The Progressive Global Sharing Economy

U.S. taxpayer, meet the newest liberal scheme to lighten your pocketbook of your hard-earned cash: the Global Sharing Economy. If you think this is not serious, consider the billions that you are already contributing to friends and foes across the globe in aid via United Nations and other myriad of nonprofits under the umbrella of our generous federal government.

This scheme is rather simple. You can tell how serious these progressives are by the length of their report, 170 pages. The London headquartered Share the World’s Resources (www.stwr.org)

is advocating for an international program of emergency relief to prevent poverty.  “We

We have already spent trillions of dollars in the war on poverty in the past fifty years and we are nowhere close to eradicating poverty, we have lost this war long time ago as populations have become accustomed to welfare and a lifestyle of welfare dependency and entitlements without any incentive for meaningful work and contribution to society.

“We also call for extensive reforms to the world economy to ensure a fairer sharing of wealth, power and resources within and between nations.”

Governments could raise over $2.8 trillion a year “to bolster the global sharing economy to prevent life-threatening deprivation, reverse austerity measures [in big spender countries like Europe] and mitigate the human impacts of climate change.”

This report published on December 6, 2012, is divided into three parts. Part one deals with “sharing economies” and “social welfare” via progressive taxation and redistribution of wealth.  Apparently social welfare systems are far from perfect and we must do more to achieve “social justice” and equitable distribution of wealth to developing nations.

I don’t know about you but I feel that Americans are quite generous and share a great deal of their wealth with the rest of the world while the world is highly unappreciative and demands more. In lock step with U.N. Agenda 21, the report recommends that we must “create a truly sustainable and equitable world.”

Part two deals with the “global emergency.” Lately, progressives have brought all their darling ideologies, schemes, and philosophies to the forefront by presenting them as a global emergency. When a real emergency happens, people might not be so quick to respond because liberals have cried wolf too many times.

“Humanity is in the grip of a global emergency.” We have so many “systemic” crises, they say, food, environment, climate change, extreme poverty, natural disasters. Apparently, the world has never before experienced the aforementioned.  The governments must act immediately by “progressive redistribution” of taxes on wealth, income, inheritance, corporate profits, and “even by setting minimum and maximum wage levels.” (pp. 27-28) 

I call this stealing my economic freedom and enslaving me to individuals I don’t even know, care to know, and whose lifestyles, religion, and ideologies I do not approve of,  nor am I willing to share my hard work with willingly. Call me selfish but I believe in personal responsibility.

Harping on climate change and ecological crises when the fake global warming scheme has been debunked is also strident and irritating when informed Americans know that huge fortunes are to be made by taxing carbon emissions and exchanging carbon credits in the developed world while the developing world is doubling up on their Co2 emissions.

Part three describes the ten policies that would finance this “global sharing economy” which in my opinion is a sorry excuse for stealing our wealth and property and enslaving us to another progressive wealth redistribution scheme.

First, the report emphasizes that “all unjust and unpayable developing country debt” should be cancelled. Who is going to decide which debt is unjust, what formula will be used, and what is unpayable debt?  Should the borrowers not have ascertained whether they could repay promissory notes before they signed the loan?

Share the World Resources (STWR) claims that over $4 trillion dollars is owed by “low and middle-income countries” and $1.4 billion is spent every day repaying debts, I presume in interest and principal. Action must be undertaken for “international debt justice.” (p. 145)

Secondly, import tariffs must be protected because lowering import tariffs reduces the government revenues significantly and poor countries have a hard time servicing their budgets without trade taxes. (p. 159)

Thirdly, support for agribusiness should end. Large agribusinesses with their government subsidies of $374 billion a year hurt small and family-run farms that are often put into bankruptcy by cheap prices with which they cannot compete. (p. 103)

According to the STWR report, the culprit of world hunger is industrial agriculture. Economies of scale should move back to “environmentally sustainable practices, alongside more localized production and consumption” just like U.N. Agenda 21 dictates. If I read this well, they want us to return to agriculture as it was practiced 100 or so years ago when local food and survival where at the mercy of the weather and crop diseases.

We tried localized agriculture for food in countries like Afghanistan however, as soon as the U.N. specialists left, the farmers returned to their main agricultural staple, poppies. It was cheaper to plant poppies and harvest opium, the buyer of the crop came to the farmer, and the return for their labor was significantly higher than any food grown.

Fourth, financial speculation should be taxed, specifically hedge funds and investment banks because they are the culprits who destabilized the world economy. I agree that hedge funds and investment banks have taken unnecessary risks and there are upwards of $800 trillion of unfunded liabilities deriving from the speculation of hedge funds and investment banks.

“Global sharing” proponents believe that a financial transaction tax can yield around $246 billion a year in the European Union and $650 billion globally. Such a tax is a bad idea in my opinion since it would fleece small mom and pop investors and steal money from pensions, income, and savings.

Fifth, fossil fuel and biofuel subsidies should end immediately, raising $531 billion a year by 2020. “The burning of fossil fuels is the largest contributor to global warming, and it would be impossible to keep carbon emissions to safe levels if governments continue to subsidize fossil fuel production and consumption.”

Renewables would have to take the place of coal and oil to fuel the world’s developed economies – the industrial world would have to plunge back to 1800s levels in order to satisfy the global warming alarmists’ demands to replace “dirty energy” with clean energy.

None of the renewable energy would exist without heavy subsidies. Many providers around the world went bankrupt even with generous government subsidies. Renewable energy would not be able to replace the needs of energy for such large economies like ours.

The sixth recommendation is to “divert military spending.” Instead of spending money on the military and the war machine, the world should strengthen the United Nations peacekeeping efforts as a way to reduce conflict. I feel safer already knowing that United Nations would be responsible for my wellbeing and safety.

According to STWR, the world has spent $1.7 trillion on military expenditures in 2011, 12 times more than global spending on aid. Progressives believe that we have misguided priorities. I personally believe strongly in the Roman motto, “Si vis pacem, para bellum,” if you want peace, prepare for war. (p. 67)

Who really believes that climate change, poverty, and inequality are a greater source of conflict than the military posturing of totalitarian regimes like Iran and North Korea? Apparently liberals do and are trying their hardest to convince the brainwashed low information Americans.

The seventh recommendation is to “stop tax avoidance.” It is the fault of the global “super-rich elite” who hold up to $32 trillion of untaxed private wealth in tax heavens. “Clamping down on tax heavens and preventing corporate trade mispricing could raise more than $349 billion globally each year. A fairer redistribution of wealth and income is fast becoming the mantra for those seeking economic justice.” The global tax is the solution because the progressive voices of international tax justice demand it. (pp. 79-80)

The eighth recommendation is increasing international aid. What we generously give is squandered and therefore we must give more. “Advanced economies are redistributing so little of their national incomes.”  The aid is conditional, it is not enough, it is tied to preferential treatment, it is phantom because of high administrative costs, it is politically motivated, it has declined in food, and some countries have become dependent on aid. (p. 94)

The ninth recommendation is to redistribute IMF resources. IMF has the third largest holdings of gold reserves in the world and should sell it at market rates in order to help poor countries. Sharing the IMF assets is seen as a restoration and compensation for the IMF’s financial mismanagement over time. IMF should “leverage its significant financial resources for climate finance and poverty eradication in developing countries.” (p. 117)

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) which was established at Bretton Woods in 1944 had a different mission – it provided loans to member countries when they ran into serious financial difficulties. IMF insisted then that borrowers adopted contractionary fiscal and monetary policies.

IMF’s current mission is to “foster global monetary cooperation, secure financial stability, facilitate international trade, promote high employment and sustainable economic growth, and reduce poverty around the world.”

The tenth recommendation of STWR is to tax carbon emissions in order to ”raise significant funding for international climate finance.” Although they acknowledge that there is no way to account for the environmental cost of emissions in the shipping and aviation industries, a universal tax on international transportation should be levied, including air travel, in addition to the carbon tax. The STWR report calculates that $108 billion in taxes could be raised from a national carbon tax, maritime and aviation taxes, and taxes on tickets for international flights. (p. 131)

It is clear that Share the World Resources is another glaring example of progressives forcing the world’s productive citizens to finance through confiscatory schemes a forced march towards communism across the globe in the name of social justice, social equity, and environmental justice.