| karo |
18 september 2011 12:59 |
Je moet Buffett ook langs de andere lant bekijken, het grotere geheel dat hij zelf verduistert is niet min. Waarom is hij de op een na rijkste persoon in de VS? Buffett verklaarde meer dan $ 40 miljoen inkomen te hebben vorig jaar, maar zijn eigendommen en activa hebben een waarde van $ 50 miljard. Wat hij betaalde aan belastingen vorig jaar was slechts 0,0138 procent van de waarde van zijn rijkdom.
Hoe verkreeg Buffet deze enorme rijkdom? Op dezelfde manier als zijn "super-rijke vrienden" alles te doen over heel deze hele wereld, door te profiteren van de arbeid van werkende mensen, ongeacht de omstandigheden waarmee zij worden geconfronteerd. Door alle natuurlijke rijkdommen leeg te zuigen, door anderen te laten opdraaien voor hun vervuiling.
Buffet is alleen geintereseerd in het helpen van zichzelf, de keerzijde van dit zal zeer duidelijk worden. Er is namelijks niets zo vijandig als een wolf in schaapskleren, lees even mee.
Citaat:
Take an example: Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway investment firm owns a chunk of Coca-Cola, a company whose products are banned from 50 college campuses because it refuses to allow an independent investigation into the deaths of unionists working for it in Colombia. A SocialistWorker.org report described the conditions for workers there:
Nonunion truck drivers in Colombia, who work 15-hour days, would have to work two years to earn what Coca-Cola CEO Neville Isdell takes home in an hour. And if ever a truck is hijacked or damaged, or if even a single bottle goes unaccounted for, the cost is docked from the driver's wages.
The company treats unionized workers in the U.S. with just as much contempt. According to a report on recent strike in Washington:
Coke showed its ruthlessness by immediately cutting off health benefits to all 500 striking employees. Since health insurance premiums are paid month by month, it means that the workers had already paid their premium for August, but still had their August coverage cut off.
This is how the sausage is made. The fortunes of investors like Buffett are amassed through ownership of corporations like Coca-Cola, where profits depend on keeping costs as low as possible, especially for workers, who have no real choice but to work labor for one or another employer.
Berkshire Hathaway also owns 18 percent of the Washington Post Co., which includes a division called Kaplan Inc. Kaplan has come under considerable scrutiny in the past year because of the for-profit colleges it operates, which have made it the target of multiple whistleblower lawsuits.
These colleges produce so much profit for the overall company that education now accounts for 62 percent of revenues--compared to 14 percent from newspaper publishing--almost $3 billion annually. And of those revenues for Kaplan, 91.5 percent comes from the federal government "through Pell grants, Stafford loans, military and veterans benefits, and other aid," according to the New York Times.
For-profit college operators like Kaplan and the University of Phoenix now enroll 11 percent of the nation's higher-education students. "But their students account for 43 percent of those defaulting on student loans," the Times reported.
These operators have a formula that works wonderfully for them, though: They keep the financial aid cash allocated to students from various government programs, whether or not the students graduate. The colleges therefore have an interest in signing up as many students as possible. The Times article on Kaplan reported that employees and students say the company's "fast-growing revenues were based on recruiting students whose chances of succeeding were low":
They cite, for example, a training manual used by recruiters in Pittsburgh whose "profile" of Kaplan students listed markers like low self-esteem, reliance on public assistance, being fired, laid off, incarcerated, or physically or mentally abused...
Carlos Urquilla-Diaz, a former Kaplan instructor and administrator who is one of the Miami whistleblowers, recalled a PowerPoint presentation showing African American women who were raising two children by themselves as the company's primary target.
Recently, Kaplan settled one of the whistleblower lawsuits charging that it made fraudulent claims. The cost of the settlement was $1.6 million--a drop in the bucket for a business that produces several billion dollars annually--or, I should say, rakes in several billion in taxpayer dollars annually.
Kaplan is breaking new ground in preying on the most vulnerable. And while Warren Buffett may not be writing the PowerPoint presentations, you can bet he appreciates the revenues the company generates for Berkshire Hathaway.
If Buffett was such a good guy, he would have admitted wrongdoing and publicly disowned Kaplan's practices--the same goes for Coca-Cola. Instead, the Washington Post Co. dished out some hush money in the hopes that the scandal will go away--with nary a word from the "affable billionaire."
In addition to Coca-Cola and the Washington Post Co., Berkshire Hathaway owns all or part of dozens of other companies, including Geico, See's Candies, Jordan's Furniture, Business Wire, American Express, Moody's--the now controversial ratings agency that gave the thumbs-up to bundled sub-prime mortgages--and, yes, the infamous Wal-Mart.
So when Buffett claims in his New York Times article that his super-rich friends, "by and large," are "very decent people," it's worth remembering what makes Buffett himself so rich.
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http://wwww.socialistworker.org/2011...e-is-warren-on |
