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When Oligarchs Rule
By Shlomo Maital
From “X”
Oligarchs? A small cabal of wealthy people who run the country, control its wealth, and dominate its leadership?
Let’s run the numbers.
The US has 813 billionaires. One of them, Elon Musk, has net worth of $359.4 billion. Musk gave Trump an estimated $270 million for his campaign. That is less than one tenth of one per cent of his wealth. It bought him control of the US political system and dominance over Trump. Good deal.
Other US billionaires have shifted rapidly from supporting honesty, truth, and fairness, and equality and inclusion, to the opposite, e.g. Zuckerberg and Bezos.
It has happened before in history. In Russia. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, in 1990/91, the Russian leadership distributed shares to the people, as part of a plan to privatize and revitalize the economy. Oligarchs bought up the shares for pennies, using bank loans – and quickly gained control of Russia’s oil, gas, nickel, steel and other industries. Putin co-opted them, terrorized them – and together, they did a deal – Putin became a dictator, for life, in return for letting the oligarchs retain their wealth – and sharing a big share of it (in secret) with Putin.
India has 200 billionaires. India is said to be the world’s biggest democracy. India does hold elections, free and fair, regularly. But india’s Prime Minister Modi has shown autocratic tendencies, and the amount of abysmal poverty and income and wealth inequality in India is enormous.
China has 400 billionaires. China! The country run by the Chinese Communist Party. As in Russia, the Chinese billionaires are on a tight leash. Alibaba’s founder Jack Ma was reined in by China’s dictator, a chunk of his wealth confiscated, and since then he has almost disappeared. The remaining billionaires are compliant and acquiescent.
How come so many billionaires? The system the US built after WWII, the Bretton Woods Agreement, opened the world to the free flow of money, goods, ideas, people, everything. IT created huge wealth – and enormous abysmal poverty for those unable to participate in the party. This led to a wave of migration – and the rise of far right politics in the West, including, now, in Germany.
The Bible calls for a Jubilee Year – in the 50th year, debts are forgiven, and assets return to their original owners. Restart. We desperately need a Jubilee Year in the world. But, even asking billinaires to pay their fair share of income taxes is today impossible – and Trump is about to gift them with a huge tax cut, ballooning the US deficit that is already alarming. The US already pays more in interest payments on its debt than it spends on defense ($1 trillion!).
You could see this coming. Nothing good can ever come out of extremes of wealth and poverty. It seems that the system has to crash before it can be rebuilt.
Financial markets are already very nervous. I advise carefully weighing how a financial collapse might affect your income and savings – and take steps to protect them.
Why Women Live Longer
By Shlomo Maital
Biologists and scientists in general know a lot. But there still remain many mysteries in our universe that are unsolved.
Here is one. In 175 countries out of the 178 that keep demographic records, women outlive men, in life expectancy. In Israel: 84.7 years (women), 80.7 (men). In the US: 80 for women, 76 for men. The four-year gap seems like a small one, but it is actually very large. And it exists for life expectancy at age 5, and also at age 50.
Why do women outlive men? Here are the theories. Women suffer less from heart disease, strokes and cancer. Why? Maybe: They have estrogen, which seems to help the immune system. Women drink less alcohol and smoke less. Women tend to visit doctors more often for checkups.
And — women have two XX chromosomes, men have one X and one Y. The double XX provides some redundancy, in case one X is damaged, and the X chromosome seems related to immunological strength.
At conception, 108 embryos are male compared to every 100 that are female. Why? We don’t know. At birth, 105 males are born to every 100 females. So, more male embryos die before birth than female. More males are born, but they live shorter lives.
There is a major social program that derives from the fact that women live longer. At ages 65, 70 and older, there are many more widows than widowers. Some are blessed with nearby children and grandchildren. And with friends and social groups. But many are not. They are lonely and isolated.
And related to that loneliness: Many elderly women are not in good health. Because — women suffer more morbidity (ill health) than men do, yet live longer. We do not know why. Women have more ill health, yet live longer, because they do not die from their illnesses. Why?
Readers: Any ideas?
G7 vs BRICS: Lose Lose.
By Shlomo Maital
As Donald Trump prepares to be inaugurated as US President on January 20, a rather bleak picture emerges of a wrestling contest between two teams: BRICS and G7. And it will not end well, at least not initially.
BRICS is the group of anti-US anti-West countries: Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa. According to recent figures, their total Gross Domestic Product, measured by the true dollar value of their currency rather than the distorted market value, is $62 trillion.
Facing off against them is the G7: the group of pro-West economies led by the US. Their GDP comes in total to $53 trillion. (Note: China’s GDP, in $, is $33 trillion, more than $4 trillion above that of the US, at $29 trillion).
Together, these two groups command $120 trillion of the world’s $138 trillion GDP.
Trump plans to impose tariffs, including on key trading partners such as Canada and Mexico. They and others will doubtless retaliate. This will reduce the volume of world trade, which since the 1944 Bretton Woods agreement has made many poor countries much wealthier.
We have seen this movie before. In the 1930’s Depression, the US imposed a heavy tariff on imports, the Smoot-Hawley tariff, and its trading partners retaliated. In just a few years, world trade all but disappeared, making the Depression worse for all.
Somehow, humanity seems to have to relive its mistakes again and again, and relearn their consequences. “I can make you poorer, at my expense,” says country A, and country B says, “so can I”.
And they’re both right.
Your 8-Country Chaos Tour
By Shlomo Maital
Caution: This blog is rather long.
Welcome to our First Annual Chaos Tour – first-hand inside look at wild unprecedented chaos in North and East Africa and the Mideast. Please join us as we tour eight chaotic countries, comprising 144.1 million hapless people.
Libya: This nation of 6.9 million rose up against the murderous whacky dictatorship of Muammar Gaddafi, who flees and is caught and killed. NATO airpower aids the rebels. The result: This oil-rich country becomes a non-country, fragmented into cantons led by local militias, part of them Islamic State. Small indicator of chaos: In October 2023, two poorly maintained dams collapse and cause catastrophic floods that smash into the city of Derna, destroying much of the city.
Yemen: A country of 34 million is torn apart by an eight-year conflict between a Saudi-led government military coalition and Houthi rebels supported by Iran. There is widespread hunger, disease, and attacks on civilians, leading to what is said to be the world’s worst humanitarian crisis – until it was superseded by the disaster in Sudan and South Sudan.
Sudan and South Sudan: Sudan, population 48 million and South Sudan, population 11 million, are torn apart by an ongoing power struggle between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces, which began in April 2023 and is causing enormous mass displacement, hunger, and a collapse of health services. More than 11 million people have had to leave their homes, as the crisis adds to what was already a growing humanitarian famine and disaster – “the largest displacement crisis in the world”, affecting 15.8 million people in desperate need of aid.
Iraq: Largely forgotten, the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, 21 years ago, was a huge catastrophe for this country and its 45.5 million people. The invasion has plunged the country into decades of chaos. The BBC reports that “the political system that the Americans instigated, which divides power along ethnic and sectarian lines, offered prodigious chances for corruption.” Amounts stolen from this country with oil resources: Some $320 b. Iraqis face power cuts, theft, bad water and inadequate medical care, in hospitals once thought as good as those in Europe. Children beg in the streets, when Iraq once had one of the best educational systems in the Mideast.
Somalia: This nation of 18.1 million suffers as an ongoing Islamic rebellion by Al-Shabab wreaks havoc in the country; US airstrikes in support of the Somali army are ineffective. Some 650,000 Somalis have fled the conflict. The European Union halted funding for the UN World Food program temporarily, as an investigation revealed widespread theft and diversion of assistance.
Syria: This nation of 23.2 million has suffered under the rule of Hafez Asad and his son Bashaar Asad for 50 years. A London-trained ophthalmologist, Bashar Asad responded to a rebellion about a dozen years ago by dropping barrel bombs on civilians and by using chemical weapons to kill thousands and impose fear and terror. His Damascus prison was infamous for killing and torturing thousands. Rebels have taken over Syria and Asad and family have fled. The Spectator website cautions that chaos could return to Syria once again. Millions of Syrians fled their country, many to Lebanon. The country is now divided between Kurdish enclaves in the North, rebel controlled areas around Irbid, Alawi towns on the coast, and former Asad-controlled territory around Damascus. Like Lebanon, Iraq, and Yemen, Syria is a once unified country now fragmented into cantons controlled by militias.
Lebanon, 5.4 million people, once the jewel of the Mideast, financial capital where oil-rich sheikhs came to spend the summer in the cool foothills of Lebanon. An enormous disastrous explosion of nitrate fertilizer in Lebanon’s port in 2020 killed 218 and injured 7,000. Hezbollah, an Iranian proxy, has dragged once-peaceful Lebanon into a disastrous conflict with Israel, bringing mass destruction. Lebanon has no real government, nor a President, and is bankrupt; many educated Lebanese have migrated.
And then, there’s Gaza.
True, there is chaos elsewhere in the world. But it pales in comparison to what we see in Gaza and the other eight North and East Africa and Mideast countries.
My word count is already bordering on illegal. So – can you find common sources for this chaos? Can you see ways to resolve it? And do you perceive why the West has caused more chaos than helped resolve it? Finally – Is there a way to help feed starving people in these countries, when their humanitarian needs surpass the resources available to meet them?
Global Chaos – Without Precedent. Why?
By Shlomo Maital
All this has happened in just a month:
Nov. 5 Trump-led Republicans win the US Presidency, House and Senate majority. Trump nominees seek to overturn the existing order. Expect chaos.
Nov. 6. BERLIN — Germany’s governing coalition collapsed Wednesday, as Chancellor Olaf Scholz fired his finance minister and announced a confidence vote that is widely expected to fail and to pave the way to early elections in the spring.
Dec 4 (Reuters) – Romanians vote in a presidential election runoff on Sunday that could see Calin Georgescu, a far-right critic of NATO, defeat pro-European centrist Elena Lasconi, an outcome that might isolate Romania in the West and erode its support for Ukraine.
Dec. 5 In an event unprecedented in the last 60 years, the French National Assembly approved a motion of censure against Michel Barnier’s government on Wednesday, which has only been in office for three months. This motion, initiated by the radical left, received crucial support from Marine Le Pen’s National Front party, triggering a major political crisis. French Prime Minister Michel Barnier has resigned. President Macro will try to cobble together a new government, a Mission Impossible given the split between far right and far left in the French Parliament.
Dec. 5. South Korea’s president, Yoon Suk Yeol, on Tuesday declared martial law, blasting the opposition as “anti-state forces” threatening the country’s democracy. The unexpected move from Yoon, marking the first time martial law has been declared in South Korea in more than four decades, alarmed the US and other allies. Six hours later he backed down, lifting the order in the face of united opposition.
Dec. 5 Brussels –Violence returns to the streets of Tbilisi following the official announcement by the ruling Georgian Dream party to stop the process of joining the European Union, leading to thousands of citizens pouring into the capital to protest what they see as the country sliding toward the Russian orbit. While tensions resurfaced after seemingly subsiding in recent weeks, the European Parliament in Strasbourg recognized as illegitimate last month’s elections and called on Georgian authorities to repeat the vote
…Shall I go on?
Is there a short clear explanation for this chaos? There is. Migration leads to backlash among those opposing it and who perceive they are hurt by it. Leading to far-right electoral gains. Autocratic leaders riding a wave of right-wing popularity seek to sow chaos in their neighbors, to overturn democratic forces.
This could have been prevented, had the obscene gap between very rich, rich, and poor within countries and among countries been addressed properly — helping migrants in their home countries, and low-wage workers domestically.
Liberals might say, who knew?
It was handwriting on the wall.
Getting to the Bottom of Things With 7 Why’s
By Shlomo Maital
There is a method for getting to the bottom of sticky problems. It’s called the method of the seven why’s. It is discovered and rediscovered by six-year-olds – many parents don’t have the patience to get beyond the first four!
Ask why? Get an answer. The answer raises questions. Ask why again, digging deeper. Answer. Why? Answer…. Few sticky problems can endure the seventh why? Without revealing an insightful answer.
Why is the world in such a horrendous mess? Seven why’s. Here goes. That was the first.
Because – of globalization.
Why? Because globalization generated massive wealth, 2,781 billionaires, to be precise.
Why did globalization create billionaires? (#3) By freeing the flow of capital, goods and information, it became possible to scale up (blitzscale, it is called) globally.
Why is this a problem? (#4). Because countries competed for capital by slashing taxes, luring billionaires’ money. Ireland: prime example.
Why are low taxes a problem? (#5) The huge wealth created by globalization could have been shared with the billions of people left behind, through the tax system. But—tax cuts and the billionaires’ purchase of political influence stymied it. (cf. Elon Musk’s massive gift to Trump’s PAC).
Why is the billionaires’ support of far-right politicians and their promised tax cuts such a problem – and such a conundrum? (#6) Because those whom this mess hurts most, low-wage working people, are precisely the ones voting for the far-right politicians and their billionaire backers. (cf. Zuckerberg’s pilgrimate to Mara Lago!).
Why do the low-wage working class people vote for those who harm them? (#7) Because the elitist centre-left, Harvard grads, ignored and denigrated them, impoverished them by exporting factories to China; their votes are protests, and the psychic benefit they gain from bashing the elite Ivy grads is what really matters most.
Every step in this seven-step chain of reasoning could be wrong. Any one wrong answer invalidates the whole syllogism.
So – where did I get it wrong?
Bernie Knows
By Shlomo Maital
I am as tired as you all, of reading the Democrats’ weary post-mortems of why they lost decisively. This blog is the last about this topic, quoting someone who gets it.
Senator Bernie Sanders, Vermont, former mayor of Burlington.
Why are the Democrats surprised that the working class did not support them? He asks. When — for years, the Democrats have not supported the working class. He said this to Michael Barbaro, on the New York Times” The Daily podcast.
Go back to the Clinton administration, when NAFTA shipped America’s factories to Mexico and Canada, $5 an hour labor rather than $25, and free trade brought a flood of cheap Chinese goods into the US, throwing many Midwest factory workers out of a job.
What specifically did the Dems offer working people in this election? Did they propose $18/hr. minimum wage legislation? Uh, no. National health care for all? No. Support for day care? No. Make groceries more affordable? Uh uh.
Virtually every ethnic, racial, and demographic group voted in the majority for Trump. And for the first time in a long time, the Republicans won the majority of votes for President. The Dems warned Trump would bash democracy. Well, he will, and has. But most Americans say, hold on. What did democracy do for me in the past 20 years? Put power in the hands of the educated elites, while I was shut out of a college education, unable to afford the tuition or the steep interest rates on student loans.
Unless the Dems (who spent a billion dollars in ads in the three blue-wall states, Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, ineffectively) start listening to working Americans, and speaking to them in their language, look for J.D. Vance to become President in 2028.
Yikes.
The Election: Educated Women vs. Uneducated Men
By Shlomo Maital
Einstein said famously, “simplify as much as possible…but not more so.”
This coming Tuesday, voters choose between Trump and Harris.
How will they choose?
According to the New York Times: a recent poll gives the answer. Educated women favor Harris by 43 points (!) over men without college education, who favor Trump. Since half of all voters are women (and women vote more than men), looks like a squeaker for Harris. Some 64% of US men do not have a college degree. For women – over 40% have college degrees, up from 4% (!) in 1940.
But this is truly sad. Men without college education have been left behind and left out in America. Whose fault? Partly the Dems. They gave away their manufacturing jobs to China, under Clinton. But partly the men themselves. It’s not that hard to get into college… many have battled into community colleges, done well and gone on to university, sometimes with partial scholarships and federal assistance.
But, it’s easy for this left-out group to blame the Dems and the system and democracy and the immigrants and… everybody else. Trump sensed this back in 2014 and plays on it incessantly.
It is a terrible shame, an iniquity, that the election is settled on this basis. And much worse – that a President may be elected by those who eschew education, voting for one who panders to ignorance.
On the Nov. 5 Election
By Shlomo Maital
David French is a near life-long Republican, person of faith, Christian, who writes in today’s on-line New York Times about his “Nine Years of Being Never Trump”.
He makes a simple point. I find it worth repeating. As an Israeli, I am reluctant to write about US politics and elections. But French’s insight applies to my own country – and virtually every democratic country.
Basically: When you vote, what is the question?
Is it, hmmm, whom do I hate? Trump hates the Democrats. They are the enemy within. Maybe if he is elected he will sic the US military on them, arrest them all. If you hate Democrats, you must love Republicans. All of them. Including the deranged. And vote for them.
But maybe the question is, whom do I love? Do you love your country, and the people who live in it? Do you love the people of the world, including the poor, the ill, the downtrodden, the oppressed – and are willing to share you incredible good fortune with them? If so, vote for those who share your value.
I belong to a Conservative congregation here in Israel. Our name is drawn from the Bible precept, love thy neighbor as thyself. We try to practice it. It works pretty well. But, I admit, in my country, it is having a rather hard time at present. Hard to love those who want to kill you, even if they are neighbors.
Whom do you hate? Or – whom do you love? I think this is a simple guide to how to vote. Love trumps hate. Always. On Nov. 5, too.
What Unites America? Sunday Night Football
By Shlomo Maital
Drew Esocoff
Americans are disunited – perhaps, more than ever, since the Civil War.
A 2017 poll found this: “Seven in 10 Americans say the nation’s political divisions are at least as big as during the Vietnam War, according to a new poll, which also finds nearly 6 in 10 saying Donald Trump’s presidency is making the U.S. political system more dysfunctional. The Washington Post-University of Maryland poll — conducted nine months into Trump’s tumultuous presidency — reveals a starkly pessimistic view of U.S. politics, widespread distrust of the nation’s political leaders and their ability to compromise, and an erosion of pride in the way democracy works in America.”
Since then, it’s gotten worse. E.g., Jan. 6. So, what does unite America?
Football! Specifically, Sunday Night Football on NBC TV.
Jody Rosen explains why on the podcast The Daily (NYT), reading his Sunday NYT essay “How an Ordinary Sunday Night Football Game Turns Into the Most Spectacular Thing on TV”.
Tune in to the game, to tune out the world, is the slogan.
NBC pays the NFL $3 billion for the rights. It loses money. Ad revenue doesn’t pay for the huge costs – even though a 30 second commercial costs over $800,000! But it’s worth it. TV viewing is plummeting, yet ratings for the Sunday night football game (SNF) on TV are soaring.
Who watches SNF? Well – pretty much everyone. Blacks, white Americans, women, Hispanics, young, middle-aged, old.
Why?
Rosen describes someone few have heard of – the legendary director Drew Esocoff. Each week, during the 18 week regular season, plus the playoffs, a convoy of a dozen or so huge trucks travels to the city that hosts the game – and goes to work. Esocoff choreographs 200 screens, cameras, sound men, play-by-play, commentators… all this, to tell a story, for a violent game that has players injured every game – sometimes seriously. (A Buffalo Bills player had his heart stopped, after a hard tackle, and was revived by speedy medical attention; he has resumed play since).
I am a regular viewer. As a part-time journalist and blogger, I am amazed at how Esocoff tells a gripping story each game – shots of jubilation, heartbreak, near misses, frustration, anger, mingling crowd views, players, referees. Some games are gripping to the end, but many are one-sided, challenging the commentators and producer to maintain the viewer interest.
SNF is the most-watched program on television, and has been every year, for years. SNF averaged 18.7 million TV viewers in 2022 ranking as primetime’s #1 TV show for an unprecedented 12th consecutive year. In Sept. 2023, Esocoff began his 18th season directing SNF.
If football unites Americans, perhaps politics can learn from football. Football has clear rules. Those rules are enforced with skill (video replays make certain of this). Bad behavior is penalized. Performance is well compensated. The system finds those with skill, no matter what their race, background or status. (Caveat: There is a paucity of Black coaches).
And Esocoff? We can learn from him too. DIE. Document. Inform. Entertain. He and play-by-play announcer Mike Tiriko follow this mantra brilliantly. Facts. Recount them. Never bore, but entertain. Find the human interest. Tell stories for 3 hours weekly.
Football unites America. Politics disunites America. Politicians — learn from football.
TIMnovate 