Showing posts with label wealth. Show all posts
Showing posts with label wealth. Show all posts

Tuesday, 7 January 2025

Play the game that people play?

Lucky Baskhar (Telugu; 2024)
Director: Venky Atluri

There are different rules for other players. The rich have it good. The system ensures that they stay wealthy. Money begets money. The law provides that the bulk of wealth remains within the confines of those with them. There are different rules for other players. The rich have it good. The system ensures that they stay wealthy. Money begets money. The law provides that the bulk of wealth remains within the confines of those who possess it. The legal system makes justice swifter for all the money that can be bought. The middle class stays put in a self-imposed restrictive loop. The middle class is trapped in a cocoon by concocting rules of morality as well as divine and social justice. Grabbing an obscene wealth escapes them and can only be an unattainable dream. 

The middle class is often used as a scapegoat to show society that the system is fair. By periodically using them as sacrificial lambs, society sets an example to others of what can happen if they flaunt the law.

The word scapegoat has an interesting origin. It comes from the Book of Leviticus. In the Jewish ritual of Yom Kippur, a goat is symbolically burdened with the people's sins and released into the wilderness. This was a practice of atonement. In modern life, the poor are left high and dry to sanitise the wrongdoings of the community's upper echelon. 

Gone are the days when people are judged by their virtues. Currently, man is assessed by the amount of wealth he amasses. It does not matter the means it was acquired. Once money jiggles in one's pocket, everything and anything can be sanitised. A middle-class person is no longer middle-class. He springboards to a different level and acquires a new set of rules. He is viewed as a success story. Society, hellbent on punishing him earlier, will now bend backwards to protect him. Anything friends in higher places cannot help; money will do that.

Lucky Baskhar is an interesting movie with twists at every corner. It is a make-believe story that shows how one can beat the system once one learns the trade of the game. Baskhar is a low-ranking bank teller who is springboarded to the post of Assistant General Manager after a minor scandal in the bank. 

Little does he realise he is a pawn in the big boys' game of interbank loans, middleman brokers, share market rigging, and swindling the Reserve Bank of India. Baskhar cannot be a hero and expose everyone as his good name is also dragged into the muck. Baskhar, too, has his own economic woes and pressures from his family, father, siblings and in-laws. So, how does he kill two birds with one stone? Baskhar devises a complicated web of deceit that beats the big boys at their own game, solves his financial woes and gives everyone a run for their money.

The viewers always like to watch the little men whip up the powerful man at his own trade. This is it. The audience will leave feeling satisfied as if they had watched 'Catch Me If You Can'!


Monday, 2 September 2024

A problem many would like to have...

While scavenging around for the next topic to ponder, I came across a conundrum a friend of a friend was going through. Not many would find it a big problem. Many would not mind inheriting that problem. Others would say, "What problem?"

After working all their lives engaging with various businesses to pull themselves out of the shackles of poverty, they can say they have arrived. No, thanks to the governmental racially discriminatory policies, and despite this, they had managed to give their three children an overseas education. Again, the children had opted to settle overseas because of the national social re-engineering policies. The roots are so deeply embedded elsewhere that they find it pointless to return to the roost. Their occasional summer vacation and digital connections would suffice for family bonding.

The couples are left to fend for the coop and the empty nest. To complement that, there are multiple landed properties, real estate assets, various incomes, and a stash of moolah to lubricate their silver years.

None of the children are keen to take over the legacy the parents will soon leave. In the minds of the foreign-educated liberty thinking, socialistic minds of the offspring, they do not want anything with their capitalistic parents' money, which they would be thinking was earned through the blood and sweat toiled by the bodies of the working class. And they want none the part of it.

So, the elders are left with a dilemma. How will they will off their legacy when none of their kids want to inherit it. In a world where siblings and relatives clobber and murder each other to get a piece of the meat, here they have to deal with no one wanting their hard-earned.

Many individuals with apparently noble intentions (?really) have no dearth of suggestions and avenues on how to dispose of their wealth to the world. There is no shortage of NGOs willing to put their money to good use, more than a hundred orphanages and homes that are always short of contributions, the house of worship with their bottomless pit of donation kits and private entities that could set up trusts to aid the needy. Yet, they decided to spend it all with close friends, fine dining, rewarding their palate and seeing all the things that they could see in this lifetime. Who knows what holds for them in the future when this life is through? An abyss? A new beginning with no recollection of what transpired here and now? Or…

I attended a friend's 80th birthday recently. It was a celebration of a man's life who had every right to show and motivate others through his slow journey of rags to riches. After a fulfilling life in the civil service, corporate world, and academia, he is engrossed in spirituality. He took it his life's mission to pay back to society. He finances needy students and also engrossed himself in social activities. His secret to success and happiness is his outlook on life. He shields off every hurdle that comes his way with a smile.


Friday, 9 September 2022

All the justice money can buy.

Chief Justices Tengku Maimun Tuan Mat, Chief Judge of Sabah and 
Sarawak Abang Iskandar Abang Hashim, and apex court judges 
Nallini Pathmanathan, Mary Lim and Mohamad Zabidin Diah.
The naive, straight-thinking, law-abiding me with no background in the legal field used to think that the buck stopped at the Court Of Appeal. If one fails at the Appellate Court, it was pretty much that. One goes to jail to complete a sentence or meets his maker as he hits the gallows. 

Now we know there is life after the appeal. One can seek justice by pleading at the Federal Court. If the results there are not to his liking, he further argues to have a judicial review of the panel of judges that meted his sentence. Even the Federal Court can be held at ransom. This is called justice in the world of the high-heeled. Everyone deserves adequate legal representation, and it is his human right. Of course, it becomes mandatory if the client can afford the obscene amount of retainer fees involved as the case goes higher in the hierarchy of the legal accolade. Nobody has the guts to inquire about these people's seemingly bottomless coffers and the disproportional amount they save from their structured civil servant pay.


Not to forget the special treatment these VIP client is entitled to. In the eyes of the law, unlike what everybody else says, he is not a criminal until he has exhausted all his legal avenues. Till then, he will be roaming freely, still flashing his designer outfits and not repeating wearing the same tunic more than once. He can perhaps add a tinge of tangerine in his tie to mock naysayers who miss the joy of seeing him in an orange prison suit. The shiny steel cuff links can remind them of the handcuffs that he does not have to wear. 


We, the mere mortal we are, are also told that everyone deserves a second chance. Like a true religious confession, with a single stroke of the royal quill, one can get a clean slate, free to do what he seems fit, sniggering at the whole parody of it all. 


In the true mantra of cash is king, money can buy friends, love, liaisons with the rich and famous and definitely justice and freedom. Laws are made to make the powerless remain so and squirm at the sight of the stick. For the privileged 1%, it is just an inconvenience. Laws are meant to be broken. The rich can challenge it. The poor just have to oblige. 


Friday, 22 April 2022

Blurred line between fact and fiction!

Inventing Anna (Miniseries, 2021)
Netflix

Believe it or not, this miniseries is based on actual events. Between 2013 and 2017, a young German heiress of Russian descent by the name of Anna Delvey was seen in the social circles of New York. She was moving around the company of who's who in the art scene and the rich and famous. Everybody was excited about her ambitious plan to create an ultra-exclusive club where the exceptionally wealthy clientele could partake. Soon every banker, lawyer, designer and leeches was dying to be in her company. The only perennial problem is that his apparently flamboyant young lady has problems mobilising her money from Germany. Her strict father is insistent that Anna earns her every single penny herself. 

People soon realise that Anna was spending way too much than she actually managed to show. Not wanting to be embarrassed, her many famous socialites and supporters of Anna's plan to build a foundation instead stay anonymous and would not like to be associated with her. This was discovered by a problematic journalist who decided to investigate Anna. She has to finish her investigations in record time as she is due to deliver her baby anytime now.

The story of Anna Delvey @ Anna Sorokin peels open the problems with modern living. Money begets money, and affluence pulls influence. Creating a persona is so important these days, and the ultimate tool to create a fake narrative is social media. It paints an illusion of prosperity and contentment when it is just a smokescreen for the ugly backdrop that lurks in the background. It is the gratifying playground of narcissists. The story is so hyperreal that it alters reality which is not so rosy.

Outstanding achievements are achieved from dreaming, but building sandcastles in the air does not hold water. One lie to cover another only gets one entangled in a web of deceit that will only reveal itself on its own finally.

Are parents really responsible for the mess that their offspring create? Can they be blamed if their children create mayhem in society? Do children come from parents or merely go through their parents? At a time when parenting is outsourced so much to nannies, schools and cyberspace, who knows who creates their personality and values? Nobody listens to their parents anymore. The children have a legitimate excuse for all their follies and failures - overbearing parenting!

It should be pretty apparent that it is a priority to save big conglomerates whenever there is an economic downturn. The justification for this is that the collapse of a large corporation has a spill down effect on the small people and the country's economy at large. The push is there to ensure their continuity at the expense of the rest of the country. The same things happen in the legal system. The average man-in-the-street will never be able to afford to appoint the shrewd legal eagles to seek justice arising from the inhumane and unscrupulous criminal antics of business concerns. The current turns of events in many high-profile cases are indeed proof that there is an invisible hand from above (definitely NOT the Hand of God!) that is controlling the narrative. By no means, beyond a shadow of a doubt, one can confidently assume that there are two sets of rules of law (not justice); one for the corporations and another for the little men (and women).

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Friday, 14 January 2022

Wealth does not last more than 3 generations?

House of Gucci (2021)
Director: Ridley Scott

They say wealth within a family only lasts only for three generations. This adage is applicable for immigrant populations and also for family businesses. The maverick from the first generation with fire in his belly, zest in his heart and vision in his mind, would venture out to dream the impossible. He would not sleep till his vision of the future materialised. With his affluence, he would not want his offspring to be deprived of what he did not have.  

Opportunities would just roll in like a fountain for the offspring, i.e. the second generation. They do not have to struggle to get their chances. To them, it is all a given thing, a no-brainer. "These things are human rights, no big deal!' They start to explore the finer things in life and the ember in the belly is slowly fizzling out. 

The generation next would have easier growing up. Shielded from cruelties of life, street smartness would be something quite alien, unlike the first generation where being witty would decide between sleeping empty and hunger pangs. Slowly, time would consume the establishment. The legacy of the pioneers would only remain as spiced up biopics for general entertainment. 

The House of Gucci was started by Guccio Gucci, who had started as a bellboy in Savoy Hotel in London, around the early 20th century in Florence, Italy. Gucci initially specialised in leather goods with their own workshop but had to diversify after 1935 when it could not source leather. The League of Nations had imposed a trade embargo after Mussolini had invaded Ethiopia. They ventured into other fabrics and by 1953, Gucci had become an international brand. The House of Gucci opened its New York branch.

By then, the House was run by the second generation. It was owned by two brothers, Aldo and Rodolfo, 50% each. Trouble brewed in the 1980s after Rodolfo died.

The movie portrays the stormy days as Rodolfo's son, Maurizio, reluctantly gets into the driver's seat when he inherits his father's share in Gucci. With the prodding by his wife, Patrizia Reggiani, they plot a devious plan to take over the whole of the House of Gucci. Patrizia's domineering attitude did not go well with their marriage. The flamboyant Maurizio started an affair that angered Patrizio. She, with her clairvoyant friend, hire a hitman to gun down Maurizio in broad daylight. Even before Maurizio's death, Gucci had lost its family-owned business status as Maurizio's spendthrift ways forced him to seek assistance from an investment group. As fate would have it, this group ousted Maurizio from Gucci.

So Gucci's is Gucci family's ownership no more; talk about wealth not lasting in a family for more than three generations. 

The movie is a trip down memory lane as songs of the yesteryears kept unexpectedly rolling as the background soundtrack. Lady Gaga gave a sterling performance of conniving missis and scorned wife who would stop at nothing to get her way.

Sunday, 21 March 2021

A full circle

Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Documentary; 2019) 
 Based on the book written by Thomas Piketty.

We started in the pre-Industrial Revolution with a significant disparity between the haves and have nots. Under the feudal system, there were the extremely wealthy landowners and the dirt poor peasants. The inequality between the two was phenomenal. The poor simply cannot work their way to become rich. It is humanly impossible. One has to be born with a silver spoon to own capital. Alternatively, one has to be married into one, like in the many fairytales and novels of the yesteryears. 1% of the world population owned 70% of the world's wealth.
The divide between the affluent and the impoverished became more apparent. This triggered the exodus of people from Europe to newer lands like Australia and the USA and took them over. The emigrants replicated their master's strategy of wealth acquisition. They used slaves, a form of movable property, as collateral and capital to generate more land and wealth.
When machines rolled in during the Industrial Revolution, people were just replaced, creating the same kind of impoverished people as they had before. Businesses flourished. Mass production of goods by machines needed a market. Fashion designing, haute culture, gift-giving, splurging during festivities was popularised. Businessmen accumulate wealth.
Nationalism reeked in as inequality reared its ugly head. People forgot about their poverty and stood steadfast behind the banner of nationhood. Industries fanned this by churning out weapons and starting military competition amongst nations to start wars. Now the elites are also the one who controls the narrative at the international level. Again, the same schism morphed between the rich and the poor, the 1% owning 70% of the wealth.
The world wars that came about were actually equalisers that jolted the inequality. Capitalism was held accountable for the catastrophe. It seems that on the cusp of death, humanity appeared more critical. Everyone is equal in fear of death. In rolled in heavy State involvement in nation-building. Cradle-to-tomb benefits were handed out to societies. The working class and women demand their place in society. For the first time in human history, an individual could climb up the social ladder through education and hard work.
Anti-capitalist protesters - St Paul's Cathedral, London, 2011. 
Photograph: Oli Scarff/Getty Images Europe
Actually, during the wars, capital was only marginally lost. Some were used to finance the war, whilst some were retrieved later. With the euphoria of peace and the push to spur economies, many manoeuvres were put into place to help big corporations be in the role of what the aristocrats used to fill.
Resentment grew again. Wage did not expand in proportion to the increased cost of living. The increase in union strikes and demand for entitlement did not help either. Labour was no longer an asset but the expense of doing business. The welfare state was just too costly.
We are now in a world where greed is good. The poor are handout loans for which they are not creditworthy. The lust for luxurious, opulent and decadent lifestyles lure the ill-prepared to dream of the impossible to plunge them into more misery than mired in. On the other hand, the wealthy has the four corners of the world to hide their treasures. Using creative accounting and the intelligent use of international off-shore banking, 85% of the world's wealth is just floating around without generating any benefit to the needy.
On the other hand, it generates more income for them. Tax evasion manoeuvres are helped via cash-strapped tax havens in banana republics. The problem with these havens is that their local populace does not benefit from these transactions. They remain poor. They do not have to fear economic downturns as history has shown that bail-outs can be arranged.
Relationship between per capita national income
 and the degree of inequality in income distribution
Capitalism started out unequal, flattened inequality 
for much of the 20th century, but is now headed back
towards Dickensian levels of inequality worldwide.

Only 15% of the world wealth is spent to create a beneficial trickle-down effect to the not-so-wealthy 99%. The 'baby boomers' had it good. With the post-war prosperity and ability to acquire wealth, they can enjoy the fruit of their labour in their twilight years if they had done so. Meanwhile, the Millenials has it bad. With the rung of the social ladder getting wider and having had to finance their own education, they may spend their whole life in debt. They may not afford to own a roof over their head like their predecessors. The gig economy that they find satisfying puts them in a precarious position. They are not provided with a safety net against accidents, sickness and opportunity for holidays.
The author suggests that there should be a comprehensive tax revision. The ultra-rich needed to be taxed progressively the more they earn. Invasion of taxes by clandestine methods needs to be looked into. As inherited wealth will dominate wealth made form a lifetime's labour by an exorbitant margin, he propose an inheritance tax. His argument is that one cannot start the game of life with different terms, the have and have nots. His analogy is a game of monopoly of two players where one player starts the game with more money and has the chance to play with two dices. He will pass 'Go' more times and buy more properties and earlier in the game, hence collecting more rent. Well, one can say this is a Marxist or leftist view of the distribution of wealth.
A friend once told me this. Even if all the world's wealth is equally divided among the world's inhabitants right to the last penny, creating an ideal egalitarian society, we just have to give ten years. After ten years, wealth distribution and inequality will revert to their previous pattern. Some people are just good with money. Others have different priorities. One glaring thing that is not taken into all these systems is the human innard qualities. As quoted by Gandhi, the Earth has everything to fill our needs, but not our greed.
History has shown that everything in life happens cyclically. Man will create an economic model. It will be a good, best thing since forever. Then slowly, one by one, its shortcomings will surface. Then more. Suddenly it will be the worst thing Man ever thought of. Then more calls for reform, a revolution maybe. A new system will be proposed - the best thing since sliced bread. And the cycle will continue.
Whatever said and done, the idea of utopia on Earth is a piped dream. The dream of eternal fairness and equality is as real as seeing a pink unicorn. Even the Universe is not kind to its dwellers. They have to endure thunders, typhoons, volcanic eruptions and asteroid collisions and their devastating effects. The presence of a large middle class is essential to form a buffer between the haves and have nots, to narrow the division in wealth inequality. Transformation and modification will happen, but we will keep on looking for the ideal elusive economic model.


Thursday, 22 October 2020

The higher you fly, the harder the fall!

Bad Boy Billionaires: India (Documentary, 2020; Netflix)

This is another one of Netflix's productions that hit a snag in India, this time it spurned court cases demanding against its release. Three out of the four episodes in the series were released recently. The fourth episode, a documentary narrating the rise and fall of Ramalinga Raju of Satyam Computers, was successfully stopped at the courts for its damaging portrayal of the man.  

The remaining episodes tell about the escapades of the three Indian icons.

Vijay Mallya, a fugitive currently residing in the UK, is also known as the King of Good Times. Born to a beer brewer father, despite the Prohibition of liquor in many states of India, managed to glamourise beer drinking during the dot com bubble heydays of the '90s. From there he went on to the world centre stage through his involvement in the 'no frills' airline business and the F1 races. He made a few shady loans, and soon he was hot on the heels of the authority. He fleed to London and is fighting extradition efforts to India.  

Diamondtaire, Nirav Modi, was born into a family that delved in the jewellery business for generations. He was the one who singlehanded showcased the master craftsmanship of the Indian jewellers to the world stage via his international brand that carried his name. He allegedly inflated the value of his own merchandise through sales of his jewellery to different shell companies. His shady loans with Punjab National Bank, however, alerted the lawmen to investigate his dealings. Modi is now seeking asylum in the UK.

We are familiar with the brand Sahara which use to be displayed proudly on the Indian cricket and hockey team jerseys. Sahara (Saviour) is the name of a financier group created by a rags-to-riches individual named Subrata Roy. At one time, the Sahara group of companies was the biggest employer in India after the Indian Railways. Its primary business was chit fund, a type of savings for the poor. It later ventured into real estate, hospitality, airline industry, healthcare, education and many more. His problems started when he decided to public list two of his companies. This spurred the Market Regulators to look into his company accounts. Despite the repeated accusations and huge fines imposed on the conglomerate, the company's fundamentals are still intact.

The story of fame and fortune always excites the deprived or those dreaming for the unattainable. Perhaps, the safest way to gather wealth is to do in the sly without kicking much pomp and splendour. Splashing obscene amount of cash for private events always open the eyes of the regulators who had been entrusted with upholding the law, has the Hobson's choice of needing to investigate. No system is leak-proof; it is easy to find a discrepancy. One thing leading to another, years of labour will come tumbling down. The middle ground seems prudent but then how do create something earth-shattering without a thud?

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“Be afraid. Be very afraid.”*