#davos

[reality-detective]

Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts, sends a powerful message to the unelected ‘elites’ in Davos. 🤔

BRAVO‼️👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻 Well Said‼️👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻

#pay attention #educate yourselves #educate yourself #knowledge is power #reeducate yourself #reeducate yourselves #think about it #think for yourselves #think for yourself #do your homework #do some research #do your own research #ask yourself questions #question everything #news #wef #davos

[odinsblog]

More than 250 billionaires and millionaires are demanding that the political elite meeting for the World Economic Forum in Davos introduce wealth taxes to help pay for better public services around the world.

“Our request is simple: we ask you to tax us, the very richest in society,” the wealthy people said in an open letter to world leaders. “This will not fundamentally alter our standard of living, nor deprive our children, nor harm our nations’ economic growth. But it will turn extreme and unproductive private wealth into an investment for our common democratic future.”

The rich signatories from 17 countries include Disney heir Abigail Disney; Brian Cox who played fictional billionaire Logan Roy in Succession; actor and screenwriter Simon Pegg; and Valerie Rockefeller, an heir to the US dynasty.

“We are also the people who benefit most from the status quo,” they said in a letter titled Proud to Pay, which they will attempt to deliver to world leaders gathered in Davos in Switzerland on Wednesday. “But inequality has reached a tipping point, and its cost to our economic, societal and ecological stability risk is severe – and growing every day. In short, we need action now.”

(continue reading)

#politics #wealth tax #inequality #davos #tax the rich #davos 2024 #brian cox #abigail disney #valerie rockefeller #world economic forum #proud to pay

[jozor-johai]

some of my favorite "evidence" for the Seven:

Davos, ardent worshipper of the seven, who stayed true in the face of a false god, is miraculously saved from drowning during the Blackwater and then, once he's stranded on a remote rock, he prays to the Mother for salvation and is delivered a ship.

Sandor, too, has a certain reverence for the Faith in him, even if he shows it in a blasphemous way, naming his horse Stranger; Sandor, too, is (probably) saved by the faith in exchange for a new life of devotion, doing peaceful work of the kind that the Hound was never allowed to do

this is the kind of thing I say when people tell me the Seven aren't real. Should we imagine that this is any less real than Melisandre or Thoros attributing her powers to "R'hllor" ?

#jozor thoughts #asoiaf meta #sandor clegane my no.1 babygirl #davos #valyrianscrolls

[mostlysignssomeportents]

The super-rich got that way through monopolies

Catch me in Miami! I'll be at Books and Books in Coral Gables on Jan 22 at 8PM.

Just in time for Davos, here's 'Taken, not earned: How monopolists drive the world’s power and wealth divide," a report from a coalition of international tax justice and anti-corporate activist groups:

https://www.balancedeconomy.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/Davos-Taken-not-Earned-full-Report-2024-FINAL.pdf

The rise of monopolies over the past 40 years came about as the result of specific, deliberate policy choices. As the report documents, the wealthiest people in America funneled a fortune into neutering antitrust enforcement, through the "consumer welfare" doctrine.

This is an economic theory that equates monopolies with efficiency: "If everyone is buying the same things from the same store, that tells you the store is doing something right, not something criminal." 40 years ago, and ever since, the wealthy have funded think-tanks, university programs and even "continuing education" programs for federal judges to push this line:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/08/13/post-bork-era/#manne-down

They didn't do this for ideological reasons – they were chasing material goals. Monopolies produce vast profits, and those profits produce vast wealth. The rise and rise of the super rich cannot be decoupled from the rise and rise of monopolies.

If you're new to this, you might think that "monopoly" only refers to a sector in which there is only one seller. But that's not what economists mean when they talk about monopolies and monopolization: for them, a monopoly is a company with power. Economists who talk about monopolies mean companies that "can act independently without needing to consider the responses of competitors, customers, workers, or even governments."

One way to measure that power is through markups ("the difference between the selling price of goods or services and their cost"). Very large companies in concentrated industries have very high markups, and they're getting higher. From 2017-22, the 20 largest companies in the world had average markups of 50%. The 100 largest companies average 43%. The smallest half of companies get average markups of 25%.

Those markups rose steeply during the covid lockdowns – and so did the wealth of the billionaires who own them. Tech billionaires – Bezos, Brin and Page, Gates and Ballmer – all made their fortunes from monopolies. Warren Buffet is a proud monopolist who says "the single most important decision in evaluating a business is pricing power… if you have to have a prayer session before raising the price by 10 percent, then you’ve got a terrible business."

We are living in the age of the monopoly. In the 1930s, the top 0.1% of US companies accounted for less than half of America's GDP. Today, it's 90%. And it's accelerating, with global mergers climbing from 2,676 in 1985 to 62,000 in 2021.

Monopoly's cheerleaders claim that these numbers vindicate them. Monopolies are so efficient that everyone wants to create them. Those efficiencies can be seen in the markups monopolies can charge, and the profits they can make. If a monopoly has a 50% markup, that's just the "efficiency of scale."

But what is the actual shape of this "efficiency?" How is it manifest? The report's authors answer this with one word: power.

Monopolists have the power "to extract wealth from, to restrict the freedoms of, and to manipulate or steer the vastly larger numbers of losers." They establish themselves as gatekeepers and create chokepoints that they can use to raise prices paid by their customers and lower the payout to their suppliers:

https://chokepointcapitalism.com/

These chokepoints let monopolies usurp "one of the ultimate prerogatives of state power: taxation." Amazon sellers pay a 51% tax to sell on the platform. App Store suppliers pay a 30% tax on every dollar they make with their apps. That translates into higher costs. Consider a good that costs $10 to make: the bottom 50% of companies (by size) would charge $12.50 for that product on average. The largest companies would charge $15. Thus monopolies don't just make their owners richer – they make everyone else poorer, too.

This power to set prices is behind the greedflation (or, more politely, "seller's inflation"). The CEOs of the largest companies in the world keep getting on investor calls and bragging about this:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/11/price-over-volume/#pepsi-pricing-power

The food system is incredibly monopolistic. The Cargill family own the largest commodity trader in the world, which is how they built up a family fortune worth $43b. Cargill is one of the "ABCD" companies ("Archer Daniels Midland, Bunge, Cargill and Louis Dreyfus") that control the world's food supply, and they tripled their profits during the lockdown.

Monopolies gouge everyone – even governments. Pfizer charged the NHS £18-22/shot for vaccines that cost £5/shot to make. They took the British government for £2bn – that's enough to pay last year's pay hike for NHS nurses, six times over,

But monopolies also abuse their suppliers, especially their employees. All over the world, competition authorities are uncovering "wage fixing" and "no poaching" agreements among large firms, who collude to put a cap on what workers in their sector can earn. Unions report workers having their pay determined by algorithms. Bosses lock employees in with noncompetes and huge repayment bills for "training":

https://pluralistic.net/2022/08/04/its-a-trap/#a-little-on-the-nose

Monopolies corrupt our governments. Companies with huge markups can spend some of that money on lobbying. The 20 largest companies in the world spend more than €155m/year lobbying in the US and alone, not counting the money they spend on industry associations and other cutouts that lobby on their behalf. Big Tech leads the pack on lobbying, accounting for 82% of EU lobbying spending and 58% of US lobbying.

One key monopoly lobbying priority is blocking climate action, from Apple lobbying against right-to-repair, which creates vast mountains of e-waste, to energy monopolist lobbying against renewables. And energy companies are getting more monopolistic, with Exxonmobil spending $65b to buy Pioneer and Chevron spending $60b to buy Hess. Many of the world's richest people are fossil fuel monopolists, like Charles and Julia Koch, the 18th and 19th richest people on the Forbes list. They spend fortunes on climate denial.

When people talk about the climate impact of billionaires, they tend to focus on the carbon footprints of their mansions and private jets, but the true environmental cost of the ultra rich comes from the anti-renewables, pro-emissions lobbying they buy with their monopoly winnings.

The good news is that the tide is turning on monopolies. A coalition of "businesses, workers, farmers, consumers and other civil society groups" have created a "remarkably successful anti-monopoly movement." The past three years saw more regulatory action on corporate mergers, price-gouging, predatory pricing, labor abuses and other evils of monopoly than we got in the past 40 years.

The business press – cheerleaders for monopoly – keep running editorials claiming that enforcers like Lina Khan are getting nothing done. Sure, WSJ, Khan's getting nothing done – that's why you ran 80 editorial about her:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/14/making-good-trouble/#the-peoples-champion

(Khan's winning like crazy. Just last month she killed four megamergers:)

https://www.thesling.org/the-ftc-just-blocked-four-mergers-in-a-month-heres-how-its-latest-win-fits-into-the-broader-campaign-to-revive-antitrust/

The EU and UK are taking actions that would have been unimaginable just a few years ago. Canada is finally set to get a real competition law, with the Trudeau government promising to add an "abuse of dominance" rule to Canada's antitrust system.

Even more exciting are the moves in the global south. In South Africa, "competition law contains some of the most progressive ideas of all":

It actively seeks to create greater economic participation, particularly for ‘historically disadvantaged persons’ as part of its public interest considerations in merger decisions.

Balzac wrote, "Behind every great fortune there is a crime." Chances are, the rapsheet includes an antitrust violation. Getting rid of monopolies won't get rid of all the billionaires, but it'll certainly get rid of a hell of a lot of them.

I'm Kickstarting the audiobook for The Bezzle, the sequel to Red Team Blues, narrated by @wilwheaton! You can pre-order the audiobook and ebook, DRM free, as well as the hardcover, signed or unsigned. There's also bundles with Red Team Blues in ebook, audio or paperback.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/17/monopolies-produce-billionaires/#inequality-corruption-climate-poverty-sweatshops

#billionaires #wef #climate #monopoly #world economic forum #competition #antitrust #consumer welfare #inequality #corruption #davos #guillotine watch

[drawitblargit]

"Melisandre had thrown back her cowl and shrugged out of the smothering robe. Beneath, she was naked, and huge with child. Swollen breasts hung heavy against her chest, and her belly bulged as if near to bursting. "Gods preserve us," he whispered, and heard her answering laugh, deep and throaty. Her eyes were hot coals, and the sweat that dappled her skin seemed to glow with a light of its own. Melisandre shone."

-A Clash of Kings, Davos II

#asoiaf #a song of ice and fire #a clash of kings #melisandre #melisandre of asshai #davos #davos seaworth #asoiaf art #game of thrones

[ireton]

Rebel News Grills Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla About His Ineffective And Unsafe mRNA Shots Why did

#Pfizer #Albert Bourla #Rebel News #WEF #Davos #Davos 2023

[kevinfeiges]

Sacha Dhawan as Davos IRON FIST SEASON 1 (2017), created by Scott Buck

#marveledit #marvel tv #tvedit #ironfistedit #MCU #Iron Fist #Sacha Dhawan #Davos #marvelcharacter8 #**

[stavosmissionary]

🧅davos_s Follow being married to yandere!his Grace King Stannis Baratheon would include: -him chopping your fingers off when you displease him -him threatening to behead you every two hours -him being possessive over you -putting you in jail when you disagree with his policies -foreplay where he threatens to cut your tongue off and you tell him it is his tongue to do with as he pleases -half of your family dying in his service 🍑kingrenly Follow what the fuck

#baratheonblogging #davos #renly #ask to tag #this is all in good fun btw

[nobeerreviews]

Please don’t expect me to always be good and kind and loving. There are times when I will be cold and thoughtless and hard to understand.

-- Sylvia Plath

(Davos, Switzerland)

#snow #cold #loving #thoughtless #sylvia plath #travel photography #davos #switzerland #quote #winter

[liamtwatter]

same as Hamilton and Vettel... at least for private jets and bikes

4) millionaires having the best food, want you to have insects .. 5) etc etc

#f1 #formula1 #formula one #formula 1 #formulaone #davos #ferrari #maxverstappen #redbull #max verstappen #charlers leclerc #carlos sainz #fernando alonso #red bull #lando norris #daniel ricciardo #george rusell #oscar piastri #mclaren #monza #monaco #imola #silverstone

[girlactionfigure]

#Israel #President Herzog #Michael Dell #CEO Dell Technologies #Davos #Birthday Kfir Bibas #October 7 #BringThemHomeNow #kidnappedbyHamas

[vintagepromotions]

Travel poster for the Parsenn ski area in Davos, Switzerland (c. 1950). Artwork by Otto Glaser.

#vintage poster #vintage travel poster #1950s #Parsenn #Davos #Switzerland #Otto Glaser #swiss #skiing #winter #holiday #travel #tourism #sunglasses #snow

[grits-galraisedinthesouth]

"A Bad Night for Davos"

Trump introduced Vivek Ramaswamy in NH

DJT: The globalists worst nightmare

There is something very wrong w/Team DeSantis

Matt Kim: Monday is going to be WILD!!! Showed up to Iowa on a whim. Blind faith. No plan. Just to experience the political process for the first time in my life. See the truth. Team Trump heard about what happened at the DeSantis event to me and offered me full access to their campaign and an opportunity to ride with their press corp to the afternoon President Trump’s events.  They’re going to let me stream, record and get the real behind the scenes footage. You never know what can happen if you don’t take that chance. Truly humbled by the experience. Thank you all who have supported me, encouraged me, shared my content, ideas and views. Without you, this is not possible. Without you, I would not have the opportunity of a lifetime. To meet President Trump face to face. Thank you! Seriously. Love y’all!

#republican primary #Trump 2024 #vivek ramaswamy #Dishonest DeSantis #Trump Train #Trump Landslide #larry kudlow #mark simone #Davos #lawfare

[chawsl]

#davos meeting #davos #billionaires #created the problems

[dadsinsuits]

Dino Patti Djalal

#suitdaddy #suiteddaddy #suit and tie #suited daddy #men in suits #daddy #suited grandpa #suitedman #suit daddy #suitfetish #three piece suit #davos #world economic forum #suited men #buisness suit #suited man #suitedmen #Indonesian man #Indonesian men #Dino Patti Djalal

[ireton]

What did he just say ?

This is my message to the globalists at the house of Davos & Company “The Great Reset”: “You look upon the world through your ideological worldview. You don’t see people, you see return on investment. You impose your ideological worldview on society, which has destroyed peoples livelihood, and in return for their compliance you offer a promise of “freedom and protection” (as if people have a choice) and punish those who do not comply, be it by inventing a crisis, a war, a pandemic… But fear not, for the media have your back and will advocate your message, be it by censorship or criminalising anyone who disagrees with your narrative. I get it, you have this ideological worldview because you were born without a conscience and a soul. You’re an “echo chamber” like your predecessors. You’re so far removed from nature you need artificial intelligence to experience life.”

#WEC #World Economic Forum #GREAT RESET #NWO #New World Order #DAVOS