As Odyne said 'where is the kindness now?'
This isn't about kindness this is about wealth and power! If the elite were acting out of kindness the world would be a more equal place where people would be healthier and happier.
The only time the elites appear to exhibit kindness is when they fear that the balance of power is about to be threatened by civil unrest. For example Roosevelt's 'New Deal'.
The reason the New Deal came about was because of the emergence of megacorporations during the industrial revolution. These megacorporations exploited their workers horrifically and used their wealth and influence to pressure or corrupt legislators so that changes were made to legislation which stopped managers from being liable for the damage a company caused to its workers health (eg Hawks Nest Tunnel Disaster:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawk's_Nest_Incident ), the granting of charters for unlimited time (where before the government could withdraw a charter if a corporation wasn't acting in the public interest) and in 1886 the US Supreme Court ruling that a corporation was a 'natural person' and therefore protected by the Bill of Rights!
By the 1900's there was widespread concern amongst the public over the power of the corporations and how much they were exploiting people, including child labour, which saw a growth in labour movements around the world which demanded change.
The super rich responded by going on a charm offensive, PR campaign to try and improve their image to try and calm the angry public. They engaged in philanthropic activities and argued that well governed corporations were actually good for society.....the back drop to this was the Wall Street Crash of 1929 and the Great Depression that followed it, not to mention the two world wars fought with industrial savagery and costing the lives of millions of working people, but making profits for the industrialists.
Roosevelt realised that he had to give more to the public or risk increasing dissent from the public so he introduced reforms to curb the corporations, alter taxation and increase workers rights. Unions and consumer movements managed to keep a balance of power between the public and the voracious corporations.....for a while.
In 1970 economist Milton Friedman brought in his school of thought (neoliberalism) with a paper titled: 'The social responsibility of business is to Increase its profits' (acting to maximise profits foir shareholders). Reagan and Thatcher used neoliberalism as the philosophical foundations of their actions as they pushed for greater privatisation (which means the rich get to buy up everything and control it!), deregulated the markets (part of a slippery slope towards the creation of the derivitives market which enabled bankers to fraudulently disguise and hide risk, leading to the housing bubble of 2008) and 'liberalise' the worlds markets for corporations.
What this allowed the corporations to do was get around the influence of the public. The public could ensure good working conditions through unions, activism (eg boycotts) and consumer groups but now the corporations could just step past them and begin exploiting the public in developing world countries where there were no unions, no child labour laws and where corrupt officials could be easily bribed to use state apparatus such as the army and police to suppress dissent from the workers.
Prior to this Nixon had discarded the Bretton Woods ('New World Order') agreement which pegged money to gold, in 1971. This lead to many countries pegging their currencies to the dollar which was seen as a strong currency; others however floated their exchange rates seperately; all this created international monetary instability. Globalisation has seen the world's economy become increasingly unsustainable. Speculators wreak havoc on economies and money flies around the world at the touch of a button. One possible solution to this would be a 'Tobin Tax'/'Robin Hood Tax' on foreign exchange transactions as this would raise money to invest where it is needed around the world whilst bringing greater stability to the system. Doing this and investing the money to tackle poverty is arguably a 'kind' thing to do.
The Bretton Woods conference saw the creation of the world bank and the 'Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) with the stated aim of helping to reconstruct the world after the war. The club of rich northern countries formed the 'Development Assistance Committee' (DAC) which used offers of aid as a way of bribing third world countries into compliance. Any efforts by the developing world to establish a more equal system where the global south had more say, based on the UN were stopped by the rich northern countries.
The oil crisis of 1973 saw the oil producing countries recycle their huge cash surpluses through private northern banks and into 'third world' loans. In 1974 77 developing nations appealed through the UN for a 'New International Economic Order', arguing that aid was no substitute for a fair deal on things like trade. (basically they were being controlled and ripped off by the north).
In 1982 a massive financial crisis hit Mexico which threatened to default on its foreign debts. The US government stepped in to protect the private northern banks and imposed ‘The Brady Plan’ on the Mexican government which required them to impose ‘structural adjustment’ (which basically means squeezing the workers...not the rich.... with austerity measures much like they are doing to all of us now)
When Mexico told its creditors it couldn't pay governments stepped in to bail out banks, transforming private debt into public debt (just like they have done again today). Developing countries were left in huge debt with 'structural adjustment' forced on them by the World Bank and IMF in exchange for new loans.
We have seen governments bail out banks again recently passing their debt onto us and the real economy of production and consumption whilst the bankers have grown phenomonally wealthy. Poorer countries were left with burdonsome interest payments while the bankers coined in the profits. In the US the Bush regime brought in tax cuts for the rich which along with an abstract war against a method of warfare called 'terrorism', saw the budget surpluses of the Clinton years turn into huge deficits.
The banking crisis of 2007 hit months after banks were announcing record profits. Governments proved willing to accept bad debts from private banks while those same banks refused to accept bad debts from 'sub-prime' mortgage borrowers, whose homes were repossessed by the banks.....so much for 'kindness'!
So the current 'new world order' is the 'Washington Consensus' (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_consensus) which involves trying to use 'free markets' to solve the worlds poverty problems and the imposition of increasing conditions on aid. Really the 'kind' thing to do would be to have a debt jubilee where the debt of the developing world is wiped off the books.
Getting back to corporate greed....in the 1980's the restructuring of the global economy caused massive unemployment and a growing gap between the rich and the poor (sound familiar?). Corporate crimes such as the Bhopal disaster involving Union Carbide in India which killed 10,000 people, the EXXon Valdez oil spill and Nestle selling breastmilk substitute to women in the developing world saw increasing public anger against the corporations just like before Roosevelt's New Deal. This has seen increasing activism eg anti-globalisation, greenpeace (and other environmental campaigners), industrial actions and growing awareness amongst the public about global poverty, famines and sweatshops.
Just like in the 19th-20th century the corporations responded with a PR campaign trying to make them look more responsible. 'Brand image' and 'corporate responsibility' became a concern for the corporations. A whole industry grew up around trying to improve corporations public image without actually making the corporations behave in a more ethical way!
Since this time the public have begun to look past corporations for alternatives and there is an increase in direct action and 'anti-globalisation' movements.
So here we are again! We are seeing more wars again, oil spills, corporate exploitation, banker bailouts, home repossessions and massive unemployment.
But money doesn't dissapear in an economic crisis it simply changes hands. So if the money is leaving the publics hands then where is it going? To the 1% of course.....same as it always does!
The increase on military spending and the tax cuts for the rich we have seen in recent years has also been matched by increasing controls on the public and on the internet.
The US was founded on ideas geared towards limiting the powers of banks and corporations but these have been eroded over time with deregulation eg the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act 1933 and the Federal reserve Act 1913. The American Revolution was against repressive taxes from the British government but the American people are being squeezed once again! During wars there is always talk of income tax. In world war one the labour movement and farm organisations used the cry: 'no conscription of men without conscription of wealth' arguing that the rich should be taxed more. In the 1890's a hugely popular move by William Bryant Jennings attempted to push through a new income tax to tax the rich more....it was overturned in the Supreme Court. This was finally reversed in 1913.
The 1970's and 1980's saw the political Right making tax cuts for the rich because of escalating house prices in California pushing property taxes sky high. New legislation (Proposition 13) limited tax but saw brutal cuts on local services and education. The people who gained from this were corporate properties who saw their tax bills reduced by hundreds of thousands of dollars. Right wingers in other countries also stirred up anger against the government to justify tax cuts for the wealthy. tax cuts for the rich inevitably mean that the governments must find the money elsewhere and that means squeezing the rest of us which lead to the poll tax revolts in Britain where 14 million people refused to pay the tax and managed to get the hated poll tax dropped and then ensured the conservative government fell from power in the next election.
When Bush gave tax cuts to the rich the gap between the rich and the poor widened. Further to this Globalisation has enabled transnational corporations and the super rich to move their money to tax havens and avoid paying tax. In 2008 it was estimated that $160 billion was lost as a result of companies using false accounting to reduce their tax liability. Surely the 'kind' thing to do would be to pay the taxes so that it can be spent on education, housing, health, infrastructure etc?
An example already posted by someone else on this forum is UK business man Philip Green (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Green ) who has avoided tax into the hundreds of millions. Whats really sick is that he has been given a knight hood and was hired by the government to help them make cuts to education!!!! Student protestors pointed out how his unpaid tax could pay for the education! This coziness between legislators and businessmen is not new and the public really need to use their democratic and consumer powers to break that cozy relationship so that the next generation can get a decent education.....after all....isn't that the 'kind' thing to do?
It should be pretty clear from history that there is a fight over power between the workers who actually make the economy work and the capitalist class who live off their investments. The government is merely the committee of the capitalist class and that is why they are not protecting the public they are protecting the capitalist class.
If we are going to improve the world for everyone and not just the super rich then more and more people must understand this dynamic and play their part in ensuring that the workers get a better deal. This means seeing through the right wing spin and propaganda which they will publish in their corporate media and to never fall for their lies that they actually want to help you and are actually nice kind people who just want to wrap you up in a big hug. They care only for money and wealth and alongside competing with other capitalist elements their other requirement in their march for greater wealth and power is the control of the worker which, unless you are living off your investments right now, is YOU(influenced by Chris Braziers ‘A Brief History...’)
