From: word_chemist@hotmail.com   
      
   'The reason so many commentators are missing this political shift is that,   
   as relatively high earners, they are mostly cut off from its social drivers.   
   Driver number one is inequality, which has risen quite markedly within most   
   economies in the past decade, mainly because tax systems have become less   
   progressive and the fruits of the world's rapid growth have been   
   disproportionately distributed to the owners of corporations and, even more   
   so, the executives who run them.   
   Income distribution in the US has not been this unequal since before the   
   Second World War, the last time that the top 1 per cent of earners accounted   
   for more than 14 per cent of all income (excluding capital gains). Executive   
   over-compensation is the main cause of this dramatic elongation of the   
   earnings pyramid (the top of which is now more like a church steeple). The   
   average pay for a chief executive in America increased 27 per cent last   
   year, to more than $11 million. By contrast, the average wage-earner took   
   home less than $45,000 in 2004, up roughly 3 per cent on the year before.   
   Back in 1940, the average top executive's salary was around 68 times the   
   average worker's earnings in 2004; now it's more like 200 times higher.'   
      
   Just when everything's going so well, here comes the Left   
   Telegraph   
      
   By Niall Ferguson   
   (Filed: 07/05/2006)   
   First, the reasons to be cheerful. And (though it's hard for a pessimist   
   like me to admit it) there are plenty. Democracy is on a roll. There have   
   never been so many democracies in the world. More than half the world's   
   people now enjoy at least some measure of political representation.   
      
      
   Peace, too, is breaking out all over. The amount of armed conflict is lower   
   than it has been at any time since the end of the Cold War. What is more,   
   the world economy is going great guns. For the first time since 1969, there   
   isn't a single major economy around the world that is in recession. On   
   average, growth rates are above 4 per cent. Stock markets are up in both   
   developed and emerging markets. Inflation is low, despite the recent hike in   
   energy prices. There has been some monetary tightening lately, yet interest   
   rates are still at historically low levels.   
   By the standards of my lifetime - the past 42 years - this is surely about   
   as good as it gets. What, if anything, should we be worried about? For most   
   of us, the thing most likely to go wrong in the next 12 months is a road   
   traffic accident or a serious illness. So those are the things that should   
   worry rational people. But, strangely, young men (the group most at risk) do   
   not worry drive their cars with especial care. And most older men do not   
   behave in ways calculated to reduce the risk of heart disease, by far the   
   biggest killer of people aged over 45.   
   When asked by pollsters "What are the most important issues facing their   
   country today?" people don't reply "our terrible driving", or "our dreadful   
   diet". In the eyes of the average voter, according to MORI and YouGov, the   
   most important issues in Britain today are (in order):   
   1. Health care and hospitals.   
   2. Immigration and race relations.   
   3. Foreign affairs including international terrorism.   
   4. Education and schools.   
   5. Crime, or law and order.   
   I suppose you could say that number one is rational. If the biggest risks   
   you face come from cars colliding and cardiac arrest, it makes sense to want   
   the NHS to be better. But immigration? War? Terrorism? Crime? In 2003,   
   according to official statistics, of deaths due to "external causes", only   
   209 British citizens perished as a result of assault, and just two as a   
   result of war, compared with 3,270 who committed suicide and 2,983 who were   
   killed in transport accidents. No doubt some of the murders were committed   
   by immigrants or their descendants, but immigration is still a trivial   
   threat to life and limb compared with bad driving and depression.   
   Britain is, of course, a relatively safe place to live. But even on a   
   world-wide basis, people in my age group (30-44) are seven times more likely   
   to die of Aids than from violent crime, and six times more likely to die   
   from heart disease than in war.   
   Why do we worry about the wrong things? A facile answer is that the media   
   distort our sense of probability by focusing on fairly unusual dangers, such   
   as war and violent crime. A better answer is that the biggest risks we face   
   are so commonplace as to be boring, which is why the media generally   
   downplay them. An even better answer is that there is no money to be made,   
   outside the insurance industry, from predicting the incidence of high   
   probability events.   
   Professional commentators on world events get paid to write about   
   low-probability, high-impact (LPHI) dangers. That's partly because they're   
   interesting to think about (nothing sells newspapers like a war). And it is   
   partly because, if you are lucky enough to predict such events accurately,   
   they can make you some serious dough. Quite apart from the fact that some   
   people can get killed, other people can make a killing if - say - the effect   
   of the high-impact event is to double (or half) oil prices.   
   Right now, the top five potential sources of LPHI events are:   
   1. Iran's nuclear weapons programme.   
   2. Fed chairman Ben Bernanke's mouth.   
   3. Iraq's descent into civil war.   
   4. Gazprom's power to blackmail European gas importers.   
   5. The hurricane season in the Gulf of Mexico.   
   The trouble with these is that they are all, as the finance types like to   
   say, "priced in" - in other words, investors and money managers have some   
   sense of the magnitude of risk involved and are hedged accordingly.   
   Are there any low-probability, high-impact events the markets might be   
   missing? I can think of five big ones that aren't "priced in" as much as   
   they might be.   
   1. Another 9/11.   
   2. An avian flu pandemic.   
   3. A computer virus that shuts down Google.   
   4. A US-China clash over Taiwan.   
   5. A worldwide political shift to the Left.   
   It is number five that really interests me, because it's actually a   
   high-probability, high-impact event. Indeed, it's not just high-probability.   
   It is already happening.   
   The headline event has been the newly-elected Bolivian President Evo   
   Morales's decision - predicted in this column on February 12 - to   
   nationalise his country's energy sector. But the swing to the Left is not a   
   purely Central American story. The Left won last month's Italian elections.   
   The French government recently caved in to street protests by trade unions   
   and Leftist students. And in the United States, the Democrats are poised to   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)