Also NYC hotel prices hitting $600-$1000 a night for 4⭐️ or less. Rents at $5k for a 1 bedroom. Smh.

I’m lucky to have bought property when I did or this would no longer feel like home for me.

#nyc #latestagecapitalism #greedkills #generationalwealthproducesleeches #gg

Encouraging news, yet the greedy are so greedy that they don't want to suffer any losses. We can no longer afford to let them dictate our future survival based on their greed calculus!

Renewable energy will cost the super-wealthy, not the rest of us – new study finds - BBC Science Focus Magazine https://www.sciencefocus.com/news/renewable-energy-will-cost-the-super-wealthy-not-the-rest-of-us-new-study-finds

#GreedKills

"A sustainable energy future could be possible if the top 10 per cent accept some losses.

The urgent need for solutions to the climate crisis was made clear in the IPCC climate report published earlier this year – but who will pay the price? Not most people, but the super wealthy, according to new research.

According to a recent study, published in journal

a transition to renewable energy would have a low impact on the majority of the population – despite previous assumptions that moving away from fossil fuels would negatively impact retirement plans and savings.

Instead, the team of economists from Sciences Po university in Paris, France, and The University of Massachusetts Amherst, USA, estimate that the biggest losses in high-income countries would be to the wealthiest citizens – and even then these losses would account for a small percentage of their total wealth.

“There’s this big question of who’s winning and who is losing from the transition and from climate change in general,” says co-first author Lucas Chancel, economics professor at Sciences Po.

“Even though our results are simple, they were not present in research or public debates before. This work is one step forward in understanding the winners and losers from the point of view of the assets that might be at risk in this transition.”

The study found similar results in both the US and the UK, as well as other countries in Europe. In these nations, an estimated two-thirds of financial losses would affect the wealthiest 10 per cent of the population.

Half of the assets lost would affect the top one per cent of wealth holders. Within this super-wealthy one per cent, the losses would make up less than one per cent of the individuals’ net wealth.

Meanwhile, the poorest half of citizens would only suffer 3.5 per cent of the financial losses.

At a much lower rate of loss, the economists argue that these damages would be more easily compensated by governments. They propose carbon emission taxes as one way of raising compensation funds.

According to the UN, a transition to renewables is likely to financially benefit everyone in the long term. Short term investments in new infrastructure will pay off, as a more resilient system helps to reduce the impacts of pollution and climate impacts – saving the world a whopping £3.3 trillion(or $4.2 trillion) per year by 2030."

It shouldn't be surprising and the rich are disproportionately responsible for climate denialism and promoting denialism amongst the not-wealthy.

How wealthy "super emitters" are disproportionately driving the climate crisis — while blaming you | Salon.com https://www.salon.com/2023/08/22/how-wealthy-super-emitters-are-disproportionately-driving-the-climate--while-blaming-you/

#GreedKills

"A recent study published in the journal PLOS Climate emphasizes that the society's elites are disproportionately responsible for the extreme weather events linked to climate change like heatwaves, droughts, floods, tropical storms, hurricanes and rising sea levels. Indeed, as corresponding author Jared Starr described American greenhouse gas pollution, "the top 1% of households are responsible for more emissions (15-17%) than the lower earning half of American households put together (14% of national emissions)."

"Our study is the first to link US households to the greenhouse gas (GHG) pollution generated when creating their incomes," Starr, a graduate student at the University of Massachusetts Amherst's Department of Environmental Conservation, told Salon in an email. "I think this offers a fundamentally different perspective on carbon pollution responsibility and new insights into emissions inequality. We found that the highest earning top 10% of households are responsible for about 40% of U.S. GHG."

Although the United States only includes roughly five percent of the world's population, it is accountable for more than a quarter of the activity fueling climate change. This is in large part because of America's dominance as the world's foremost economic power — a dominance reflected in its large investor class, which because of its wealth is figuratively steering Earth off of the climate cliff.

"The top 1%'s emissions would be the size of five Empire State buildings stacked on top of each other and the top 0.1%'s emissions would be taller than Mount Everest."

"For the first time, we also quantify the share of emissions related to investment," Starr explained. "The share of emissions coming from investments increases as we move up the income ladder. For the top 0.1% households, more than half of their emissions are coming from investment income." Starr used a visual analogy to illustrate his point."

#Environmental campaigners say #SeabedMining could have a #catastrophic impact on #marine #ecosystems & should be delayed at least until the #ocean environment is better understood & proper safeguards are in place.
TMC said on Tuesday that its subsidiary, Nauru Ocean Resources Inc. (NORI), intended to submit an application to the International Seabed Authority (ISA) after global regulator meets in July next year.

https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/canadas-tmc-says-it-will-apply-seabed-mining-licence-2024-2023-08-03

#StopEcocide #ClimateChange #CorporateGreed #GreedKills

Says it all!!

#GreedKills

Shame and guilt are the least of the things the greedy should feel and reap for their callous, sociopathic and socially destructive actions. No more!! Our survival is at stake! From healthcare, to climate change, the opiod crisis, countless wars and conflicts, and so much more, this is what threatens our continued existence and destroys so many lives, so much wellbeing and so much of the fragile ecosystems we cannot exist without. How can we look our children and future generations in the eyes and tell them we were too complacent and beat down to object and right this incredible wrong!

Article: It’s Too Late for Me, But These 6 Healthcare Reforms Could Save Your Life

https://flip.it/pYRs1p

#GreedKills
#SociopathsDestroySociety
#SociopathsLoveCapitalism

"Our healthcare system has produced amazing strides in medical care. However, it is also too expensive and inefficient. The primary principle for a healthcare system should be predicated on placing the patient’s health as its defining feature. Instead, the current system is based on maximizing profits and revenue for the corporate elites in the healthcare and financial industries while healthcare workers and patients suffer.

It is long past time to create a different equation in which patient well-being takes precedence over profits.

This entire system is supported and protected by the elites who run or own the insurance companies, pharmaceutical corporations, hospitals, and private equity firms as well as industry lobbying organizations such as the American Medical Association. And let’s not forget the role played by those politicians who serve the interests of these institutions in return for campaign contributions or the promise of lush jobs after their “public” service. The current system is a case study in placing profits before people with incentives to increase revenue and minimize costs, which have combined to decrease the quality of patient care.

It is long past time to create a different equation in which patient well-being takes precedence over profits. The first policy reform in this article, Medicare for All, addresses the problem of the tens of millions of people who are uninsured or underinsured and the overall cost of and access to insurance. The other five policy reforms address problems associated with the actual delivery and quality of healthcare that are not addressed by Medicare for All: stopping the increasing corporatization of healthcare; mandatory nurse staffing ratios; moving from the current fee-for-service reimbursement structure to “value-based” payments based on the well-being of patients; unionizing all healthcare workers; and creating an effective process for patient advocacy. These policy recommendations are supported by numerous research reports and by my informal discussions with dozens of healthcare providers.

These reforms would not only improve patient well-being but also cut long-term costs. However, the reforms can only be instituted through a broad progressive movement which can take on the entrenched interests of the big healthcare corporations, Wall Street, and their paid political agents. It will be tough, but it can be done. After all, progressive mass movements and progressive politicians led the fight for Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid in the face of bitter opposition by the healthcare corporate elite and their political allies. Major healthcare reform happened before, and it can again, but only through the concerted and sustained efforts by progressive activists and politicians."

This is your daily reminder that greed kills.

#GreedKills #TaxTheRich

Robert Reich hits it out of the park again. The GOP's reprehensible, fascistic and vicious attempt to rally their base by creating fear of Trans and Gay people is yet another indicator of just how low they will go to gain more power so they can destroy our democracy and replace it with an autocracy all to lavish more regulation and tax breaks on their wealthy donors and never have to share power again. There is nothing more than that going on here for most of them and it is repulsive, inhumane and shows how power-hungry and greedy they are.

The GOP’s Attack on LGBTQ Americans, Revealed | Robert Reich - YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iWgzyS8h3Iw

#Trans
#LGBTQ
#GreedKills

"From drag bans to "Don’t Say Gay Laws", Republicans are seizing on irrational fears of the LGBTQ+ community to vilify the very people who are already marginalized.

This is a classic authoritarian tactic: to push paranoia and hatred in order to distract from the vast consolidation of wealth and power for both themselves and their wealthy donors.

In this manufactured atmosphere of fear and hatred, it’s no accident that in the single year between 2020 and 2021, hate crimes against LGBTQ+ individuals increased by 70%. A record number of trans individuals were murdered in 2020. In 2021, that record was broken again.

For the LGBTQ+ community, the GOP’s latest cynical vendetta is literally a matter of life and death. Watch our latest video and share it with those who are important to you. This issue is too important to neglect.

Watch & Share
The lies, paranoia, and fear-mongering coming out of the Republican Party must be called out for what it is -- a threat to all our human rights.

While the GOP often claims its anti-LGBTQ+ legislation is all about “protecting children,” it is actually putting some of the most vulnerable children at greater risk. LGBTQ+ kids are already more than four times as likely to attempt suicide , especially transgender children. Gender-affirming care and supportive school environments substantially reduce those risks— but Republicans are determined to ban them.

Of course not.

You see, if Republicans really cared about protecting kids, they’d focus on gun violence, now the leading cause of death for children in the U.S. But that’s not what this is all really about. The GOP is trying to stoke so much paranoia and hatred that we don’t notice how they are consolidating power and wealth into the hands of a ruling few.

We can -- and must -- fight back. Against the oligarchy. And against bigotry.

The stakes are too high for us to sit on the sidelines."

#Industrial #logging is one of the country's biggest #climate #polluters with more than 10 per cent of #Canada ’s total planet-heating #emissions .

This is according to an #analysis of the #NationalInventoryReport produced by both #NatureCanada & #NaturalResourcesDefenseCouncil #NRDC - #American #environmental #advocacy group.

https://www.pentictonherald.ca/spare_news/article_b70fe9af-6f70-511e-80a1-90f171fd207a.html

#StopEcocide #StopClearcuts #StopDeforestation #SaveOldGrowth #WorthMoreStanding #WorthMoreStanding #CorporateGreed #GreedKills #TreesOverGreed

Family & supporters of #Mexican #activist who was #killed after opposing a #Canadian company's #mining project are taking their case to an #international #HumanRights body.
The #JusticeAndCorporateAccountabilityProject - Canadian initiative by #volunteer #lawyers is making a complaint to the #InterAmerican #CommissionOnHumanRights on behalf of the family of Mariano Abarca.

https://beta.ctvnews.ca/national/politics/2023/6/7/1_6430747.amp.html

#Canada #Mexico #EnvironmentalRacism #CorporateGreed #GreedKills #BlackfireExplorations #Legal

@thenarwhal They're going to kill the ancients 😞 #Death by a thousand #clearcuts in #BritishColumbia under #BCNDP aka #NewDeathParty

#ecocide #CorporateGreed #CurseTheEvilGreedy #deforestation #environmental #ecosystems #NDP #PNW #PacificNorthwest #VancouverIsland #Cascadia #ClimateCrisis #GreedKills #DavidEby #HorganizedCrimes #SuperSelloutBC #SuperUnnaturalBC #TourismBC #TourismCanada #ShameOnBC #AncientForests #Ecology #MotherEarth #TreesOverGreed

#SilentSunday
Stop the #CorporateGreed fueled assaults on #MotherEarth 🌲🌎

#StopEcocide #StopClearcuts #SaveForests #UncededTerritory #NativeLand #StolenLand #Landback #FirstNations #Indigenous #NativeSovereignty #Deforestation #GreedKills #RedDress #symbolism #ProtectTheSacred #EarthProtectors #MatriarchsRising #ForestDefenders #WorthMoreStanding #ProtectOldGrowth #SaveOldGrowtg #ProtectTheWild #WildFirst #BCNDP #NewDeathParty #BritishColumbia #vanisle #VancouverIsland #PNW #PacificNorthwest

Talk about regulatory capture by private industry!!! This is crazy. These chemicals are so bad for humans and all life, and the EPA is giving them a free pass to continue to make money at human's and the environment's expense. It isn't enough to just ban them, the companies making them and lobbying to keep them on the market when their safety was already an issue, should be fined and or shut down.

This kind of action by companies and their lobbying groups to keep products on the market to the detriment of our planet and people is a grave threat to all life and must be punished enough to dissuade companies from ever doing it again. Executives, corporate profits, board members, and anyone directly involved must be held accountable with serious costs and punishments, including jail time. We can't have companies continuing to play this game of treating this as just a cost of doing business, making billions and being fined millions, while humans, the planet and our descendants pay unbearable costs.

Opinion | EPA’s Whack-a-Mole “Forever Chemicals” Posture Is an Intolerable Failure | Common Dreams https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/epa-pfas-forever-chemicals-failure

#RegulatoryCapture
#GreedKills
#CapitalismKills
#JailExecutives

"To great applause, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency last month proposed “maximum contamination levels” in drinking water for six per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) chemicals. This was the first such action that EPA had taken in more than 30 years on any drinking contaminant.

Unfortunately, despite the magnitude of this action for this handful of PFAS, there are at least 12,000 PFAS variations.

Before the applause for EPA could die down, this month, a study found 26 types of PFAS in drinking water samples from 16 states. Notably, EPA has no pending proposed standard for 20 of these PFAS. More disturbing, 12 of these PFAS are not included in EPA's current monitoring—in other words, EPA does not even currently test for them.

Furthermore, three of these PFAS fall outside the “working definition” for PFAS that EPA adopted without any outside review in 2021. This means that EPA is not considering regulating them.

The public health implications of its chemical-by-chemical posture are much too serious to accommodate (however lamely) EPA’s scientific self-image.

In fact, EPA’s working definition is far narrower than those adopted by other entities, such as the intergovernmental Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and members of the European Union. Nor is it as broad as the definition adopted by numerous states that have started regulating PFAS on their own, frustrated by the slow pace set by EPA. It is also substantially narrower than the definition EPA itself uses for research purposes and non-regulatory estimates.

Why would EPA summarily adopt a definition that leaves out thousands of PFAS?

Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), the organization I work for, asked the agency this very question. Just four months after EPA published this working definition in 2021, we submitted a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for documents that would provide a scientific explanation or justification for this new definition.

We are still waiting.

Months after our request, EPA released some 2,500 pages of documents that did not answer the question. By June 2022, when it became clear that the agency would not voluntarily produce any meaningful response, my organization filed a federal lawsuit under FOIA demanding complete production.

In the ensuing months, like a squid emitting an ink cloud to throw off a pursuer, EPA’s attempts to evade production have only grown more convoluted. This exercise, however, appears to have confirmed the information we received from inside the agency – EPA’s working definition does not appear to be the product of EPA scientific research.

This working definition suddenly appeared out of thin air, with no discernible paper trail of parentage. We suspect it actually sprung from a chemical industry lobbyist’s pen, as the financial implications of this definition are enormous. If EPA admitted the definition’s true origin that would be embarrassing, to say the least, and puncture all of the lofty rhetoric its senior officials regularly spout about the rigorous scientific integrity behind agency decision-making..."

The GOP couldn't care less about the financial, or any other kind of, wellbeing of the average American! They would gladly crash the economy if it got them more donations from their obscenely wealthy donors or if it hurt Biden's and Democrat's chances in the next election. They are the party of sociopaths, who don't care about the common good, but only about themselves and those who can benefit them.

The obscenely wealthy are equally as devoted only to themselves and their insatiable, pathological need to make ever more money! No amount would ever be enough, because their greed is like an addiction that can only be satisfied by constantly gaining more money. This is only part of what gives their greed away as a pathology that is fundamentally driven by fear and insecurity as they already clearly have plenty of money to take care of themselves. They just keep needing more; more money, more possessions, more winning and more losing for the rest of us.

Why the GOP May Actually Want a Second Great Depression https://hartmannreport.com/p/why-the-gop-may-actually-want-a-second?

#GreedKills
#GOPIsThePartyOfTheRich
#GreedIsAPathology
#InsecurityComplex
#GreedIsAnInsecurityResponse

"This is why Kevin McCarthy’s proposed legislation to raise the debt ceiling would strip $80 billion from the IRS: the morbidly rich tax cheats who own him (with the Supreme Court’s blessing in Citizens United) don’t want to get caught.

They want to hang onto the trillions they made during the last two crashes.

And, apparently, they’re happily anticipating the next crash that their boy McCarthy and their bought-off Republicans in Congress are working hard to bring to pass with their debt ceiling manipulations.

— Economic downturns not only cut wages and present buying opportunities for the wealthy and corporate America, they also give massive companies far more leverage when negotiating with vendors, who are typically desperate smaller businesses.

— They retain access to credit so they can leverage their buying opportunities in ways smaller companies and working class individuals can’t.

— And their power to fight unionization increases exponentially as workers scramble and compete for jobs that have become vanishingly rare.

But the average American can be forgiven for thinking that Republicans would be reluctant to crash the economy. Their lived experience is very different from that of Elon Musk (532% increase in wealth during the single year of 2020), Mark Zuckerberg (86% increase), or Jeff Bezos (65% increase).

During the Bush Crash, average income for the poorest 10% of Americans fell by a full 23%, making business (and billionaires) much more profitable while working people were skipping meals and cutting pills in half.

Thirteen years later, the Trump Crash threw 8,500,000 Americans out of work: according to the World Economic Forum, the adjusted unemployment rate hit 22.7 percent in 2020, higher than even during the Bush Crash, and it’s taken a full three years for working people to get back to where they started before Trump so badly mismanaged the pandemic.

Small business revenue collapsed by more than a fifth under Trump, new business formation cratered, and by July 2020 one-in-five American families were behind on their rent. The rate of hunger in America doubled at the same time the GOP sought to cut food stamps (SNAP) and Medicaid benefits.

The Bush and Trump crashes, in other words, did the work the morbidly rich have been demanding for years. Wages fell, unions struggled, corporate profits hit highs literally never before seen in America, and hedge funds bought up millions of distressed single-family homes to flip into high-priced rentals.

The stock market became absurdly cheap with both crashes, providing both the multimillionaire members of Congress and their billionaire backers with what used to be once-in-a-lifetime buying opportunities.

Additionally, throwing the country into a depression would almost guarantee Joe Biden loses the 2024 election. Presidents are rarely re-elected when the economy has gotten worse on their watch. Just ask Donald Trump, Jimmy Carter, or Jerry Ford.

So don’t be so sure Republicans in the House and Senate won’t drag America into default and a second Republican Great Depression if they have a chance.

They and their billionaire backers have almost nothing to lose and a fortune to gain."

Sounds like we are just some kind of cattle to the rich or maybe more like chattel, serfs or just assets to capitalize on. They don't care if they pay us starvation wages, move all the good jobs to other countries and reduce the U.S. to a 3rd world economy/society. They are too focused on all the money, possessions and toys they have. They don't care about us or our society.

People who care that much about money and that little about their fellow citizens and society should never be in a position to influence our government, let alone be able to buy it and politicians for what is a pittance compared to how much they make on the return of their donations/investments. Spend 10 million, get back 100 million in tax breaks or lowered regulations.

It can be difficult for us to see how sick and pathological this addiction to ever more money and power is because our society has been groomed to accept it as normal or even a sign of true success. It is sick/pathological though and driven by fear, insecurity, and an emotional immaturity and hollowness that makes them think that ever more money, possessions, power or what have you, will make them whole, safe, better, and looked up to.

There is nothing enviable about their malady nor is there a net positive contribution to our society from it. Rather, the majority of us are in worse financial shape than we were decades ago thanks to their behind-the-scenes machinations and yet they still press their flunkies in the GOP to take away even what little we have. It pains them to see us have employment, health, retirement or really any kind of security. It isn't just that they want it all, they also don't want us to have any of it. That is how pathological and unfit to steer our society they are.

Hmmm...but maybe we should allow them to control our society...what could it hurt?!

Okay, down from my soapbox for a minute to encourage you to read the very good and short article below.

Why The Rich Love To Crush Wages, Cut Pensions And So On To Fight Inflation – Ian Welsh https://www.ianwelsh.net/why-the-rich-love-to-crush-wages-cut-pensions-and-so-on-to-fight-inflation/

#InsecurityComplex
#GOPIsThePartyOfTheRich
#GreedKills
#GreedIsPathological

"The majority of price increases, of inflation, right now, are driven by price increases that are higher than increases in costs. Numbers I see tend to range from the mid sixties to the seventies.

They aren’t, then, driven primarily by wage increases.

The obvious way to solve this is to put in a surplus profit tax based on 2019 profit levels and forbid other ways of withdrawing excess profits like stock buy backs and option grants. Only after doing this would you consider trying to crush wages or cut pensions or other benefits.

That is, if your primary aim was to reduce inflation.

But it is undeniable that crushing wages will reduce inflation somewhat, even if it is far from the best way to do so and it has a great advantage.

It makes the rich even richer by reducing their wage costs!

On the other hand, an excess profits tax would make the rich not get richer nearly as fast.

You can see why governments controlled by the rich (yes they are, let us not be tedious) would prefer to crush wages as opposed to limit profits.

For the elite to support the sort of policies which would not crush wages and which would appear to reduce their profits, they would have to be like a good chunk (but not all) of the post-war elites. Having seen what happened when demand collapsed in the Great Depression, they knew they needed wages to rise and were thus willing to share and to pursue some policies which they didn’t like.

After all, while the fastest way to deal with inflation is an excess profits tax, the structural way is breaking up control of industries and re-regulating anything that even sniffs like an oligopoly or monopoly, plus slamming on huge estate taxes, wealth taxes and 90% top marginal tax rates, while putting a Glass-Steagall analogue back in place and re-nationalizing key parts of the economy.

Now, as it happens, the post-war economy was the best we’ve known since we were keeping records. High growth, reducing inequality but still plenty of profits. The rich had to live with only getting 20X or so as much as the middle class, though, and that’s just unacceptable to them.

Now never let it be said that the rich don’t learn: they do have a dim understanding of “demand collapse bad” and they have a solution, which they’ve been trying since 2008.

“What if we just print tons of money!?” Trillions and trillions of dollars were produced and are currently being produced out of thin air, with no increase in the underlying economy, and given to rich people to bail them out and even when they don’t need bailing out.

Who needs to actually grow customers and have customers having increased real incomes when you can just give yourself money?

This is why things will only improve when current elites lose power wholesale."

Greed and unbridled capitalism are sociopathic and are actively destroying the foundations upon which our societies and the cooperation that enables it, are built. Ironically, the greedy capitalists are unintentionally cannibalizing and destroying the very society that they and their enterprises can't exist without. Sounds pathological and insane, because it is!

Can Civilization Survive "Really Existing Capitalism"? An Interview With Noam Chomsky - Truthout https://truthout.org/articles/can-civilization-survive-really-existing-capitalism-an-interview-with-noam-chomsky/

#GreedKills
#GreedIsAntiSocial
#AllInThisTogether

"Since the late 1970s, most advanced economies have returned to predatory capitalism. As a result, income and wealth inequality have reached spectacular heights, poverty is becoming entrenched, unemployment is skyrocketing and standards of living are declining. In addition, “really existing capitalism” is causing mass environmental damage and destruction which, along with the population explosion, is leading us to an unmitigated global disaster. Can civilization survive really existing capitalism?

First, let me say that what I have in mind by the term “really existing capitalism” is what really exists and what is called “capitalism.” The United States is the most important case, for obvious reasons. The term “capitalism” is vague enough to cover many possibilities. It is commonly used to refer to the US economic system, which receives substantial state intervention, ranging from creative innovation to the “too-big-to-fail” government insurance policy for banks, and which is highly monopolized, further limiting market reliance.

It’s worth bearing in mind the scale of the departures of “really existing capitalism” from official “free-market capitalism.” To mention only a few examples, in the past 20 years, the share of profits of the 200 largest enterprises has risen sharply, carrying forward the oligopolistic character of the US economy. This directly undermines markets, avoiding price wars through efforts at often-meaningless product differentiation through massive advertising, which is itself dedicated to undermining markets in the official sense, based on informed consumers making rational choices. Computers and the internet, along with other basic components of the IT revolution, were largely in the state sector (R&D, subsidy, procurement, and other devices) for decades before they were handed over to private enterprise for adaptation to commercial markets and profit. The government insurance policy, which provides big banks with enormous advantages, has been roughly estimated by economists and the business press to be perhaps on the order of as much as $80 billion a year. However, a recent study by the International Monetary Fund indicates – to quote the business press – that perhaps “the largest US banks aren’t really profitable at all,” adding that “the billions of dollars they allegedly earn for their shareholders were almost entirely a gift from US taxpayers.” This is more evidence to support the judgment of Martin Wolf of the London Financial Times, that “an out-of-control financial sector is eating out the modern market economy from inside, just as the larva of the spider wasp eats out the host in which it has been laid.”

In a way, all of this explains the economic devastation produced by contemporary capitalism that you underscore in your question above. Really existing capitalism – RECD for short (pronounced “wrecked”) – is radically incompatible with democracy. It seems to me unlikely that civilization can survive really existing capitalism and the sharply attenuated democracy that goes along with it. Could functioning democracy make a difference? Consideration of nonexistent systems can only be speculative, but I think there’s some reason to think so. Really existing capitalism is a human creation, and can be changed or replaced."

Like so many things, the water crisis in the western U.S. is about short-sighted, self-interest (read selfishness and greed) and the power of certain, small but wealthy groups to dictate government agendas that hurt the majority of the population. Huh, greed, selfishness and bought politicians getting in the way of making government work for all of us? Sounds so damn familiar!!!

Why is the Colorado river drying up? Feeding cows is a large part - Vox https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/23655640/colorado-river-water-alfalfa-dairy-beef-meat

#GreedKills
#CapitalismKills
#AllInThisTogether

"...residential water use accounts for just 13 percent of water drawn from the Colorado River. According to research published in Nature Sustainability, the vast majority of water is used by farmers to irrigate crops.
...
which crops receive the bulk of the Colorado River’s water, 70 percent goes to alfalfa, hay, corn silage, and other grasses that are used to fatten up cattle for beef and cows for dairy. Some of the other crops, like soy, corn grain, wheat, barley, and even cotton, may also be used for animal feed.
...
The stress on the West’s water supply due to alfalfa is especially acute in Utah: A staggering 68 percent of the state’s available water is used to grow alfalfa for livestock feed, even though it’s responsible for a tiny 0.2 percent of the state’s income. Last year, the editorial board of the state’s largest newspaper, the Salt Lake Tribune, declared that “it’s time for Utah to buy out alfalfa farmers and let the water flow.”

California takes more water from the Colorado River than any other state, and most of it goes to the Imperial Valley in the southern part of the state. It’s one of the most productive agricultural regions in the US, producing two-thirds of America’s vegetables during winter months. But the majority of the Imperial Valley’s farmland is dedicated to alfalfa and various grasses for livestock.

In Arizona, Phoenix’s backup water supply is being drained to grow alfalfa by Fondomonte, owned by Saudi Arabia’s largest dairy company, which it ships 8,000 miles back to the Middle East to feed its domestic herds. (Water-starved Saudi Arabia banned growing alfalfa and some other animal feed crops within its own borders in 2018.)
...
all that alfalfa is used to produce beef and dairy — two food groups that themselves contribute significantly to climate change. In other words, we’re using water supplies that have been shrunk in part by climate change to produce food that will in turn worsen climate change.

A #report from a #coalition of #environmental groups shows that #RoyalBank of #Canada was the biggest #FossilFuel #financier in the world last year after providing over US$42 billion in funding.
The annual #BankingOnClimateChaos report shows the bank's #funding between 2016 & 2021 put it as the fifth-largest #FossilFuelFunder but 2022 was the first year it provided the most money.

https://www.ctvnews.ca/business/rbc-biggest-fossil-fuel-funder-globally-in-2022-at-us-42b-report-1.6353605

#Bank4ABetterFuture #BoycottRBC #ShutdownRBC #CorporateGreed #GreedKills #EcocideFunder

Love it that I live in a place where there is no choice but to spend large chunks of time waiting for multiple different people to lie to me repeatedly, so that someone else can send me papers lying to me, because someone else made unauthorized changes to my healthcare coverage, and everyone involved in the process on the end of supplying/managing my healthcare coverage shares the attitude of, this is the common, normal, acceptable, and preferred way of things working.

#greedkills

The #Canadian #Ombudsperson for #Responsible #Enterprise (CORE) is an #independent & #impartial #HumanRights ombudsperson that #examines #complaints of #alleged human rights #abuses committed by Canadian #companies operating outside #Canada in the #garment , #mining & #OilAndGas sectors.

https://www.dentons.com/en/insights/articles/2023/april/10/the-core-of-the-matter

#educational #CorporateResponsibility #StopCorporateGreedAbuses #SocialJustice #BusinessEthics #GreedKills #Crapitalism #GreedIsEvil #FileComplaints