Pay your luxury tax

Recently, I wrote about the rapid increase in gun sales since Barack Obama was elected president. Let’s take that a step further and look at a profession in which many people assume only criminals deal. Thanks to Jeff Bayer and AskMen.com, a few of the myths about arms dealers have been dispelled. In a nutshell, it’s typically quite legal.

Think about it. You may know somebody famous, but do you honestly know any international arms dealers? I certainly don’t. We know they sell armaments, but that’s about it. The majority of the picture we have in our minds has been created by films (Nicholas Cage’s “Lord of War” or Robert Downey Jr. in “Iron Man“) and television shows. Mr. Bayer, tell us the truth.

Top 5 things you don’t know about arms dealers

1. Dealing arms isn’t illegal
   Surprised? In most countries, private arms dealing is perfectly legal. Few others even have any laws that specifically forbid arms dealing. According to Bayer, this works primarily because the arms dealer is only a middleman with a phone, computer and bank account. If laws are ever broken, they are import/export laws or United Nations sanctions against offending countries – not arms dealing laws. While some profess to despise arms dealers, the truth is that it happens in every country, and whether the deals made are illegal or not, there is little interference from authorities. Their non-involvement is taken to mean acceptance by some.
2. The AK-47 is often used as a loss leader
   Some dealers, Bayer says, simply give these assault rifles away to trusted buyers. AK-47s only cost about $75 to buy, transport and sell. Profit margins are too low.  But many of the high-profile arms dealers don’t bother with this gun at all because the margins it offers are too low. They’re an incentive, a gateway into more profitable items.
3. Arms buyers need not pay cash
   But we aren’t talking bad credit personal loans here. Arms dealers go where the conflict is. “Vulture” and “death merchant” tags aside, it’s simply good business for them. Areas of conflict are typically volatile on a variety of levels, including economic. Thus, dealers do take other items in trade. “Blood diamonds” from the mines of West Africa are one example Bayer gives. Even though 50-plus countries honor the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme that is meant to prevent illicit (dangerous) diamond importing of this nature, the market remains strong.
4. Arms dealers’ salaries run into the millions
   Bayer gets this from sources close to the action. According to Jean Bernard Lasnaud, a French-born arms dealer living in Florida, “between $1 million and $2.5 million (U.S.) in merchandise will be unloaded in an average year.” Dealer Viktor Bout claims he made $50 million selling to the Taliban in the 1990s. American arms manufacturers even use arms dealers. Boeing, for instance, contracted Dale Stoffel for 34 Russian missiles so that American ship defense systems could be tested.
5. Arms dealers will sell anything and everything
   Bayer points out that arms dealers aren’t merely guns and ammo salesmen. They’re “war providers.” In addition to armaments, vehicles, communications equipment, medicine, uniforms and food are also typically available. The items are typically purchased in one country, then shipped to another via ship or airplane. More successful dealers may even have their own shipping fleet.

Clearly, the world needs to tax them for revenue

President Obama’s call for limiting executive salaries for TARP-dependent businesses doesn’t go far enough. All people internationally who earn $1 million per year or more should be subject to a luxury tax. They can afford it and the world needs it, as economies are deflating across the globe. Arms dealers are known; the money changing hands at one time is too large to hide completely. World leaders should work together to institute this tax. In turn, arms dealers could actually build good will with more than military leaders for a change. War and conflict are part of human nature, so arms dealers aren’t going away any time soon. They can pay it forward for the survivors.

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Cash Advance Mojo appreciates what the United Nations was trying to do, but for satire to work the way it should, one must be aware of the boundaries of good taste. Dance the line, don’t eradicate the line.

What is Refugee Run?

Unfortunately, that’s what the U.N. did at Davos with their little “Refugee Run” theme park. With introductions like this – “Are you looking for a little excitement in your life? Imagine what fun it would be to live through a rebel attack . . . to navigate a minefield … to negotiate with corrupt officials and border guards in a desperate effort to survive” – who wouldn’t want a piece of the fun?

“Are there no prisons?” exclaimed Ebenezer

Refugee Run is targeted at the disconnected world leaders and luminaries who are sheltered from real world conditions by the trappings of their wealth. Perhaps if these leaders were made to understand the conditions their own people actually face in places like Darfur, Congo, Iraq and Pakistan, they would be motivated into action.

Huddle on the floor in a canvas tent

Visit Refugee Run. There’s a canvas tent in Darfur, where you huddle with others on the dirt floor. Move on to a slightly larger hovel, where families pray for their lives. Now you’re in Afghanistan, Pakistan or Iran. Homeless tent towns like those found in the United States or one hundred other countries aren’t far away from where you sit.

However, most world leaders tended to skip the theme park and headed back to their Swiss hotel suites that came complete with whirlpool hot tubs and gift baskets. And the freedom and financial means to access payday loans if they so desired.

A bit less heavy-handed next time, OK U.N.?

“Can Davos man empathize with refugees when he or she is not in danger and is going back to a luxury banquet and hotel room afterwards?” William Easterly of Aid Watch wrote in one of many scathing reviews.

Yet not all were critical of the display. “The exhibition is artificial, but anything that sensitizes people to the harsh realities of refugees can only be a plus,” said former Australian Foreign Minister Gareth Evans. Ban Ki-Moon, the U.N. Secretary-General, called his organization’s efforts ” Refugee Run “a profound experience that reminds us of the plight of millions of forcibly displaced people.” Even mega-rich celerities like Virgin Group Chairman Sir Richard Branson voiced their support, calling Refugee Run a statement “beautifully done.”

Hundreds visited, but did they see?

Only time will tell. Fundraising for refugee aid programs continues, and the U.N. remains hopeful that displaced peoples worldwide will eventually discover an acceptable quality of life. Political, economic and self-determination should be basic human rights that all who live and breathe possess. Voting for representative leaders, doing what you desire with your money and making the big and little decisions in your personal life are all part of what make you human. If someone wants a cash advance for extra money until their next payday, they shouldn’t be looked down upon like a refugee. Humans should be in the business of making decisions for themselves.

Related articles

• Hey, Davos Man: If You’re so Smart, Why Didn’t You See this Coming? (blogs.harvardbusiness.org)
• Plea At Davos: Don’t Forget World’s Poor (cbsnews.com)
• Sir. Richard Branson: talks up optimism for entrepreneurs (bizequity.com)

However, this may be a good time to reflect on just how lucky we are to live in one of the richest nations on earth.  It seems kind of maudlin to say, but it is the truth.

Many others across the globe would be thankful just to have clean drinking water, enough food to feed their children or some basic antibiotics to fight off diseases that were cured or done away with over a century ago in the core nations.

UN votes nearly unanimously that food is a basic human right

A somewhat contentious vote (for some) went before the United Nations and was passed nearly unanimously.  The vote was whether to add food to the list of basic human rights.

The measure saying food was a basic human right passed 180 to 1.   Financial freedom should be on the agenda eventually, which would give people the option of payday loans in lieu of loan sharks.

The votes for were signed by almost every nation of the world, including many of the big time power players.  China, the UK, Germany, France, even the tiny Principality of Liechtenstein, all voted yes.

Who voted no?

As stated, only one nation opposed the measure. That dissenter, who opposed the idea that all human beings should have food to survive on, was the United States of America.

We aren’t going to start America bashing here. This isn’t an anti-American forum, and this author, for one, isn’t about to back a different horse in the least. But it seems, at the least, to be arrogant on the part of our leaders to pursue a policy in which those who can’t provide for themselves aren’t given a helping hand by a nation with the richest agricultural base in the world and the largest food reserves perhaps in recorded history.

This author is not one who is about to start advocating that any one nation has to take care of the world. That would be ludicrous. But it is at least worth discussing that this has transpired.

We all hear it so many times during the season, but that hardly negates the truth of the statement

It is an oft repeated sentiment that there are “starving kids” elsewhere in the world, often to persuade kids to eat vegetables ineptly prepared by their parents that smell like an NFL lineman’s gym sock. But in the wake of severe food shortages the world over, it’s all too terrifyingly true. Citizens of the island nation of Haiti have been resorting to eating literally sand and dirt “cookies” to stave off starvation and suffering as a result of ingesting the soil.

So remember, if you have to look into getting payday loans to cover a short-term gap in your finances, do not, by any means think there is any shame in doing so.  There are millions who would love to be in your shoes.