Bill of Rights

The middle class deserves access to the best, most lucrative business and investment opportunities available globally – the current system in place does the middle class a great disservice. Supposedly riskier investments which have correspondingly higher returns are closed to the middle class ostensibly to protect middle class folks (MCFs). The problem is that the supposedly safe investments open to the middle class are ultimately no less riskier;  plus, the wealthy few have always figured out ways to take advantage (market timing Wikipedia page) of those seemingly safe instruments.  “The 2008 decline in the markets is instructive. While many retail brokers were instructed by their brokerages to tell their clients not to sell, but instead “look to the long term”, the market makers at those same brokerages were busy selling to cash to avoid losses for the brokerages’ large institutional clients. The result was that the retail clients were left with huge losses while the institutions fled to the safety of short term bonds and money market funds, thereby avoiding similar losses.” (extract from referenced market timing Wikipedia page). What happens now is that the middle class gets the very short end of the stick in so called safe investments and no participation in the best opportunities while the rich manage to participate in (and profit from) the best (supposedly riskier) opportunities as well as get the longer (and fatter) end of the stick in supposedly safe (low return) opportunities. As long as MCFs are able to pool resources and deploy those according to the same rules and best practices the rich employ, there is no reason to expect them to profit less than the rich would under the same circumstances, using the same quality of talent.

The middle class deserves access to the best, most competent, professional (accounting, tax, legal, real estate and so on) management talent, advice and advisers. Currently, only the rich can afford the best of these services – little wonder that they get the early warning signal to sell when everyone else is buying and buy when everyone else is selling. If an appropriate platform is provided for MCFs to pool resources, they would then have access to the best advice available and profit accordingly, as well as be in a position to advance middle class interests which have been under assault for decades (if not centuries).

The middle class should not be left to the whims and caprices of the rapacious rich elite who are consistently and persistently seeking ways and means of undermining middle class interests by facilitating high unemployment, laying off working folks while profiting from the layoffs, and paying working folks less while working them harder. In the absence of platforms dedicated to the advancement of middle class interests, MCFs are otherwise consigned to a life of servitude, sub-optimal wages/benefits and overwhelming insecurity.

The middle class deserves a fair shot at upward mobility. There is a price to be paid in terms of financial self-discipline and self-denial of some wants (or luxuries) at the front end in exchange for a better future – we are not proponents of a ‘something for nothing’ philosophy. The problem we see right now is that even when MCFs deny themselves of some things, in order to secure their future, the financial services industry still chooses to prey on these hard working men and women. As Jon Stewart (the American comedian put it) “On Wall Street, gambling is called innovation, and clients are idiots” – we think the middle class deserves better than that and should not be left at the mercy of Wall Street types.

Middle class folks have a right to not only know the various loopholes in the tax law, but have the option of taking advantage of those loopholes for the benefit of the middle class at large, as well as personal self-enrichment. The current (status quo) system that places the (tax) burden of funding government expenses squarely on the backs of MCFs while denying them the various benefits silently funneled to the rich and wealthy via the same tax code (the US being the example in this case) is simply unconscionable.

You can contact us to suggest other rights to be added to this list.