like in my opinion.
It would be a world without currency all together. Where nothing is ever given simply in order to receive something in return. Where the planets and people’s health, wellbeing and happiness come first.
Where people could follow their passions and in so doing, society would naturally sustain itself. People who were passionate about building would build, not so they could earn enough money to pay for their own homes but because they love to build and because other people need homes to live in.
Artists could create, not influenced by what sells so they can pay their rent but completely at the will of their imaginations!
Scientist especially in the medical field would not be influenced by megacorporations and big pharma to produce things that only treat symptoms of diseases in order to keep profiting from the sick and dying but to create actual cures that treat or prevent the causes of those diseases and that would be freely available so that anyone in the world could manufacture the medicines and contribute to healing the world in the process.
People, who want to help others by way of life coaching or through other means like therapy or counciling or charity work wouldn’t have to worry about making ends meet or ever decide between a roof over their head or food in their belly.
In fact, in such a world, most charities would have no need to exist. With people being able to prioritize their phisical and mental health without having to worry about paying any rent or morgages and with nobody being homeless or without food, toiletries and healthcare, I think most mental health issues would become a thing of the past.
Is this a world that could possibly exist? I can’t say it’s impossible, but it would require the collaboration of people all over the world including the people at the top. That’s why I think even if something like this were to come about it would probably take hundreds if not thousands of years.
So what about something we could impliment now!?:
Indeed! There needs to be something that we can do now to make the world fairer, and I would argue we should not rely completely on governments to do it.
I mean look at their track records. How many politicians have sucummed to corruption around the world? I personally feel like it’s almost impossible to be a politician without being or becoming corrupt. So, if change is really going to happen I think it’s something were going to have to create ourselves. And the bigger those changes are, the harder they will be to implement.
This is why we should in my opinion start off small because a million people making one small change is still a big change for society. So long as there are people in society that hold power over others, the people at the top will almost always take advantage of the people at the bottom. It seems therefore that the old saying ‘power corrupts’ would be true.
But are there any examples where this is not the case? Yes. If the people at the top are willing to look at themselves critically and actually change. Here is one such example:
Dan Price, CEO of Gravity Payments Inc, was challenged by one of his employees on the unfairness of their salaries and instead of just ignoring them, Price took a critical look at himself and the way he was running his business and realised his staff member was right.
He decided to make a change and over the next few years ended up raising the minimum wage at his company to $70,000 (Roughly £50,000). He was ridiculed by other leaders in the industry and even called a socialist. People were saying his company wouldn’t be able to survive the changes but not only did it survive, IT THRIVED!
This is an example of a CEO who decided to change and actually managed to impliment those changes to the benefit of his staff. It might seem like a small change in the global economies but to the people working at his company I’m sure it changed their lives!
And that’s still capitalism. They’re still turning a profit, in fact they’re turning over more of a profit and it’s benefiting them all in the long run not just the CEO.
This is what I would call…
Ethical capitalism?:
Ethical capitalism is something that as you can see, we can begin to impliment right now in society without having to drastically change the system as a whole. For now it seems like this change is in the hands of CEO’s and executives but there are few reasons as to why you yourselves couldn’t start businesses and mangage them in ways that benefit you’re customers, your staff and yourselves equally.
If enough of us can do that then we’d be able to rely on each other instead of being dependant of the worlds elite.
We could create companies where the CEO’s and executives earn the same as the receptionists and the cleaners i.e whatever ammount it takes to keep a roof over your head, bread on your table, pay for any healthcare, save a little and most importantly, ACTUALLY HAVE A LIFE OUTSIDE OF WORK!!
Instead of how most companies currently work, paying most of their employees just enough to stop them from going on strike. Dan Price is a great example of how this is not only possible, but desirable and would lead to more profit in the long run.
Hopefully we’ll start to see more small businesses flurishing and creating more opportunities for everyone else to flurish. It’s quite evident that in the wake of the global pandemic for example many people are choosing not to go back to their old jobs, opting instead for more fulfilling careers elswhere or turning to self employment and starting their own businesses.
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