It’s freezing outside. The woman being interviewed on the radio explains that
she is 28 years old and that she sleeps in abandoned railroad wagons. She is
perpetually cold and cannot sleep. She has just taken refuge in a gymnasium
opened by the municipality and inside which the temperature is a toasty 25°.
It’s a shock, she says, she almost feels nauseous. The same story repeats itself
with other protagonists on English television, on German radios. Homeless, with
nothing.
The President of the French Republic, the candidate of the
opposition Mr. Hollande, Mr. Cameron, Mrs. Merkel all go on-site, shake hands
with the poor. In the United States, the candidates for the Presidential
election do the same for here too, the same misery exists.
And
meanwhile, Facebook is about to enter the stock market for 100 billion dollars.
Its young and genial founder, Mark Zuckerberg, is going to have to pay 1.5
billion dollars in tax. In London, Glencore and Xastra, two giants of the mining
industry have merged, forming an enterprise worth 88 billion pounds.
Last Thursday, France borrowed 8 billion euros with a 3.13% interest rate. Spain
also borrowed, approximately 4 billion euros.
On the financial markets,
machines are replacing human decisions with increasing frequency. The
"high-frequency traders" buy and sell a value or financial instrument in 22
seconds flat, round trip. This operation can repeat itself millions of times per
day with an infinitesimal profit, say a third of a euro cent or a quarter of a
penny. At the end of the day however, this quickly adds up to a considerable
sum.
And all the while, in Britain, in Scotland, in Pomerania, the
woman speaking on the radio is overjoyed at the prospect of being able to curl
up in a corner of the gymnasium opened by the local Town Hall due to the
freezing weather conditions.
Nothing on the one hand, totally
incomprehensible sums of money on the other. What’s the world coming to?
I can already hear and see the reactions and comments ranging over an entire
specter of opinions. It’s up to the State to help them, they should pull their
socks up, taxes must be increased for the rich. Last week in France, the
presidential candidates were falling over themselves in order to show their
support at the Abbé Pierre Foundation. Their support being verbal of course.
Of yore, Marxists spoke of the exploitation of man by man in order to
explain these gigantic differences in standards of living, a reality at the
heart of which we live. Today, the exegetes of the middle classes wonder that
after 20 to 25 years, the majority of the population has seen its standard of
living stall or drop.
It isn’t possible to simply ‘tax the rich’. It
wouldn’t do much good. Instead, we must increase the revenues and standards of
living by placing an emphasis on the even distribution of the fruits of labour
and hard work at the heart of companies and by putting an end to the breaches of
the financialisation of the global economy.
Two statistics: Between 1980
and today, the Dow Jones, the New York stock exchange index, increased by more
or less 1000% depending on the given moment, whilst the American GNP increased
my a mere 30%. The great William Shakespeare was right: Something is rotten in
the kingdom of Denmark.
It’s up to the law, to regulations, to take the
relay. For example, all investment funds, regardless of their nature, of their
constitution, should be obliged to invest 25% of the money it collect in the
support of companies, employment, the wealth of everyone.
We must
massively invest in those activities that generate jobs and wealth. In other
words, we mustn’t simply content ourselves with multiplying our money on highly
sophisticated technological platforms.
As for speculation? Why
no. But first, investing in order to employ the woman living in abandoned
railway wagons and other like her.