The referendum in Switzerland I wrote about last week went down 65% to 35%. The Swiss decided that top salaries in a corporation should NOT be limited to 12 times bottom salaries.

It probably failed because of the overreach of the ratio 12. Extreme views rarely get quick popular support, whichever side they come from. But I still think it is interesting that it will take just 15% of Swiss to change sides on this binary issue, and the extremely well paid elites will get whacked.

The Swiss campaign leaders have vowed to fight on.

Elsewhere, the sentiment against extreme inequality is starting to build more.

The Italians have finally summoned the courage and thrown their billionaire politician Silvio Berlusconi out of parliament, where, absent the protection of parliamentary privilege, he may be exposed to more criminal prosecution.

The Thais are now into their fourth day of widespread protests against their Government. Their fear is that the Government is just a puppet of their disgraced former billionaire prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra.

And even Pope Francis is on board. Now … he commands an audience!

The Pope has issued a new “apostolic exhortation“. A couple of extracts:

54. … some people continue to defend trickle-down theories which assume that economic growth, encouraged by a free market, will inevitably succeed in bringing about greater justice and inclusiveness in the world. This opinion, which has never been confirmed by the facts, expresses a crude and naïve trust in the goodness of those wielding economic power and in the sacralized workings of the prevailing economic system. Meanwhile, the excluded are still waiting.

55. … The worldwide crisis affecting finance and the economy lays bare their imbalances and, above all, their lack of real concern for human beings; man is reduced to one of his needs alone: consumption.

56. While the earnings of a minority are growing exponentially, so too is the gap separating the majority from the prosperity enjoyed by those happy few. This imbalance is the result of ideologies which defend the absolute autonomy of the marketplace and financial speculation. Consequently, they reject the right of states, charged with vigilance for the common good, to exercise any form of control. A new tyranny is thus born, invisible and often virtual, which unilaterally and relentlessly imposes its own laws and rules. Debt and the accumulation of interest also make it difficult for countries to realize the potential of their own economies and keep citizens from enjoying their real purchasing power. To all this we can add widespread corruption and self-serving tax evasion, which have taken on worldwide dimensions. The thirst for power and possessions knows no limits. In this system, which tends to devour everything which stands in the way of increased profits, whatever is fragile, like the environment, is defenseless before the interests of a deified market, which become the only rule.

Hmmm … screwed priorities … says it all really!