Not the poor. If you are below a certain income level not only do you not pay federal income tax but you get earned income credit. I did the taxes for a family who got $3000 more than what they paid in federal income tax. 43% of Americans pay no federal income tax. They do pay payroll taxes but that goes to fund their Social Security and Medicare benefits. None of it went to TARP.
As for websites, here is one:
http://www.businessinsider.com/43-of-americans-dont-pay-federal-income-tax-2013-9
Thanks for the information. Well if it's not the poor paying the taxes, then it's the average people, or the middle class, because it's completely impossible to believe that the super-rich are paying the taxes that are being used in order to create bail-outs and to save their own big bonuses. They are not growing to the super-rich status by using their own money, they grow super-rich by sucking the blood of the underpaid workers.
Those average citizen are the first to be touched by poverty in times of crisis anyways.
And the poor workers are paying the tax by simply being underpaid. The difference between a decent wage and their low wages are actually a tax and a punishment they have to endure for not having a certain "social status".
Lower wages for the workers mean more income for the companies and consequently more federal tax.
They may not be doing enough but they are doing more than you give them credit for:
http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=51358#.VsuUCX0rLIU
Well, sorry if I was too harsh on the Colombian movement named FUNDAEC.
My point is that, first of all, UN is misleading them. The UN is using charitable people like those at FUNDAEC in order to create some marginal research that everyone will forget about in a few years. I bet that in a few years the page you linked will even be deleted from the UN website. I really hope I am wrong, but I'm just doing my best to be realistic.
So, the article is named
"Small farmers can be major actors in reducing agriculture's carbon footprint - UN agency" and it starts with
"8 July 2015 – Helping farmers adapt to the impacts of climate change can also significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions, finds a new study released today by one of the agricultural agencies of the United Nations system." Let's see if the article will still be there in 5, 10 or 20 years.
Unlike totalitarian regimes, the Western governments are allowing the relevant reports to surface and they just cover them in irrelevant entertainment. Let's not forget that the establishment people
are smart enough to know the masses never respond to truth, so they don't fear its broadcast. They are essentially hiding the truth right out in the open where it's safe.
So what the UN is doing is to distract the people at FUNDAEC, keeping them busy and pretending that they are interested in the topic of small farming just enough to keep the people of FUNDAEC convinced that they are putting their energy to a good use.
And actually it's really easy to see that the UN is misleading the people: The small farms are more efficient than the big farms, except animal and cereal/grains cultures. They are more efficient in fruit and vegetable crops - look at Holland for example - the most efficient agriculture in the world with an average farm size of 18 hectare. So there is not much need to even make such research.
That being said, it remains to be seen if the FUNDAEC people will manage to avoid this trap. Unfortunately, most of the time, such people are not capable to do that.
That was once the case, it is much less so now. While powerful Western countries still control the Security Council, it is the developing world that has the larger say in the General Assembly. Of course when countries like the US withhold funds from UNESCO that does prevent them from doing much. Whenever we threaten to do that because of a project the US doesn't like, I send them a special contribution.
The poor countries have governments made by the corrupt politicians who save their money in the West. And the master in the West is the US. So those corrupt politicians have to listen to the "big brothers" if they want to avoid some some unpleasant asset freezes.
Also, let's not forget that today, the foreign investments decide.
John Eatwell, one of the leading specialists in finance at Cambridge University, estimates that, in 1970, about 90% of international capital was used for trade and long-term investment-more or less productive things- and 10% for speculation. By 1990, those figures had reversed: 90% for speculation and 10% for trade and long-term investment.
Also,
"the free flow of capital creates what is sometimes called a 'virtual senate' of lenders and investors who carry out a moment-by-moment referendum on government policies, and if they find that they’re irrational, meaning they help people instead of profits, then they vote against them, by capital flight, by tax on the country, and so on. So the democratic governments have a dual constituency, their own population and the virtual senate, who typically prevail. And for the poor, that means regular disaster." - alternative link:
chomsky.info
So the UNESCO funding is just a tiny and insignificant piece of the equation.
The reality is that the West is funding and dictating the UN policies and programs.
I don't think we are encouraging biofuel plantations so much. As for things like Palm tree and coconut plantations the way I've seen it implemented in places like India is not so much with big plantations but rather that farmers are encouraged to grow these trees along with their foodstuffs.
I don't know about palm tree plantations in India but in Indonesia and Malaysia there was/is a
huge deforestation taking place in order to grow palm trees. Also I've heard stories of big coconut plantations in Africa, growing on displaced small farms, of course.
Have you heard about any country in the developing world which is paying more attention to small farms than to big farms?
If we are going to help small farmers we have to talk to them, not other people on the internet. And small farmers in the developing world don't have internet. You have to go to the villages and consult with the villagers, find out what it is the need, what is working and what doesn't work. Then you figure out to what extent they can get what they need by their own cooperative efforts and to what extent they need outside assistance and how that can best be delivered. It takes a grass roots effort.
The farmers who live in villages should have internet. They can have their own associations and connect to the internet at the office of the association. They simply can't afford to stay disconnected in today's world. Also, in 2011, half of Africa's one billion population had a mobile phone - many of them can also carry internet too.
Of course every community has specific needs, some lands are more suitable for crop X and not for crop Y, cultural matters have to be taken into account and so on.
However, what they need most is land, and after land, they need real free markets. I (and anyone else) can tell that without visiting them. In the West, the farmer can buy tools and milling services for cheap. In Africa, they have to buy everything overpriced, because the lack of the free market and that's because of the corrupt politicians.
The average villager can't produce tools or build a windmill because the corrupt politicians won't give them a licence. Instead the corrupt politician (e.g. the mayor) will give the licence only to a select number of companies belonging to his family members. In the poor countries, the blood sucking mechanisms are very few, very rudimentary and therefore very easy to understand.
Those corrupt African politicians save their money and buy assets in the West. So it's our duty to freeze that wealth and to pressure them in order to allow their farmers to make a decent living.
After doing that and after teaching the small farmers such basics, and after teaching them how to stay connected and learn more relevant information, of course, we have to encourage them to come with solution adapted to their local particularities.
