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Mind the Gap

Income Inequality is a Problem

When we think of income inequality, we often think of gender or racial disparity. These are barely the surface problems. While it's true that women and minorities earn less in the workplace than their white male counterparts, over 99% of the world earns less than %50 of the total new earnings available. In fact, it's worse than that, only 3 households earn more than %40 of all of the new income available to the whole world!

The DeBeers Effect

Two things affect perceived value for most things, supply and demand. Once a demand is established, the entity controlling the supply controls the market. DeBeers realized this very early on with diamonds. Diamonds are neither particularly rare, nor particularly aesthetically unique. There are hundreds of gems more colorful, with more brilliance, more unique, and overall nicer than diamonds in many ways. Knowing that they had a virtually unlimited supply at near zero price, DeBeers bought up hundreds of billions of gem quality diamonds and stowed them away in safes to create a false scarcity. Leveraging this scarcity, they proceeded to run ads touting "A diamond is forever" and "If your love is forever you'll get her the forever stone". The price of the diamond was touted as reasonable because it would last a lifetime (nevermind that gold, silver, garnet ... really every stone and metal would also last many generations). Once they controlled the supply and the price, then created the demand, their false scarcity allowed them to completely dominate the market.

The Billionaire Effect

The 1%, are controlling money the way DeBeers controlled diamonds. Income disparity is a false scarcity! let's repeat that for the people in the back ...

INCOME DISPARITY IS A FALSE SCARCITY!

There is plenty of money. There is plenty of food. There is plenty of housing. The ONLY reason to earn more than a billion dollars a week is to control access to money in general. Why would someone want people to be poor and struggling? Unfortunately the simple answer to that is control. If people are hungry, struggling to keep a home, and depressed, they have been weakened and are easily controlled. ![shackled.jpg](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmSaqfwovD8J4smkLqpAmS9XDgK4apvX1rPabBc6zNJ5eD/shackled.jpg) If people are kept in poverty they will buy in to the idea that "hard work" leads to success. They will give up their personal time, family time, social time, and even their health to try to reach the level of "hard work" that creates a billionaire. While this was possible in bygone days, even as recently as the 1980's when typical (and I say typical not "average" because averages are skewed) wages were well above minimum, it is not achievable today as the price of education and housing leaves most people with insurmountable debt.

Socialism

Before I begin with this topic, I should clarify the meaning of "Socialism". Often we are told North Korea, the USSR, China, and Nazi Germany were "Socialist" regimes. Let's get this straight from the onset, NONE OF THOSE ARE EXAMPLES OF SOCIALISM! Every so called "Socialist" failure was a Fascist Dictatorship with Nationalist political ideals that touted the "superior" citizens as better than the rest of the world, including their own poor. An effective society (that being a socially cooperative community) within a civilized (that being governed with a set of rules supporting social constructs and the general welfare) nation (that being an area bounded with borders that shares a similar political governance) TAKES CARE OF ALL OF ITS PEOPLE!

A Solution

Living Wage

A minimum living wage must be set at a level where one person working full-time can support the minimum basic needs of that person including *Safe and healthy housing *Power for heat and cooking *Food for nutrition *Clothing for protection and modesty *Necessary and preventive medical care *Transportation *Reasonable savings This wage must NOT be time bound, but rather re-assessed every 6 months (because that is the length of a housing lease). After the minimum wage is established for ALL employers, a separate requirement should be set for corporations requiring that the lowest paid employees make no less than 1/300 the annual pay of the highest paid executives based on a full time work week, or receive a profit share equal to their individual contribution to the profit. In order to prevent abuse of this provision, the top paid executives income should be considered to include any profit share or dividends for stock in the company. Please tell me what you think about the problem of income disparity and if you even think there is a problem ... As always, I Steem for my kids ![DQmSATX3k1zuK9N1EVBS58w4h6m19NeyceAb5ccsyQHaGJD_1680x8400.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmatwGtroevydPGqkjh4U6YWGka8VTF7T9Ad4QAR8sYwfk/DQmSATX3k1zuK9N1EVBS58w4h6m19NeyceAb5ccsyQHaGJD_1680x8400.png) ![comment.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmToquu3wrnSS19j1qEoEfCBX5h9YH9GSCUNorukgvZBGG/comment.png)![upvote.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmZm3nAotW3sTJdcEjLgXyQbE81fSVSJS4uJ7Teyp6fb2r/upvote.png)