Perhaps you might get $12 million per person if all the money was divided equally, but the ultimate basis of wealth is the productive capacity of the Earth. The money is just paper. Take a look at the 2005 Footprints of Nations on the Redefining Progress site and the methods by which environmental footprints are determined. In brief, environmental footprint is a way of converting consumption and biocapacity to notional hectares of land.

In terms of the new footprints, the global average per person is 22 (54 acres) hectares. Panama consumes at about this level. Biocapacity per person is 16 hectares (38 acres) and is less than the global average because we are degrading our environmental capital for present consumption. This level of average consumption is about the same as that of Thailand (15.95 hectares) and Botswana (16.42). By comparison (in hectares), US: 108.95, Norway: 93.13, the UK 62.56, Australia: 79.05.

The bottom line is that there aren't enough resources to give everyone a decent standard of living, and there will be even less per person in the future, given population growth and environmental degradation. The problem is aggravated of course by unequal distribution.

SHONGA,

I haven't mentioned the AWU. Nor do I think that the ALP is dominated by the AWU. I believe in democracy and in individual responsibility. People get what they vote for. Anyone who doesn't like it is free to stand for election themselves.

The democratic world has well and truly defeat communism, and, like fascism, it isn't coming back. It's a pity it wasn't defeated in 1917, which would have saved the lives of perhaps 80 million human beings.

I use the terms right and left myself, but they are pretty vague really. I don't think where the members of the French National Assembly sat in the eighteenth century can be that useful in describing today's politics.

ChrisC contact me at swulrich@bigpond.net.au about education policy
and just be honest

thanks

stu

The following link is taken from Connor Hunter shows that Work Choices was designed to reduce the pay of workers. Scroll down or search for Connor Hunter or Freehills

http://www.rightsatwork.com.au:81/community/showthread.php?t=617&page=7&highlight=freehills

There is much talk about a shortage of seasonal workers and the following letter to the Sydney Morning Herald describes working conditions for blueberry picking.

http://www.smh.com.au/news/letters/berry-picking-conditions-just-not-good-enough/2007/03/09/1173166979230.html

Country Gal,

“in-many-business-machines-are-employed-to-aid-production---yes-workers-are-still-needed-but-their-direct-contribution-to-wealth-generation-is-lower”-

Who builds machinery? Where does the capital come from to buy machinery? Where do the resources come from to build machinery, and that machinery “works up”? How are products transported? etc, etc. If workers’ “direct-contribution-to-wealth-generation-is-lower”, how low is the direct contribution to wealth generation of someone who only provides “capital” and does no work? As an accountant, how high is your direct contribution to wealth generation - is counting beans the same as producing beans? I bet you make more money than most of your hard-working clients. A humble fruit-picker makes more “direct” contribution to tangible wealth than you with your fancy-schmancy accounting tricks.

“Also-look-at-primary-production,-in-many-cases-there-are-little-employees---animals-and-ground-provide-the-wealth-generation.”

Where do fertilisers, seed, etc. come from? Where does farm machinery come from? Where did the land come from? How does one person or family or corporation come to own it privately? Did humans just climb down from the trees, mark out private plots of land and buy a tractor from John Deere?

There is a historical process by which we have arrived at where we are i.e. relatively speaking a handful of people own the land, and the means of production of wealth, and the majority don’t and are forced to sell their labour. Private land ownership did not come about through the irresponsibility of poor people who couldn’t save their pennies, it came about through violent dispossession – I challenge you to show me where the majority of people willingly gave up their historical right to share in the products of land and/or work land to sustain themselves, preferring to give it to some rich capitalist to fence off.

cont...

You ought not be so quick to call others silly, Country Gal. After trying to demonstrate that workers have a lower “direct” contribution to wealth creation, you finish your comments with “business-knows-it-needs-its-workers-in-order-to-generate-future-income”. Your comment reveals the essential fact that profit can only come from surplus value created by labour of human beings. The private appropriation of this surplus value can only be justified by capitalist-ideology, capitalist property law, and ultimately the use of force.

As for your example of giving a homeless person (importantly of course without a mental problem – which must be the only reason people can’t save) $100,000, think on this: my partner and I between us earn about $100,000 per year. After we pay tax, rent, car expenses, bills, etc, we have a little for our entertainment/recreation, and not much more. What is so remarkable about a homeless person (by definition already having pretty much nothing), being given $100,000 and spending it in 6 months? What skills and/or resources would a homeless person have to ensure that they saved their little nest egg as you put it? The entire system works against ordinary people, historically and currently, yet you try to blame them because they don’t save, while you justify others taking a share of the wealth they have created. There are many more people in the world like my partner and I, and we are relatively well-off. Many many more people are on lower incomes than us. No doubt you believe savers like you are inherently intellectually and morally superior to non-savers who inherently deserve to be poor. It is absolute rubbish.

It is the system which creates poverty, not individuals. It is not a case of giving people equal money, what is required is bringing what is already social production (but privately owned) under the democratic control of workers i.e. the people who produce the wealth, and those workers deciding who gets what. Then, instead of viewing humans (i.e. workers) and their needs in terms of their cost to the bottom line of capitalists, human need would be viewed as the reason for production.