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Banned
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I've highlighted in bold characters, the motivation behind our government "leaders" and some religious broadcasting "personalities" efforts to disparage Mr, Chavez, what he has been doing in Venezuela, and why he has risen to, and maintained authority in his country.
It's the "dirty li'l secret" that the US State Department report, below, let slip out, but that our president, does not want us to pay attention to....heaven fucking forbid, we should ever WTFU, and tell our president to STFU !
Quote:
http://www.state.gov/outofdate/bgn/v/57234.htm
Venezuela (11/05)
For the most current version of this Note, see Background Notes A-Z.
....ECONOMY
....Central Bank-held international reserves increased from U.S.$21.39 billion in January to U.S. $23.91 billion in November 2004, after growing U.S. $6.6 billion in 2003. There are three primary reasons that reserves did not increase more, even though oil prices averaged about $6.50 (25%) more per barrel in 2004 than in 2003. State oil corporation PDVSA bought back U.S. $2.5 billion in external debt in August 2004; CADIVI was on track to liquidate more than U.S. $12 billion in 2004 (approximately 2.7 times as much as in 2003); and the government diverted, amid great controversy, at least U.S. $2.0 billion to a new Social Development Fund run by PDVSA.
Venezuelan sovereign debt, both internal and external, has been increasing, but in 2004 the government succeeded in extending its debt profile and reducing near-term debt service. While Venezuela’s debt/GDP ratio is low by Latin American standards, it has increased in recent years. Venezuela’s Emerging Markets Bond Index investment risk rating, at 398 basis points, dropped somewhat over 2004, but remained higher than all countries in the region except Argentina.
There is considerable income inequality. The Gini coefficient was 0.618 during 2003. According to private sources, the percentages of poor and extremely poor among Venezuelan population were 74.6% and 39.3%, respectively, in 2003. These high ratios are due primarily to lower real wages earned by employees, and high rates of un- and underemployment......
http://www.state.gov/outofdate/bgn/v/73479.htm
Venezuela (03/06)
....ECONOMY
....Central Bank-held international reserves increased to U.S.$30.4 billion at the end of 2005. The reserves would have been higher, but the BCV transferred $6 billion to the National Development Fund (FONDEN) during the last quarter 2005, as directed by the Central Bank Law (July 2005). The level of international reserves is expected to decrease during 2006 because the Central Bank Law established that state-owned oil company PDVSA will only transfer the foreign exchange earnings needed for its domestic expenses, taxes, royalties, and dividends to the BCV, and would transfer the rest to FONDEN.
Venezuelan sovereign debt, both domestic and foreign, has been increasing. The government announced plans to prepay some of its most expensive foreign debt and to extend the debt profile of the domestic debt, reducing near-term debt service. Despite increases in domestic and foreign debt, Venezuela’s debt/GDP ratio is low by Latin American standards. Venezuela’s Emerging Markets Bond Index investment risk rating, at 213 basis points, dropped somewhat over 2005, but remained higher than all countries in the region except Argentina and Brazil.
There is considerable income inequality. The Gini coefficient was 0.514 during 2005. According to private sources, the percentages of poor and extremely poor among Venezuelan population were 67% and 35%, respectively, in 2005. These high ratios are due primarily to lower real wages earned by employees, and high rates of un- and underemployment.
http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/35766.htm
Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs
February 2007
.......Central Bank-held international reserves increased to over U.S.$36 billion at the end of 2006. The reserves would have been higher, but the BCV transferred $6 billion to the National Development Fund (FONDEN) during the last quarter 2005, as directed by the Central Bank Law (July 2005) and an additional $4.3 billion in 2006. The level of international reserves is expected to decrease during 2007 after additional transfers of foreign reserves to FONDEN and because the Central Bank Law established that state-owned oil company PDVSA will only transfer the foreign exchange earnings needed for its domestic expenses, taxes, royalties, and dividends to the BCV, and would transfer the rest to FONDEN.
Venezuelan sovereign debt, both domestic and foreign, has decreased in recent years in both absolute terms and as a percentage of GDP. Venezuela's external debt/GDP ratio of approximately 16% is low by Latin American standards. Venezuela's Emerging Markets Bond Index investment risk rating, at 202 basis points, dropped somewhat over 2005, but remained higher than many in the region.
<h2>There is considerable income inequality. The Gini coefficient was 0.45 during 2006.</h2> According to government statistics, the percentages of poor and extremely poor among Venezuelan population were 33.9% and 23.2%, respectively, in 2006. These high ratios are due primarily to lower real wages earned by employees, and high rates of un- and underemployment.
Although economic growth has been impressive, as a result of the oil windfall, many in the Venezuelan business community remain very concerned about President Chavez' vision for 21st Century Socialism and what it portends for the private sector.
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Quote:
https://www.cia.gov/library/publicat...elds/2172.html
Country ......Distribution of family income - Gini index
Argentina 48.3 (June 2006)
Brazil 56.7 (2005)
Colombia 53.8 (2005)
Israel 38.6 (2005)
Netherlands 30.9 (2005)
Russia 40.5 (2005)
Ukraine 31 (2006)
<h2>United States 45 (2004)</h2>
This page was last updated on 19 July, 2007
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In the preceding box, I only posted 2004 and newer GINI stats.....
Quote:
http://web.archive.org/web/200604220...60303-fri.html
Mar 03, 2006
<b>Global: Globalization's New Underclass</b>
Stephen Roach (New York)
.....The United States and China exemplify the full range of pressures bearing down on the income distribution. With per capita income of $38,000 and $1,700, respectively, the US and China are at opposite ends of the global income spectrum. Yet both countries have extreme disparities in the internal mix of their respective income distributions. This can be seen in their so-called Gini coefficients -- a statistical measure of the dispersion of income shares within a country. A Gini Index reading of “0” represents perfect equality, with each segment of the income distribution accounting for a proportionate share of total income. Conversely, a reading of “100” represents perfect inequality, with the bulk of a nation’s overall personal income being concentrated at the upper end of the distribution spectrum. In other words, the higher the Gini Index, the more unequal the income distribution. The latest Gini Index readings for the US (41) and China (45) are among the highest of all the major economies in the world -- pointing to a much greater incidence of inequality than in economies with more homogeneous distributions of income, such as Japan (25), Europe (32), and even India (33).
While the US and China suffer from similar degrees of income inequality, they have arrived at this point through very different means. In the case of the US, there is nothing new about elevated readings of income inequality. America’s Gini coefficient has been on the rise for over 35 years -- moving up from about 35 in 1970 to over 40 today. What is new is how America’s income distribution has become more unequal in a period of rapidly rising productivity growth -- a development that has been accompanied by an extraordinary bout of real wage stagnation over the past four years. Economics teaches us that in truly competitive labor markets such as America’s, workers are paid in accordance with their marginal productivity contribution. Yet that has not been the case for quite some time in the US. Over the past 16 quarters, productivity in the nonfarm US business sector has recorded a cumulative increase of 13.3% (or 3.3% per annum) -- more than double the 5.9% rise in real compensation per hour (stagnant wages plus rising fringe benefits) over the same period.
I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the relationship between productivity growth and worker compensation has broken down as the forces of globalization have intensified.......
....While fully 560 million urban Chinese are now participating in the economy’s rapid development dynamic, that still leaves a rural population of some 745 million on the outside looking in. Interestingly enough, the accelerating trend of rural-to-urban migration has done little to arrest the inequalities of the Chinese income distribution over the past 15 years. This is somewhat surprising in that urban per capita incomes in China (US$1,531 in the top 35 cities in 2004) are slightly more than three times those in rural areas ($488). But the increase in China’s overall Gini Index from 35 in 1990 to 45 in 2003 not only reflects the impacts of an ever-widening income disparity between coastal China and the rest of the nation, but it is also a function of the increased divergence in the distribution of urban incomes.....
....Significantly, Chinese income disparities in the Internet age may well have a very different connotation than in the past. With increased IT connectivity in western and central China -- mainly in the form of the village kiosk -- the rural poor now have real-time access to the “outside world.” This gives them a very vivid picture of the prosperity they are missing. In that vein, the Internet has the potential to spark resentment and social instability in China’s two-track development model -- the very last thing the government wants.....
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It's simple, folks....we can remain disconnected, or take a cue from the common people in Venezuela and the man who they have elected to lead them....or we can continue to muddle along, under the "funnel" that makes most of us poorer every year, under the leadership of someone like the propagandist, GW Bush, a man as disconnected and irrational as the top one percent of us....the only constituency who he truly represents....a constituency in Venezuela who Mr. Chavez is determined to make fend for itself....
Quote:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/05/te...l?ref=business
In Silicon Valley, Millionaires Who Don’t Feel Rich
By GARY RIVLIN
Published: August 5, 2007
.....But many such accomplished and ambitious members of the digital elite still do not think of themselves as particularly fortunate, in part because they are surrounded by people with more wealth — often a lot more.
When chief executives are routinely paid tens of millions of dollars a year and a hedge fund manager can collect $1 billion annually, those with a few million dollars often see their accumulated wealth as puny, a reflection of their modest status in the new Gilded Age, when hundreds of thousands of people have accumulated much vaster fortunes......
......Mr. Kremen estimated his net worth at $10 million. That puts him firmly in the top half of 1 percent among Americans, according to wealth data from the Federal Reserve, but barely in the top echelons in affluent towns like Palo Alto, Menlo Park and Atherton. So he logs 60- to 80-hour workweeks because, he said, he does not think he has nearly enough money to ease up.
<h3>“You’re nobody here at $10 million,” Mr. Kremen said earnestly over a glass of pinot noir at an upscale wine bar here...........</h3>
.....Yet like other working-class millionaires of Silicon Valley, she harbors anxieties about her financial future. Ms. Baranski — who was briefly worth as much as $200 million in 2000 but cashed out only $1 million before the collapse of the tech bubble — returned to work in March......
....“People around here, if they have 2 or 3 million dollars, they don’t feel secure,” said David W. Hettig, an estate planner based in Menlo Park who has advised Silicon Valley’s wealthy for two decades......
....“They recognize that if they happened to walk into a different office,” said Marilyn Holland, a Menlo Park psychologist who has been counseling the Valley’s elite for 25 years, “things would have turned out very differently.”.....
....That is one big difference between these working-class millionaires and the country’s wealthiest tycoons, who tend to see themselves as pillars of the community worthy of the hundreds of millions of dollars, perhaps billions, they now possess.
“A lot of the money here is accidental money,” said Bruce Karsh, 51, an engineer who puts his net worth at $2 million to $4 million. “People weren’t setting out to become gazillionaires.”.....
.......Like most of her neighbors, Ms. Baranski splurged most on a house in a community studded with some of the most expensive real estate in the country. Early in 2001, when Ms. Baranski seemed richer than she was, they paid $1.95 million for a dilapidated house in Menlo Park, knowing they would tear it down. They spent $1 million over the next few years building their dream house.
Ms. Baranski recognizes, of course, that she is far better off than many of her neighbors. Even well-paid college administrators, professors and other white-collar professionals struggle to pay their bills in this expensive redoubt 30 miles south of San Francisco.
<h3>“I don’t know how people live here on just a normal salary,” said Ms. Baranski.</h3>
Her nanny rents an apartment in Palo Alto, Ms. Baranski said. She pays her what she described as a generous salary and gave her the keys to her old Saab when she bought the newer one. But “basically I have no idea how she survives here.”
Mr. Hettig, the estate planning lawyer, sums it up for many: “We’re in such a rarefied environment,” he said, “people here lose perspective on what the rest of the world looks like.”......
.....No one knows for certain how many single-digit millionaires live in Silicon Valley. <h3>Certainly their numbers reach into the tens of thousands,</h3> say those who work with the area’s engineers and entrepreneurs. Yet nearly all of them still have all-consuming jobs, not only because the work gives them a sense of achievement and satisfaction but also because they think they must work so much to afford their gilded neighborhoods........
......To Mr. Milletti, it all looks like a marathon with no finish line.
“Here, the top 1 percent chases the top one-tenth of 1 percent, and the top one-tenth of 1 percent chases the top one-one-hundredth of 1 percent,” he said.
“You try not to get caught up in it,” he added, “but it’s hard not to.”......
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Last edited by host; 08-06-2007 at 08:51 PM..
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