Life and Spirituality

The Fairy Tale Art of Carl Larsson D id you hear that Jolly old grandma was developing bags under her eyes and she worried and made a fuss that her bags were getting larger and it would be her end. At the same time cancers were developing on her left, right and center and expanding slowly but surely, yet grandma worried no end about the bags under her eyes and had little attention left for the cancers, that one day would engulf her and put an end to her worries in the not too distant future. Is our lovely dear old earth, or the humans that walk upon it, behaving like that grandma? It is making a huge hue and cry about carbon emissions that not all agree are a serious problem, some even mentioning that it is good for plants and the planet as a whole and that stronger greenhouse gases such as water vapor are a necessity for the planet and have been around for as long as life has in proportions that are hugely larger so that perhaps not even the feedback loops of NASA can de

A Brief Introduction to the Economics of Greed and Exploitation S ome of the posts in this blog have been about economic inequalities and its tragic consequences - such as hunger, homelessness and early mortality - that seems to be increasing in some of the leading capitalistic societies of the world. The wealth of the world has become concentrated in fewer and fewer hands. It has given rise to things such as the occupy movement and a demand for a return to communism. However communism and equality created by it have not worked since some amount of economic diversity and inequality are natural and required just as it is with the size of trees in a forest. At the same time, given the opportunity, humans can become extremely exploitative leading to unsustainable inequalities. The new revised version of the book – A brief Introduction to the Economics of Greed and Exploitation – suggests simple methods to control extreme economic inequalities in modern capitalism i.e easy and p

Corporate Taxes: Rule of Ninety I t is neither natural nor practical to have an equality of wealth and income for all in any society as perhaps some idealistic philosophers  may dream of at times. It is inequalities that motivate humans to work and also because inequality within limits is a natural thing. However, massive inequalities in any society are equally unnatural and damaging. Whereas it is natural for trees in a forest to be of different heights, it is not natural to have a few trees that are a million feet tall either. Unfortunately something like that has happened as regards human wealth and income distribution is concerned and these inequalities have been growing in recent decades. An earlier article described how less than one hundred humans on the planet possess a wealth equal to half of the seven billion humans on the planet, with the rest being owned by a very small percentage All this takes place in the backdrop of societies where huge numbers of humans

Image source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Poor_and_rich_in_Thailand.JPG W e know from history that in the past, much of the world’s wealth was held by a few rich and powerful kings and emperors. Has that changed now? Have you wondered how the world’s wealth is distributed in the new modern democratic age where we have rule of the people, by the people for the people. It seems that the emperors may not have gone away. They have perhaps just changed their style and address. Nevertheless as human civilisation advanced inequalities on the whole reduced or moved up and down over the centuries, then something dramatic happened around thirty years ago in 1985, inequalities began to rise again at ever faster rates. See here for precise scholarly data on this and simple ways to fix it. According to a report in the guardian,  The extent to which so much global wealth has become corralled by a virtual handful of the so-called 'global elite' is exposed in a n

Rule of 10, 12 or 20 O ften we hear talk of raising the minimum wage in different economies of the world. The people who ask for this are those who have got trapped  into an exploitative economy where a few control most of the wealth and raise the minimum wage of the poor from time to time as feudal lords used to raise the salary of their servants and slaves from time to time. What needs to be addressed instead are income inequalities but those can be done by controlling the maximum wage not just the minimum one. Raising minimum wages could cause maximum wages to rise faster increasing inequalities further and inflation could erode the value of minimum wage even if increased as has happened in many countries. One might say that raising minimum wage could reduce inequality. but  that is a poor way to go about it. There is a far better way that has something to do with a ratio as explained next. It is not an advanced concept. Elementary school children learn about it in arith