Getting paid for the data we share.

"Every breath you take
And every move you make
Every bond you break
Every step you take
I'll be watching you."

Lyrics: "Every breath you take," sung by The Police, 2003 

We give up our valuable data. We should get paid for it.

Eavesdropper. 

This week I visited with a student finishing up a degree in Computer Science at Southern Oregon University's Honors College. She suggested I turn off "Siri" on my I-Phone. She warned me about "cross tracking" from applications I have downloaded. Apparently, just because I am not using an app doesn't mean that that it isn't tracking me. You are giving up all that data, she warned.

Andrew Yang got famous for suggesting every adult in America be paid $1,000 a month as a benefit of citizenship. It was described as socialism. Free money for nothing! Most of the attention was on what a guaranteed income would mean to the work ethic and federal budget. 

He said, no, it wasn't a give-away. It was an earned benefit. He cited Alaska. Alaskans share in owning the mineral wealth of the state, so every citizen gets a check representing a share of oil royalties. Yang's observation was that American citizens were turning over to technology companies, retailers, financial services companies--in fact to every business that swipes our debit or credit cards--data that had enormous value, and we were giving it away for free. It was like owning a pool of oil or the electromagnetic spectrum and not getting income from it. 

Who owns that data? Businesses collect it, yes, but in a democracy "we the people" can decide that they are collecting something that is still ours. WE own the data. That means we can charge them for it, collected through taxes, and redistribute it how we wish. 

With the student's warning fresh in mind, I made a small purchase yesterday. I wanted some small heat lamp bulbs to keep exposed pipes from freezing. I went to PetSmart, where they sell a variety of light bulbs to heat animal cages. I picked out three small bulbs, prominently marked at $8 for one, and 50% off on a second bulb. They had three on the shelf, so I bought all three. I expected to pay $20: Eight, plus four for the second one, and probably another eight for that third one. 

The friendly cashier rang me up, asked if I had a customer number. I said no. She said it would be $40. I said, no, it was $20, the eight dollar price prominently marked, plus the second one 50% off.  She explained that they post the member prices. The non-member price would be $40 for the three bulbs. She said she would make me a member right there. She needed my name, address, phone number, and email address. She entered them. Now it is $20, she said brightly.

I am already earning valuable "loyalty" points.

When I got home I had a welcoming email from PetSmart in my in-box. They wanted to confirm my information, know the name of each of my pets, their dates of birth, breed, neutering status, health conditions and whether I preferred to get notices about special promotions by text or email.

Andrew Yang, in explaining his idea of a guaranteed annual income said the value of the data that we were giving up to businesses was as valuable as the markup they were making on items they sold us. That seemed crazy impossible to me, so I dismissed it as exaggerated or imagined justification for giving people free money. Maybe Yang was exactly right. For PetSmart yesterday, the difference between having someone they could target marketing to versus an anonymous cash buyer holding a $20 bill, was 100%. Without my contact information, the bulbs were $40. They wanted to know when to send me birthday greetings and pet maintenance products to the pets they expect me to own.

$81 billion for 5G licenses

Data on some consumers are worth more than data on others, but there is no reason that in a democracy this wealth of data could not be defined as a resource owned by the public, inalienable, like our life and liberty. Recognizing that the public is creating wealth in the data we are offering up changes the moral and political justification for a guaranteed benefit. We would not be taxing businesses to give citizens something for nothing.  We would be taxing them to recover value from them something that is ours, the data on where we go, what we buy, what we read. 

The data Americans share are invisible, but it is as real as the invisible electromagnetic spectrum, and far more valuable. The public owns the spectrum and we auction that off and get paid for it. Why not our data? And since the public is constantly creating that resource, why not return its value to the public directly every month?

Thought of that way, it isn't a crazy idea. 

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Manchin bid "One No Trump"

A bid of "One No Trump" means something in the game of Bridge. 

It is a signal to a partner and opponents of having a powerful hand. It forces partners and opponents to take action.

Manchin signaled:

Back the hell off, Bernie. And stay out of West Virginia. Or else.

Today's blog is about Manchin, bidding in the card came of Bridge, and guns on the sets of movies.  It is all signaling.

Politics is carried out with body language, both between the candidate and voters, and also between political actors. People who play the card game of Bridge understand that the bidding to find the right fit and contract to win a hand involves coded signals, where a bid implies far more than it says. 

Bernie Sanders took a provocative act. He thought to increase the political pressure on Manchin by authoring an op-ed in the largest newspaper in West Virginia. He mentioned Joe Manchin by name, saying he was stopping West Virginians from getting what they wanted and needed. In Bridge, that was an opening bid: "One Club." It means Bernie wants to make a deal and wants to know what you are going to do about it.

Manchin responded by words: “I will not vote for a reckless expansion of government programs. No op-ed from a self-declared Independent socialist is going to change that.” This exchange gives Manchin more flexibility going forward. The words position Manchin in opposition to Sanders, which is good and necessary in West Virginia.

But Manchin's response showed that the pressure on him had become too intense. Manchin has more power if he is seen to be irascible, driven by emotion, maybe impulsive, maybe angry. Manchin needed something tangible, a warning shot.

Manchin used Rolling Stone reporter David Corn, done as a "scoop," by a sole reporter, reporting a rumor. Manchin would have deniability and ambiguity. It would be a threat, put out there to lurk. In a movie it would be the camera lingering for a full second on a gun, sitting on a table.

Pow! Crisis! The implications of this are enormous for Biden, for Democrats, for progressive policies generally. 

Manchin immediately denied the story he placed, calling it "bullshit." (Gun? What gun? I didn't even know there was a gun in the room!) Manchin is signaling he was a Democrat and wanted to be a Democrat. 

David Corn stood by the story, saying Manchin was talking about leaving and had thought through plans. Manchin adjusted. It was just talk, he said. 

We just watched a performance. It wasn't scripted, but each party knew how it would play out. Both won. Corn was a guy in the know. Manchin made his veiled threat. In a movie it would be a second look at the gun. Perhaps a teenage son would enter the room, idly pick up it up, the protagonist would notice and say to "put it back. It's loaded. It's dangerous. Someone could be killed." The gun would have moved from backdrop to a part of the action.

Manchin's is still a "No Trump" bid, and would caucus with Democrats, he said, but added that if he were thought an embarrassment to Democrats--too moderate--as a courtesy to his friends he would leave the party. This is an open request for some love, mixed with his power play. Don't you love me? I want to be in the Democratic tent, so define it to include me, please.

In the card game of Bridge, "One No Trump" means a strong hand. Manchin was sending message that criticism of him addressed to West Virginians angered him. Sanders went too far. 

Now Democrats know. In politics and in Bridge, one can only bid "One No Trump" like this once. The threat to leave the Democratic Party cannot become habitual or else it becomes an empty bluff. In this performance with David Corn, Manchin attempted to preserve for another time use of the overt threat. Corn misunderstood me, he said. And besides, he wouldn't be leaving in an angry huff. It wasn't a breakup. It was a request for reconciliation--but on his terms. I don't want Democrats to be embarrassed by me. Tell me I'm OK. 

 As with the gun in the movie, we got the message. The next time the protagonist touches the gun he might be making an overt threat: Do it my way, or else! Or maybe it will be too late, and he will use the gun to shoot the Democratic Party. 

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Cannabis Harvest

The harvest is underway. 

People can and do grow cannabis legally here in Southern Oregon. 

The plants needed to get out of the weather. It has frozen three times and the cool rains have begun. 

Cannabis grown for its medicinal non-psychoactive CBD is regulated as an agricultural crop and is grown like corn or other annual field crops. Current practice is to control weeds and water use by growing it poking through plastic ground cover strips. One or more drip lines are laid down under the plastic. Young plants are transplanted in small holes poked into the plastic. The plastic is pulled up, compacted, and discarded at season end. The crop is not a particularly high value crop, so farming practice tends to be low-input to control costs. This is a weedy field.  Below, a crew of workers start a CBD harvest about October 9:

Cannabis grown for the psychoactive "get you high" THC is grown differently. THC-bearing plants have complicated government rules that limit the size of fields and the number of plants. THC plants tend to be coddled, with careful attention to soil amendments, fertilizer schedules, pest control, and trellising to support the branch. They get the "Ritz Carlton" treatment, so they will grow huge buds. 

Here is what a THC plant looks like in early August. The plant grew from an 18-in high transplant in late May to this, in about 70 days.

Look closely.  Notice there are no buds or flowers on the plant above, but by October 10 it looks like this: 

The plants grew buds like these:

A close up photograph of a bud can be expanded on a smart phone to give a good look at the trichomes on the flower. These little white dots change from transparent to milky-white to amber-colored as the plant matures. This photo was taken on October 10, and it indicated the plants were not quite ready. The trichomes were not yet turning amber.

We mostly avoided a bug-pest problem this year but we had three other problems. The first was a tiny problem of seeds on one plant. Seeds happen when the female plants get fertilized by some errant male plant upwind, probably on a neighbor's property about 600 feet away. The immature seed is that light green football-shaped object about midway between the fingers in this photo. Fortunately, there were few of these.

The second problem was threat of theft. The price has collapsed on THC-bearing cannabis buds, but objects acquired for free  are worth stealing. I was one of several people guarding my crop, armed with headlights, high-beam flashlights, a car horn, and a cell phone to call 911. Plus, I located and installed multiple tiny GPS trackers and paid for a service to track their location and alert me if they moved and show me where they go. Perhaps more important, i invested in two signs warning people I had done this.  My goal was to be an un-attractive target for the people flying drones that were surveilling my farm.

The third problem was frost. The coldest part of the night is right at dawn. The temperature dropped from 29 degrees at 4:00 a.m. down to 25 degrees briefly just after daylight on October 12, ten days ago. This photo is taken with natural light at 7:20 a.m. Notice a light dusting of frost on the buds and leaves.

Had it been only that single frost, I might have been able to ignore it, but it was followed by two more nights of frost and now cool rains. The golf-ball and tennis-ball sized buds retain water and risk rotting from the middle. We began harvesting to get them harvested before rot began. Better a couple of days immature than rotten. The photo below is a plant 99% harvested.

Here is a final harvest photo, taken Wednesday. I am all done but the clean-up. Notice the remains of the trellising, done with plastic netting.The buds get heavy and the branches will sag and break if they are not supported. 

 

The crop is harvested and safe, I think, from thieves, insects, and mold. The buds are hanging in a room with a de-humidifier and fans. I treat the cannabis crop the way I treat my melons. I grow cannabis because it is fun to grow things. I mostly give the crop away in small amounts to people who find "farm tourism" interesting. I like showing off the farm, especially during melon harvest season in August. People like my cousin, photographed below, had the unexpected fun of dropping a melon on purpose:

Democrats don't have the votes to "think big."

Democrats don't have a mandate for change. 

They don't even have a majority.

50-50

Joe Manchin said the simple truth. If you want to advance liberal causes, he told Democrats, "elect more liberals."  

Democrats had a good chance to elect a liberal senator in North Carolina in 2020. It is a swing state.  North Carolina voters elected Tom Tillis, a Republican.

In Maine Susan Collins won 51-42. Collins is a moderate. She sometimes votes with Democrats when her vote is irrelevant, but she is a reliable Republican when McConnell needs her to be one.

In Iowa incumbent Republican senator Joni Ernst had the burden of Iowa soybean farmers having their crop rejected by the Chinese, in retaliation to Trump tariffs. She won anyway, with 52% of the vote.

Democrats had opportunities. Trump was uniquely controversial at a time when COVID cases and deaths were at their highest. Voters rejected Trump himself, but kept Republican senators who backed Trump.

Joe Manchin is a Democrat in a state that loves Trump. West Virginia is rural, White, blue collar, and church-going. Its population is the archetypal Trump voting base. Democratic messaging is clear and consistent that fossil fuels are bad and that coal is the worst of the worst. West Virginia's biggest industry is coal. Green New Deal messaging declared war on coal, and therefore on West Virginians and their way of life, in a state John Denver called "almost heaven." 

Democrats need to stop and look around. If a deal is going to get done, it won't have a big Green New Deal component because it needs at least 50 votes. The problem isn't Manchin. He is being who he always was, a Democrat who got elected in West Virginia. 

Kristin Sinema represents Arizona. Her issues seem to be taxes and drug pricing. There are a lot of conservative retirees in Arizona, and they are notoriously anti-tax. Her tax position is not surprising. She is also sympathetic to drug companies. Democrats can stop the faux dismay that she gets campaign help from those companies. Every U.S. senator gets financial support from some industry, or two, or three, plus for Democrats, some union, or two, or three. Democrats are unhappy that she is standing in the way of using Medicare's market power to negotiate lower prices on prescription drugs.  

Democrats have a mixed message. Democrats say that drug companies were a lifesaver when it came to COVID. They employ cutting edge research, and they are trustworthy, very trustworthy, and care about us. Get vaccinated. Meanwhile, drug companies are money-grabbing extortionists who put their own interests first. 

The reality is that the American taxpayer overpays the drug companies. In exchange, we fatten up their R&D budgets--and stockholders--and we get more and faster new drugs than we otherwise would.  Americans are getting their third COVID vaccine doses, while much of the rest of the world has none. We are paying for that. Kristin Sinema is on the side of continuing that extraordinary subsidy, 

Whatever bill gets through will not have a significant change in either coal or drug pricing. Democrats look confused and lost, but they are not lost. They just don't like where they are: One vote short.

Democrats need to face the real problem. Democrats lose by attempting to please their most liberal, woke, point-of-the-spear supporters on cultural issues, and they project a kind of moral superiority over culturally conservative people. It is why Black and Hispanic voters are drifting away, and would do so faster if GOP messaging were not so hostile to them. How do I know that?  It is because that is what Trump, Fox, GOP officeholders and GOP candidates all hammer on. They don't defend high drug prices or tax cuts for billionaires. They talk about transgender bathrooms and the left's accusation that all Whites are racially prejudiced, whether they know it or not. 

Democrats can console themselves by knowing they are morally right and working to move to a more just America. An emotionally satisfying way to display a superior moral position is to condemn and sneer at the people who "don't get it." Not everyone does that, but there is enough of that coming out of liberal cities and academic environments that this message becomes the caricature of Democratic thinking. Prudent Democrats who want to have majority power in the chambers of Congress could inoculate themselves if they called it out, clearly and forcefully condemning that attitude, but so far I don't see it happening. They don't want to lose their progressive woke base. Social change is happening, but it is happening faster than a majority of people are comfortable with and people don't like to feel scolded. That is how culturally conservative people feel, and they feel it so strongly they will support GOP senators and a narcissistic, autocratic, election-overthrowing, race-baiter for president, rather than trust people who they think sneer at them.

Damned lies and statistics

The message on conservative media is that COVID vaccines are risky and of questionable value.

Moreover, tyrants are forcing it on you. Of course you are angry.

The Fox and Friends hosts were on-message this morning. There was a lot of head shaking and smirking. "Who knows how effective the vaccines are?" "I've heard of three people who died, and they were fully vaccinated." 

Will Cain, a Fox commentator, responded to Colin Powell's death:

[H]ow effective overall are these vaccines? The headlines have shifted over the past 18 months. And look at these numbers. We have gone from implications that the vaccine was 100 percent effective to 90 percent, to 70 percent, to 60 percent, to 50 percent. … This does not inspire much confidence.

One vivid anecdote like the death of fully-vaccinated Colin Powell, is easier to grasp than are the statistics of COVID deaths, especially when the statistics are presented misleadingly. College classmate Eliot Nierman, M.D. is a physician and Professor of Clinical Medicine at a University of Pennsylvania's Perelman School of Medicine. He read this blog and Tucker Carlson's words yesterday and sent a comment that helps explain how it is Carlson might be so misleading about vaccine effectiveness. 

Eliot sent me this note:

Interesting idea to talk of [medical people] as fiduciaries. You might also have talked about religious leaders. One could make the argument that media leaders should be as well.

As for what Carlson said, the issue is misuse of statistics and using a singles case an anecdote to prove something. He is of course the liar and manipulator The chances of dying unvaccinated are at least 10 times higher than vaccinated. Yes that means that some vaccinated people die. And yes that means that if most people are vaccinated, as many who die of covid may in fact be vaccinated. 

Assume for example, that 90% of elderly are vaccinated (true in some locations) and the chances of dying unvaccinated  and elderly are 1/10 that of dying vaccinated. Assume your chances of dying from covid if you are unvaccinated are 0.1 % (1/1,000). The chance of dying vaccinated are 0.01% (1/10,000). Take 1 million elderly people. 900,000 are vaccinated, 100,000 are not. Of the unvaccinated 100 die. Of the vaccinated 90 die. Hmmm, close to the figure in Maryland of 40%. (actually higher at 47%)

Anyone who wants to bet with me and give me 10x odds when the odds should be even count me in!

Eliot graduated from college summa cum laude in physics, and the college is very stingy giving out summas. It is possible that his comment needs a moment's translation and repetition. As is predictable, the pool of people who are most vaccinated are the people who understood themselves to be most at risk, the elderly and ill. They are the people most likely to die of something, especially if there is a complication from COVID, as in the case of Colin Powell. There is also a pool of people who have, so far, not gotten vaccinated--a pool that includes a large number of people who are young and healthy, and who consider themselves invulnerable. A small percentage of people in both groups get COVID and get very sick. 

As the pool of highly vulnerable people get vaccinated and grows to approach 90% of the population, and the pool of unvaccinated shrinks, then even the rare instances of hospitalization and death from the huge pool of the vaccinated turns out to be a bigger number than much-greater percentage of illnesses from the smaller pool. Moreover, not only are the sizes of the pool different, but the age and risk profile of people in the pools are different; the vaccinated group was older and less healthy to begin with. So the absolute number of deaths from the large and small pools might be equal.

Properly understood, this is strong evidence for vaccination. Being vaccinated is as good or better than being young and healthy!  

When reported misleadingly, as Tucker Carlson did, that near equal numbers of people die--vaccinated or un-vaccinated--it implies that vaccinations are of little value. It leaves out the most important thing: The size and makeup of the pool of people in each group.

Possibly Eliot's explanation was as clear or clearer than my repeat, but we may hear the Fox message more often as the U.S. makes progress on getting people vaccinated. Head's up: if and when everyone is vaccinated, there will still be a very few people who get sick and die with COVID as a complication, and at that point everyone who dies will have been vaccinated. Don't be surprised when that gets reported. Vaccinations don't make people immortal. They do make people much less likely to get sick and die.

Fiduciary. Some jobs include a duty of care.

Not everyone has a well-functioning immune system. Colin Powell didn't. COVID tipped him over the edge.

I consider health care workers and police officers to be fiduciaries.

Readers of this blog skew older. We have a right to live. We have a right to be protected from people who would assault us by carelessly shoving us and knocking us down onto a sidewalk or store aisle.

There are some places where an old or ill person is likely to be by necessity--hospitals, for one. Much of the work of a doctor, nurse, or other attendant is done up close. A police officer, too, is likely to get close to a senior who is being helped or detained. In either case, people are in the control and care of the worker. 

Everyone exhales. That is how COVID spreads.

A word has become a familiar part of public discourse, "immunocompromised." Getting older in itself is a cause of reduced immunity. Other causes are chemotherapy for cancer, drugs to suppress rejection of transplants, and treatment of diseases including lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, Crohn's disease, celiac disease, multiple sclerosis, multiple myeloma, and more. 

Powell died from a combination of COVID and multiple myeloma. Tucker Carlson's monologue made the point that Colin Powell had been fully vaccinated, but got COVID and died. Readers who have difficulty understanding neighbors who refuse vaccination might take a moment to read closely and watch this talk, even if watching Carlson is not something one normally does. He said,

Like almost everyone his age Colin Powell was vaccinated against Covid, yet according to his family and doctors Colin Powell died of COVID. Of course that fact does not make his death any less sad, nor is it unusual. Many thousands of vaccinated people have died of COVID. Former CDC director Robert Redfield just today announced that about 40% of all recent COVID deaths in the state of Maryland, for example, are among those who have had both shots. So what does this tell you exactly? It tells you you have been lied to. 

Vaccines may be highly useful for some people, but across the population they do not solve COVID. That’s not speculation. It is an observable fact. People who have been vaccinated can still get the virus, they can still transmit the virus to others, and they can still die from COVID. Colin Powell is hardly the only example of that. So the question is, why are they telling us otherwise? And the answer is simple. They are telling us that to divide us from each other. To set the country against itself. It’s been going on a long time but it’s never needed to happen. There is no inherent reason that a virus should rip apart the United States. COVID easily could have brought us together. Shared suffering often does that. 9-11 did that. Yet from the very beginning demagogues like Joe Biden and many others have used this virus as a hammer, to smash the bonds that connect Americans to one another.

 https://www.mediamatters.org/media/3976741/embed/embed 

Carlson employs an adept switch in the vaccination frame. He left out the fact of Colin Powell's multiple myeloma, and he offered a misleading statistic about the effectiveness of vaccines. Readers should not let his cynicism and dishonesty distract from the skill of his message and presentation. He is indignant and confident. He is bold and shameless. He blames Democrats for what he himself is doing right there on screen. "Vaccines may be highly useful for some people" is a subordinate clause, a throwaway to the real point of the sentence, that vaccinations "do not solve COVID," as if anyone claimed vaccinations "solved" it. Carlson employs Powell's death to show vaccines don't work. People inclined to think Joe Biden is a demagogue now know the score. You are a victim of lies. Don't be a sap. There is a lying demagogue in America who inflames and divides, and it is Biden.

There are lots of old and immunocompromised people who do well--if they avoid a mistake. An older person who falls, or is shoved, sometimes breaks a hip and dies. A person who carries COVID endangers others with exhalations. Some of the people they endanger are immunocompromised. They have a right not to be shoved. They have a right to know the institution that person works for has taken every precaution.

Many people like what they hear from Carlson, and it helps explain why people quit jobs this week rather than be vaccinated. They don't want to feel pushed around by a "demagogue." Meanwhile, vulnerable people don't want to be pushed around, either, or be at higher risk of a breakthrough case of COVID transmitted by an unvaccinated person. Colin Powell died because he caught COVID from someone and that, when added to the existing disease, was enough to kill him.

How does one resolve the conflict between the two views of shoving? There is law and custom regarding fiduciaries. They have a duty of care. 

The news is full of people resigning their jobs this week. I am OK with them quitting. Go. If they don't want the duty of putting the vulnerable person's interest first, they should do something else.

City councils and hospital boards of directors are fiduciaries, too. People in control of police forces and health care workers have a responsibility to the people they serve and to their institutions. A vulnerable immunocompromised patient or police detainee who gets COVID after close exposure to an unvaccinated COVID-infected health care worker or police officer has a gripe, and maybe a lawsuit. 

A multi-million dollar lawsuit might give fiduciaries of institutions courage better to protect the people they serve.

Billionaires and their billions

"Ask what you can do for your country."

        JFK inaugural speech

Today's Guest Post tells billionaires what they can do.

For the first 35 years of the postwar era, the income of working Americans tracked the overall productivity of the nation. Everyone was getting richer. Then, in 1980, things changed. Productivity kept going up, but the workers' share of that pie flattened. What happened to the "excess value" produced by the rising productivity? It went to capital, not labor. It created people of unimaginable wealth.

Perhaps it all goes back to Ronald Reagan's breaking the air traffic controllers' demand for higher wages and better working conditions by firing the ones on strike. Or maybe it was the mass of Boomers like me entering the workforce faster than we could be absorbed. Or maybe it was increase in immigration numbers with President Reagan's blessing. Or maybe it was something as simple but profoundly important as shipping containers, which put low-wage labor in China into direct competition with American workers. Or maybe it was something else.

Michael Wallace

One thing is clear: The middle class got poorer and America began creating a class of fabulously wealthy people who owned the businesses that participated in the rising productivity. 

Michael Wallace is a college classmate who became a Peace Corps Volunteer in Nepal, then an international career worker in social and economic development in Pakistan, Nepal, Philippines, Russia, and Macedonia. He is coiner of "numbulary" (number-vocabulary), and shares his insights at a Twitter account, @numbulary, where he posts interesting and useful observations about numbers.

Guest Post by Michael Wallace         

                  How much is enough?

 

During a recent visit with college classmate Peter Sage, I commented: "America has done a great job with the production side of things. “We can create lots of stuff for Americans. But we haven’t figured out the distribution side of a prosperous economy. Amid all this plenty, so many people are destitute.” I promised to provide my perspective on distribution for Up Close.

 

The distribution of stuff reflects the distribution of income and wealth, and income and wealth are easier to measure and analyze than stuff such as land and houses and cars and clothes, so let's look at income and wealth:

• In 2019, the world’s billionaires (2,153 people) had more wealth than the poorest 4.6 billion people (3/5 of humanity). The richest 22 men in the world own more wealth than all the 700 million women in Africa. The world's billionaires have $9 trillion of wealth, while the poorest 60% of humanity has barely $6 trillion--less than $2,000 per person. The billionaires could double the wealth of each member of the poorest 60% and still be billionaires.
• The 400 richest US citizens have more wealth than the 150 million adults in the bottom 60% of the country's wealth distribution. The top 0.1% of the population (333,000 people) has nearly 20% of the nation’s wealth, giving them a greater slice of the American pie than the bottom 80% of the population (266 million people) combined.

These descriptions illustrate the same point: There is too much money concentrated in the hands of too few people, both globally and in the US.

Countries move extremely slowly in solving global problems, and we cannot expect individual countries or groups of countries such as the European Union or the African Union or the United Nations to solve our global wealth and income inequality problems. We must pursue other avenues to address the global wealth and income inequality problem: we must define and present this as a global philosophical and ethical problem and address it from that perspective.

If the world’s 2,000+ billionaires gave $6 trillion of their wealth to the poorest 60% (the poorest 4 billion people), doubling the wealth of the poor, would the world be a happier place? The 4 billion would certainly be happier, and the 2,000+ billionaires would still be billionaires.

The key to solving problems is to define them in ways that allow for solutions. We must define this as a problem that individuals can help solve. We must define this problem in a way that the rich themselves must see as a problem and see themselves as the problem-solvers.

Peace Corps Training Group. Wallace is front row, second from left

 

We must convince the rich that the distribution of global wealth is a global problem and enlist their help in solving it. We must convince the rich that they can help solve this problem in their own best interests. Let's take a clue from Bloomberg, which publishes lists of the world's richest people.  (https://bloomberg.com/billionaires/)

The Chronicle of Philanthropy publishes lists of the largest charitable donations each year. This should be expanded to highlight the people who are the largest overall donors each year, and this list should be published as front page headline news.  (https://www.philanthropy.com/article/jeff-bezoss-10-billion-environmental-gift-tops-chronicle-list-of-the-biggest-charitable-donations-of-2020)