Humaira Asghar Ali Chaudhry (1992 – 2025) was a Pakistani social media influencer, actress, model, reality TV star, and theatre artist who was linked with socially conscious theater groups. She was also into sculpting and painting. She was a graduate of the prestigious National College of Arts (NCA) in Lahore with degrees in Fine Arts, TV, and Film. She earned her Masters in Philosophy from Punjab University.

Humaira last accessed her Facebook account on September 11, 2024  and her Instagram account on September 30. The last time she used her phone was on October 7 when she called 14 people but, none of them picked up her call. She left messages. One of them was an Islamabad-based famous director.

That was the last time she used her phone.

Humaira had been living alone in an apartment in Karachi’s Ittehad Commercial area of DHA Phase VI since 2018. According to Humaira’s landlord, the last rent she paid was in May 2024. The landlord complained to the courts of not receiving rent since then, a court-appointed bailiff with police joined him to visit the flat on July 8, 2025. When no one opened the door, it was broken into, and they found Humaira’s decomposed body lying on the floor. Electricity to her apartment had been cut-off since October 2024, for non-payment of bill. Humaira’s greatly decayed unrecognizable body was transported to Lahore to her family. She was buried on July 11. Her funeral was attended by only a few people.

Without being judgemental, actress Durefishan Saleem had a simple heartfelt message:

“Been thinking about life a lot lately. Not in terms of big dreams or loud success, but in the small, quiet moments.”

“I pray, with all my heart, that whenever [death] comes, for me or anyone, it doesn’t come in silence. Not in loneliness. Not in an empty room. But with love in the air. With familiar hands nearby. With someone who truly knew your heart.”

The police report was released on July 18, said chemical examination of her remains found no psychotropic drugs, intoxicants, tranquilizers, or any poisonous substances in her system.

She had three cellphones with over 2,000 saved contacts. With at least 75 people, she was in frequent contact and had had long conversations.

Stylist Danish Maqsood worked with Humaira on two photo-shoots, one in 2023 and the other on October 2, 2024. Maqsood’s request to Humaira for releasing images on social media didn’t receive an approval from her:

“When the request wasn’t approved, we tried calling her several times. After receiving no response, we messaged her on WhatsApp, but there was still no reply.”

He informed some digital publications about Humaira’s disappearance. After great efforts, he succeeded in a couple of them reporting her missing but, Maqsood regrets: it failed to garner attention of most people in the industry.

Humaira had not been in touch with her family for a long time. We don’t know if there were any family problems; speculation would probably be out of line.

But there remain several questions:

• In the nine months of her absence, why did none of the 75 people she often talked to become worried about her whereabouts?
• Did any of the last 14 people she contacted try to call her back? If they did, why didn’t they follow-up?
• In the world of celebrities, parties are as common as regular people going to the dollar store, why did no one notice her disappearance?
• In one of her last calls, she called a director which may have been work related, did that director think about what state she was in, and did he follow up on her missed call?

Entertainment industries worldwide do not have good reputation. Many people attracted to the glamor get exploited. The phrase rising Sun gets worshiped is very applicable to this industry. Once your star is down, you’re not allowed within the vicinity of the movie moguls’ sight; and you’re out of their mind. Then there are those who never find work which could lead to frustration, depression, and rejection that can lead to suicidal tendencies.

On 19 June, the dead body of another actress Ayesha Khan (1941 – 2025) was found as result of the neighbors complaint of a strong odor emanating from her place. She had been dead for a week! It’s tragic that people are lying dead for days and months without anyone knowing about it.

Most people working in the industry, including directors, actors, spot boys, lighting technicians, etc. don’t get paid on time.

Film and TV serial director Mehreen Jabbar:

“In the US, even with all their issues, there’s a fixed schedule for payments. People know when they’ll get paid. Here, you have to chase payments like beggars. Ask anyone and they’ll have horror stories. This is across every channel and production house. They [the crew members] do the hardest labour. But with no union, no rights, and no fair pay, they remain trapped. Working in Pakistan has become more disheartening. Compared to other places, the difference in professionalism and organization is stark.”

Many artists have the same complain including, senior artists who have now started voicing their grievances in the media.

(Renowned Indian singers Sunidhi Chauhan and Sonu Nigam said there are instances where they don’t get paid because Bollywood mafia controls things.)

There is no doubt Humaira was desperately looking for work. One of her two bank accounts had only Rs390,000 or about $1,375. The call to her close friend Dureshehwar revealed she was looking for work:

“I’m so sorry, I was traveling, caught up here and there. I’m so happy you’re in Makkah [on a pilgrimage]. Please pray a lot for me… Pray a lot from your heart for your cute friend/sister. For my career, please remember me in your prayers. You have to pray a lot for me.”

Pakistani society is very conservative and is rough on women, particularly on single women. The Global Gender Gap Index 2025 lists 148 countries of which Pakistan is ranked 148. Only 24% women are part of the labor force.

Sociologist Nida Kirmani gives an example of a woman named Saima who lived in a poor conservative neighborhood but found work in a very posh locality with a multinational department store where she made four times more money than most women, and even many men. She would put on an abaya (a loose overgarment) to cover her uniform but remove it once she reached her work because at work she would have seemed out of place in an abaya. Fortunately, her work company provided pick-and-drop service for their employees, otherwise, she would have faced verbal and or sexual harassment during her commute to work. Nevertheless, she still faced contempt from her neighbors and extended family members.

Coming back to Humaira, the cultural critic Aimun Faisal points out:

“It appears, at least to our moral gatekeepers, that there are no good women left in Pakistan.

“And so, perhaps understandably, people celebrate their deaths, leave their decaying bodies unclaimed, and repurpose their broken corpses as stark reminders — cautionary examples used to sermonize virtue. They preach goodness from behind their monetized YouTube accounts, from behind verified Twitter accounts, from the benches of the superior courts, from their pulpits, and from their news channels, and drawing rooms. And for their guidance, we are eternally grateful.”

Actor Osman Khalid Butt went after morality brigade and money makers:

“Stop turning people’s real trauma into content. Stop projecting your morality onto someone who’s not here to defend herself. Stop the speculation and the judgment, and the deflection. For God’s sake, just stop.”

Actress Mawra Hocane extended a helping hand:

“If you’re in trouble or caught in spiraling thoughts, if I have known you briefly or extensively, if you’re a friend or an acquaintance, if you’re from my fraternity and you feel I will understand your pressures, please reach out!”

Suggestion

What Mawra should do is get some of her fraternity on board to form a hotline service that artists in crisis, depression, and other problems are able to access. Also the service should try to reach artists who have been active but have suddenly vanished, like Humaira.

Humaira in the womb of death

for nine months,
life grows in the womb of a living being
it grows into a fetus
then turns into a human being
where as lifeless Humaira resided
nine months in the womb of death
when she was found,
one could say she was reborn but in a dead state
she was dead …
but became live fodder for news & social medias
many …
gossip-mongers, influencers, reporters, & others, cashed in
voyeuristic vloggers and commercial cameras not far behind
commercialism neither respects life, nor has regard for death
and custodians of morality too …
especially for a single woman from showbiz
why did it happen –
how can we stop more Humairas from happening?
for such questions,
the state has no interest,
nor any intention to pursue
the state resources are for
the ruling class’ families, friends, and donors …

VIDEO: Ahmad Ali Butt/ Youtube

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by B.R. Gowani.

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This article is co-published with The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan local newsroom that informs and engages with Texans. Sign up for The Brief Weekly to get up to speed on their essential coverage of Texas issues.

In a half-empty committee room in late April, one of Texas’ most powerful Republican state senators pitched legislation that would make it harder for immigrants in the country illegally to get jobs.

Her bill would require all employers in the state to use a free federal computer system, known as E-Verify, that quickly confirms whether someone has authorization to work in the United States. Sen. Lois Kolkhorst of Brenham ticked off a handful of Republican-led states that mandate the program for all private companies and listed others that require it for most over a certain size. Yet Texas, which prides itself on being the nation’s toughest on illegal immigration, instructs only state agencies and sexually oriented businesses to use it.

“E-Verify is the most functional and cost-effective method the state of Texas can implement to stem the flow of illegal immigration, or those that are here not legally, to ensure that U.S. citizens and those able to work in the state of Texas are the ones who get the Texas jobs,” Kolkhorst told fellow senators, reminding them that the Business and Commerce Committee passed her nearly identical bill two years ago. (That proposal never made it to the Senate floor.)

No one spoke against the new legislation. Only one committee member, a Democrat, questioned it, asking if supporters would also favor an immigrant guest worker program. A handful of labor representatives called the bill a bipartisan priority, testifying that too many employers cut corners by hiring workers illegally at lower wages. The bill went on to sail through the committee and the Senate.

But then, like dozens of E-Verify bills over the last decade, the legislation died.

Texas’ top Republican leaders have built a political brand on the state’s hard-line stance against illegal immigration, pouring billions of dollars into Gov. Greg Abbott’s state border security initiative, including funding construction of a border wall and deploying state police to arrest migrants on a newly created offense for trespassing. This session, lawmakers voted to require most sheriff’s offices to cooperate with federal immigration agents.

Yet again and again the state’s conservative Legislature has refused to take what some Republicans call the single most crucial step to preventing immigrants from coming and staying here illegally: mandating E-Verify to make it more difficult for them to work.

Since 2013, GOP lawmakers in Texas have introduced more than 40 E-Verify bills. Most tried to require the program for government entities and their contractors, but about a dozen attempted to expand the system to private employers in some capacity. With few exceptions, like mandating E-Verify for certain state contractors, Republican legislators declined to pass the overwhelming majority of those proposals.

This session, lawmakers filed about half a dozen bills attempting to require private companies to use the program. Kolkhorst’s legislation was the only one to make it out of either legislative chamber but eventually died because the state House did not take it up.

Given Texas leaders’ rhetoric on the border, it is a “glaring omission” not to more broadly require E-Verify as other GOP-led states have done, said Lynden Melmed, former chief counsel under Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the federal agency that oversees E-Verify. At least nine majority Republican states — including Arizona, Georgia, Florida and South Carolina — require that most, if not all, private companies use the system. Abbott has frequently positioned Texas as harsher on immigration than each of them.

Still, that a private mandate made it further this session than ever before may illustrate the growing conflict in Texas between the pro-business side of the state’s GOP and Republicans who want to look tougher on immigration, said Melmed, who was a former special counsel on the issue to U.S. Sen. John Cornyn of Texas.

The resistance to E-Verify isn’t just about Texas Republicans’ reluctance to regulate business, Melmed said. It’s about how such a system could impact the state’s labor supply and economy.

An estimated 1.3 million Texas workers, more than 8% of the state’s work force, are here illegally, according to a 2023 analysis of U.S. census data by the Pew Research Center, a nonpartisan think tank in Washington, D.C. About a quarter of all construction workers in Texas lack legal status, for example, and the industry faces a critical labor shortage as a need for housing booms. Likewise, the state’s understaffed agricultural, restaurant and elder care sectors rely on workers here illegally.

“If you got serious about applying [E-Verify], you would create even worse problems” with labor shortages, said Bill Hammond, a GOP former state lawmaker who once led the Texas Association of Business. “Do you want to go to a restaurant and use paper plates because no one will wash dishes?”

Texas’ political leaders know this, Hammond said, but they don’t want to publicly acknowledge it.

A spokesperson for Abbott refused to say whether the governor supports mandating the program for private companies. However, when running for governor more than a decade ago, Abbott acknowledged that businesses had complained about instituting the system. At the time, he touted federal statistics that E-Verify was 99.5% accurate. State agencies, he said, could serve as a model before legislators imposed it on companies.

A spokesperson for Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who as a senator unsuccessfully pushed legislation to hold employers accountable for hiring immigrants here illegally, did not return requests for comment, nor did a spokesperson for Speaker Dustin Burrows explain why the House refused to take up E-Verify. Kolkhorst declined repeated interview requests on her legislation.

State Sen. Charles Schwertner, a Georgetown Republican who authored the first E-Verify bill that the Texas Legislature approved, said in an interview that his 2015 legislation did not go as far as he would have liked. He said that he agreed with Kolkhort’s private-company mandate.

“We need to enforce our immigration laws, both at the border and the interior of Texas, and E-Verify is an important component,” Schwertner said.

Some GOP lawmakers who pushed the issue this session faced “deafening silence” from many colleagues and impacted industries, said state Rep. Carl Tepper, a Lubbock Republican who filed two E-Verify bills.

Lawmakers and industry groups have a “misguided fear” about losing a portion of their workforce who are here illegally and whom they feel dependent on, he said. Although immigration enforcement is overseen by Congress, Tepper said that the state should do what it can to prevent such workers from coming to Texas by making it more difficult to hire them.

Even one of the state’s most influential conservative think tanks has supported more incremental E-Verify legislation, such as extending the state mandate to local governments. Doing so would be an “easier win” than requiring it for businesses, said Selene Rodriguez, a campaign director for the Texas Public Policy Foundation. Still, she said that the organization generally supports a broader mandate and is disappointed that Kolkhorst’s legislation failed.

E-Verify has been tricky for her group, Rodriguez acknowledged, because lawmakers have done so little over the years that it has had to prioritize what is “attainable.”

“Given the Trump agenda, that he won so widely, we thought maybe there’d be more appetite to advance it,” Rodriguez said. “But that wasn’t the case.”

She blamed “behind-the scenes” lobbying from powerful industry groups, particularly in agriculture and construction, as well as lawmakers who worry how supporting the proposal would influence reelection prospects.

A dozen prominent state industry groups declined to comment to ProPublica and The Texas Tribune on their stances relating to E-Verify.

E-Verify supporters admit the system is not a panacea. The computer program can confirm only whether identification documents are valid, not whether they actually belong to the prospective employee, and as a result a black market for such documents has surged. Employers, too, can game the system by contracting out work to smaller companies, which in many states are exempt from E-Verify mandates.

Even when states adopt these, most lack strong enforcement. Texas legislators have never tasked an agency with ensuring all employers comply. South Carolina, which has among the toughest enforcement, randomly audits businesses to see if they are using E-Verify, said Madeline Zavodny, a University of North Florida economics professor who studied the program for a 2017 Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas report. But South Carolina does not check whether companies actually hired immigrants here illegally, said Alex Nowrasteh, vice president for economic and social policy studies at the libertarian-leaning Cato Institute in Washington, D.C. Some states have carve-outs for small companies or certain employers that often rely on undocumented labor. North Carolina, for example, exempts temporary seasonal workers.

Immigrants here illegally contribute billions to the economy, said Tara Watson, an economist at the Brookings Institution, a Washington, D.C., think tank. Much of the rhetoric over the issue is “using immigration as a wedge issue to rile up the base of voters who are concerned about cultural change, but at the same time not wanting to disrupt the economy too much.”

Expanding E-Verify, she said, is “not really in anybody’s interest.”

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by Lomi Kriel, ProPublica and The Texas Tribune.

The ad said “Management trainee, college degree necessary, no experience needed.” I called the place, The **** Linen Corporation, and got an interview. Their plant was in downtown Brooklyn, maybe a 30 minute commute from home. After I finished all the paperwork, the sales manager interviewed me for maybe just 20 minutes. He was Italian American like myself, wore a suit that was too tight for his expanding paunch, and had this (pardon the French) greasy look to him. Basically, what he said to me should have signaled all that I would really need to know about this company: “Listen kid, the way it works is that the more you save the company, the more you can earn… period!” He told me of my duties, which were basically to “Hold the whip over all the workers and drivers.” Then, he walked me into the GM’s office to meet him. This guy, a bit older than the sales manager at maybe fifty years of age, gave me the once over and repeated what the other guy had said. He then told the sales manager to give me a tour of the facility.

When we walked into the tremendous area of the plant where the linens were washed and dried, I thought I was back in the days of the plantations. Here we were, two white guys strolling into a two tiered area, hot as hell (and this was mid January), and noisy enough to force us to shout in order to hear each other. The giant plant was filled with all black faces, with the women wearing outfits that looked like Aunt Jemima from the pancake box. The men all wore white pants and tops, and when we arrived there, it seemed like all I could see was a myriad of “the whites of eyes” peering at me. Everything seemed to just stop for perhaps 30 seconds. I felt like I was the new overseer at a plantation in the colonial South. The sales manager shouted into my ear: “You gotta keep an eye on these birds or they’ll goof off every chance kid.” He then took me back to his office for my work instructions.

The next morning, I was to report to the giant garage area to meet up with the delivery drivers. I was to spend one full day on the road with a driver, and then repeat this the next day with another driver until I went through the lot of them. In the AM, very early, maybe at 6 o’clock, I showed up at the garage area, and man was it frigid cold in there. The driver’s foreman greeted me and introduced me to the first guy to take me out with him. We got going in a truck was so old it must have had arthritis! The heater wasn’t working too well, and the ride was like a jeep in the jungle! The driver was pleasant, chain smoking one ciggie after another. He had the Bronx territory, so we were able to chat for awhile. I learned that the union was what they called a “Sweetheart union,” whereupon the union officials were basically “in the pocket” of the corporation. This guy pulled no punches. We began making stops, and man there were so many of them. These were bakeries, butcher shops, food stores and restaurants mostly. He told me I could wait in the truck, but I needed to see how things went. After all, in reality I was his boss, yes? At the first stop, which was a bakery, the driver greeted the owner with a few funny hellos about the frigid weather. Then, the mad scramble began. After dropping off the fresh linens, he had to search the premises for the old, dirty ones. I mean, they were everywhere! “Is this the way it always is?” I asked him. He nodded as we went down the basement stairs. I really got nervous when I could sense that something down those steps was fixed on me. “Don’t get too scared kid, those rats are as scared of us as we are of them. They won’t hurt ya,” he laughed.

One day on that job was enough for me. I went home and didn’t show up the next day. What really hurt me was the fact that those workers didn’t have the luxury that I still had. I lived at home and could move on whereas many of these folks couldn’t. Those black faces from the Caribbean in that plant had little formal education or formal skills training, and the few jobs they could secure were similar to this shit. The drivers, going by the two or three I had met, were not formally educated men, and thus another shitty driving job would be the same. The workers in the plant had NO union at all, and I already was alerted to the driver’s lot. Sadly, forty five years later nothing has changed, except perhaps for the worst! A Neo feudalistic society is what the corporate predators want… and still get!!

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Philip A. Faruggio.

The global economy was already navigating a minefield of volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity (VUCA) when US President Donald J. Trump’s ‘Liberation Day’ tariffs reverberated across international markets. This aggressive escalation of trade barriers, including a mélange of sudden rate hikes, retaliatory measures, and rhetorical brinkmanship, didn’t just amplify the chaos; it ignited the specter of a full-blown economic firestorm.

Volatility unleashed

The moment the tariffs were announced, markets convulsed. Stock indices plummeted, erasing $2.1 trillion in global market cap within days, while currency markets whipsawed as traders scrambled to price in the fallout. Supply chains, still reeling from pandemic-era disruptions, faced new shocks. Factories in Vietnam scrambled to reroute shipments, German automakers recalculated production costs overnight, and Chinese exporters braced for 145% retaliatory duties on key goods. The tariffs acted like a sledgehammer to an already teetering Jenga tower of global trade, with each blow amplifying volatility far beyond their intended targets.

Uncertainty weaponized

While volatility reigned, the tariff war between the United States and China introduced a deeper, more corrosive uncertainty. Businesses accustomed to stable trade rules now faced policy seesaws. Exemptions granted one day were revoked almost overnight while the constant threat of broader tariffs were dangled without clarity on timing or scope.

CEOs delayed investments, fearing sudden cost hikes. The Federal Reserve, already grappling with inflation, found itself trapped in a Catch-22 situation: raise rates to tame inflation and risk recession, or hold steady and watch confidence erode. Meanwhile, allies like the EU and Canada retaliated with precision strikes on politically sensitive US exports, ranging from bourbon to motorcycles, threatening 2.6 million American jobs at one point. The potential unemployment tallies just kept rising worldwide.

The message was clear: no one was safe from the fallout.

Complexity spirals out of control

As the trade war escalated, the global economic order began to fracture. Nations abandoned decades of multilateralism in favor of ad hoc alliances. China fast-tracked deals with the EU and ASEAN and began to court rivals Japan and India. The US, on the other hand, found itself isolated. Companies, desperate to adapt, began planning redundant supply chains – one for tariff-free markets and another for the US. This only served as a costly and inefficient hedge against further disruptions. Regulatory labyrinths simultaneously emerged overnight. A single auto part might now face several different tariff rates depending on its origin, destination, and material composition. The system now groaned under the weight of its runaway complexity.

Ambiguity: Strategy or stumbling block?

Worst of all was the ambiguity. Trump framed the tariffs as a “negotiating tool” to revive US manufacturing, yet no coherent industrial policy followed. Were these temporary measures or a permanent decoupling from China? Would they actually bring jobs back, or simply raise prices for consumers? The administration’s mixed signals left allies questioning America’s reliability and adversaries probing for weakness. Geopolitically, the tariffs accelerated a crisis of trust. NATO allies doubted US commitments, Southeast Asian nations hedged toward Beijing, and the Global South explored alternatives to the dollar. The longer the ambiguity persisted, the more the world adapted to a reality where the US was no longer the anchor of the global economy.

What makes these tariffs uniquely dangerous is their role as a VUCA multiplier. They don’t just create volatility – they lock it in. Uncertainty doesn’t subside – it metastasizes. Complexity isn’t resolved – it becomes the new normal. And ambiguity isn’t clarified – it is weaponized. The result is a self-reinforcing cycle: tariffs provoke retaliation, which fuels inflation, which strains central banks, which spooks investors, which forces more protectionism. Meanwhile, the dollar’s dominance erodes, supply chains Balkanize, and businesses lose faith in long-term planning.

AI as the VUCA force multiplier

When the first round of tariffs was imposed by Washington DC, traditional economic models anticipated familiar disruptions in the form of market corrections, supply chain adjustments, and eventual equilibrium. What these models missed was the presence of a new wildcard – AI systems that don’t just respond to volatility but can amplify it. Algorithmic trading platforms and predictive logistics tools, operating on assumptions of continuity, struggled to adapt to the sudden, chaotic shifts introduced by trade barriers. In some sectors, this has led to mismatches between inventory and demand, not because of human misjudgement, but due to machine learning models which are ill-equipped to handle the cascading effects of cross-sectoral VUCA.

AI is indeed accelerating the fragmentation of the global economic order. As nations implement competing AI systems to manage trade flows, we may see the emergence of parallel digital realities. One country’s customs AI might classify a product as tariff-free while another’s system slaps it with prohibitive duties. This isn’t just bureaucratic confusion; it represents the breakdown of shared frameworks that have enabled global commerce for decades. We used to worry about trade wars between nations; now we should worry about conflicts between the machines built to manage them. In a hypothetical future, trade wars will be fought by rival AI systems fighting proxy battles through markets, logistics, and information. Personally, I doubt this planet has scope for another crisis beyond this one, as Albert Einstein’s adage that WW4 will be fought with “sticks and stones”  comes to mind.

In the midst of the ongoing VUCA torrent, many clueless bureaucrats and executives have quietly turned to AI, particularly GPTs, to make sense of the myriad crises facing their nations and institutions. Many flawed decisions may have been made and sums allocated for “future-proofing.” Let me tell you why this is a recipe for disaster: one prominent GPT model gave me not one but five (5) erroneous and wholly-fictitious examples of how AI had messed up the post-Liberation Day geo-economic landscape. And here is the scary part: only those well-versed in complex systems, global risks and AI would have discerned those flaws. Otherwise, the scenarios generated by the GPT model were generally more accurate than most of those voiced by pundits on prime time television.

Why did the GPT model make such mistakes? I am convinced that AI is being surreptitiously used to sift out the gullible from the indispensable, perhaps in preparation for a post-VUCA world. But that remains a relatively optimistic theory!

Mass unemployment ahead?

AI and VUCA are rapidly converging to create the preconditions for the worst unemployment crisis since the Industrial Revolution. Back then, the West could resort to new markets in the form of colonies. This time, however, there are no new territories left to colonize – only the continued cannibalization of societies themselves. The accelerating spiral of global wealth inequality is not an anomaly; it is the clearest symptom of this internalized exploitation.

The world is not merely staring at job losses in specific sectors. No, this is about the simultaneous breakdown of multiple stabilizing mechanisms that have historically absorbed economic shocks.

Russia’s Digital Development Minister Maksut Shadaev recently claimed that half of his nation’s civil servants could be replaced by AI. Shadaev, however, noted that certain professions, such as doctors and teachers, cannot be replaced. Bill Gates thinks otherwise. He predicts that AI will swiftly replace humans in nearly every professional sphere, including teaching and medicine. For once, I wholly agree with Gates.

So, what do we do with the “excess humans”? Institute a CBDC-mediated rationing system as a stop-gap measure?

Culmination of systemic global corruption

The VUCA-AI quagmire unfolding today is the consequence of decades of entrenched patronage systems that were perfected in the West and subsequently exported to the Third World. These were intrinsically corrupt systems that rewarded compliant mediocrity over critical thought. In sidelining genuine thinkers, these structures forfeited any real chance of forging a balanced, intelligent response to the collision between VUCA dynamics and artificial intelligence.

In the end, we are left with a world designed by clowns and supervised by monkeys, to borrow a phrase from a disillusioned Boeing pilot. Many Third World pundits and policymakers, themselves products of the West’s neocolonial machinery, are now advocating a wholesale pivot towards the BRICS bloc. Like courtiers in a globalist brothel suddenly desperate for new clientele, these elites now decry the very “inequalities” that once elevated them to cushy posts – at the expense of the citizens they claim to represent.

As far back as 1970, the Nobel Laureate Albert Szent-Györgyi had warned of the consequences of the “terrible strain of idiots who govern the world.” Szent-Györgyi, who bagged the Nobel Prize in Medicine (1937) for discovering Vitamin C had however hoped that the youth of the future would save humanity from a gerontocracy that cannot “assimilate new ideas.”

Little did he know that the same gerontocracy had already hatched a plan to create a new breed of “young global leaders” – even children – who were more feckless and pliant than their predecessors. This may have been the real raison d’etre behind the World Economic Forum. Personally, I can find no other justification behind the founding of this institution.

In the end, individuals with real ideas – both young and old – have largely abandoned a system that no longer rewards insight, only compliance. Their views no longer appear on search engines as Big Tech had employed a variety of pretexts to shadowban their viewpoints.

However, the day may come when the phones of ideators may start ringing again in the quest for “solutions”. It will be too late by then.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Mathew Maavak.

A few years ago, no one would have imagined that one of the biggest democracies in the world would cancel research programs under the pretext that the word ‘diversity’ was in this program.

— French President Emmanuel Macron, Choose Europe for Science Event/Paris, May 5, 2025

America’s shores are experiencing a huge sucking sound as one of the biggest brain drains of modern history hits the country’s best, smartest, heading for Europe on grants, as smiles abound across the pond. European leaders are pinching themselves, unable to believe such good fortune falling into their laps, thanks to the Trump administration “freezing” government funding linked to “diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives.”

The EU has officially launched a drive to attract scientists and researchers that America is discarding by the bucketful, see:  “Europe Launches a Drive to Attract Scientists and Researchers After Trump Freezes US Funding,” AP News, May 5, 2025.

This is an extraordinary shrinking of America’s IQ in so many ways that a full understanding is nearly impossible, but it is only too obvious that deliberate destruction of science is the product of a bruised/intimidated mentality that’s seeking payback. There is no other logical explanation.

The EU is licking its chops over this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. According to EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, while on stage at Sorbonne University, the EU Executive Branch has already decided to set up a “super grant” program, aimed at “longer-term perspective to the very best in the field.”

Essentially, the EU is cherry-picking some of America’s best brain power. To accomplish this phenomenal opportunity, the Commission is authorizing additional funding of $566 million in 2025-2027, making Europe “a magnet for researchers.” This funding is in addition to the European Research Council’s budget of $18 billion for 2021-2027. Moreover, the EU will “enshrine freedom of scientific research into law” via a new enactment. Europe will not compromise on its long-standing principles of academic freedom.

Above and beyond the EU, according to President Macron, France has also beefed-up commitments to science and research to capitalize on America’s ‘fired’ scientists. France has launched a platform for reception of international researchers: Choose France for Science. President Macron officially christened the platform: “Here in France, research is a priority, innovation a culture, science a limitless horizon. Men and women researchers from all over the world, choose France, choose Europe.”

So far, the US has cut 380 grant projects and thousands of university researchers have been notified that their National Science Foundation funding is canceled, but they know where to turn. Backlash has resulted as doctors, scientists, and researchers hit the streets in “Stand Up for Science” rallies across the country. Astronomy Professor Phil Platt, addressing a crowd, said: “We’re looking at the most aggressively anti-science government the United States has ever had.” UPenn climate scientists Michael Mann: “Science is under siege.” Bill Nye the Science Guy hit the bull’s eye, rhetorically challenging the forces of government: “What are you afraid of?” which may become the rallying cry of opposition throughout the land.

Professionals agree that science has been in the midst of enormous achievements to make lives better than ever, but according to senior staff members of the National Institutes of Health, funding cuts will seriously damage or eliminate major progress on key, very significant, programs for Alzheimer’s, diabetes, and cancer, as examples. Unfortunately, this will negatively impact tens of millions of Americans for years to come.

Since World War II, the US has been recognized as a world leader in science and technology. Now, that enviable position is swirling around the drain. According to several key federal workers who spoke at a recent MIT Technology Review, America’s world leadership is literally being dismantled before our eyes. These are research programs that backstop American life. “The US took nearly a century to craft its rich scientific ecosystem; if the unraveling that has taken place over the past month continues, Americans will feel the effects for decades to come.” (“The Foundations of America’s Prosperity Are Being Dismantled,” MIT Technology Review, Feb. 21, 2025)

According to a recent article in The Hill, March 2, 2025: “The administration has issued a multi-pronged, anti-science attack on the health sciences. Possibly the most destructive is the recent slashing of research funding for both NIH and the National Science Foundation.” Here’s what’s at stake: “In 2024, NIH provided more than $37 billion in funding across every state, creating more than 400,000 jobs and generating $92 billion in economic activity. This funding is used for laboratory research, research centers and, most importantly, the education of trainees, the next generation of scientists. Trainees greatly contribute to the research and discoveries even while they are in training.”

If $37 billion in funding produces $92 billion “in economic activity” and “supports 400.000 jobs,” what’s up with destroying a greater than 2-for-1 return on investment? What’s missing from this equation, or is it simply a matter of looney-tunes, not knowing which way is up? Study after study after study, and more studies, prove that governmental funding of science generates returns in-excess of what private enterprise achieves. For example, governmental science funding played the crucial leading role in creation of the internet. What’s that worth?

It should be widely recognized and brought to the public’s attention that so much is wrong, so much at stake with anti-science rhetoric, recklessly cutting science budgets, elimination of entire programs, and loud-mouthed threats, demoralizing the public about science. It’s difficult to know how to respond, and of course, this is the intention behind the rapidity of a well-orchestrated blind-siding all parties, unable to collect ones’ thoughts type of assault on major, hugely productive governmental programs that protect life. This type of assault is comparable to a Panzer Division Blitzkrieg. Nobody has enough time to react.

What’s the impact of Blitzkriegs demolishing science? According to an article in Science, May 2, 2025: “Trump’s Proposed Budget Would Mean ‘Disastrous’ Cuts to Science.” For those interested, this article delineates agencies subject to cuts. Meanwhile, the brain drain is in full throttle motion. Of interest, an article in the prestigious science journal Nature, March 25, 2025: A poll found that 75% of 1,600 respondents, including 1,200 US scientists said: “Yes, they are looking for jobs in Europe and Canada.” And there’s considerable anecdotal evidence that current post-graduates are looking overseas.

And there’s this: “Trump Proposed Unprecedented Budget Cuts to US Science,” Nature, May 2, 2025: “Huge reductions, if enacted, could have ‘catastrophic’ effects on US competitiveness and scientific pipeline… The message that this sends to young scientists is that this country is not a place for you,’ says Michael Lubell, a physicist who tracks science policy at the City University of New York in New York City. ‘If I were starting my career, I would be out of here in a heartbeat.”

The word is out. Scientists will find opportunities galore. Science has never been more sought after in Europe and Canada and Australia, which ranks 5th in the world for trust in science. After all, the world is experiencing the most exciting era of scientific achievement of all time, and the EU intends to take over leadership, stripping the US of its 75-year crown. It’s been laid in their lap.

Moreover, according to the National Science Foundation, China has already overtaken America in several key scientific metrics. Going forward, the EU has America to thank for reinvigorating its science and technology effort more so than ever before, as they challenge China with much more enthusiasm for top billing. The U.S. lit their fuse, making EU science and technology great again!

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Robert Hunziker.

Purge is the word symbol of Athena – Athens

But there is no drive-through.

I park and walk inside. There are few twenty-somethings sitting around in offices, but no tellers. Just an automated ATM, who one of the twenty-somethings tells me can take my deposit. But a maintenance worker has the ATM door swung open, working on it. So, I don’t get to make a deposit.

I resolve to make the deposit the next day, instead.

Then, my roomie rings me and tells me to pick up a few things at the grocery. I’m no fan of Wally World, but it’s the most convenient stop. I park, run in, and grab a few groceries. I go to the check out, and it’s a lot like the bank I stopped at. It’s not tellerless—it’s checkerless. It’s all automated.

This doesn’t amuse me.

The more I think about it, the worse it gets. And, worse still, I do some research.

Talk about a bill of goods.

A decade or two back, “outsourcing” was all the rage. Our jobs were being sent overseas and we were livid. Now, blaming immigrants is in vogue.

But the numbers are funny and don’t really add up. And you don’t have to look real hard to figure it out. According to the internet machine, 4.5% of American jobs are outsourced each year. Also, according to the internet machine, immigrants make up 19% of the American workforce (one in five jobs).

Neither percentage is anything to dismiss—they just miss the point.

Our politicians and political pundits use figures like these to obscure the real issue … it’s all sleight of hand nonsense. And it’s a bummer, really, for so many of us, because we’re Pavlovian about terms like “outsourcing” and “immigrants”—as if we live for ill-informed finger-pointing. These economic bogeymen have been drummed into us for decades. Half of you are probably slobbering, now. But, please, dab your taco hole with your shirtsleeve and bear with me.

Outsourcing and immigrants really only infringe on an already diminished share of the scraps. According to the internet machine, automation has replaced 70% of Middle-Class jobs in the United States since 1980—and a related economic corollary is worse. Also, according to the internet machine, automation has driven down Middle-Class wages 70% since 1980. AND THESE AREN’T OBSCURE FACTS. They’re proffered front and center by a search engine’s AI shortcut!?

Put that in your mouse and scroll it.

It’s not just mouth-breathers that need to unite. It’s all of us. It’s anyone that may need a breather. It’s anyone that needs to breathe at all. Because what’s replacing most of us doesn’t.

President Dildo J. Trump’s claims about immigrants and bringing manufacturing jobs back to America are bald-faced lies, because most of those jobs were lost to robotics, computer processing, etc., and they’re never coming back. Immigrants and outsourcing are obviously easier targets than automation or AI, but still. This should scare you, reader. This should terrify you.

Immigrants and outsourcing are perfect red herrings, for sure, but neither—as proto-punk, rock-and-rolling band The Trashmen once sublimely put it—“bird is the word.”

“Purge” is the word.

Obsolescence is the word.

Human obsolescence.

And it’s coming to a universal wage station near you.

This is what technology hath wrought.

Vocationally speaking, human jobs have been being tossed in the trash for decades. It probably started innocently enough with something like gas station attendants. But don’t kid yourselves.

We are no longer surfing the web—the web is surfing us.

And the wave is about to break.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by E.R. Bills.

The warning signs are unmistakable. Despite the Federal Reserve’s aggressive rate-hiking campaign over the past two years, inflation remains stubbornly above target. February’s Consumer Price Index showed prices still rising at 3.2%, while previous months have delivered unwelcome upside surprises. Meanwhile, GDP growth has begun to sputter, at just 1.6% in the first quarter, down sharply from 3.4% in late 2023.

Even more alarming, the Atlanta Federal Reserve’s closely watched GDPNow forecast model has recently slashed its second-quarter growth projection. When the Fed’s regional banks signal economic deceleration while inflation persists, the stagflation alarm bells should be ringing loudly.

This toxic combination represents the classic stagflation recipe: prices rise faster than paychecks while economic momentum simultaneously loses steam. Conventional economic models struggle to address this scenario, as policies that fight inflation typically hamper growth, while growth-boosting measures often exacerbate inflation.

Stagflation is particularly pernicious because it confounds traditional economic remedies. When inflation and unemployment rise simultaneously, policymakers face an impossible choice between fighting one problem while exacerbating the other.

The warning signals extend beyond inflation and growth statistics. Federal agencies have begun implementing hiring freezes and initiating workforce reductions as budget pressures mount. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that federal government employment declined by 5,000 jobs in January alone, with more cuts potentially looming. These job losses contribute to economic stagnation without addressing the underlying inflation problem.

Meanwhile, fiscal austerity measures designed to address budget deficits have reduced government spending across multiple agencies. While necessary for long-term fiscal health, these spending cuts remove economic stimulus precisely when private sector growth is already slowing, amplifying stagflationary pressures.

Perhaps most concerning for millions of Americans is the resumption of student loan payments after a three-year pandemic pause. With average monthly payments of $200-$300, the Department of Education estimates that borrowers collectively face over $7 billion in monthly payments—essentially a massive consumer spending tax that dampens economic activity without addressing supply-side inflation drivers. For many households, these payments come on top of significantly higher housing costs, energy bills, and grocery expenses.

Labor markets offer another concerning indicator. Despite headlines touting low unemployment, job growth has slowed considerably. In contrast, wage growth hasn’t kept pace with inflation in many sectors. Companies are increasingly caught in a vise between rising costs and consumers unable or unwilling to absorb higher prices.

The roots of our current predicament are not hard to identify. Years of extraordinary monetary accommodation followed by trillions in pandemic stimulus created excess liquidity. Supply chain disruptions, geopolitical tensions, and energy price volatility fueled the fire. We’re left with an economy where growth is cooling, but prices refuse to follow suit.

For investors, the stagflation playbook requires a dramatic departure from conventional wisdom. The investment landscape of the next several years will reward those willing to adapt and punish those clinging to outdated strategies.

First and foremost, commodities deserve a prominent place in any stagflation-resistant portfolio. During the 1970s stagflation, the S&P GSCI commodity index delivered a staggering 586% return over the decade. Gold performed even more spectacularly, rocketing from about $269 per ounce in 1970 to over $2,500 by 1980.

Why do commodities shine in stagflationary environments? They represent tangible assets with intrinsic value that tend to rise with inflation. Hard assets become monetary safe havens when currencies weaken through policy interventions or economic uncertainty.

Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities (TIPS) also merit serious consideration. Unlike conventional bonds, which suffered brutal losses during the 1970s with approximately negative 3% annualized actual returns, TIPS adjust their principal value based on the Consumer Price Index. This built-in inflation protection can preserve purchasing power when conventional fixed-income investments crumble.

Investors should pivot decisively toward defensive sectors within equities—consumer staples, healthcare, and utilities. These industries provide essential goods and services people need regardless of economic conditions, and many possess the pricing power to pass inflation through to consumers. During past stagflationary episodes, U.S. consumer staples delivered average quarterly returns of +7.9%, while consumer discretionary stocks declined by 1.3%.

The dangers of stagflation extend far beyond investment portfolios. The most insidious aspect of stagflation is how it methodically erodes societal living standards. When prices rise faster than wages for extended periods, everyday purchases become increasingly painful. Essentials consume a growing share of household budgets, leaving less for discretionary spending, savings, or investments in the future.

The psychological toll shouldn’t be underestimated either. During the 1970s stagflation, consumer confidence plummeted to record lows as Americans believed economic malaise was permanent. This pessimism affected everything from marriage rates to entrepreneurship, creating a downward spiral of reduced risk-taking and investment precisely when the economy needed it most.

Stagflation particularly punishes those on fixed incomes especially retirees whose pension or Social Security benefits fail to keep pace with true living costs. It also penalizes savers, and those with traditional fixed-income investments, who watch their purchasing power diminish monthly.

For younger Americans already grappling with housing affordability challenges and now facing resumed student loan payments, stagflation compounds financial stress. Many millennials and Gen Z workers entered a labor market already characterized by stagnant real wages; persistent inflation threatens to erase what little progress they’ve made.

Businesses suffer, too, caught between rising input costs and price-sensitive consumers. Profit margins contract, leading to reduced hiring, investment cuts, and, in many cases, layoffs. Small businesses with less pricing power and financial cushion are particularly vulnerable, potentially leading to increased market concentration as only the largest firms survive.

Stagflation will eventually end through successful policy intervention or economic adjustment, but the transition may prove lengthy and painful. The 1970s stagflation persisted for nearly a decade before Paul Volcker’s Federal Reserve crushed inflation, with interest rates approaching 20%.

Today’s policymakers face a similar dilemma, but even higher debt levels constrain their options. The Fed has signaled reluctance to cut rates while inflation remains elevated, yet maintaining restrictive policy risks further dampening growth—the very definition of our stagflationary trap.

Preparation means building financial resilience for individuals: reducing high-interest debt, maintaining emergency savings, and seeking opportunities to increase skills and income potential. Homeowners with fixed-rate mortgages benefit from what amounts to an inflation discount on their housing debt, while renters may need to budget more aggressively as housing costs continue climbing.

Though difficult, stagflation is ultimately a surmountable challenge. Following the 1970s ordeal, America entered a period of extraordinary growth and prosperity. The pain of adjustment, while real, eventually gave way to renewed economic vitality. The same can happen again if we make the difficult choices necessary to restore price stability while fostering sustainable growth.

The stagflation monster may be back, but America has faced and overcome economic challenges throughout its history. By understanding the nature of the threat and taking appropriate actions both as individuals and as a society, maybe we can weather this economic storm and emerge stronger on the other side. The alternative of ignoring the warning signs until a crisis forces our hand will only prolong the pain and deepen the eventual reckoning. The time for clear-eyed assessment and deliberate action is now.

Whilst observing the questionable economic decisions of our elected officials, it seems that no one will bury stagflation back in the graveyard.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Elliott Lipinsky.

The warning signs are unmistakable. Despite the Federal Reserve’s aggressive rate-hiking campaign over the past two years, inflation remains stubbornly above target. February’s Consumer Price Index showed prices still rising at 3.2%, while previous months have delivered unwelcome upside surprises. Meanwhile, GDP growth has begun to sputter, at just 1.6% in the first quarter, down sharply from 3.4% in late 2023.

Even more alarming, the Atlanta Federal Reserve’s closely watched GDPNow forecast model has recently slashed its second-quarter growth projection. When the Fed’s regional banks signal economic deceleration while inflation persists, the stagflation alarm bells should be ringing loudly.

This toxic combination represents the classic stagflation recipe: prices rise faster than paychecks while economic momentum simultaneously loses steam. Conventional economic models struggle to address this scenario, as policies that fight inflation typically hamper growth, while growth-boosting measures often exacerbate inflation.

Stagflation is particularly pernicious because it confounds traditional economic remedies. When inflation and unemployment rise simultaneously, policymakers face an impossible choice between fighting one problem while exacerbating the other.

The warning signals extend beyond inflation and growth statistics. Federal agencies have begun implementing hiring freezes and initiating workforce reductions as budget pressures mount. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that federal government employment declined by 5,000 jobs in January alone, with more cuts potentially looming. These job losses contribute to economic stagnation without addressing the underlying inflation problem.

Meanwhile, fiscal austerity measures designed to address budget deficits have reduced government spending across multiple agencies. While necessary for long-term fiscal health, these spending cuts remove economic stimulus precisely when private sector growth is already slowing, amplifying stagflationary pressures.

Perhaps most concerning for millions of Americans is the resumption of student loan payments after a three-year pandemic pause. With average monthly payments of $200-$300, the Department of Education estimates that borrowers collectively face over $7 billion in monthly payments—essentially a massive consumer spending tax that dampens economic activity without addressing supply-side inflation drivers. For many households, these payments come on top of significantly higher housing costs, energy bills, and grocery expenses.

Labor markets offer another concerning indicator. Despite headlines touting low unemployment, job growth has slowed considerably. In contrast, wage growth hasn’t kept pace with inflation in many sectors. Companies are increasingly caught in a vise between rising costs and consumers unable or unwilling to absorb higher prices.

The roots of our current predicament are not hard to identify. Years of extraordinary monetary accommodation followed by trillions in pandemic stimulus created excess liquidity. Supply chain disruptions, geopolitical tensions, and energy price volatility fueled the fire. We’re left with an economy where growth is cooling, but prices refuse to follow suit.

For investors, the stagflation playbook requires a dramatic departure from conventional wisdom. The investment landscape of the next several years will reward those willing to adapt and punish those clinging to outdated strategies.

First and foremost, commodities deserve a prominent place in any stagflation-resistant portfolio. During the 1970s stagflation, the S&P GSCI commodity index delivered a staggering 586% return over the decade. Gold performed even more spectacularly, rocketing from about $269 per ounce in 1970 to over $2,500 by 1980.

Why do commodities shine in stagflationary environments? They represent tangible assets with intrinsic value that tend to rise with inflation. Hard assets become monetary safe havens when currencies weaken through policy interventions or economic uncertainty.

Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities (TIPS) also merit serious consideration. Unlike conventional bonds, which suffered brutal losses during the 1970s with approximately negative 3% annualized actual returns, TIPS adjust their principal value based on the Consumer Price Index. This built-in inflation protection can preserve purchasing power when conventional fixed-income investments crumble.

Investors should pivot decisively toward defensive sectors within equities—consumer staples, healthcare, and utilities. These industries provide essential goods and services people need regardless of economic conditions, and many possess the pricing power to pass inflation through to consumers. During past stagflationary episodes, U.S. consumer staples delivered average quarterly returns of +7.9%, while consumer discretionary stocks declined by 1.3%.

The dangers of stagflation extend far beyond investment portfolios. The most insidious aspect of stagflation is how it methodically erodes societal living standards. When prices rise faster than wages for extended periods, everyday purchases become increasingly painful. Essentials consume a growing share of household budgets, leaving less for discretionary spending, savings, or investments in the future.

The psychological toll shouldn’t be underestimated either. During the 1970s stagflation, consumer confidence plummeted to record lows as Americans believed economic malaise was permanent. This pessimism affected everything from marriage rates to entrepreneurship, creating a downward spiral of reduced risk-taking and investment precisely when the economy needed it most.

Stagflation particularly punishes those on fixed incomes especially retirees whose pension or Social Security benefits fail to keep pace with true living costs. It also penalizes savers, and those with traditional fixed-income investments, who watch their purchasing power diminish monthly.

For younger Americans already grappling with housing affordability challenges and now facing resumed student loan payments, stagflation compounds financial stress. Many millennials and Gen Z workers entered a labor market already characterized by stagnant real wages; persistent inflation threatens to erase what little progress they’ve made.

Businesses suffer, too, caught between rising input costs and price-sensitive consumers. Profit margins contract, leading to reduced hiring, investment cuts, and, in many cases, layoffs. Small businesses with less pricing power and financial cushion are particularly vulnerable, potentially leading to increased market concentration as only the largest firms survive.

Stagflation will eventually end through successful policy intervention or economic adjustment, but the transition may prove lengthy and painful. The 1970s stagflation persisted for nearly a decade before Paul Volcker’s Federal Reserve crushed inflation, with interest rates approaching 20%.

Today’s policymakers face a similar dilemma, but even higher debt levels constrain their options. The Fed has signaled reluctance to cut rates while inflation remains elevated, yet maintaining restrictive policy risks further dampening growth—the very definition of our stagflationary trap.

Preparation means building financial resilience for individuals: reducing high-interest debt, maintaining emergency savings, and seeking opportunities to increase skills and income potential. Homeowners with fixed-rate mortgages benefit from what amounts to an inflation discount on their housing debt, while renters may need to budget more aggressively as housing costs continue climbing.

Though difficult, stagflation is ultimately a surmountable challenge. Following the 1970s ordeal, America entered a period of extraordinary growth and prosperity. The pain of adjustment, while real, eventually gave way to renewed economic vitality. The same can happen again if we make the difficult choices necessary to restore price stability while fostering sustainable growth.

The stagflation monster may be back, but America has faced and overcome economic challenges throughout its history. By understanding the nature of the threat and taking appropriate actions both as individuals and as a society, maybe we can weather this economic storm and emerge stronger on the other side. The alternative of ignoring the warning signs until a crisis forces our hand will only prolong the pain and deepen the eventual reckoning. The time for clear-eyed assessment and deliberate action is now.

Whilst observing the questionable economic decisions of our elected officials, it seems that no one will bury stagflation back in the graveyard.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Elliott Lipinsky.

If so, Dejected Associates is ready to work with you. Our team of employees were emotionally abused by their fathers, bullied in childhood, and ready to take their anger out on your employees. We’ll use a chainsaw, not a scalpel, feeding their hopes for the future into our wood chipper. Best of all, we’ll do it en masse so they’ll all be competing for new jobs elsewhere at the same time.

But hurry. Avoid regret before a judge’s order rescinds this unusual opportunity to cut costs while boosting your self-esteem.

Here is my brief bio. Please do not post my e-mail address in it:

Nick Phosphorus writes poetry and fiction and has been published in a variety of literary magazines.

Thank you,

Nick Phosphorus

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Nick Phosphorus.

Work requirements have largely failed to boost employment in significant ways because these requirements do not attack the core barriers to work, such as weak macroeconomic conditions, the volatile nature of low-wage employment, and caregiving responsibilities.

In fact, the primary barrier to work for low-income adults who want steady hours of employment is the state of the macroeconomy—conditions that are far beyond their control. Low-income adults’ employment rises when overall unemployment is low, and they work more hours and earn more as a result. When unemployment is high, however, low-income adults are often the first to lose their jobs and see large hour declines as well.

The report also compares the demographic and safety net profile of all adults ages 18 to 59 and adults who are on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, or food stamps) and Medicaid. Those receiving SNAP and Medicaid are disproportionately likely to be women and nonwhite, and they are also less likely to have a college education—only 15% of adults on SNAP and Medicaid have a bachelor’s degree or higher. Further, adults on SNAP and Medicaid are much more likely to have an elderly person in the household.

“Work requirements for safety net programs are a punitive solution that solves no real problem. They do not reliably increase employment, but they do kick people off essential benefits like food assistance and health care,” said Hilary Wething, EPI economist and author of the report. “If policymakers are genuinely concerned about improving access to work, they should support policies like affordable child and elder care.”

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.

Rasmus is the rare university-educated purveyor who knows where to look, looks critically, and clearly synthesizes the data to draw broad and useful conclusions for working people. For a philosophically-trained skeptic and self-styled Historical Materialist, I have grown to trust Rasmus’s digest of the meaning of arcane, jargon-filled, often-misleading government reports.

Of course, we have had earlier times when similar data were available. For over three decades, Labor Research Associates — a group of Communist and left researchers — published a comprehensive Labor Factbook every two years that addressed “labor trends,” the “social and labor conditions” of the period, “people’s health,” the “trade unions,” “civil liberties and rights,” “political affairs,” and “Canadian labor developments.” This comprehensive book armed working people who cared to advance the cause of workers with a cache of ammunition in the class war. We don’t have Labor Factbook, but we are lucky to have Jack Rasmus’s report.

What does his report tell us?

● Despite $10 trillion in stimulus since the pandemic, the US economy has only produced an anemic recovery: GDP of 1.9% (2022), 2.5% (2023), and 2.2% (2024, to date).

● And the US worker fared even worse: “…with regard to wages, the American worker has not benefited at all from the $10 billion-plus fiscal-monetary stimulus. Real Weekly Earnings are flat to contracting. And take-home pay’s even less.”

● The great US job creation machine that US politicians celebrate is not performing so well: “It is important to also note that the vast majority of the net new jobs created have been part-time, temp, gig and contractor jobs. In the past 12 months, full-time jobs in the labor force [have] fallen by 458,000, while part-time jobs have risen by 514,000.”

Typical of an election year, official reports grab headlines, exaggerating job gains, only to be corrected later: “The jobs reports over the past year are revealing as well. They continually reported monthly job gains of around 240,000. But the Labor Department just did its annual revisions and found that for the period March 2023 thru March 2024 it over-estimated no fewer than 818,000 jobs!” [The September 6 employment report downgraded June and July’s job growth by a further 86,000 jobs!]

“The Wall St. Journal further reported that up to a million workers have left the labor force due to disability from Covid and long Covid-related illnesses. Neither of those statistics [is] factored into the government’s unemployment rate figures.”

● For working-class citizens, debt has been a paradoxical life-saver, supplementing slack wage growth. But it continues to grow at a dangerous pace and with increasingly unsustainable interest rates: “The last quarter century of poor-wage increases has been offset to a degree by the availability of cheap credit with which to make consumer purchases in lieu of wage gains and decently paying jobs. Actually, that trend goes back even further to the early 1980s at least.”

“Household US debt is at a record level. Mortgage debt is about $13 trillion. Total household debt is more than $18 trillion, of which credit-card debt is now about $1 trillion, auto debt $1.5 trillion, student debt $1.7 trillion (or more if private loans are counted), medical debt about $.2 trillion, and the rest installment-type debt of various [kinds].

American households carry probably the highest load of any advanced economy, estimated at 54% of median family-household disposable income. And that’s rising.

Debt and interest payments have implications for workers’ actual disposable income and purchasing power. For one thing, interest is not considered in the CPI or PCE inflation indexes and thus their adjustment to real wages. As just one example: median family-mortgage costs since 2020 have risen 114%. However, again, that’s not included in the price indexes. Home prices have risen 47% and rents have followed. But workers pay a mortgage to the bank, not an amortized monthly payment to the house builder.

One should perhaps think of workers’ household debt as business claims on future wages not yet paid. Debt payments continue into the future for purchases made in the present, and thus subtract from future wages paid.”

Since Rasmus penned his report, the Census Bureau released its report on household incomes. While there was an uptick in 2023, median household income adjusted for inflation remains below the levels of 2018, explaining why poll respondents (and voters) are feeling insecure about the economy. In fact, household incomes have only increased around 15% over the last twenty-three years– hardly a reason for a victory lap by the last four administrations… or the capitalist system!

● Rasmus brings a necessary sobriety to the discussion of the state of the organized trade union movement in the US. While there are many exciting developments, the goal of building a formidable force to advance the interests of working people remains far off: “Since 2020 union membership has declined. There were 10.8% of the labor force in unions in 2020. There are 10.0% at end of 2023, which is about half of what it was in the early 1980s. Unions have not participated in the recovery since Covid, in other words, at least in terms of membership. Still only 6% or 7.4 million workers of the private-sector labor force is unionized, even when polls and surveys in the past four years show a rise from 48% to 70% today in the non-organized who want a union.”

“Recently the Teamsters union under new leadership made significant gains in restoring union contract language, especially in terms of limits on temp work and two-tier wage and benefit structures. The Auto workers made some gains as well. But most of the private-sector unionization has languished. And over the past year it has not changed much.

About half of all Union members today are in public-sector unions. It has been difficult for Capital and corporations to offshore jobs, displace workers with technology, destroy traditional defined-benefit pension plans, or otherwise weaken or get rid of workers’ unions. The same might be said for Transport workers, whose employment is also not easily offshored but is subject to displacement by technology nonetheless. But overall, union membership has clearly continued to stagnate over the past year, as it has since 2020.”

Rasmus’s candid conclusion: “The foregoing accumulation of data and statistics on wages, jobs, debt and unionization in America this Labor Day 2024 contradicts much of the hype, happy talk, and selective cherry picking of data by mainstream media and economists. That hype is picked up and peddled by politicians and pollsters alike.”

*****

And speaking of politicians…

A recent Jacobin piece stands as a sterling example of torturing facts and logic to build the case that Democratic Party politicians got the “stop the genocide” message at the Party’s national convention. Waleed Shahid writes that “the Uncommitted movement didn’t win every immediate demand…” in his article Why the Uncommitted Movement Was a Success at the DNC. The Uncommitted Movement didn’t win any demand — immediate or otherwise — at the DNC!

It takes some skill and determination to recast a near totally effective effort to stifle the voice of pro-peace and pro-justice participants and protesters into “not just a fleeting victory — it is the beginning of a strategic shift in how the Democratic Party grapples with its own contradictions.” Sad to say, it takes a twisted perception to see “victory” and “a strategic shift” while convention-goers derisively and dismissively stroll past demonstrators reciting the names of civilians murdered by the Israeli military.

Shahid attempts the impossible in likening the 2024 Democratic Convention to the 1964 Convention, when brave civil rights activists shamed the Democratic Party before television cameras and journalists into negotiating with the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (See this sharp comparative account in Black Agenda Report). There was neither shame nor negotiations in 2024.

Like Democratic operatives before him, Shahid scolds those expecting more from Democrats to– in the future– “out-organize” the Neanderthals controlling the party. In other words, force them to do the right thing!

When one finds a credible political party to support, it should not be one that must be coerced to support justice.

*****

It is a commonplace on the soft left to advocate a broad coalition or united front to address the rise of right-wing populism in Europe and North America. Building on the ineffectiveness of the long-ruling centrist parties, the French RN, Germany’s AfD, the US’s Trump, and a host of other populist movements have mounted significant electoral campaigns. The knee-jerk left reaction is to advocate a broad popular front of all the oppositional parties or movements, a tactic modeled crudely and inappropriately on the Communist International’s anti-fascist tactic.

Most recently, the French left conceded to an electoral “popular front” with the ruling president, Emmanuel Macron’s party and other parties in opposition to Marine Le Pen’s RN. To the surprise of many, the left won the most votes and should have — by tradition — organized a new government. But President Macron “betrayed” popular-front values and appointed a center-right career politician, hostile to the left, as prime minister. To add insult to injury, Macron consulted with Le Pen for approval of his appointment.

Consequently, despite commanding the largest vote, the popular front is in a less favorable position and the right is in a more favorable position than before the electoral “victory” (see, for example, David Broder’s Jacobin article for more).

This move by Macron should sober those who glibly call for a popular front as the answer to every alarm, every hyperbole regarding the populist right.

Because of this gross misapplication of the united-front tactic, I can enjoy an I-told-you-so-moment. I wrote in late June: “The interesting question would be whether Macron’s party would return the favor and support this effort in a second round against RN. I doubt they would. Bourgeois ‘solidarity’ only goes so far.” Where the left selflessly threw its support behind Macron’s party where it needed to win, Macron through his deal with Le Pen, threw the left under the bus!

Hollow victories, indeed.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Greg Godels.

If you don’t have a lot of time, this is what you should know:

• For China, Iran’s attack on Israel was “an act of self-defense”
• The West’s new narrative against China: overcapacity
• China exceeds its 5% GDP growth target in first quarter
• Historic “peace trip” by former Taiwanese leader Ma Ying-jeou

For China, Iran’s attack was “an act of self-defense”

In the context of the genocide that Israel is perpetrating on the Palestinian population, and in retaliation of Israel’s attack on its embassy compound in Damascus (Syria), Iran carried out a missile and drone attack on Israeli territory for the first time in history, repeatedly puncturing the famous “iron dome”.

After the military response, Wang Yi, China’s foreign minister, called his Iranian counterpart Hossein Amir-Abdollahian. During their discussion, Wang Yi again condemned Israel’s “unacceptable” attack on the Iranian embassy in Syria, saying it was a serious violation of international law. He also stated that “Iran can handle the situation well and prevent the region from further turmoil while safeguarding its sovereignty and dignity.” The Iranian foreign minister assured Foreign Minister Wang that his country was willing to be moderate and had no intention of escalating the situation further. He further stressed that “the Islamic Republic of Iran advocates an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and supports China’s positive efforts to promote a ceasefire.”

In contrast, Yuval Waks, deputy head of the Israeli mission to China, said Israel was not satisfied with China’s current response to Iran’s attack as, in his words, they had expected “a stronger condemnation and a clear recognition of Israel’s right to defend itself.”

A few days later, the US House Speaker labeled Iran, China, and Russia the new “axis of evil” while supporting the latest bill to send $60 billion to Ukraine.

For years, China has advocated a two-state solution, the creation of an independent Palestinian state, and full Palestinian membership in the UN. In fact, last week, it again supported a UN Security Council motion to that effect, but it was vetoed, once again, by the United States.While everyone is talking about Iran’s actions in recent weeks, a major shift in Iran’s energy trade has been taking place in recent years. Despite Western sanctions, Iran’s oil exports reached a 6-year high, boosting its economy by $35 billion per year.

Iran sold an average of 1.56 million barrels per day, of which the vast majority were sold to China. Approximately one-tenth of China’s oil imports come from Iran.

This makes it more difficult for the new sanctions that the United States and Europe may impose because of the conflict with Israel to really affect the Iranian economy. We could be witnessing a phenomenon similar to that of the Western sanctions against Russia since February 2022: by increasing trade with the economies of the Global South, driven by China, which does not engage with Western sanctions, the economy, which in theory should suffer, ends up strengthening and reducing its dependence on the West. It is too early to say but the indications provided by Iranian oil exports seem to point to this.

The West’s new narrative against China: overcapacity

During her visit to China at the beginning of April, US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen expressed her concern about an alleged overcapacity in the Asian giant’s new energy sector. In the last few weeks, this idea has been circulating in the Western media, accusing the Chinese government’s subsidies to energy sector companies as “unfair”. However, the decision to subsidize or not an industrial sector is a national sovereignty decision of the country and a common practice in international trade. The fact is that Europe heavily subsidizes its agricultural sector (and has even been accused of dumping practices) and, historically, the United States has had a protectionist policy to boost its domestic industry. The bottom line is that both the US and Europe are concerned about China’s sweeping advance in the production of electric cars, solar panels, technology, and robotics, products at the core of China’s current industrial development.

A good example is China’s largest automation company Innovance, which has a market capitalization of US$ 25 billion. Known as “little Huawei”, it was founded by former Huawei engineers and today is the main supplier of AC servo systems parts (those that produce motion in industrial machines) and the second largest national producer of industrial robots. Its 2023, revenues increased by 30% to US$ 4 billion; its R&D investment is significant, and it has two factories in Hungary and one in India.

According to figures from the International Federation of Robotics, in 2022 more than half of all industrial robot installations in the world were in China.

This boost in China’s new energy industries is an opportunity for countries in the Global South, Dongsheng member Marco Fernandes told CGTN in an interview. He emphasized that “…it is the first time that we have a major economy, such a strong economy in the Global South, so it is absolutely strategic” and that for developing countries it is “…a matter of trying to have balanced partnerships”.

In this way, China’s alleged overcapacity seems more of a threat to the traditional powers than to the world’s developing countries. Both Europe and the United States insist on decoupling or “de-risking” from China, but the data show that such a thing is far from being achieved. According to a Brookings paper last year, US manufacturers are far more dependent on China than standard calculations that examine the origin of intermediate goods, i.e., imports used to make US products, suggest.

The paper reveals that, in 2018, China was the supplier for more than 90% of US manufacturing sectors, particularly apparel, motor vehicles, and electrical equipment. In 1995, Japan was the main foreign source for about 40% of US manufacturing sectors, followed by Canada with about 30%. This high dependence on Chinese intermediate goods implies, for the authors, that “decoupling from China will be much, much more difficult and much slower than many people think, and may be impossible.”

In the same vein, it was Siemens CFO Ralf Thomas who said a few days ago that it will take “decades” for German manufacturers to reduce their dependence on China. “Global value chains have been built up over the last 50 years – how naive do you have to be to believe that this can change in six or 12 months?” he remarked. This is a small sample of the dependence that European countries also have in their trade with China. Following Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s visit, China announced that it will reduce controls on German agricultural products, including pork, apples, and some beef products. Similar measures were taken earlier this year on products from Spain, Belgium, and Austria, in a clear sign of Beijing’s intentions to improve its ties with Europe.

First quarter economy: China exceeds its 5% GDP growth target

China’s economy exceeded expectations and grew by 5.3% year-on-year in the first quarter, consistent with the annual growth target of “around 5%” set at the Two Sessions earlier this year.

Amid China’s productive reorganization, based on manufacturing, not real estate, as the cornerstone of growth, the investment in fixed assets reached 10 trillion yuan (1.4 trillion USD), up by 4.5%. Amid the restructuring of industry, investment in real estate continues to fall (-9.5%), while manufacturing and infrastructure made up the overall growth in investment, increasing by 9.9 and 6.5%, respectively.

China’s industrial value-added grew 6% in the first quarter, especially in the  high-tech sector whose manufacturing growth accelerated. China’s central bank will set up a 500 billion yuan ($70 billion) re-lending program to support the country’s science and technology sectors for small and midsize companies.

On the international front, the use of the RMB in international transactions continued to grow. According to SWIFT, the share of the yuan in global payments rose to a record high in March (4.69%), remaining the world’s fourth most active currency. The US dollar continued to have the largest share in global payments, at around 47% and the euro fell below 22%.

When SWIFT began tracking the use of the yuan in 2010, the currency accounted for less than 0.1 percent of global settlements.

Moreover, the use of the yuan in China’s cross-border transactions for trade in goods was nearly 30% in the first quarter, up from 25% in 2023 and 18% in 2022.

Historic “peace trip” by former Taiwanese leader Ma Ying-jeou

Ma Ying-jeou, the former leader of the island of Taiwan from 2008 to 2016, made a peace trip to mainland China where he met with Xi Jinping. At the meeting, Xi affirmed that “there are no problems that cannot be discussed and no forces that can separate us” and that “external interference cannot contain the historical trend of national reunification”.  For his part, Ma said that upholding the 1992 Consensus and opposing “Taiwan independence” are the common political basis for the peaceful development of cross-Strait relations.

Ma belongs to Taiwan’s main opposition Kuomintang party, which is more inclined to maintain a friendly relationship with the mainland. The Democratic Progressive Party, which has ruled since 2016, won the last regional elections. In a few days, the new leader William Lai Ching-te, who will succeed Tsai Ing-wen, will take office. Since Tsai came to power in 2016, talks with the central government have been frozen since the Taiwanese government stopped recognizing the 1992 Consensus that respects the One China principle.

It remains to be seen how these relations will develop with the new government. Ma, after his visit to the mainland, urged the elected leader to respond “pragmatically” to Xi Jinping’s call for peace, and to respect the One China principle.

China launches third round of anti-corruption inspections of the financial sector

China launched another series of disciplinary inspections of key government departments and state-owned financial institutions.

The third round of routine inspections, following the last one in 2021, will target 34 agencies, including central government ministries, the central bank, the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges, the largest state-owned banks and insurers, as well as policy lenders.

The anti-corruption campaign launched by Xi Jinping in 2013 has covered all sectors of governance. From ministries, finance, and state-owned enterprises, to health and sports. More than four million CPC regional cadres and 533 at the vice-ministerial level and above have been investigated since the start of the anti-corruption campaign.

Pork prices plummet in China

Chinese pork prices are in a prolonged slump due to oversupply. After peaking at 26 yuan (US$ 3.6) in October 2022, they have now hit a low of 14 yuan (US$ 1.93). This product accounts for 60% of the country’s meat consumption, so fluctuations in its prices have multiple implications.

• For a start, it puts deflationary pressure on the Consumer Price Index, which in March rose by 0.1% year-on-year, below the government’s 3% target.
• If China decides to reduce the number of pigs raised, it will most likely have an impact on the global grain market, as a decrease in feed demand will put downward pressure on international prices.
• In addition, the downward price trend puts producers at risk of bankruptcy and may put many small producers out of production, as has happened on other similar occasions.

That is why the Chinese government started to take action, announcing plans to reduce its target number of breeding sows by about 5% starting in March, from 41 million to 39 million. In addition, it will consider 92% of that target (about 35.9 million sows) as an acceptable level.

China’s coastal cities will be below sea level within a century

A quarter of China’s coastal land will sink below sea level within a century, according to a new study by Chinese and US researchers published in the journal Science. They found that about one-third of the population of the 82 cities analyzed live in regions that drop more than 3 mm per year, while 7% live in areas that drop more than 10 mm per year. The paper also found that 270 million Chinese currently live on subsiding land.

Changes in groundwater and the weight of construction would be among the reasons, and a possible solution could lie in long-term control of groundwater extraction.

Subsidence causes cracks in the ground, damages buildings, and increases the risk of flooding. In addition, land subsidence-related disasters in China have injured or killed hundreds of people and cost an annual direct economic loss of more than 7.5 billion yuan (US$1 billion) in recent decades.

The team mapped the subsidence of cities between 2015 and 2022 using a technique powered by the European Space Agency’s Sentinel-1 satellites to measure vertical land movement.

New university graduates choose smaller cities for work

Chinese university graduates are increasingly opting to leave the country’s major cities and seek employment in smaller cities and counties. According to a Mycos survey, in 2018, only 20% of respondents were working in counties and cities six months after graduation, but this figure increased to 25% by 2022.

It’s because graduates want to move closer to family and avoid the pressure that comes with working in big cities. Counties and cities also offer more opportunities to get public sector jobs.

Nearly 60% of respondents working in counties and cities had been in the same place for at least five years and their average monthly income had increased from 4,640 yuan ($641) in 2018 to 5,377 yuan in 2022. Their average job satisfaction rate increased from 67% to 76% during the same period.

Some regions push policies aimed at promoting the return of graduates to their hometowns. For example, Suichang County in Zhejiang Province offers those with master’s degrees a housing allowance of 300,000 yuan and an annual living allowance of 30,000 yuan for five years.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Dongsheng News.

Placing Reaganomics in its realistic context displaces Republican rhetoric that extols the Great Communicator as the model for presidential performance. President Reagan had enviable accomplishments for which he deserves praise, the most significant being the dignity he brought to the office, the trust and stability he gave the American people, and his manner of communicating and connecting with the populace.

Reaganomics had four simple principles — reduce government spending, reduce income and capital gains marginal tax rates, reduce government regulation, and control the money supply to reduce inflation. Containing the Soviet Union and preventing the spread of communism dominated foreign policy.

Reduce Government Spending

The top graph shows federal debt increasing from $998 billion to $ 2.6 trillion during Reagan’s reign. The lower graph has total credit outstanding also almost tripling from $5 trillion to $14 trillion during the same period.

True, it was a Democratic Congress that initiated the federal deficit, but this occurred during his administration and he had some executive power to lower it.

Reagan’s administration’s fiscal policy directly opposed his stated objectives and those of the GOP. Credit throughout the nation and federal deficits started a fast rise in debt that determined America’s future economies.

Tax Reduction

The 40th president of the United States reduced income and capital gain taxes. Objectively, income tax rates determine the transfer of money between the government and taxpayers. Neither direction, taxes up or taxes down, adds or subtracts money to the economic system or allows more or less available spending to the economy; purchasing power stays the same, which means the total purchases of goods and services remain the same.

Individual workers and taxpayers benefit from tax cuts. Stimulating the entire economy with income tax breaks is a psychological phenomenon. The exaggerations, promises, and optimism generated by tax breaks fashion a more optimistic public that incorrectly assumes the cuts stimulate additional spending to an already combined consumer and government spending. Creeping into the debate are other false assumptions — those who have excess funds will purchase domestic goods, invest, and stimulate growth. Not considered is that individuals might purchase imports and invest in speculative ventures that only churn money, both decreasing available purchasing power in the domestic economy. Reagan’s tax cutters were also against government deficits and did not realize that the former leads to the latter.

New York Times, March 6, 2018, “In Blow to Trump, America’s Trade Deficit in Goods Hits Record $891 Billion.”

Money from the tax cuts helped Americans buy more imported goods than ever in 2018. In addition, to finance the tax cuts, the government needed to borrow more dollars, some of which came from foreign investors.

GDP has steadily grown, with a few bumps, and no relation to the lowering of taxes has been proven. A government report: Taxes and the Economy: An Economic Analysis of the Top Tax Rates since 1945, Thomas L. Hungerford Specialist in Public Finance, September 14, 2012, concludes:

The top income tax rates have changed considerably since the end of World War II. Throughout the late-1940s and 1950s, the top marginal tax rate was typically above 90%; today it is 35%. Additionally, the top capital gains tax rate was 25% in the 1950s and 1960s, 35% in the 1970s; today it is 15%. The average tax rate faced by the top 0.01% of taxpayers was above 40% until the mid-1980s; today it is below 25%. Tax rates affecting taxpayers at the top of the income distribution are currently at their lowest levels since the end of the second World War. The results of the analysis suggest that changes over the past 65 years in the top marginal tax rate and the top capital gains tax rate do not appear correlated with economic growth. The reduction in the top tax rates appears to be uncorrelated with saving, investment, and productivity growth. The top tax rates appear to have little or no relation to the size of the economic pie. However, the top tax rate reductions appear to be associated with the increasing concentration of income at the top of the income distribution. As measured by IRS data, the share of income accruing to the top 0.1% of U.S. families increased from 4.2% in 1945 to 12.3% by 2007 before falling to 9.2% due to the 2007-2009 recession. At the same time, the average tax rate paid by the top 0.1% fell from over 50% in 1945 to about 25% in 2009. Tax policy could have a relation to how the economic pie is sliced, lower top tax rates may be associated with greater income disparities.

To fund government programs, Reagan signed tax increases into law every year Huge increases in FICA and signing of the Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act, the “largest peacetime tax increase in American history,” describe Reagan’s ambivalence to tax reductions. If the budget was balanced, then a reasonable conclusion could relate the growth of GDP to a cut in taxes. The economic stimulus due to deficit spending and credit, coupled with the reduction of oil prices and interest rates, probably played more significant roles in the GDP rise.

Note that the graph of GDP coincides with the previous curves of credit outstanding and government debt. All these parameters started their huge increases during the Reagan administration.

Deregulation

True to his word, Reagan offered some deregulation. Was it beneficial?
The Garn–St. Germain Depository Institutions Act of 1982, which deregulated savings and loan associations and allowed banks to provide adjustable-rate mortgages, contributed to the savings and loan crisis of the late 1980s. William A. Niskanen, a member of Reagan’s Council of Economic Advisers has written that deregulation had the “lowest priority” of the items on the Reagan agenda.” Reagan “failed to sustain the momentum for deregulation initiated in the 1970s” and he “added more trade barriers than any administration since Hoover.”

Inflation

Reagan’s policies for controlling the money supply to reduce inflation were contradictory. Paul Volcker, who chaired the Federal Reserve from August 1979 through August 1987, resolved the anomaly.

It always seemed to me that there is a kind of common sense view that inflation is too much money chasing too few goods. You could oversimplify it and say that inflation is just a monetary phenomenon. There are decades, hundreds of years, of economic thinking relating the money supply to inflation, and people to some extent have that in their bones. So I think we could explain what we had to do to stop inflation better that way than simply by saying that we’ve got to raise interest rates. It was also true that we had no other good benchmark for how much to raise interest rates in the midst of a volatile inflationary situation. Then in October [1982], or whenever it was, the money supply (by some measures) was increasing again rather rapidly. We had a tough explanation to make, but I thought we had come to the point that we were getting boxed in by money supply data that was, in any event, strongly distorted by regulatory changes and bank behavior. We came to the conclusion that it was not very reliable to put so much weight on the money supply any more, so we backed off that approach.”

Decreasing income taxes and increasing the money supply by lowering interest rates and running deficits are not the recommended means to reduce inflation. So, why did inflation get tamed — chalk it up to greatly lowered oil prices and cheap imports from rising Japan and the rejuvenated China.

Reduced Unemployment

We come to the most often cited success of Reagan’s policies; an increase of 18 million jobs, but where? All of them were in the non-manufacturing sectors. The Bureau of Labor Statistics, shown below, reports 11 million growth in the service industries, 4.5 million in wholesale and retail trade, and 2 million in the financial industry.

Any employment increase is welcoming and significant. Few of these industries are export industries and are, in effect, supported by the surplus income of manufacturing workers. Banks don’t normally lend to consumers to buy hamburgers, and going to a doctor doesn’t increase assets. Services, trade, and finance create intangible assets and not the tangibles that have defined prices.

This leads to Reagan’s greatest failure; during an era of global prosperity, and while Japan and Germany enhanced their export industries, America started its monotonically increasing deficit in its surplus account. The graph below shows that 1983 was a fatal year for the United States; the year it became a global debtor nation.

During the Reagan decade, Japan’s current account balance went from a record deficit of $10.7 billion in 1980 to a record surplus of $87 billion in 1987 before declining to $57.1 billion in 1989. Similarly, the Federal Republic of Germany, after experiencing deficits during 1979–81, had its current accounts balance rebound to about a DM 9.9 billion surplus in 1982 and increase to DM 76.5 billion in 1986.

While Reagan talked mellifluously, the world’s principal nations trade (including an emerging China) flowed with honey. Examine all the graphs and tables and the conclusion becomes obvious: Reagan’s administration policies increased federal and private debt at exponential rates, decreased manufacturing employment, and turned a positive current account into an ever-mounting negative.

Cold War

Reagan talked tough and acted tough — excoriating the Soviet Union, militarily challenging Moscow by greatly increasing the defense budget, and covertly helping Pakistan intelligence in supplying arms to the Afghan Mujahedeen. His 1983 NSC National Security Decision Directive 75 stated that” a central priority of the U.S. in its policy toward the Soviet Union contains, and over time, reverses Soviet expansionism.” The directive noted: “The U.S. must rebuild the credibility of its commitment to resist Soviet encroachment on U.S. interests and those of its Allies and friends, and to support effectively those Third World states that are willing to resist Soviet pressures or oppose Soviet initiatives hostile to the United States, or are special targets of Soviet policy.” None of these pursuits intended to overthrow the Soviet Union, all were long-term, and did not provide mechanisms to end the Cold War.

The Reagan administration approached the 1986 Reykjavik Summit meeting as an informal exploratory session with a limited agenda and found Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev proposing dramatic reductions in strategic arms. Gorbachev led the negotiations between the two governments and led the Soviet Union into disintegration. An end to the Cold War automatically followed. Reagan’s involvement in the proceedings was more as an observer who did not discourage Gorbachev and refrained from interfering rather than a direct participant who engineered the outcome. He was not in office when Russian President, Boris Yeltsin, on December 8, 1991, signed the Belovezha Accords with President Kravchuk of Ukraine, and Chairman Shushkevich of Belarus, “recognizing each other’s independence and creating the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) to replace the Soviet Union.”

Step away from Reagan’s relation to the decline of the Soviet Union and step forward to examine his policy of preventing communist expansion and his foreign policy initiatives appear troubling.

• Nicaragua ─ Use of the illegal sale of arms to Iran to fund the Contra rebels in Nicaragua was a major scandal.
• El Salvador ─ Despite the atrocities committed by the El Salvador governments, which Reagan never persuaded the Central American government to halt, he provided the Salvadoran government with substantial military aid and advisors.
• Guatemala ─ Reagan attempted to justify his shipments of military hardware to the repressive Rios Montt regime by claiming that Guatemala’s human rights conditions were improving. In May 2013, Ríos Montt was found guilty of genocide against Mayan Indian groups by a Guatemalan court. He was sentenced to 80 years in prison, 50 years for genocide, and 30 years for crimes against humanity.
• Grenada ─ Reagan misstated the construction of a civilian airport by Cuban laborers as a military airport for delivery of military hardware to Angolan rebels and used that as an excuse to invade defenseless Grenada and overthrow the leftist government. Casualties from the unnecessary invasion ─ 24 Cuban laborers killed and 59 wounded, the Grenadian Army suffered 21 killed and 58 captured, and 24 Grenadian civilians died during the operation. The United Nations General Assembly condemned the invasion as “a flagrant violation of international law” by a vote of 108 to 9.
• Angola ─ China originally assisted Jonas Savimbi and his National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA), which espoused Maoist thoughts. A later UNITA modified itself and aligned with Western capitalism, bringing Reagan to militarily support UNITA in its struggle with the communist-oriented Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA). U.S. support for UNITA prolonged the conflict and caused havoc.
• Afghanistan ─ Reagan’s CIA’s assistance to the fundamentalist insurgents through Pakistani intelligence, in a Civil war that was not part of the Cold War, and where the U.S. had no interest, proved fatal to America. Reagan’s assistance to Pakistani intelligence enabled the Taliban victory and the organization of al-Qaeda. Enough said.
• Philippines — The Reagan administration aligned itself with Dictator Ferdinand Marcos, through all his assassination of opponents, repression, corruption, and election rigging until military and government leaders abandoned Marcos.
• Libya ─ Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi did not ingratiate himself with Ronald Reagan, The tit-for-tat invectives and hostile actions exploded into Reagan ordering full-scale bombings by the U.S. air force of Libyan territory. By a vote of 79 in favor to 28 against with 33 abstentions, the United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution that “condemns the military attack perpetrated against the Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya on 15 April 1986, which constitutes a violation of the Charter of the United Nations and of international law.”
• Beirut ─ President Reagan sent U.S. troops to Lebanon as part of a peace-keeping force, dispatched to assist Lebanese armed forces in the “departure from Beirut of armed PLO personnel and to assist in the transition of authority to the Lebanese government in Beirut.” Troubles for the American-backed regime of President Amin Gemayel led US warships to shell Syrian and Druze militia positions outside Beirut, which Reagan explained as a military intervention to prevent the Middle East from being “incorporated into the Soviet bloc.” Several months later a bombing of the U.S. barracks in Beirut killed 241 U.S. Marines. Four months later, after one of the biggest debacles in U.S. history, Reagan ordered all U.S. forces to leave Lebanon.
• Iran Air Flight 655 ─ On July 3, 1988, surface-to-air missiles, fired by USS Vincennes, shot down a scheduled passenger plane over Iran’s territorial waters in the Persian Gulf and killed all 290 people on board. Excuses of misidentification intensified criticism of Reagan’s orders that sent U.S. military into war zones where they were not wanted or needed. As usual, Reagan used the Soviet bogeyman as a superficial reason for sending a U.S. warship close to Iran’s shores. President Reagan said that “increasing the American naval force and protecting the tankers are necessary to defend the principle of free navigation and to prevent the Soviet Union, which is leasing tankers to Kuwait, from establishing itself as a gulf power.”

Conclusion

President Ronald Reagan had a vision that serves one sector of today’s Republican Party, a vision of self-reliance, limited government, stout defense, and world leadership toward freedom. His administration contradicted that vision, using big government to expand the economy, expand the defense budget, and engage in useless assistance to anti-communist tyrants who crippled their defenseless peoples and stained America’s image as a democratic and peace-loving nation. Federal debt and trade deficits gained impetus during the Reagan presidency. A pledge to balance the federal budget never materialized in any of his eight years in office.

The Gipper can take some credit for propelling an already declining Soviet Union into total decline. The most significant contribution to the political environment of the time was himself. The nation was more united during his tenure in office, exhibiting bipartisan cooperation and not displaying the antagonisms, adversities, and lack of cohesion that characterize 21stcentury America. He connected with the populace, performed with dignity, and portrayed an optimism that energized the public. The contradictions he personally displayed mirrored the contradictions of his policies ─ at times Ronald Reagan seemed disengaged and disenchanted with his surroundings, but his private notes, policy directives, speech writings, and alertness when the U.S. was challenged indicate he was deeply involved in governing the United States of America. Similar to Ronald Reagan, the results of the governing are contradictory and depend upon perspective.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Dan Lieberman.

A Tongan RSE worker, whose case sparked an independent review of Immigration New Zealand’s “out-of-hours compliance visit” practices, is still on edge.

Pacific community members have compared the actions to the infamous “Dawn Raids”.

Keni Malie’s lawyer, Soane Foliaki, said his client’s case should have ended such exercises.

• READ MORE: Ponsonby march highlights Dawn Raids pain and overstayer uncertainty

However, the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment’s (MBIE) Immigration Compliance and Investigations team has only temporarily suspended “out-of-hours compliance visits” to residential addresses.

“At least until this work is completed,” MBIE Immigration Investigations and Compliance General Manager Steve Watson said.

He said the visits would not resume until new standard operating procedures came into effect and staff had been fully trained in the new procedures.

It is uncertain how these new procedures will be different, and what this will mean for migrant workers.

Detained in front of wife, family
In the early hours on April 19 this year immigration officials showed up at Keni Malie’s residence and detained him in front of his wife and children. He was then taken away and shortly after served with a deportation order.

“Four children were in the house, with three sleeping downstairs and at least one woken up by the activity,” the independent review states.

Malie’s lawyer broke the story to the media, out of desperation. The story gained traction and following a public outcry, Immigration New Zealand admitted this was not a one-off incident.

Keni Malie has since been granted a temporary visa while he and his lawyer work though his residency application but he said he was still nervous about it.

Malie explained in Tongan, as his lawyer translated:

“The hardest thing for me was trying to make sure that I can put a loaf of bread on the table for my children. I hope for the day that I can feel secure and get residence,” Malie said.

Immigration New Zealand has confirmed it has been conducting out-of-hours compliance visits — known as “Dawn Raids” — for the past eight years.

Figures released under the Official Information Act show Pacific community members were the third highest after Indian and Chinese nationals of the total number of people located, between July 1, 2015, and May 2, 2023.

Out of 95 out-of-hours compliance visits, which in some cases multiple people were found, 51 were Chinese, 25 Indian and 17 Pacific.

There was one from the USA and one person from Great Britain on the list.

MBIE reviews
An independent review of what Pasifika community leaders have called MBIE’s Dawn Raids-style visits has now been completed.

The review was led by Mike Heron.

Leaders and members of the Pacific, Indian and Chinese communities were interviewed, along with immigration lawyers and advisers and representatives.

One of the reasons given for this review was that the raids of the 1970s were a “racist application of New Zealand’s law”.

“Immigration officials and police officers entered homes of Pacific people, dragged them from their beds, often using dogs and in front of their children. They were brought before the courts, often barefoot, or in their pyjamas, and ultimately deported,” Heron report reads.

Tongan community leaders were outraged to find out Keni Malie, who is Tongan, went through what they see as a similar trauma.

According to the report, Malie was in New Zealand as an RSE worker when he did not turn up to work because he was getting married.

Added to ‘process list’
After being stopped by police for driving without a licence, Crime Stoppers were also sent a notification for another issue. He was then added to Immigration’s National Prioritisation Process list.

In the Immigration Officers’ view, their “compliance visit” to Malie was carried out reasonably and respectfully.

“They stressed that the operation was calm, respectful and did not require any use of force,” the review states.

But his lawyer, Soane Foliaki disagrees that it was “respectful”.

“In the dark of the night they were back at it, you know, without any consideration? Why did the Prime Minister apologise?” Foliaki said.

To him this was reminiscent of the Dawn Raids. Something the former Prime Minister had only just apologised for.

An INZ spokesperson told RNZ Pacific at a Pacific community event earlier this year that in some cases officers sit down with a cup of tea to build rapport with overstayers.

Trauma for community
“I want to again acknowledge the impact the Dawn Raids of the 1970s had on the Pacific community and that the trauma from those remains today,” MBIE’s Steve Watson said.

We know we have more to do as we learn from the past to shape the future. This continues to be at the centre of our thinking as we move forward,” he said.

Lawyer Soane Foliaki who has been fighting for justice for 30 years still has hope, hope for his client and hope that there will be change.

“We always felt that New Zealand was always a decent country, they’ll always give us a fair go. This is also our home here,” Foliaki said.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

The post Subsidized Employment Can Reduce Crime and Gun Violence Among Black Men appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Algernon Austin.

The post Religious Freedom isn’t About Employment “Accommodations” appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Thomas Knapp.

Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster.

— Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, Aphorism 146

We’re not dealing with a government that exists to serve its people, protect their liberties and ensure their happiness.

Rather, we are the unfortunate victims of the diabolical machinations of a make-works program carried out on an epic scale whose only purpose is to keep the powers-that-be permanently (and profitably) employed.

Case in point: the FBI.

The government’s henchmen have become the embodiment of how power, once acquired, can be so easily corrupted and abused. Indeed, far from being tough on crime, FBI agents are also among the nation’s most notorious lawbreakers.

Whether the FBI is planting undercover agents in churches, synagogues and mosques; issuing fake emergency letters to gain access to Americans’ phone records; using intimidation tactics to silence Americans who are critical of the government, or persuading impressionable individuals to plot acts of terror and then entrapping them, the overall impression of the nation’s secret police force is that of a well-dressed thug, flexing its muscles and doing the boss’ dirty work.

Clearly, this is not a government agency that appears to understand, let alone respect, the limits of the Constitution.

Indeed, this same government agency has a pattern and practice of entrapment that involves targeting vulnerable individuals, feeding them with the propaganda, know-how and weapons intended to turn them into terrorists, and then arresting them as part of an elaborately orchestrated counterterrorism sting.

Basically, it works like this: in order to justify their crime-fighting superpowers, the FBI manufactures criminals by targeting vulnerable individuals and feeding them anti-government propaganda; then, undercover agents and informants equip the targeted individuals with the training and resources to challenge what they’ve been indoctrinated into believing is government corruption; and finally, the FBI arrests the targeted individuals for engaging in anti-government, terrorist activities.

This is what passes for the government’s perverse idea of being tough on crime.

For example, undercover FBI agents pretending to be associated with ISIS have been accused of seeking out online and befriending a 16-year-old with brain development issues, persuading him to secretly send them small cash donations in the form of gift cards, and then the moment Mateo Ventura, turned 18, arresting him for providing financial support to an Islamic terrorist group.

If convicted, the teenager could spend up to 10 years in prison.

Yet as The Intercept explains, “the only ‘terrorist’ he is accused of ever being in contact with was an undercover FBI agent who befriended him online as a 16-year-old… This law enforcement tactic has been criticized by national security researchers who have scrutinized the FBI’s role in manufacturing terrorism cases using vulnerable people who would have been unable to commit crimes without prolonged government assistance and encouragement… the Ventura case may indicate that authorities are still open to conjuring terrorists where none existed.”

In another incident, the FBI used an undercover agent/informant to seek out and groom an impressionable young man, cultivating his friendship, gaining his sympathy, stoking his outrage over injustices perpetrated by the U.S. government, then enlisting his help to blow up the Herald Square subway station. Despite the fact that Shahawar Matin Siraj ultimately refused to plant a bomb at the train station, he was arrested for conspiring to do so at the urging of his FBI informant and used to bolster the government’s track record in foiling terrorist plots. Of course, no mention was made of the part the government played in fabricating the plot, recruiting a would-be bomber, and setting him up to take the fall.

These are Machiavellian tactics with far-reaching consequences for every segment of the population, no matter what one’s political leanings, but it is especially dangerous for anyone whose views could in any way be characterized as anti-government.

As Rozina Ali writes for the New York Times Magazine, “The government’s approach to counterterrorism erodes constitutional protections for everyone, by blurring the lines between speech and action and by broadening the scope of who is classified as a threat.”

For instance, it was reported that the FBI had been secretly carrying out an entrapment scheme in which it used a front company, ANOM, to sell purportedly hack-proof phones to organized crime syndicates and then used those phones to spy on them as they planned illegal drug shipments, plotted robberies and put out contracts for killings using those boobytrapped phones.

All told, the FBI intercepted 27 million messages over the course of 18 months.

What this means is that the FBI was also illegally spying on individuals using those encrypted phones who may not have been involved in any criminal activity whatsoever.

Even reading a newspaper article is now enough to get you flagged for surveillance by the FBI. The agency served a subpoena on USA Today / Gannett to provide the internet addresses and mobile phone information for everyone who read a news story online on a particular day and time about the deadly shooting of FBI agents.

This is the danger of allowing the government to carry out widespread surveillance, sting and entrapment operations using dubious tactics that sidestep the rule of law: “we the people” become suspects and potential criminals, while government agents, empowered to fight crime using all means at their disposal, become indistinguishable from the corrupt forces they seek to vanquish.

To go after terrorists, they become terrorists.

To go after drug smugglers, they become drug smugglers.

To go after thieves, they become thieves.

For instance, when the FBI raided a California business that was suspected of letting drug dealers anonymously stash guns, drugs and cash in its private vaults, agents seized the contents of all the  safety deposit boxes and filed forfeiture motions to keep the contents, which include millions of dollars’ worth of valuables owned by individuals not accused of any crime whatsoever.

It’s hard to say whether we’re dealing with a kleptocracy (a government ruled by thieves), a kakistocracy (a government run by unprincipled career politicians, corporations and thieves that panders to the worst vices in our nature and has little regard for the rights of American citizens), or if we’ve gone straight to an idiocracy.

This certainly isn’t a constitutional democracy, however.

Some days, it feels like the FBI is running its own crime syndicate complete with mob rule and mafia-style justice.

In addition to creating certain crimes in order to then “solve” them, the FBI also gives certain informants permission to break the law, “including everything from buying and selling illegal drugs to bribing government officials and plotting robberies,” in exchange for their cooperation on other fronts.

USA Today estimates that agents have authorized criminals to engage in as many as 15 crimes a day (5600 crimes a year). Some of these informants are getting paid astronomical sums: one particularly unsavory fellow, later arrested for attempting to run over a police officer, was actually paid $85,000 for his help laying the trap for an entrapment scheme.

In a stunning development reported by the Washington Post, a probe into misconduct by an FBI agent resulted in the release of at least a dozen convicted drug dealers from prison.

In addition to procedural misconduct, trespassing, enabling criminal activity, and damaging private property, the FBI’s laundry list of crimes against the American people includes surveillance, disinformation, blackmail, entrapment, intimidation tactics, and harassment.

For example, the Associated Press lodged a complaint with the Dept. of Justice after learning that FBI agents created a fake AP news story and emailed it, along with a clickable link, to a bomb threat suspect in order to implant tracking technology onto his computer and identify his location. Lambasting the agency, AP attorney Karen Kaiser railed, “The FBI may have intended this false story as a trap for only one person. However, the individual could easily have reposted this story to social networks, distributing to thousands of people, under our name, what was essentially a piece of government disinformation.”

Then again, to those familiar with COINTELPRO, an FBI program created to “disrupt, misdirect, discredit, and neutralize” groups and individuals the government considers politically objectionable, it should come as no surprise that the agency has mastered the art of government disinformation.

The FBI has been particularly criticized in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks for targeting vulnerable individuals and not only luring them into fake terror plots but actually equipping them with the organization, money, weapons and motivation to carry out the plots—entrapment—and then jailing them for their so-called terrorist plotting. This is what the FBI characterizes as “forward leaning—preventative—prosecutions.”

The FBI has also repeatedly sought to expand its invasive hacking powers to allow agents to hack into any computer, anywhere in the world.

Suffice it to say that when and if a true history of the FBI is ever written, it will not only track the rise of the American police state but it will also chart the decline of freedom in America: how a nation that once abided by the rule of law and held the government accountable for its actions has steadily devolved into a police state where justice is one-sided, a corporate elite runs the show, representative government is a mockery, police are extensions of the military, surveillance is rampant, privacy is extinct, and the law is little more than a tool for the government to browbeat the people into compliance.

This is how tyranny rises and freedom falls.

The powers-that-be are not acting in our best interests.

Almost every tyranny being perpetrated by the U.S. government against the citizenry—purportedly to keep us safe and the nation secure—has come about as a result of some threat manufactured in one way or another by our own government.

Think about it.

Cyberwarfare. Terrorism. Bio-chemical attacks. The nuclear arms race. Surveillance. The drug wars. Domestic extremism. The COVID-19 pandemic.

In almost every instance, the U.S. government (often spearheaded by the FBI) has in its typical Machiavellian fashion sown the seeds of terror domestically and internationally in order to expand its own totalitarian powers.

Consider that this very same government has taken every bit of technology sold to us as being in our best interests—GPS devices, surveillance, nonlethal weapons, etc.—and used it against us, to track, control and trap us.

Are you getting the picture yet?

The U.S. government isn’t protecting us from threats to our freedoms.

The U.S. government is creating the threats to our freedoms. It is, as I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, the source of the threats to our freedoms.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead.

• China to use Russian port of Vladivostok
• Tech transfer to Thailand for high-speed trains
• Rural youth stay in their hometowns
• Free housing for young job seekers

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Dongsheng News.

As corporate interests continue to attack Julie Su, dozens of progressive organizations on Wednesday pressured a U.S. Senate panel to swiftly advance the labor secretary nominee, who "has devoted her life to fighting for workers' rights, holding exploitative employers accountable, leveling the playing field for high-road employers, and doing pioneering work to protect the most vulnerable of workers."

Labor and advocacy groups have celebrated since President Joe Biden nominated Su in February, but industries opposed to her are spending big in states like Arizona, Montana, and West Virginia, hoping some current and former Democrats in the Senate will block her confirmation.

"Julie Su's career has been defined by solving complex problems and building a more just economy for all."

"Why are corporations spending millions to defeat Julie Su's nomination as labor secretary? They know she's a champion of the working class and will take on the forces of corporate greed, illegal union-busters, and improve working conditions. The Senate must confirm her nomination," Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) tweeted Friday.

Sanders and Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.)—as chair and ranking member of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP), respectively—received the new letter from 94 organizations ahead of the panel's Thursday hearing.

Led by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) and National Employment Law Project (NELP), the groups wrote:

The Department of Labor's (DOL) basic mission is "to foster, promote, and develop the welfare of the wage earners, job seekers, and retirees of the United States; improve working conditions; advance opportunities for profitable employment; and assure work-related benefits and rights." Few people are as uniquely well-suited to lead the Department of Labor in executing this mission as Julie Su...

Over the past two years, Deputy Secretary Su has proven herself to be an indispensable partner to Secretary Marty Walsh. Her recent experience and proven track record as a leader at the Department of Labor will enable a smooth leadership transition for the agency and a continuation of the agenda they both charted, one that will better protect workers from exploitation, but one that also has due regard for the regulated community and employers who are playing by the rules. Indeed, that is why Deputy Secretary Su is so well respected by so many in the business community in her home state of California, because she is someone who respects all stakeholders, including high-road employers who understand that their success is built by and with their workforces.

"This is a critical time for the Department of Labor to continue supporting workers through the economic recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic," the letter stresses, pointing to the DOL's work to finalize independent contractors rules, modernize unemployment insurance, carry out new interagency initiatives, improve access to well-paying employment, and implement the Good Jobs Initiative and items from the White House Task Force on Worker Organizing and Empowerment.

The letter highlights Su's "deep experience addressing the particular needs of low-wage workers" as well as her "pioneering work for the labor and human rights of immigrant workers," and argues that her former job in California "left her well-positioned to manage the relationship between the U.S. DOL and their numerous state-level counterparts."

As NELP executive director Rebecca Dixon said Wednesday, "Even before coming to Washington—from her experience as a civil rights lawyer to her work as secretary of the California Labor and Workforce Development Agency—Julie Su's career has been defined by solving complex problems and building a more just economy for all."

"Now, having served as deputy secretary at the Department of Labor for over two years and using her decades of experience to have a profound impact at the national level, we urge a swift confirmation process so that she and the Department of Labor can continue to make progress on the key labor, workforce, and employment issues facing our country today," Dixon added.

EPI president Heidi Shierholz also advocated for urgent action by lawmakers, saying: "Workers in this country need an experienced leader and brilliant public servant at the helm of the Department of Labor, and Julie Su is exactly that. I encourage the U.S. Senate to act quickly on her nomination to ensure that the Department of Labor can continue its ongoing work to support the economic recovery and address issues important to working people."

Other groups that signed on to the letter include the AFL-CIO, AFSCME, Casa Latina, Child Labor Coalition, Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights, Communications Workers of America, National Black Worker Center, Our Revolution, Oxfam America, Sierra Club, Service Employees International Union, United Steelworkers, and Women's Law Project.

Citing unnamed sources, Punchbowl also reported that "union officials will begin a six-figure TV ad buy" supporting Su in Washington, D.C. as well as Arizona and other states, and that more spending would follow.

Some unions have individually pressured the Senate on Su's nomination—including the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, whose general president, Sean O'Brien, argued in a letter last week that she is "uniquely qualified" and "would make an extremely effective leader" at the DOL.

United Farm Workers president Teresa Romero similarly said in a Tuesday letter to Sanders and Cassidy that "few nominees in U.S. history have been as qualified" for the role as Su, who "has shown a lifelong commitment to upholding worker's rights as well as working with employers to keep our economy strong and working for everyone."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Jessica Corbett.

Photograph Source: AgnosticPreachersKid – CC BY-SA 3.0

Federal Reserve action may be a necessary component to reaching Black full employment, but it is not sufficient. Full employment for Black people will require additional policies including subsidized employment.

The Federal Reserve aids job growth by lowering its interest rate. From the end of 2008 through 2016, and again for most of 2020 and to early 2022, the Fed’s interest rates were close to zero. These rates were helpful in producing historically low Black unemployment rates, but none of these Black unemployment rates were truly low. To put it another way, no other racial group would have considered the same unemployment rates as anything to celebrate.

This figure illustrates the persistent high-unemployment conditions facing Black people in the United States. It places the annual White and Black unemployment rates into rate categories. The median rate for White people from 1963 to 2022 is 5 percent. Rates of 4.1 percent to 5 percent are considered to be “low unemployment” for this discussion. “Full employment” will be defined as an unemployment rate of 4 percent or lower. (This definition of “full employment” is an explicit rejection of the non-accelerating inflation rate of unemployment as a standard for full employment. One of the reasons to reject this standard can be found in this article.) Given that there are always people leaving jobs and new people entering the labor force who are looking for work, some level of unemployment will always exist.

In the past 60 years, the White population experienced full employment for 13 of those years, as well as 18 years of low unemployment. The Asian American population has also had several years of full employment. The Latino population has had low unemployment in recent years, but not full employment.

As the figure illustrates, the Black population has never had full employment over the past 60 years, nor has it even had low unemployment like other groups. The Black population is always living with varying degrees of high unemployment, while the White, Latino, and Asian American populations have all experienced annual unemployment rates below 5 percent.

This unemployment-rate history makes clear that Black full employment will not happen without a new policy approach. The Federal Reserve has an important role to play, but it is unable to create the conditions for Black full employment on its own. The 60-year period covered in the figure includes several years of Fed interest rates near zero, and yet the Black unemployment rate never reached the low-unemployment range.

The Federal Reserve is not able to target job creation to the specific cities, suburbs, and rural areas or the neighborhoods within these places where there is high Black unemployment. The Fed is not able to counteract the segregation and economic marginalization of Black communities. The Fed is not able to circumvent the discriminatory practices of employers. All of these factors must be addressed to achieve Black full employment.

Federal Reserve policy can determine whether the Black unemployment rate is in the 6 percent range or the 16 percent range. It is easier to achieve Black full employment when the Black unemployment rate is near 6 percent. For this reason, efforts to pressure the Fed to strenuously pursue maximum employment are very important.

Fiscal policies that spur job creation are also necessary. For example, investments in the nation’s inadequate physical and care infrastructure are good ways to create jobs and address dire needs.

A national subsidized employment program is also required. The Works Progress Administration (WPA) was able to subsidize the creation of over 400,000 jobs for Black workers over the Great Depression. The WPA was only the largest of dozens of subsidized employment programs in U.S. history. Subsidized employment can be designed to effectively target job creation to disadvantaged Black communities. A subsidized employment program can be done effectively and at scale. If Black people are to experience full employment, there needs to be policy action beyond the Federal Reserve.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Algernon Austin.

• Li Keqiang’s report at the Two Sessions
• US sanctioned companies at the Two Sessions
• Douyin contests the e-commerce market
• Chinese diplomats on social networks

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Dongsheng News.

• Wang Yi met with Putin
• Provinces to employ more people
• Guangzhou to set up high-tech support fund
• 40 years of Chinese medical team in Uganda

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Dongsheng News.

This not the crux of the question, since I was a monogamous dater and monogamous husband. It’s more centered around the discordance and dissheveled nature of humanity in the Western world, which unfortunately is the litmus test for much of the world now, which is another conundrum for me: why the hell would Japan or Oaxaca or Istanbul give a shit about McDonalds, Disneyland, Top Gun and disposable diapers? How viral is Western consumerism and retail disease? How diseased are the people of the world to buy into a disposable culture, from the ketchup containers to the children to the old people?

Marketing, man, and that is a very sophisticated psychological end game. The end run around is the pervasive marketing of everything, and the fake quality of modern humans. All about selling or acting or putting on a show.

Yeah, I’m writing this on the heels of yet another attempt to have a job tied to some civil and social justice gig. I got the call for a 15 minute interview Tuesday, with the fair housing coalition of Oregon, working in four rural counties as an outreach-educator specialist, getting stakeholders (I despise that term) to get around a table, or in a room or on Zoom to understand the rights of renters, tenants, and home buyers.

Up my alley, and alas, I have worked around the housing “issue” for several decades, as an urban and regional planning grad student, and then with clients in Seattle, Spokane, Portland, Vancouver, and on the Oregon Coast.

Two people interviewed me, and one big question was what I thought of how poverty has come about. Oh how it all ties into Capitalism, about the Gilded Age, about the first Anglo Saxons coming to this “New World” and exploiting the Original peoples. Exploiting as in murdering. Stealing land. Polluting the land. Moving them off the land. Re-educating them. Turning the real people into savages. Enslavement and denigration. Haves and haves not. You know, workers, laborers, even the professional managerial class, at the whim of the One Percent and the Five percent. You need poor people to make a buck, and you need poverty to be rich. You know, toil and labor to make the gilded ones money.

But it is deeper, sort of like economic sanctions on countries like Cuba or Venezuela — sanctions against the majority of people in Capitalism to pay the fines, fees, tolls, poll taxes, taxes, add-ons, service fees, tickets, violations, late charges, penalties, and the mortgages.

All those millions working hard to stay afloat, and then some medical emergency, some run-in with a lawyer or insurance company or the law, and bam, the semi-stable household is put into a spin — economic, spiritual and existential spin.

There will always be a PayDay monster lurking in Capitalism. There will always be scammers and legions of thieves who get away with it in CAPITALISM. Poverty makes millions of people money — cops/pigs, courts, judges, schools, governmental program managers, workers in all those so called welfare divisions. You get it! Take a child out of a home, and you will find dozens of workers and managers managing that Child Protective Services intervention-destruction.

In any case, I got a second interview, this time in front of seven people and with an hour to dog and pony my self into their midst. Provide a seven minute Zoom teaching modality or Power Point. Also tell us what a strategy would be to undertake an outreach program in Clatsopo, Tillamook, Lincoln and Columbia Counties. One educator and outreach honcho, and what would you do and who would you engage to get this off the ground?

One hour equalled five hours or more of prep. I actually called county commissioners in two of the counties. I did much research on all the places that might be engaged with low income folk or people of color. The obvious thing is to get into the faith communities, with support services like work source and Department of Human services departments, and even school districts and landlord groups.

Here, what I was being asked to get ready for:

Here are some details about the interview.

• It will be about an hour long. The whole team will be there.
• One question for you to prepare in advance: Talk about how you would conduct an outreach campaign to raise awareness of fair housing in rural Columbia, Clatsop, Tillamook and Lincoln Counties. Who do you think would be most important to reach and what would your strategies be for reaching them?
• At the end of the interview, we will ask you to conduct a seven-minute training on any topic you like. We want to see what your facilitation style is like. We will make you a cohost on Zoom so if you have a PowerPoint to share, you can.

I talked to one woman originally from Michigan who was a county commissioner in Clatsop County. She had spent much time in Portland, and she told me that she had experienced living in Lansing, Michigan as a white woman who witnessed redlining and major discrimination against Black Americans in their attempt to get affordable housing.

She had that poster of Che on her wall.

At the risk of seeming ridiculous, let me say that the true revolutionary is guided by a great feeling of love. It is impossible to think of a genuine revolutionary lacking this quality.

― Ernesto “Che” Guevara (“Venceremos: Speeches and Selected Writings of Che Guevara.”)

She gave me great insight into her county, and how the rural-urban divide has a crass and prejudice guiding mark — “These trust fund babies or super rich come into our Oregon Coast Communities and think that the IQ for our rural residents is 30 points lower than from their urban locales. Everyone comes here to be served and waited on, even for a couple of days. Everyone, even the struggling middle class, want that two or three days of pretending to be like the rich — fancy food, big hotel, and loads of beach fun and trinket buying.”

I even talked to the president of the Landords Assocation, and I interviewed another commissioner, with the eye toward their opinion on how an outreach campaign might work in their respective communities — counties with 27K, 50K, and 42K populations. Rich homes, arts, retired, and then the linen changers, the cooks, the medical technicians, the teachers, you know, coffee shop workers, bussers, cooks, even the simple laborers to keep those amenities and Martha Stewart homes, kitchens and decks prettified.

The lack of housing is huge, and affordable housing is few and far between. Of course I am a socialist, and these systems of oppression and exploitation have to go. Homes and apartments and mixed neighborhoods have to be run by us, the people, the new American government, and, sure a few can get in on building and designing, but there should never be a society where rents are artificial for investment and profits. A one bedroom apartment for how much in Seattle, Chicago, here? And what are those wages of the linen changers and hotel cleaners?

It will take so many tens of millions to strike against this super exploitative system, and we need a public commons, public utilities, public health, education and transportation. Housing has to be part of that, not some bogus HUD lie, which is predicated on which insane political party is in office. Safe, affordable housing. That human right!

Fact: In 1948, the United States signed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), recognizing adequate housing as a component of the human right to an adequate standard of living.

• All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.
• Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status. Furthermore, no distinction shall be made on the basis of the political, jurisdictional or international status of the country or territory to which a person belongs, whether it be independent, trust, non-self-governing or under any other limitation of sovereignty.
• Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.
• No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms.
• No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.
• Everyone has the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law.
• All are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to equal protection of the law. All are entitled to equal protection against any discrimination in violation of this Declaration and against any incitement to such discrimination. (source)

Oh, well, that job went the way of the Dodo, as many of my job applicatons have: “Hi Paul, Thank you so much for your time and energy today in the interview and the obvious passion you have towards social justice. We didn’t feel that you were the right fit for this position at this time and we are going to continue our search. Again, thank you for your time and energy. Sincerely, S…!”

There are those buzzwords — “energy” and “passion” and” social justice.” AND, “not the right fit.” I will not get into the errors of their ways, or the dynamics of being age 66 and being interviewed by all women except one, but all in 30 something age range, two hitting forty something. Spilt milk? Sour grapes? Come on, that missive-whatever-rejection-note tells me shit about the interview, what was missing, what I did right, about anything, really. Me thinks there is prejudice here, including age, gender and alas my white skin discrimination. I’m a communist, which I did not disclose, but certainly they might have Googled me, and then, you get the semi-half picture of me (right … little of what I write or how I express myself gives anyone doing a cursory search of men much to know about me — the real me).

Oh well, another interview bites the dust, another quippy essay in the can.

Note: For a Continuation of this diatribe around bandwagons and following the sheeple, go to Dissident Voice, “Let the Bandwagon Play On!”

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Paul Haeder.

In an effort to "create an economy of full employment for all regardless of race, gender, or religion," 10 leading U.S. economic advocacy groups on Monday launched a new campaign calling for a federally subsidized jobs program targeting communities plagued by high unemployment.

The Full Employment for All campaign is timed to coincide with the Martin Luther King Jr. Day holiday and the 60th anniversary year of King's "I Have a Dream Speech."

Just as King's indictments of U.S. capitalism and militarism are often overlooked, omitted, or overshadowed by his civil rights work, the full name and purpose of the August 1963 demonstration—the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom—have been eclipsed by the iconic speech he delivered there. A year before his April 1968 assassination—which happened while he was supporting striking Black Memphis sanitation workers—King wrote that "we must create full employment or we must create incomes."

In 1963, the national unemployment rate was about 5% for white Americans but nearly 11% for Blacks. That disparity has remained remarkably consistent to this day, and shows that communities of color face high unemployment even during periods of low overall joblessness. These people are the focus of Full Employment for All.

The Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), which is spearheading the new campaign, asserted:

Everyone who wants to work should be able to find a job, but this is not the case today. Although the official statistics indicate that we are in a period of historically low unemployment, there are still millions of people who are willing to work but are not able to find a job. Recent data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics suggests that there are about 15 million people who are unable to find work. This joblessness is not uniformly distributed across the country but [is] concentrated in the most disadvantaged communities. A targeted federal program for subsidized employment could create jobs and economic growth in these communities that have been left behind.

"Like in 1963, national employment numbers are relatively high, but those aggregate numbers can be deceiving," Algernon Austin, CEPR's director of race and economic justice, said in a statement Monday. "Black unemployment remains roughly double that of white workers nationwide, and regional unemployment rates for white workers in Appalachia, Latinos in the southwest, and among Native Americans remain persistently high."

"Only a federally funded and long-lasting subsidized employment program can adequately solve these disparities," Austin added. "We have a historic opportunity to reach Dr. King's goal of full employment, and on this anniversary year we expect this dream to become a reality."

"Decades of evidence show us that subsidized jobs work: they help pull people back into the labor market and increase economic security, especially for people facing systemic barriers to employment, such as Black and Brown workers."

Federally subsidized employment programs have a track record of success from the Works Progress Administration and other New Deal initiatives meant to combat the Great Depression to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, enacted during the last major recession.

"Decades of evidence show us that subsidized jobs work: they help pull people back into the labor market and increase economic security, especially for people facing systemic barriers to employment, such as Black and Brown workers," said Kali Grant and Natalia Cooper of the Georgetown Center on Poverty & Inequality, one of the 10 Full Employment for All participants. "A federal program of subsidized employment would empower workers, strengthen communities, and move us toward a more equitable economy for everyone."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Brett Wilkins.

Late last year, the Auckland University of Technology (AUT) initiated a process to eliminate 170 academic jobs to cut costs. The Employment Relations Authority (ERA) found AUT’s approach breached its collective employment agreement with staff and their union and ordered it to withdraw the termination notices.

Tertiary education runs on an insecure labour force in New Zealand and elsewhere. The AUT decision illustrates that even traditionally secure positions are becoming less so.

Tenure is the traditional protection for academics in the tertiary sector, but New Zealand does not have tenure at its universities.

• READ MORE: For many NZ scholars, the old career paths are broken. Our survey shows the reality for this new ‘academic precariat’
• Universities: The often overlooked player in determining healthy democracies
• Employment court orders Auckland University of Technology to scrap redundancies
• Media and academia: the intriguing case of AUT’s Pacific Media Centre

Tenure is more than a perk

A common argument against tenure is that it leads to a complacent, under-motivated university professor. These concerns are hypothetical — evidence that tenure causes productivity differences is lacking.

In fact, one of few large studies on the subject found the opposite. Good administrators should be able to manage any actual productivity issues as they do in all other workplaces.

On the other hand, lack of tenure creates risks for free societies. Tenure is common practice in other liberal democracies. UNESCO says:

Security of employment in the profession, including tenure […] should be safeguarded as it is essential to the interests of higher education.

Tenure is important, if not indispensable, for academic freedom. Academic freedom is essential to a university’s mission, and this mission is a characteristic of a democracy. As University of Regina professor Marc Spooner put it:

A country’s institutional commitment to academic freedom is a key indicator of whether its democracy is in good health.

The Employment Relations Authority has issued a compliance order to the university, requiring it to withdraw its notices of termination. https://t.co/NUvBfqS6ad

— Stuff (@NZStuff) January 5, 2023

Scholarship is not piecework
The ERA said AUT misunderstood terminology in the collective employment agreement.
The clash term was “specific position”. AUT’s position was that specific positions are identified by professional ranks (from lecturer to professor) and the numbers of each role across four particular faculties.

The ERA did not agree and concluded an essential component for identifying specific positions is the employee, being the person who is the current position holder or appointee to a position.

AUT’s assertion would be like the air force using the rank of “captain” to adjust its number of pilots. The number of captains does not tell you what each captain does, be it to fly planes or fix them.

Without tenure, a standard less than this minimum established by the ERA can be used to eliminate academics who have legitimate priorities that do not align with the administrative staff of the day, or are the victims of any other concealed discrimination. The ERA clarification makes it more difficult to inhibit intramural criticism, the right to criticise the actions taken by managers and leaders of the university.

The authoritative review of freedom of speech and academic freedom in Australian universities singles out the importance of academic freedom for this purpose, saying:

It […] reflects the distinctive relationship of academic staff and universities, a relationship not able to be defined by reference to the ordinary law of employer and employee relationships.

The ERA clarification helps to prevent the firing of academics who are teaching, researching or questioning things administrators, funders or governments don’t want them to. But it is a finger in a leaking dyke. Tenure is a tried and tested general solution.

Health of the democracy
We only need to observe the events in the United States to recognise the importance of tenure. This benchmark country has a proud tradition of tenure. Nevertheless state governments are dismantling tenure to impose political control on curriculums. Our liberal democracy is not immune to this.

We need more than tenure-secured academic freedom to enable universities to do the sometimes dreary and at other times risky work of providing societies alternatives to populist, nationalist or autocratic movements. But as the Douglas Dillon chair in governance studies at the Brookings Institution, Darrell M. West, wrote, academic freedom is a problem for these movements.

Recognizing the moral authority of independent experts, when despots come to power, one of the first things they do is discredit authoritative institutions who hold leaders accountable and encourage an informed citizenry.

In a system with tenure, a university would have a defined stand-down period preventing reappointment to vacated positions. For example, if an academic program and associated tenured staff that teach it were eliminated at the University of Arkansas for financial reasons, the program could not be reactivated for at least five years. The stand-down inhibits whimsical or agenda-fuelled restructuring as a lazy option to manage staff.

If a similar trade-off were to be applied to how AUT defined specific positions, then no academics could be hired there for five years. It is very different to be prevented from hiring academics than it is to, say, not re-establishing a financially struggling department or program.

Herein lies the true value of tenure. It is greater than a protection of the individual. It protects society from wasteful or ideologically motivated restructuring as an alternative to poor management. Tenure is security of the public trust in our universities.

Dr Jack Heinemann is professor of molecular biology and genetics, University of Canterbury. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

The drops in both new jobs and wage growth contained in a Department of Labor report released on Friday elicited cheers from financial world insiders.

“This is a really terrific jobs report in lots of subtle ways,” tweeted Neil Irwin, Axios’s chief economic correspondent. He said, “Job growth is soft-landingish” — polite econ-speak for saying growth is decreasing steadily.

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This content originally appeared on The Intercept and was authored by Ken Klippenstein.

The Employment Relations Authority (ERA) has knocked-back an attempt by one of Aotearoa New Zealand’s largest universities to axe more than 100 staff.

The Auckland University of Technology planned to make 170 academic staff redundant, but the ERA has now ruled that its process was flawed and breached the collective agreement.

Now the school may need to walk back its dismissals, and start all over again.

• LISTEN TO RNZ MORNING REPORT: ‘A very callous and uncaring process’ – union organiser Jill Jones
• ‘This level of disruption and instability in our lives is just crippling’
• Other AUT academic crisis reports

ERA said AUT had called for voluntary redundancies too early, before the institution had even decided which positions to cull.

The Tertiary Education Union (TEU) is celebrating the ruling as a win. However, AUT says the union and the university have interpreted the decision differently and it would be seeking clarification.

Lawyer Peter Cranney, in an email to members of the TEU yesterday, said the ERA was considering a compliance order that would require AUT to withdraw all the notices it had already issued.

“Although a compliance order is discretionary, the [ERA] authority has indicated it will not decline the granting of the order it needed,” he wrote.

“The parties will now have three days to consider the matter; and if a compliance order is necessary, the AUT will need to comply within five days.”

Cranney said any compliance order would be issued by Friday.

Trust difficult to rebuild, says union organiser
TEU organiser Jill Jones said the decision meant people at risk of losing their jobs no longer were.

“It’s great because what it does show is our collective agreement has been respected by the Employment Relations Authority,” Jones told RNZ Morning Report.

But although staff members were “absolutely” thrilled with the decision of the ERA, there was a breakdown of trust with their employer and it would be difficult to rebuild it.

“Its been a long, hard road for these staff members. They’ve paid a very large price.

“These are members that really, really care about their students and the high price that they’ve paid for this bungled redundancy is that lots of things have happened.

“It’s felt as if, to them, it’s been a very callous and uncaring process and it’s going to be difficult to come back from that.”

With issues of trust and many staff feeling targeted and bullied, AUT had a “very big job” ahead to rebuild that trust, she said.

Frances* was one of the unlucky 170 to receive a redundancy letter.

“This level of disruption and instability in our lives is just crippling,” she said.

The ERA decision had not brought much comfort.

“It’s kind of a double-edged sword,” she said. “I’m really happy that we’ve seen some justice be recognised through the court system, but I don’t know what’s going to happen next.”

Frances expected AUT to withdraw her notice of dismissal, but did not expect a happy ending.

“I’m not deluded, they’re still going to come for me I’m sure, but they’ll have to start from scratch and do it properly,” she said.

“That’s all we ask, that this is done properly.”

Poor handling of the situation had destroyed staff morale, she said.

“For three months, I’ve been feeling disengaged, demotivated, angry, upset, waiting, waiting, waiting for this letter,” she said.

“This whole process has been about targeting, humiliating, and bullying people.”

AUT seeks clarification of ‘complex findings’
An AUT spokesperson said the findings were legally complex and it regretted that a “procedural issue” highlighted had made staff more uncertain.

“Although the ERA has published its findings, it has not issued orders.

“AUT’s view of these findings differs from that of the TEU. AUT is endeavouring to clarify and resolve the issue promptly.

“Given the differing views between the parties it will therefore be necessary to return to the ERA tomorrow for clarification on some aspects.”

AUT said ERA’s findings found no bad faith in how it had acted — and AUT had formed a differing view of the collective agreement.

“The ERA has noted that AUT should have identified the specific positions potentially declared surplus and, at this point, written to offer voluntary redundancy to the people in these specified positions.

“Following clarification of the procedural issue we will write to those impacted by the decision to confirm the way forward.”

* Name changed to protect identity. This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ. 

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

Orientation

The golden age of left-wing economists

In part because the 1960s was still a period of capitalist abundance, there were few socialists in Yankeedom who pointed to the economic contradictions of capitalism as a motivator for the coming revolution. “Western Marxists” ignored the economy, imagining capitalism could go on forever. As first anarcho-communist and then as Situationists, the group I was in never talked about any economic laws that would drive the economy into a crisis. But a couple of my comrades, one from France, had been closely studying a book by Lyn Marcus (later his public name became Lyndon LaRouche) called Dialectical Economics. Here was a wake-up call for all of us to get back to economics, especially since by the late 1970s the days of economic abundance were over.

Throughout the next thirty years, good economic Marxists like Richard Wolff, David Harvey, Robert Brenner and John Bellamy Foster have carried the torch for political economy. However, it was not until The Great Recession of 2008 and the Occupy movement in 2011-2012 really brought economic crisis into the foreground of life in Mordor. Since then, more Marxist economists have emerged such as Michael Perelman, Michael Roberts, and Anwar Shaikh. They have all added depth and scope. Non-Marxist economics such as Michael Hudson, Steve Keen and Jack Rasmus have made acidic analyses of finance capital. The great value in all these economists is that they speak in natural language, not mathematical language. This makes it easier for the Yankee population to understand them.

Varieties of capitalist crises theory and their rivals

In his book The Long Depression Michael Roberts asks four key questions from which he derives eight possible answers about the nature of economic turmoil or even whether there is a crisis at all.

• Is capitalism subject to economic crisis?

Within the camp which says no, a second question is answered.

1b) Do periodic fluctuations need fixing?

If the answer is “yes” you are a Keynesian like Paul Krugman. If the answer is “no” you are a libertarian like Milton Friedman. For the libertarians capitalism only goes through “business cycles”.

Within the camp that says “yes”, that capitalism is subject to crisis, a second question is asked:

• Is the kernel of the crisis found in production?

If the answer is “no” you are an underconsumptionist like Marxists David Harvey or Rosa Luxemburg.

If the answer is “yes” about the kernel of the crisis found in production, there is another question:

2b) Are crises more than struggle over wages and profit shares?

If no, you are a profit-squeeze supporter. Economics associated with this are Baron and Sweezy and Richard Wolff.

If the answer to the kernel of the crisis is found in production is “yes”, a further question should be:

3a) Are crises integral to the accumulation crisis?

If the answer is “yes” you follow Marx’s argument about the tendency of the rate of profit to fall. This is advocated by Michael Roberts, Anwar Shaikh and Robert Brenner.

If the answer to the question is crisis integral to the accumulation process is “no” then a further question is asked.

4a) Does extra-consumption come from outside the system?

If the answer is “yes” you are a follower of Rosa Luxemburg or David Harvey and claim that capitalism has limited resources and needs imperialism to survive.

If the answer is “no” to the question then there is second question.

4b) Does extra consumption come from state intervention?

If the answer is “yes” you are a post Keynesian such as Steve Keen.

If the answer is “no” you are a Malthusian.

In this article I will be drawing from David Harvey’s book The Seventeen Contradictions and the End of Capitalism. I picked this book, not because I agree with Harvey’s theory of crisis, but because he lays out the contradictions so exhaustively. I am not a political economist by training but I have studied hard to understand him. What is most important for my readers to understand is that there are a great number of reasons that capitalism is in very, very, very serious trouble.

What is a contradiction?

Harvey says a contradiction is when two seemingly opposing forces are simultaneously present within a particular situation, an entity, a process or an event. A contradiction can be produced either by innovations, disasters or slow decline.

Contradiction 1 Exchange-value is More Important than Use Value Though Use-Value Matters More in Real Life

The use value of a house is contained in the cost of its production. This includes all the materials that went into building the house as well as the cost of labor to complete the house. The use value of the house is its protection from bad weather conditions, prowlers, a place of comfort, privacy and social reproduction, including sex and taking care of children. The use value of a commodity is relatively stable.

But the exchange value of housing is not fixed. It is interdependent on surrounding houses. Property values can go down on my house if my neighbors’ houses are not kept up, even if my house has been kept up. On the other hand, a house that is not kept up can sell for a high price if it is located in a gentrifying neighborhood. Harvey points out that there have been property market crashes in 1928, 1973, 1987 and 2008. The contradiction is that use-values are captive to exchange values and this constantly destabilizes the economy. Harvey says exchange value is always in the driver’s seat.

Contradiction 2 Money is Valued Above the Social Value of Labor

Harvey identifies four constructive functions that money provides:

• It is the means or medium of circulation. Before money, with barter exchange was dependent on both parties having goods the other wanted. Money overcomes the incongruity in immediacy of goods and services that limits direct barter.
• It provides a single measuring rod for economic values of all commodities.
• It provides a way to store value.
• It delays the need to buy a commodity immediately.

But there is a gap between money and the labor that ultimately produces it. Money hides the social labor that went into its material form. The problem is that money, which is supposed to be used to measure value, itself become a kind of commodity— that is money capital. Its use value is that it can be used to produce more value profit or surplus value. Its exchange value is, for example, an interest payment.

Commodity money such as gold and silver are rooted in tangible commodities with definite physical qualities like:

• It is relatively scarce.
• The supply is relatively inelastic so they maintain their relative value against all other commodities over time.
• These metals do not oxidant and deteriorate.
• The physical properties are known and their qualities can be assayed accurately so their measure can easily be figured out.

The problem is these commodity moneys are awkward to use on a daily basis of coin tokens. Bits of paper and then electronic moneys became much more practical in the exchange of goods. They are good at storing value but not so good in circulating commodities.

The problem is also the desire for finance capital as a means of social power becomes an end in itself. This distorts the concrete relation of the money that would be required simply to facilitate exchange. It also throws a monkey wrench into the supposed rationality of capitalist markets. Harvey writes that one of the most dangerous contradictions of capital is that of compounding growth so that with the abandonment of the metallic base, money could be printed infinitely by whoever was authorized to do so. This is exactly what is happening now with the Fed freely printing money without any foundation in gold or any real social wealth. Money out-of-control from material products is what leads to financial depression.

Contradiction 3 Private Property and the State Often have Conflicting Interests

Keeping refugees and immigrants out vs the need for cheap labor

The kind of rationality the state typically imposes is illustrated by its urban and regional planning practices.The job of the nation-state is to protect their borders from unwanted refugees or immigrants. On the other hand, capitalists need migrants to work under-the-table for dirt cheap wages. Capitalists indirectly fight with the state over the status of migrant workers.

Capitalists vs the matriarchal state

Secondly, the state can be divided into its matriarchal and patriarchal functions. Matriarchal functions include unemployment insurance, pensions, welfare, road construction and repair. The patriarchal state functions include the military, the police and prisons. Capitalists are against the matriarchal functions of the state because they cut into profits. However, capitalists are more than willing to invest in the police to protect them, prisons to house the unemployed or the military to take the natural resources of other countries.

Patriotism vs global trade

Even within the patriarchal state there are contradictions. On one hand the military is very patriotic and expect that people will buy Yankee cars. Harvey says the state is interested in the accumulation of wealth and power on a territorial basis. On the other hand, capitalists will seek to make a profit anywhere in the world and will import foreign cars and many other goods. As many of you know, capitalist oil businesses were making profits from Germany during the Nazi era and the Yankee state had to force them to leave.

Neocon war of all against all vs liberal laissez-faire trade policies

Lastly, the patriarchal state often opposes capitalists in its international ambitions. For example, neocon foreign policy war mongers like Victoria Nuland wants war with Russia and China. Liberal capitalists on the other hand, want to trade with China. Capital is not the only agent involved in the pursuit of technological advantages in civil society. The state apparatus looks for superior weaponry, surveillance and other methods for policing the population.

Contradiction 4 Capitalists Acting in Their Own Short-term Self-interest Undermine the Conditions of Their Own Reproduction

If the use value of a product and the price of the commodity were the same, there would be no room for capitalist profit. One the one hand, the common wealth created by social labor comes in a great variety of use values from the most basic knives and forks, to the food we eat, to the cars we drive. to the houses we live in and the clothes we wear. The capitalist private appropriation of common wealth along with the expropriation of social labor is legally sanction under normal conditions of trade. But there is a dark unseen and illegal side of the market which Harvey includes such as robbery, thievery, swindling, corruption, usury, predation, violence which goes unaccounted for. In addition, there is market cornering, price fixing and Ponzi schemes. All these activities weaken the socio-production process. Harvey writes:

It is stupid to seek to understand the world of capital without engaging with the drug cartels, traffickers in arms and the various mafias and other criminal forms of organization that play such a significant role in world trade. (53)

All this swindling and double-dealing is labor expended in counter-production which weakens the amount of energy left for production. This production includes the amount of wages paid and products consumed by workers to get to the next day.

Contradiction 5 The Class Struggle Over the Proportion of Wages given to Workers as Part of the Working Day

Harvey states that one of the most outstanding aspects of the capitalist system is that it does not appear to rely on cheating. For Marxists, labor has two aspects. On one hand, labor as human species is activity which distinguishes us from the rest of the animals and produces all real social wealth. One the other hand, there is labor power which is a commodity the capitalist rents for roughly half the working day. This “fairness” of the wage rests on the assumption that laborers have an individualized private property right over the labor they are capable of furnishing. But in reality, workers have a social property right over their labor because the cooperative social labor of all the workers in factories and offices produces all the wealth.

The commodification of labor power is the only way to solve a seemingly intractable contradiction within the circulation of capital. This contradiction is that in a fully functioning capitalist system, where coercion, cheating and robbery are supposedly ruled out, the exchanges should be based on the principle of equality – we exchange use values of products with each other and the value of those use values should be roughly the same. For all capitalists to realize a positive profit requires the existence of more value at the end of the day than there was at the beginning means an expansion of total output of social labor. Without that expansion there can be no capital. Zero growth defines a condition of crisis for capital. Here there is no room for profit. So where does the profit come from? As Harvey says, there must exist a commodity that has the capacity to create more value than it has itself. That commodity is labor power.  And this is what capital relies upon for its own reproduction. It’s the exploitation of the extra five or six hours of the workers’ pay that is pocketed by capitalists. In reaction to workers joining in unions for higher wages and better working conditions capitalists will:

• lock workers out or close the businesses completely:
• refuse to invest or reinvest in workers or infrastructure;
• deliberately create unemployment and create an industrial reserve army; and
• move jobs to peripheral world countries for their cheap land or labor.

So there is a long-term, relentless struggle between capitalists and labor over the proportion of wages given to workers on a given day.

Capitalist contradictions about education

Another part of this conflict is over education. On one hand, capitalists want to keep workers as uneducated as possible so that they find out as little of the workings of capitalism as possible. But on the other hand, capitalists must make workers more creative in order to fix problems on the job. The problem for capitalists is they can’t control how the workers may use their creativity on the job to undermine capitalism one way or another.

Contradiction 6 The Contradiction Between Fixed and Circulating Capital

Capital investment takes three forms: as an investment in fixed capital – machinery, plants, land and investment and an investment in variable capital which is labor power. Labor power is remunerated afterproduction has occurred, whereas the means of production are usually paid for prior to production (fixed capital). But capital also invents the circulation of commodities. When the commodity is sold, then capital becomes liquid again. In the circulation of commodities, the speed of its circulation is also important. If one capitalist can circulate their commodities faster than another they have a certain competitive advantage. So they attempt to accelerate the turnover time of capital.

Limitations of making a profit on fixed capital

However, there are limits to the speed of circulation. To paraphrase Harvey, if I want to make steel, the iron ore and coal are still buried in the ground and it takes a lot of time to dig them out. There are not enough workers close by who are willing to sell their labor power. I need to build a blast furnace and that takes time. There are physical barriers to reducing this turn-around time to zero. Workers, furthermore, are not automatons. They may lay down their tools or slow down their labor process. (73-74)

Once the steel is finished it has to be sold. The commodity can sit on the market for some time before the buyer shows up.  The capitalist has a vested interest in securing and accelerating the turnover time of consumption. One of the ways is to produce steel that rusts so fast it needs rapid replacement: planned obsolescence (73-74)

These problems center on the category of long-term investments in fixed capital.

In order for capital to circulate freely in space and time, physical infrastructures and built environments must be created that are fixed in space – anchored on the land in the form of roads, railways, communication towers and fiber-optics plants, airports and harbors, factory buildings offices, houses, schools, hospitals.  More mobile forms of fixed capital are ships, trucks, planes and railway engines. (75)

Capital in danger of social sclerosis

The part which is moveable capital cannot be replaced during the item’s lifetime without loss of value. As time goes by the sheer mass of this long-lived and often physically immobile capital for both production and consumption increaserelative to capital that is continuously flowing. Whole sites are abandoned and wasted as in the rust belts of Mordor. On one hand, in order for capital to circulate freely in space and time, physical infrastructures and built environments must be created that are fixed in space. Yet capital has to periodically break out of the constraints imposed by the world it has constructed. As Harvey says, it is always in mortal danger of becoming sclerotic. Why?

Capital is forever in danger of becoming more sclerotic over time because of the increasing amount of fixed capital required. Fixed and circulating capital are in contradiction with each other but neither can exist without the other. The flow of that part of capital that facilitates circulation has to be slowed down. But the value of immobile fixed capital (like the container port terminal) can be realized only through its use. It is generally much slower.

From physical goods to spectacles

One solution for capitalists is to sell events rather than physical commodities. Harvey says there is a huge difference between, for example, the live transmission of a World Cup football match and lugging around bottled water, steel girders, furniture or perishable items like soft fruit, hot pork pies, milk and bread. Commodities are variably mobile depending upon their qualities and transportability. Production, with some exceptions, like transportation itself is the least mobile form of capital. It is usually locked down in place for a time. In shipbuilding it is considerable.

Contradiction 7 The Contradictory Nature of Low Wages vs Capitalist Realization

The goal of capitalism is to sell as many products as it can at the cheapest possible price. But in the process of making a profit the capitalist must:

• exploit labor power (surplus value) so it can raise the price of a commodity;
• realize the sale of the product in the market – which is far from easy

The problem for capitalists is that if wages are kept low the aggregate demand of laborers won’t be enough to buy the products off the shelf. So if the cost of social reproducing of the laborers is being forced back into the household, then those laborers will be less likely to buy goods and services off the market. Lack of aggregate effective demand creates a serious barrier to the continuity of capital accumulation. Working class consumer power is a significant component of that effective demand. Yet if the capitalist insists on paying minimum wage how can the workers buy the products?

Between 1945 and the mid-1970s, the problem for capitalist was in the production of enough surplus valuebecause of unions were strong and wages high. When unions became weaker, wages dropped beginning in the 1970s. Then the problem for capitalists was was not in the achievement of extracting surplus value but in cultivating conditions for its realization since workers had less money to buy commodities. This is why in the early 1970s capitalists began issuing credit cards to workers in order for capitalist profits to be realized.

Contradiction 8 Contradiction and Alienation of Labor

Harvey says there is an important distinction between the technical and social division of labor. By technical he means a separate task within a complex series of operations, that anyone can do. By social he means the specialized task that only a person with adequate training or social standing can do, like a doctor, or an architect. In the technological division labor, the unity of mental and manual aspects of laboring was broken.

The meaning of the term “alienation” has psychological and sociological components. As a passive psychological term, it means to become isolated from connection to others whether at work or in leisure. As an active psychological state, it means being angry and hostile or feeling oppressed, deprived or disposed of. The person acts out that anger, lashing out without any clear definition. Teenage rebellion movies of years ago, The Wild One or Rebel Without a Cause, are examples.

As beautifully laid out by Bertell Ollman, sociologically alienation means the worker is estranged from his or her product of labor as well as the process of work. He/she is also alienated from other workers, from nature and from their own creativity. As Marx said it is only outside of work that the worker has the possibility to achieve any personal fulfillment. Uneven geographical development in the divisions of labor and the parallel increase in social inequality in life choices, are exacerbating that sense of alienation. This creates a danger for capitalists in the form of labor unions, strikes, labor parties and agitation for socialism. On one hand, the accumulation of capital requires squeezing the life out of the worker. On the other hand, this repression creates militancy on the part of workers.

Contradiction 9 Automation Might Shrink the Ratio of Necessity and Freedom vs Automation as the Driver od Unemployment

One of the mythological stories told by capitalists is that technological innovation would lead to more leisure time for workers. Well, since about 1970 in Yankeedom, we have seen an increase in the amount of full-time work from 40 hours to at least 50 hours per week. This is because capitalist motivation is not to create more leisure for workers, but to replace workers, especially militant workers, with machines.

On the other hand, automation and artificial intelligence now provide us with abundant means to achieve the Marxian dream of freedom beyond the realm of necessity. In other words, the population could have more leisure time to use their creativity for new inventions, new arts and new sciences. Full advantage could be taken of automation and artificial intelligence. But for the capitalists the more time that has been released from production, the more imperative it has become (for the capitalist) for the workers to absorb their leisure time in consumption. It has no room for authentically free time which neither produces nor consumes commercial wealth.

Contradiction 10 Technological Innovation vs Monopoly Capitalism

From competition to monopoly

According to Harvey, the development of technology first became a focus for capitalists in the second half of the 19^thcentury with the rise of the machine tool industry. Harnessing energy like the steam engine was applied to multiple industries. The classic Marxist argument is that through capitalist competition, the productive forces (technology) increase and outdistance the capitalist capacity to use this productive power. This overabundance of products creates the conditions for socialism. But what Marx didn’t anticipate is that capital demonstrates a trend towards monopoly rather than competition. This is a less favorable environment for innovation.

Wealth of Nations is the founding myth of liberal economic theory. Capital is imagined as constructed by a plethora of molecular and competitive collisions of individual capitalists moving freely and searching for profitable opportunities within a chaotic sea of economic activity. But in fact by the end of the 19^th century, corporations has overwhelmed Adam Smith’s competitive invisible hand. All this is news to market fundamentalist economists. Right-wing market libertarians present monopolies as an exception to the rule, rather than the predominant way of life under capitalism. Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Amazon, Walmart and Apple are all examples of oligarchies tending towards monopolies. The tendencies in many sectors of the economy – pharmaceuticals, oil, airlines, agribusiness, banking software, media and social media – suggest strong tendencies towards oligopoly, if not monopoly. In fact, says Harvey, most capitalists, if given the choice prefer to be monopolists rather than competitors

Lenin saw capital moving into a new phase of monopoly power associated with imperialism at the turn of the 20^th century when the big industrial cartels combined with finance capital to dominate the leading national economies. This view re-emerged in the 1960’s with Paul Baran and Paul Sweezy’s book Monopoly Capitalism. The crisis of the 1970s – stagflation and inflation – was widely interpreted by Marxists as a typical crisis of monopoly capital.

Why monopolies put the brakes on innovation

Capitalism today limits the rate of technological innovation because:

• The organization of cooperation and divisions of labor must be made in ways to maximize efficiency, profitability and accumulation. This means that innovations that will not be very profitable, such as long-lasting technologies, will be repressed.
• The capitalist needs to facilitate the acceleration of capital circulation in all its phases, along with the need to annihilate space through time. What I mean is increasing speed of transport and communication reduces the friction and barrier of geographical distance. This requires minimizing capitalist occupation of space.
• Capitalist must shorten the turnover time by shortening the lifetime of consumer products (planned obsolesce).
• Capitalist can shorten the lifetime of products’ shift from the production of things that last to the production of spectacles which are ephemeral and contain faster turn-around time.
• Capitalists technologies of knowledge are used to identify consumer preferences.
• The speeding up and turnover time by the use of the technologies of finance. Beginning with invention checks and credit cards, the goal is faster turn-around time. The rise of cyber moneys, like bitcoin, is just the beginning of an inexorable descent of the monetary system into chaos.
• Capitalists must not only speed up the realization and consumption process, but they must develop technologies that speed up the workers. This includes time motion studies, the Hawthorn experiments, and surveillance. This attempted control encompasses not only physical efficiency but also the rise of robotization. As Harvey writes, robots do not complain, answer back, sue, get sick, go slow, lose concentration, go on strike, demand more wages, want tea breaks or refuse to show up.

All this means is that that the because the capitalist must speed up the production and consumption process, it is far from the ideal conditions of innovation. Scientific innovators are in no hurry and want their products to last. The contradiction is that capitalists want scientific innovation to create ever new processes and products. Yet in their efforts to shorten the turnover time of products, they undermine the innovative processes themselves. They will not be able to innovate at the pace that would develop the productive forces and would stagnate and shrink the rate of profit.

Contradiction 11   Globalization of Capital: Promises and Perils

The division of labor within capitalism is now taking place at a world-wide scale. Harvey writes that what is now in place is radically different from anything that existed prior to 1850.

There are three sectional classifications of the division of labor between:

• primary – agriculture, forestry, fishing and mining;
• secondary – industry and manufacturing; and
• tertiary – services, finance, insurance and real estate sectors.

On one hand a world market in grains can forestall a local crop failure. At its best all capitalist countries have the technology to support each other during famines, extreme weather, floods, earthquakes and droughts. The fact that capitalist countries limit these interventions to countries that are their allies does not limit their potential to serve the whole world.

One the other hand, as Harvey points out today the clothing factories in Bangladesh, the electronics factories of southern China, the maquiladora factories strung along the Mexican border or the chemical complexes in Indonesia are all interdependent.  Small disruptions in a supply chain can have very large consequences. A strike in a key car parts factory in one region of the world can bring the whole production system to a halt everywhere. Supply chain blockages thanks to Covid result in delays in both the process of production and the delays on the product.

Contradiction 12 Uneven Geographical Developments: Super-Concentrations of Production  and Wastelands

The capitalist division of labor has reached a world scale and this results in uneven pockets of production with high concentration of work in some areas and wastelands in other areas. Time is money for capitalism. Traversing space takes both time and money. As much as possible the near elimination of transport costs and times is a factor in location decision making. This permits capitalists to explore different profit opportunities in widely disparate places.

Harvey writes that what arises is “agglomeration” economies where many different capitals cluster together. For example, car parts and tire industries locate close to car plants. Different firms and industries can share facilities and access labor skills, information and infrastructures. However other regions may become wastelands increasingly bereft of activities. They get caught in a downward spiral of depression and decay. The result is uneven regional concentrations of wealth, power and influence.  Affections and loyalties to particular places and cultural forms are destroyed and treated as anachronisms. Large blotches of the world become wastelands where nothing is grown and people can no longer live.

Capital never has to address its systemic failings because it moves them around geographically. Since myopic capitalists treat these wastelands as “externalities” the problem grows worse. The heads of nation-states are enslaved to capitalists and are in no position to address the geographical mess capitalists have created. There are, however, limits to continuous centralization through agglomeration. It results in overcrowding and rising pollution. In addition, labor may become better organized in its struggles against exploitation because of its regional concentration.

Contradiction 13 Finance Capital vs the Physical Economy

There are two ways in which capitalist crises might be produced:

1) chronic inequalities produce imbalances between production and realization; and

2) financialization of profit means capitalists will not invest in their own infrastructure.

In the case of financialization, what makes the current phase special is the phenomenal acceleration in the speed of circulation of finance capital and the reduction in financial transaction costs. If all capitalists seek to live off finance, insurance and real estate interests and are just speculating in asset value or living off capital gains the gap between finance capital and the real physical economy grows.

The problem of compound interest

Harvey points out that – Michael Hudson in the Bubble and Beyond is one of the only political economists who takes the issue of compound growth seriously. He says that most people do not understand very well the mathematics of compound interest.

Nor do they understand the phenomenon of compounding growth and the potential dangers it can pose. Harvey writes that compound interest curve rises very slowly for quite a while and then starts to accelerate and by the end the curve becomes a singularity as it sails off into infinity. Harvey goes into much more detail on pages 223-228 of his book.

There is one form that capital takes which permits accumulation without limit and that is the financial form. Today finance capital is now unchained from any physical limitations. In Mordor today the Fed issues fiat moneys that can be created without limit. Adding a few zeros to the quantity of money in the circulation is no problem for them. The danger is that the result will be a crisis of inflation. The contradiction is in disparities between accumulation process that is necessarily exponential and the conditions that might limit the capacity of exponential growth. These conditions are the requirements to invest in the physical aspects of the economy such as buildings, harnessing of energy and infrastructure.

Fictious capital instruments

Besides the printing of fiat money another financial instrument in the purchase of assets includes debt claims. Harvey writes an asset is simply a capitalized property title. This was paralleled by the creation of wholly new assets markets within the financial system itself such as currency futures, credit default swaps, and CDOs.

This was fictitious capital feeding off and generating even more fictitious capital.

Harvey writes there is a labyrinth of countervailing claims that were almost impossible to value except by way of some mix of future expectation, beliefs and outright crazy short-term betting in unregulated markets with no prospect of any long-term payoff.

Contradiction 14 Capital’s Relation to Nature

Liberal environmental politics has preferred to ignore entirely the fact that it is capitalism that produced the current ecological crisis. Harvey writes that they nibble away at issues on the periphery of the capitalist system while they never reach the core of the system that is producing the problem. “Deep ecologists” wrongly call Marxism “Promethean” which has a disregard for nature and claims that only human history matters. But John Bellamy Foster has dedicated the better part of his life arguing for the belief that Marx was ecologically sensitive and had a concept of capitalism as creating a “metabolic” rift with nature.

In addition, by training David Harvey is a geographer and has written books on a Marxist criticism of what capitalism has done to the natural world. The change in climate and the frequency of severe weather events is increasing.  Catastrophic local events can be readily accommodated by capital since a predatory disaster capitalism is ready to go. But pollution problems do not get solved, only moved around in uneven benefits and losses. The capitalist system is not prepared for the slow, cancerous degradations. Harvey says that whereas the problems of in past were typically localized, they have now become more regionalized such as acid deposition, low level of ozone concentration, stratospheric ozone holes, habitat destruction, species extinction and loss of biodiversity.

Conclusion

Harvey points out that this one-at-a-time presentation of capitalist contradictions does not address that all these contradictions are feeding into each other forming an organic whole. Do capitalists understand these contradictions? For the most part, no. Most are enthralled with market fundamentalist theories. A minority have read Marx. But even so, their short-term material interests as capitalists blocks them from understanding the full ramifications of their system. So capitalists as a class do not understand their system. They blithely roll along accumulating finance capital and pay no attention to the fourteen fractures I’ve identified. What problems occur are dismissed as “business cycles”. As the fractures deepen we can count on capitalists to ramp up  their ideology and distract us with more extreme forms entertainment, including football games, escapist movies and increasing violence in movies coupled with special effects.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Bruce Lerro.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Allen Forrest.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Allen Forrest.

Wage Growth Moderates Further

Perhaps the best news in this report is further evidence of moderating wage growth. The annualized rate of wage growth, comparing the last three months (April, May, June) with the prior three months (January, February, March), was 4.3 percent. That is down from an annualized rate of 6.1 percent, comparing the winter (November, December, January) to the fall (August, September, October).

This is a huge deal because the Fed’s plans for aggressive rate hikes was based on a concern for a 1970s-type wage-price spiral. It is impossible to have a wage-price spiral when wage growth is slowing. As it is, the 4.3 percent annualized rate of wage growth is only a 0.9 percentage point higher than the 3.4 percent rate in 2019 when inflation was comfortably below the Fed’s 2.0 percent target.

Construction Again Adds Jobs, Manufacturing Employment Above Pre-Pandemic Levels

Construction added 13,000 jobs in June, with gains elsewhere offsetting a small decline in residential building. Overall employment in the sector is now 0.6 percent above pre-pandemic level. Lower housing starts will be a drag on employment in the sector, although this will be at least partially offset by easing supply chain problems, which is allowing for more completions. Manufacturing added 29,000 jobs, pushing employment in the sector slightly above its pre-pandemic level.

Air Transportation and Retail Add Jobs

Air transportation added 7,500 jobs in June. Employment in the sector is now 7.9 percent above the pre-pandemic level. The retail sector added 15,400 jobs, putting employment now 1.2 percent above the pre-pandemic level.

Healthy, but More Normal Job Growth in Hotels and Restaurants

Hotels added 14,800 jobs in June, while restaurants added 40,800 jobs. These are strong numbers but not out of line with what might be expected in a normal month with good job growth. These sectors were among the hardest hit by the pandemic.

Employment in hotels is still down 18.0 percent from its pre-pandemic level. Restaurant employment is 5.9 percent lower. It is likely that with a permanent decline in business travel, hotels will not recover their pre-pandemic employment levels. The same is likely the case with restaurants, where real sales are already well above pre-pandemic levels.

Nursing Homes and Childcare Centers Add Jobs, but Employment Still Far Below Pre-Pandemic Levels

Both nursing homes and childcare sectors have had difficulty adding jobs in the recovery as low pay and difficult working conditions make these jobs relatively unattractive. Nursing homes and childcare added 5,400 and 10,600 jobs in June, respectively. This leaves employment in the sectors 14.4 percent and 9.6 percent below pre-pandemic levels.

Local Government Adds 5,000 Workers, Employment Still Down 599,000 from Pre-Pandemic Level

Like nursing homes and childcare centers, state and local governments have had difficulty attracting workers in the recovery. Employment in local government is still down by 4.1 percent from pre-pandemic levels. More than half the drop is in local government education. State government employment is down by 57,000, or 1.1 percent from pre-pandemic levels.

U-6 Measure of Labor Market Slack Hits Record Low

While the unemployment rate was unchanged at 3.6 percent in June, a sharp drop in the number of people involuntarily working part-time lowered the U-6 measure of labor market slack to 6.7 percent, the lowest level on record.

Drop in Labor Force Participation Rates

The overall labor force participation rate (LFPR) fell by 0.1 percentage point to 62.2 percent. The LFPR for prime age (25 to 54) men dropped by 0.3 percentage point, while it fell 0.2 percentage point for prime age women. The June LFPR for men was 0.8 percentage point below its pre-pandemic peak, while it was 0.5 percentage point lower for women.

Length of Average Workweek Stable

The length of the average workweek was unchanged at 34.5 hours in June. For production and nonsupervisory workers, it was 34.0 hours, down from 34.3 hours last June. Employers that can’t find workers often increase workweeks. This does not seem to be a problem now.

Share of Unemployment Due to Voluntary Quits Rises, but Still Below Peaks

The percent of unemployment due to voluntary quits rose to 14.0 percent, still well below peaks of more than 15.0 percent hit in February of this year and peaks hit in 2000 and 2019. This is consistent with a strong, but healthy labor market.

Another Really Great Jobs Report

The June report showed considerably stronger job growth than was generally expected. It also showed a labor market that is looking more normal, although still very strong. We continue to see moderation in wage growth, which should alleviate concerns about a 1970s wage-price spiral. The unemployment rate remains near a 50-year low and the U-6 measure of labor market slack is the lowest on record. If the economy stays on this path, the second half of 2022 should look very good, as the supply chain issues get largely resolved and prices fall back to more normal levels in many areas.

This first appeared on Dean Baker’s Beat the Press blog. 

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Dean Baker.

Outflow of foreign capital

Nomura's chief China economist Ting Lu said he predicts an economic growth rate of just 1.8 percent in the second quarter of this year, with annual GDP growth of 3.9 percent for the whole of this year.

The move comes after a U.S.$8 billion selloff of Chinese government bonds by foreign investors in March, with foreign capital outflows of U.S.$17.5 billion in the same month.

Foreign investment in Chinese funds fell by 70 percent in the first quarter of 2022, compared with the previous quarter, while the yuan hit a six-month low against the dollar and China's foreign exchange reserves fell by U.S.$25.8 billion between the end of February and the end of March.

Online comments were skeptical that the Politburo could do much to affect the mass outflow of foreign capital.

"The higher-ups shout their slogans, while the in-betweens have no policy to implement them, and the lower ranks are just cashing in," according to one comment seen by RFA on Friday.

Others said little would change economically while the CCP's zero-COVID policy was still in place.

The meeting came after the Wall Street Journal quoted a number of people as saying that Xi is insisting that China's economic growth must exceed that of the U.S. this year. The U.S. posted a 5.7 percent GDP growth rate in 2021.

Downward revision

Zhu Chengzhi, chairman of Wanbao Investment Consulting, said said four percent GDP growth would be a good achievement for China this year.

"[Zero-COVID] must have caused a significant downward revision [in GDP growth forecasts], a very serious downward revision," Zhu told RFA. "The real estate sector is stuck, and they'll have to rely on money supply [to boost] domestic demand."

"China's economy is based on value-added manufacturing, but global prices for raw materials are on the rise around the world, squeezing profits in that sector, so that will also hurt GDP," Zhu said.

In a commentary for RFA, commentator Wang Dan said recent moves by the CCP to regulate entire sectors of the economy by limiting private-sector involvement had affected the labor market, where 11 million new entrants are expected this year.

Wang said Xi will likely solve these structural problems by ordering up the results he wants to see.

"Why do I say he can still manage it? Because companies in China ... do as he tells them," he said. "This has to do with Xi Jinping's status and his bid for [a third term] at the 20th party congress."

He said the likelihood is that Xi regards his COVID-19 policy as a crucial part of attempts to demonstrate the superiority of China's political system to the rest of the world.

"But if he elevates his disease control and prevention policy to be a part of that attempt, he will be forcing himself to ride a tiger," Wang warned.

'Common prosperity'

Zhu said stock markets in China, even pre-pandemic, had been dealt a huge blow by Xi's insistence on the "common prosperity" model, which saw a nationwide ban on the highly lucrative private education and tutoring sector.

"During the past five years, mainland China and Hong Kong have been the only places where stockmarkets are falling, which is not a good sign," Zhu said. "Xi Jinping is trying to introduce some bullish sentiment with certain remarks, but it's just a brief respite."

"It's not so easy to correct mainland Chinese markets when they are this weak," he said, adding that GDP figures are already likely artificially inflated, or shares would be performing better.

The meeting came as authorities in Beijing shut down more businesses and placed more residential compounds under lockdown on Friday, while extending contact-tracing.

Meanwhile, video clips of people banging pots and pans from Shanghai apartments in protest at the ongoing lockdown have been circulating on social media.

Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Hwang Chun-mei and Fong Tak Ho.

This condition has become rather acute in the British political scene.  While a backbencher earns £81,932 annually plus expenses, they may pursue consultancies in the private sector as long as they do not engage in lobbying – a ridiculous fine line.  Astonishingly, there is no limit on the number of hours they may spend on these additional jobs.  Accordingly, members of parliament have shown marked confusion on how to separate their various jobs.  Every so often, business has tended to find its way into the member’s office.

A stunning feature of the British system is that there is no revolving door to speak of.  Politicians can seamlessly undertake contracts and perform services, irrespective of their parliamentary position.  The conditions and rules have a Gilbert and Sullivan absurdity to them.

One such figure exemplifies this.  Between October 2016 and February 2020, Conservative MP Owen Paterson received remuneration for lobbying efforts on behalf of two companies: the medical diagnostics company Randox, and meat processing entity Lynn’s Country Foods.  The report by the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards, Kathryn Stone, conveyed to the Parliamentary Committee on Standards, was a thorough and scathing effort on Paterson’s exploits.

In his dealings with Randox, the Commissioner found that Paterson “sought to promote Randox products, including their ‘superior technology’ and thereby sought to confer benefits on Randox.” He “sought assistance with accreditation for Randox’s technology” and sought to promote “other, unrelated, Randox technologies”.  Then came the seedy connection: efforts to promote Randox testing by government agencies.

The smelly nature of Paterson’s advocacy for Lynn’s arose because of efforts made by the MP to approach the Food Standards Agency, at the request of the company, because of concerns dealing with the mislabelling of the food producer’s ham product and a product used by Lynn’s to cure bacon.  The Commissioner also noted Paterson’s initiated contact with the Minister of State (DfID) on the subject of laboratory calibration in developing countries.  All were held to be “in breach of the rules on paid advocacy.”

Paterson, for his part, has claimed that the investigation was uncalled for, unjust and pernicious, having allegedly caused his wife’s suicide in June 2020.  The Standards Committee did take this into account as a mitigating factor on the penalty, and noted Paterson’s “passion for and expertise in food and farming matters”.  For all that, the members found that the MP’s conduct had been “an egregious case of paid advocacy.”  He had “repeatedly failed to perceive his conflict of interest and used his privileged position as a Member of Parliament to secure benefits for two companies for whom he was a paid consultant”.  Bringing the House into disrepute, a penalty of suspension of 30 sitting days was warranted.

The response from the governing Tories was one abundant in viciousness.  In trying to save Paterson from the 30-day suspension, Conservative MPs put forth an amendment in an effort to dismantle the very watchdog that had found Paterson out.  A review of the investigation’s findings on Paterson’s conduct was also proposed.  As committee chair Chris Bryant rued, “The definition of injustice is you change the rules in the midst of the process.”

It logically fell upon the investigator to face the chop.  Stone was duly rounded on.  Her office was deluged with abusive messages.  The business secretary, Kwasi Kwarteng, revealed after the vote that Stone had been called upon to consider her position.  It was, claimed Kwarteng on breakfast radio, “difficult to see what the future of the commissioner was”.  Within hours, she found out that her position would probably be safe, with Johnson’s government having executed yet another one of its famous U-turns of spectacular confusion.

The Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, had a rather novel interpretation of the proceedings in approving an amendment that would essentially abolish the standards system – if one could even call it that.  “The issue in this case, which involved a serious family tragedy, is whether the member of this House had a fair opportunity to make representations in this case and whether, as a matter of national justice, our procedures in this House allow for proper appeal.”

Despite Johnson’s efforts to save Paterson, the MP quit on November 4.  And just to make matters worse, a raging fire had been lit, enveloping other members of the government.   Former Attorney General, Sir Geoffrey Cox, was the next figure to find himself burning brightly.  Cox had received some £6 million in addition to his MP salary for a retainer with the law firm Withers. This included an annual fee of £400,000, and an additional £156,916.08 for 140 hours of work undertaken between April and May 31, 2021.

To show the high regard he held for the voters of his electorate, Cox had also been in the British Virgin Islands (BVI) for a number of weeks, meaning that he was absent from his constituency while being an advisor on a corruption inquiry.

To the likes of Paterson and Cox can be added scores of Tory MPs, among them Johnson  himself, who is estimated to have received £4 million from second job income over the course of 14 years.

With typical, and in this case cringing understatement, International Trade Secretary Anne-Marie Trevelyan has suggested that it would be “wise” to review the rules around second jobs.  But she did not favour a total ban, suggesting that Parliament would somehow miss out if MPs could not perform such services as that of a doctor or nurse.

Such a view is also held by Commons leader Jacob Rees-Mogg, who claimed it was vital that MPs “maintain connections to the world beyond so that we may draw the insight and expertise that this experience offers”.

In an effort to make some modification to the rules, Johnson has now proposed a measure that any outside role undertaken by parliamentarians, paid or otherwise, can be undertaken “within reasonable limits”.  Trevelyan has suggested that “reasonable”, in this context, is 15 hours.  Labour’s defeated proposal had been to place all second jobs, bar a select few, on the banned list.

The central question to this unfolding farce remains: If you are doing other jobs that are not directly connected to your function as a parliamentarian, are you really representing your constituency?  The likes of Cox, more brazen than ever, square the circle in thinking you do.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Binoy Kampmark.

Australia’s union for journalists says Australian journalism is in crisis after years of disruption, undermining and neglect, and swift action is needed to halt the decline.

A new study pointing to the crisis in public interest journalism demands urgent government action to safeguard democracy.

The Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA) commissioned the Centre for Future Work at The Australia Institute to prepare the report, The Future of Work in Journalism, to examine the state of Australian journalism and to develop recommendations that could be used to address the serious decline in public interest journalism that has taken place over the past decade.

• READ MORE: Active policy needed to stop decline of Australian journalism
• How NZ’s Public Interest Journalism Fund can help ‘normalise’ diversity (Part 1)
• Perceptions over NZ’s public interest journalism project – saint or sinner? (Part 2)
• NZ’s Public Interest Journalism Fund

The report says journalism is a “public good” that can only be sustained by a dramatic renovation of government supports, including:

• a new $250 million fund to sustain journalism;
• expanded funding for public media organisations;
• rebates (refundable tax credits) for the employment of journalists;
• tax concessions for consumers of news media; and
• a stronger Mandatory News Bargaining Code with dedicated funding for small and new media.

MEAA media federal president Marcus Strom said: “It’s abundantly clear that the slow erosion of Australia’s media industry over many years has taken its toll on public interest journalism.

“As this study shows, failure to take dramatic steps now places our democracy at risk.”

Disappearance of dozens of outlets
He said the crisis was most stark in the disappearance of dozens of outlets and hundreds of jobs from regional, rural and community media in the past few years.

The Australia Institute’s study reveals that the number of journalists has fallen dramatically over the past decade; that decline will continue without effective policy and regulatory changes.

Efforts to support journalism have, to date, been inadequate and poorly targeted.

Media workers have delivered massive productivity gains in an environment of ongoing cost-cutting, but have been “rewarded” by stagnant wages, and ongoing restructuring and shifts into freelance and casual work, which now make up about one-third of the media workforce.

A significant and unacceptable gender pay gap persists above the national industry average.

The report highlights the upheaval caused to the Australian media ecosystem by the arrival and rise of digital platforms.

The government’s response, the News Media and Digital Platforms Bargaining Code, has not achieved the rebalance needed to promote public interest journalism.

Call to disclose Bargaining Code ‘deals’
The report recommends that the deals struck under the code be disclosed and that dedicated funding be provided to the small-to-medium media sector, which has been “treated with contempt” by the major digital players.

Among the other remedies recommended in the report, MEAA supports calls for certainty around and restoration of the funding of public media including the national broadcasters ABC and SBS; and expansion of the government’s existing Public Interest News Gathering programme to include all classes of journalism, including freelancers, and media content production.

The amount of support needed has been estimated at $250 million a year.

“This storm has been coming for many years,” Strom said.

“The media industry has been savaged. Thousands of journalism jobs have been lost. Print and broadcast media have all been hurt: mastheads have closed, networks have been cut back.

“Local community and regional reporting has, in many places, disappeared altogether. The number of media players have been reduced to a handful of very powerful players, and that power concentrated in the hands of a few reduces the variety of voices and choices for Australians.

‘Cynically avoided regulation’
“The News Media Bargaining Code offers a partial remedy to the revenue losses by Australian media, but the big digital platforms have cynically avoided regulation under the code by promising to do ‘just enough’.

“Outside the code they are showing their ‘just enough’ is wholly inadequate with not only small publishers missing out, but SBS and The Conversation being excluded.

“Public interest journalism is a public good. It informs and entertains Australians, ensures the public’s right to know and holds the powerful to account.

“If we want that to continue, then there is no time to waste to address the many challenges facing those working in journalism and the entire media industry.”

• The full report

In other media developments today, the video Your ABC vs Their IPA, funded by ABC Alumni and the ABC Friends, was released on YouTube in response to an attack by the rightwing Institute of Public Affairs (IPI) on the ABC. The ABC itself is not involved in any way, but the presenter is former ABC Media Watch presenter Jonathan Holmes who says that “the mainstream thinks that the ABC is the most trustworthy source of news in Australia”.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by Pacific Media Watch.

As we write this article, the delta strain of covid-19 is reminding the world the pandemic is far from over, with millions of Australians in lockdown and infection rates outpacing a global vaccination effort.

In the northern hemisphere, record breaking temperatures in the form of heat domes recently caused uncontrollable “firebombs”, while unprecedented floods disrupted millions of people.

Hundreds of lives have been lost due to heat stress, drownings and fire.

• READ MORE: The rise of ‘eco-anxiety’: climate change affects our mental health, too
• In a landmark judgment, the Federal Court found the environment minister has a duty of care to young people
• New polling shows 79 percent of Aussies care about climate change. So why doesn’t the government listen?

The twin catastrophic threats of climate change and a pandemic have created an “epoch of incredulity”. It’s not surprising many Australians are struggling to cope.

During the pandemic’s first wave in 2020, we collected nationwide data from 5483 adults across Australia on how climate change affects their mental health. In our new paper, we found that while Australians are concerned about covid-19, they were almost three times more concerned about climate change.

That Australians are very worried about climate change is not a new finding. But our study goes further, warning of an impending epidemic of mental health related disorders such as eco-anxiety, climate disaster-related post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and future-orientated despair.

Which Australians are most worried?
We asked Australians to compare their concerns about climate change, covid, retirement, health, ageing and employment, using a four-point scale (responses ranging from “not a problem” to “very much a problem”).

A high level of concern about climate change was reported across the whole population regardless of gender, age, or residential location (city or rural, disadvantaged or affluent areas). Women, young adults, the well-off, and those in their middle years (aged 35 to 54) showed the highest levels of concern about climate change.

The latter group (aged 35 to 54) may be particularly worried because they are, or plan to become, parents and may be concerned about the future for their children.

The high level of concern among young Australians (aged 18 to 34) is not surprising, as they’re inheriting the greatest existential crisis faced by any generation. This age group have shown their concern through numerous campaigns such as the School Strike 4 Climate, and several successful litigations.

Of the people we surveyed in more affluent groups, 78 percent reported a high level of worry. But climate change was still very much a problem for those outside this group (42 percent) when compared to covid-related worry (27 percent).

We also found many of those who directly experienced a climate-related disaster — bushfires, floods, extreme heat waves — reported symptoms consistent with PTSD. This includes recurrent memories of the trauma event, feeling on guard, easily startled and nightmares.

Others reported significant pre-trauma and eco-anxiety symptoms. These include recurrent nightmares about future trauma, poor concentration, insomnia, tearfulness, despair and relationship and work difficulties.

Overall, we found the inevitability of climate threats limit Australians’ ability to feel optimistic about their future, more so than their anxieties about COVID.

How are people managing their climate worry?
Our research also provides insights into what people are doing to manage their mental health in the face of the impending threat of climate change.

Rather than seeking professional mental health support such as counsellors or psychologists, many Australians said they were self-prescribing their own remedies, such as being in natural environments (67 percent) and taking positive climate action (83 percent), where possible.

Many said they strengthen their resilience through individual action (such as limiting their plastic use), joining community action (such as volunteering), or joining advocacy efforts to influence policy and raise awareness.

Indeed, our research from earlier this year showed environmental volunteering has mental health benefits, such as improving connection to place and learning more about the environment.

It’s both ironic and understandable Australians want to be in natural environments to lessen their climate-related anxiety. Events such as the mega fires of 2019 and 2020 may be renewing Australians’ understanding and appreciation of nature’s value in enhancing the quality of their lives.

There is now ample research showing green spaces improve psychological well-being.

An impending epidemic
Our research illuminates the profound, growing mental health burden on Australians.

As the global temperature rises and climate-related disasters escalate in frequency and severity, this mental health burden will likely worsen. More people will suffer symptoms of PTSD, eco-anxiety, and more.

Of great concern is that people are not seeking professional mental health care to cope with climate change concern. Rather, they are finding their own solutions. The lack of effective climate change policy and action from the Australian government is also likely adding to the collective despair.

As Harriet Ingle and Michael Mikulewicz — a neuropsychologist and a human geographer from the UK — wrote in their 2020 paper:

For many, the ominous reality of climate change results in feelings of powerlessness to improve the situation, leaving them with an unresolved sense of loss, helplessness, and frustration.

It is imperative public health responses addressing climate change at the individual, community, and policy levels, are put into place. Governments need to respond to the health sector’s calls for effective climate related responses, to prevent a looming mental health crisis.

If this article has raised issues for you, or if you’re concerned about someone you know, call Lifeline in Australia on 13 11 14.

By Dr Rhonda Garad, senior lecturer and research fellow in Knowledge Translation, Monash University; Dr Joanne Enticott, senior research fellow, Monash Centre for Health Research and Implementation (MCHRI), Monash University, and Dr Rebecca Patrick, director, Sustainable Health Network, Deakin University This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Dongsheng News.

While I am always happy to celebrate any accolades my country and city might garner on the international stage, seeing Auckland/Tāmaki Makaurau awarded the top ranking in a recent “most liveable cities” survey left me somewhat flummoxed.

In particular, I would argue that many Māori whānau in Auckland do not enjoy the benefits of this supposed “liveability”.

This is important, given Māori comprised 11.5 percent of the Auckland population in the 2018 Census. Roughly one in four Māori in Aotearoa New Zealand are living in the greater Auckland region.

• READ MORE: Recession hits Māori and Pasifika harder. They must be part of planning New Zealand’s COVID-19 recovery
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• If New Zealand can radically reform its health system, why not do the same for welfare?

The survey was conducted by the Economist Intelligence Unit, sister company of The Economist, and looked at 140 world cities. Auckland was ranked 12th in 2019, but took top spot this year for one obvious reason:

Auckland, in New Zealand, is at the top of The Economist Intelligence Unit’s Liveability rankings, owing to the city’s ability to contain the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic faster and thus lift restrictions earlier, unlike others around the world.

Most cities in Europe plunged in the rankings this year as the EIU’s liveability index incorporated new indicators related to covid-19 https://t.co/8555hY1f2U

— The Economist Data Team (@ECONdailycharts) June 9, 2021

Alternative liveability criteria
Each city in the survey was rated on “relative comfort for over 30 qualitative and quantitative factors across five broad categories: stability, healthcare, culture and environment, education and infrastructure”.

Overall rankings depended on how those factors were rated on a sliding scale: acceptable, tolerable, uncomfortable, undesirable, intolerable. Quantitative measurements relied on “external data points”, but the qualitative ratings were “based on the judgment of our team of expert analysts and in-city contributors”.

The methodology, particularly around culture and environment, seems somewhat subjective. It’s predicated on the judgement of unnamed experts and contributors, and based on similarly undefined “cultural indicators”.

To better understand the living conditions of Māori in Auckland, therefore, we might use more robust “liveability” criteria. The New Zealand Treasury’s Living Standards Framework offers a useful model.

This sets out 12 domains of well-being: civic engagement and governance, cultural identity, environment, health, housing, income and consumption, jobs and earnings, knowledge and skills, time use, safety and security, social connections and subjective well-being.

The Māori experience
Applying a small handful of these measures to Māori, we find the following.

Housing: According to recent reports, Auckland house prices increased by about NZ$140,00 on average in the past year. That contributed to Auckland being the fourth-least-affordable housing market, across New Zealand, Singapore, Australia, the US, UK, Ireland, Canada and Hong Kong.

Next to that sobering fact, we can point to estimates that Māori made up more than 40 percent of the homeless in Auckland in 2019. We can only assume this rapid increase in house prices has made homelessness worse.

Poverty: Alongside housing affordability is the growing concern about poverty in New Zealand, and particularly child poverty. While there has been an overall decline in child poverty, Māori and Pacific poverty rates remain “profoundly disturbing”.

Employment: As of March 2021, the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment recorded a Māori unemployment rate of 10.8 percent, well above the national rate (4.9 percent). This is particularly high for Māori youth (20.4 percent) and women (12.0 percent).

Health: Māori life expectancy is considerably lower than for non-Māori, and mortality rates are higher for Māori than non-Māori across nearly all age groups. Māori are also over-represented across a wide range of chronic and infectious diseases, injuries and suicide.

The digital divide: The Digital Government initiative has found Māori and Pasifika are among those less likely to have internet access, thus creating a level of digital poverty that may affect jobs and earnings, knowledge and skills, safety and security, and social connections.

Making Auckland liveable for all
Taken together, these factors show a different and darker picture for far too many Māori than “liveable city” headlines might suggest.

I say this as someone who has lived in Auckland for the majority of the past 60 years. It is a city I love, and I acknowledge the grace and generosity of the mana whenua of Tāmaki Makaurau, with whom I share this beautiful whenua and moana.

I am also part of a privileged group of Māori who enjoy job security, a decent income, a secure whānau and strong social networks.

But, until we address and ameliorate the inequities and disadvantages some of our whānau face, we cannot truly celebrate being the “most liveable city in the world”.

Dr Ella Henry is an associate professor at Auckland University of Technology. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

Many of you in the middle class are opposed to socialism. You still think there is some chance for you under capitalism and you fear that the socialists will take what little you have and divide it among the shiftless and thriftless. You need not have the slightest fear. The socialist has no use for your small capital; it would do (them) not the least good. (They are) after the earth, the trusts, and the machinery of production. Besides, soon you will have nothing to divide. When the big capitalists get through with you, you will be ready for us. You may not be ready yet, but you are ripening very rapidly. When you have been stripped of what you have, when you have become proletarians, when you have become expropriated, you will be ready to join us in expropriating the expropriators.

— Speech by Eugene Debs over 100 years ago in Chicago about the middle-class fear of socialism

Orientation

Almost five years ago I wrote an article in Counterpunch: “Lost at Sea: Left Liberals Have No Party.” In that article I challenged the blithe interchangeability of the words “liberal” and “democrat”. I tracked eight historical changes of liberalism from left-liberal, to centrist-liberal to right-center liberals (neoliberals). I also argued that the words liberal and democracy are used interchangeably by liberals, even though it wasn’t until the 20th century that liberals were clearly for democracy (translated as universal suffrage for white males).

The problem with my article as I see it today is that I lumped upper middle-class left liberals with middle-class liberals. Two years later I wrote another article called “The Greater of Two Evils: Why the Democratic Party is worse than the Republican Party for 85% of the U.S. Population.” In that article, I outlined how, since the 2008 crash, the social classes whose wealth grew were the ruling class, the upper-class and the upper-middle-class, constituting about 15% of all social classes. Everyone else was doing worse, including the middle-class.

In my first article I slurred the differences between the upper-middle-class and the middle-class, advocating for both classes to get out of the Democratic Party. I have since come to see (as I will get into later) that the upper-middle-class has done very well under the umbrella of the Democrats and it is not in their material interests to leave. This is no longer true of the middle-class. Historically, the material interests of the middle-class and the upper-middle-class has more in common with each other than the working-class. In other words, the difference between news anchors, lawyers, senior managers on the one hand and high school teachers, librarians and supervisors on the other hand are more differences of degree than kind. After all, they all did mental work, as opposed to the physical work of the working-class. However, in the last 50 years middle-class life has gotten far worse than the life of the upper middle-class. It has gotten bad enough to be able to say it is closer to the working-class. Whether they realize it or not, for middle-class left liberals, the Democratic Party has left the building 40 years ago.

My claim in this article is that:

1. Middle-class FDR liberals need to leave the democrats and be part of building a new party
2. Middle-class left liberals need to form alliances with the working-class and the poor, not the upper middle-class
3. The new party should advocate for socialism

What follows is why this should be so.

Difference Between FDR Liberals and Neoliberals

Left liberal values

Left liberals are broadly for the following. They are pro-science as well as for investing in scientific research and development as well as investing in infrastructure. They are for the separation of church and state as well as for the use of reason in problem-solving, such as raising children through what is called “authoritative parenting”. They support the matriarchal state: universal health care, unemployment, pensions, food stamps and a minimum wage automatically raised to keep up with inflation. They expect the state to intervene in the economy to soften the hard edges of capitalism, following a Keynesian economic policy. They are committed to gradual change and a lessening of race and gender stratification. Left liberals support an expansion of unions. This left liberalism has been present in the United States for roughly 40 years, from the mid-1930s to the mid-1970s.  Since then, Democratic Party has slid further and further right to the point that their platform today is a center-right neoliberal party which embodies none of these values. The problem is the collective denial left liberals have in ignoring this fact.

Right-wing neoliberal values

Neoliberals are directly opposed to the matriarchal state. They support the economic policies of Milton Friedman and Friedrich Von Hayek with minimum state involvement in the economy.  Neoliberals have withdrawn funding from long-term science programs. They have presided over the rise of New Age thinking initiated by Marilyn Ferguson’s book The Aquarian Conspiracy. Neoliberals have become extreme relativists championing the rise of identity politics which began in the early 1970s. Neoliberals have lost hope and have failed to bring the principles of the Enlightenment forward. They have abandoned investment in profits made on manufacturing and instead make their profits on the defense industry, arming the entire world. Under their rein most of the remaining profit is invested in finance capital.

Neoliberals have presided over the destruction of unions over last fifty years.  They have stood by and watched the full-time, well paid secure working-class jobs disappear.  Work hours under neoliberalism have gone from 40 hours per week to at least 50 hours per week for those lucky enough to be employed full-time. In general, the standard of living has declined in the US so that the next generation can expect to make less than their parents. It’s no accident that credit cards became available to the working-class in the early 1970s, so workers didn’t have to directly face the fact that their standard of living had declined. The civil rights movement spoke to what minorities had in common with organized labor, which was low-cost housing and fair wages. Today we have individualist identity politics where being recognized for your identity along with using politically correct language is all that is asked for. In the 1960s, community college was free. In the last 50 years the cost of college education is so high that student debt appears to be debt for life.

Neoliberals have supported the explosion of the prison-industrial complex which has expanded many times over since the 60s despite the rate of crime going down. The police departments have been equipped with military weapons that make the equipment of police prior to the 1970s pale in comparison. They have presided over the growth of the insurance industry and the pharmaceutical companies which now have control over our physical and mental health. The official diagnostic manual was 50 pages in 1950. Today the same manual is well over 1000 pages. Today upper-middle-class parents are no longer authoritative but instead are practicing a form of “permissive parenting”, which easily results in spoiled, narcissistic children, with helicopter parents fretting endlessly over their little darling’s self-esteem. Please see Table A for a comparison.

Differences Between Middle Class and Upper Middle Class

Not everyone is middle-class

In the United States, most people think of themselves as middle-class. Last time I checked 80% of the working-class mistakenly thought they were middle-class. Why? Because in Yankeedom, it’s an embarrassment to be working-class. So too, upper-middle-class people, nervous about being seen as well-to-do, play down their wealth. Nevertheless, there are real parameters around what it means to be middle-class, as I’ll get to. But first the social class composition.

Social class composition

Based on the work of William Domhoff, in his books Who Rules America and The Powers That Be, the ruling-class and the upper-class together compose about 5% of the population. They live off stocks and bonds and don’t have to work. Their investments are principally in oil, mining, the military and banking. They have been characterized as “old money” and are mostly Republicans.

The upper-middle-class is about 10% of the population. They make most of their money off scientific innovations like computers, internet and electronics. They are called “new money” and are mostly Democrats. Upper-middle-class people are also doctors, lawyers, architects, senior managers, scientists and engineers, as well as media professionals such as news commentators, magazine and newspaper editors, college administrators and religious authorities.

The middle-class consists of about 25% of the population. Occupational examples include high school and grammar school teachers, registered nurses, librarians, corporate middle managers, self-employed artisans and tiny little mom-and-pop operations. The middle-class is at the bottom rung of the Democratic Party not well-represented at all.

The working-class is about 40% of the population and consists of skilled, semi-skilled and unskilled workers. The skilled working-class include carpenters, welders and electricians, wait-staff and store clerks who are likely to vote Democrat. Their interests are not represented by the Democratic Party either. The semi-skilled are bus drivers or train operators and along with unskilled are less likely to vote. The last 10% consist of what Marx called the “lumpenproletariat” who live by their wits as prostitutes, hustlers, gamblers or those on welfare. These folks are not likely to vote either.

Income is not the most important determinant of social class: the nine dimensions of social class

When most Yankees try to understand social class, the first thing they think of is how much income a person has. But this is only one of the nine dimensions of social class, and not the most important one. Most of these dimensions are covered in the work of Marxist Erik Olin Wright as well as some of the followers of Max Weber. The first dimension of social class is technical, and this consists of three parts: a) the proportion of mental and physical work the job requires; b) the amount of independence or interdependence the kind of work involves; and c) the proportion of the work that is mechanical rote work versus creativity. So typically, a good upper-middle-class job will involve mental work, be independent from others and involve creativity. At the other end of the spectrum is unskilled working-class labor which predominantly involves physical labor and working with other people, while the work itself is repetitive. Other social classes have various combinations in between.

The second dimension of social class is political and economic authority relations. This consists of two sub-categories. The first is the degree of power the person has over resources, tools, goods and services. A capitalist has control over all these things. Workers usually have control over none of them, except that skilled workers might own their own tools. The second sub-category has to do with the proportion of order-giving and order-taking involved. The owner of a company gives orders and takes no orders. His workers take orders and don’t give orders. Middle-class people in corporations may give orders to workers but must take orders from senior management. This category is simply – who gets to boss around who and under what conditions.

The third dimension of social class is mobility. How easy is it to move up or down the class hierarchy both within one’s lifetime or across generations? The fourth dimension of social class is resources. Most people think of resources in terms of income. But wealth also includes assets such as inheritance, real estate, stocks, bonds and property. Sometimes upper-class people may work only part time, but it would be deceptive to make sense of their class position by some part-time job when they have an inheritance.

The fifth dimension of social class is education. This consists of the number of years of school completed as well as the quality of the school attended. The sixth dimension of social class is status. This is the degree of prestige in which one’s occupation is held by others. One reason why income is unstable as an indicator of social class is that some workers can make a good deal of money, such as unionized garbage collectors, but have low status. Conversely, an adjunct college instructor can have high status among the Yankee population but make significantly less money than a garbage collector.

The seventh dimension of social class is lifestyle and consumption patterns. This has four sub-categories. The first is health – birth and death rates. As many of you know, working-class people die on average seven years younger than people in the middle and upper-middle-classes. The second sub-category is how people dress, their speech patterns, body mannerisms and manners. The third sub-category is their recreational habits – whether they ski, play baseball or go bowling. The last sub-category is their religious beliefs. Religions are class divided. In the case of the protestants, there are the Unitarians, Episcopalians and Presbyterians near the top and Baptists and fundamentalists at the bottom.

The eighth dimensions of social class is the degree of awareness people have of their social class. Generally, the upper class and the ruling class are extremely class conscious and are very fussy about who is allowed into their circles. The upper-middle-class and the middle-class tend to be less class conscious. In countries other than the United States, the working-class is very class conscious. But here in Yankeedom, workers see themselves as “temporarily indisposed millionaires”. The last social dimension of class is the ability to take collective action. Capitalists at the end of World War II and soon thereafter organized a big campaign to win back the allegiance of workers. The ruling class has exclusive clubs in which they organize class strategy. The World Economic Forum and the Bilderberg group are examples. At the other end of the spectrum, when workers join unions or strike, they are showing class consciousness. No social class fits neatly into each dimension. There are what Wright calls “contradictory class locations” where a person is caught between two classes either between generations or within their lifetime.

Why does class count?

Why have I gone over the dimensions of social class in such detail? One reason is to show that upper middle-class people and middle-class people are not interchangeable. They vary in the technical division of labor, authority relations, class mobility, resources, education, status, lifestyle, degree of class consciousness and their willingness to take collective action. They also differ in their attitudes towards the meaning of work, as well as in their attitudes towards time and eating habits. If we want to suggest that the middle-class should break its alliance with the upper middle-class and get out of the Democratic Party, we have to expand and deepen their differences as I am starting to demonstrate.

Summary: two reasons why middle-class left liberal should get out the Democratic Party

Summarizing, the first thing we needed to do is to establish that the Democratic Party is a center-right neoliberal party which has next to nothing to do with being left-liberal. This is reason A to get out of the Democratic Party. The second reason is that the Democratic Party serves the interests of the upper-middle-class not the middle-class. The most obvious indicator of why the middle-class should no longer align themselves with the upper-middle-class is to understand what has happened since the crash of 2008. Both Thomas Piketty and Richard Wolff argue that the “economic recovery” was very class specific. The rulers, the upper class and the upper middle-class have done considerably better in that “recovery”. All other social classes, including the middle-class, have done worse. The middle-class, economically and in other dimensions, is far closer to the working-class than it has ever been. Reason B to get out of the Democratic Party.

But can these two classes really get along? There is a built-in tension and discomfort about doing mental work and physical work; there are differences in the degree of status in the two classes’ occupations.  If we want to move middle-class people and working-class people closer together, we have to understand their commonalities and where the tension points are in their differences.

Similarities and Differences Between Middle Class and Working Class People

Similarities

The biggest similarity between the two classes is a decline in the standard of living. This includes income, work stability, increase in hours worked and lack of benefits. Another commonality is sports. Working-class people and middle-class people can unite around being fans of baseball, football and basketball professional teams. In terms of music, rock or country rock might bring these two classes together. Another commonality is that both classes have what sociologists have defined as achieved status. Unlike the upper classes, they usually do not come into life with an inheritance. Lastly, both classes see hard work as a virtue.

Differences

One of the major differences between these two classes is that middle-class people make their living primarily by doing mental and/or supervisory work. Working-class people make their living primarily with their hands and their bodies. A second major obstacle to overcome is that middle-class jobs usually have higher status. The third difference is that middle-class people often give orders to working-class people, but the reverse is not the case. This can lead to jealousy and resentment among working-class people. Middle-class people are very individualistic and not likely to organize as a class. There is likely to be tension between the classes when the working-class agitates to start a union or take strike action. There are also differences between the classes around the meaning of work. For working-class people, the meaning of work is less important than the money and material benefits. Some middle-class people might trade off a higher paying job for work that seems socially redeeming to them.

In terms of resources middle-class people today are likely to own their own home and have stocks and bonds. Working-class people’s assets are usually a car and possibly a home. Mostly they do not own stocks. Whatever savings account they have, that is it. There are also differences in their health conditions. Working-class people are likely to have eating, drinking and smoking problems and middle-class people are healthier. Working-class people are more likely to go to gambling casinos and play the lottery. Middle-class people see that as a waste of time and money.

Another tension point is education. Usually, middle-class people will have a bachelor’s or master’s degree, while working-class people will have no degree or an associate degree at best. Middle-class people will dress, speak and have manners that will be different from the working-class, and this will produce class tensions. Middle-class and working-class people will attend different religious denominations. Working-class religious services invite submission, confessions of being a sinner as well as altered states of consciousness like speaking in tongues, singing and dancing in the church aisles. In middle-class religions, there is less pressure to make you feel like you are a sinner. At the same time, sermons are designed to appeal to what is reasonable rather than to force you to have a revelatory experience which alters one’s state of consciousness.

Middle Class People Meet Socialists

Surely you are kidding

Let’s suppose middle-class left liberals have enough doubts about the Democratic Party because they are no longer New Deal liberals, and they’re starting to see that the party no longer looks out for middle-class interests. Let’s assume that economic, political and ecological disasters will continue to plague capitalism, and somehow a third party – a mass party – has emerged founded on socialism and is getting up a head of steam. This party has some working-class support as well as some union support. What would it take for middle-class left liberals to join?

Fears Middle-class Liberals Have About Socialists

Dictatorship and one-party rule

In its propaganda war with socialism, capitalists inevitably point out some of what it perceives to be the dictatorial tendencies of communism – in Russia, China and Cuba – as the archetypal example of socialism. What it does not do is study the conditions under which one-party rule occurred and what the authorities were up against. I am not going to get into pros and cons of this here because this kind of socialism – whether Stalinist or Maoist – is only one type of socialism. There are six types of socialism. Starting from the right and moving leftward there are social democrats and then three kinds of Leninists – Maoists, Stalinists and Trotskyists. Continuing leftward, there are left communists or council communists and the anarchists. In my efforts to convince middle-class liberals of the feasibility of socialism I will address as much as I can what most or all of these types are in agreement on. For now, let’s just say that dictatorial rule is not a foundational principle of socialism, even for the Stalinist and Maoist parties that have been called dictatorial by capitalists.

Furthermore, I think it is ludicrous for members of the Democratic Party to complain about the one-party rule of socialists when in Yankeedom there are only two parties. The Democratic Party is hardly democratic when it only serves the interests of the about 10% of the population (Republicans serve the ruling and upper classes) and leaves over 85% with no representation at all. The party I call the “Republicrats”, representing 15% of the population, is one party, the party of capital.

Confusion of personal property with social property

We socialists have a running joke on our Facebook posts, mostly in reaction to over-the-top conservatives who think we want to abolish personal property. We say “yes indeed, we are coming for your tooth brush.” That perceived threat is accompanied by imagining that socialists are all having group sex. But seriously, when we socialists say we want to abolish private property we only mean social property. We want to abolish capitalist control over water, food, energy systems, tools, all the necessities that people need to live. We don’t believe resources that everyone needs in order to live should be privately owned. On the other hand, personal property will remain with the individual as it would under capitalism.

Discouragement of innovation

Capitalism has a very shallow and narrow understanding of human nature. Capitalists imagine that people are lazy at heart and unless the carrot is held in front of people – the prospect of being a millionaire – they will do nothing. Further, they look at the types of “leisure” activities a working-class person enjoys after another 50-hour work week and take those as representing what human nature is really like. For example, on Friday night the worker wants to play cards. On Saturday he watches a ball game and have a few beers and on Sunday he sleeps in. For the capitalist this is lazy. What the capitalist thinks is that if workers did not have to work, then playing cards, watching football, drinking, getting laid and sleeping is all he would ever do. What the capitalist doesn’t understand is that the entire weekend is not leisure at all. Its recovery from the week and preparation for the new week.

Under conditions of socialist work, alienation would be minor – and I am being conservative here. The natural collective creativity on the job will arise. People will work less, perhaps 30 hours a week at first. Because workers will control the workplaces as well as decide what to produce, how to produce it, how much they should work and how they will be compensated, work will be a joy, not a curse as under capitalism. There will be plenty of room for innovation, in fact, much more than under capitalism where most workers are imprisoned in wage labor and told not to be curious and not have their own ideas about how things should be run.

All this collective creativity gives the lie to the ridiculous capitalist notion that people want socialism because they want “free stuff” with no contribution. All socialist plans have a budget and decisions have to be made about what and how the budget will be spent. No one will “get out of working”. What the capitalist cannot imagine is that under socialism people will want to work. The idea of not working would be painful – not liberating.

Equality of poverty

In its heyday, between the 1930s and the 1970s, the Swedish Social Democratic Labor Party was a socialist society which produced great material wealth. The socialist countries that have been showcased by capitalists as poor – the Soviet Union, China and Cuba – were only poor during certain times of their existence. What capitalists fail to inform us of is that before the socialist revolutions, as Michael Parenti points out, those countries were even more poor. What material wealth does exist in capitalist societies has taken hundreds of years to build up. In China today, absolute poverty was eradicated within 40 years.

There will be far more innovation than existed under capitalism because under socialism the workplaces will be controlled by the workers and workers’ activities will be guided by an overall plan. To cite one instance, before Yugoslavia was destroyed by capitalists, Yugoslavian productivity under worker self-management was higher than in any capitalist country. The same was true during the Spanish Revolution under worker self-management in both industry and in agriculture.

People are naturally greedy

Cross-cultural research on happiness has found that there is a direct correlation between money and happiness when people move from poverty to a middle-class life. However, the movement from middle-class to upper-middle-class and beyond is no longer correlated to happiness. In other words, people who are upper class or upper-middle-class are not any more likely to be happy than are middle-class people. This gives the lie to the capitalist notion that people are greedy and that everyone secretly wants to be a millionaire. What is more likely is that people want to be middle-class. They want basics in material security. After that they want other things; creativity on the job, to be able to contribute to society and to be recognized for their work, to mention only a few things.

Socialists will want to abolish religion

I admit that the state socialist attempt to decree the abolition of religion was a big mistake. I also think that doing so was contrary to the principles of materialism Marxists aspire to. While I stand firm in the ontological belief that there are no gods or god, at the same time I understand the degree to which people wish to hold on to religion as an expression of their alienation of social life. As generations pass and prosperous ways of life become normalized, I predict three things will happen. First, more people will become atheists. Secondly, those who continue to believe in religion will notice that the nature of the gods, or god, will change. The gods or god will blend more with the nature we know because social life will be more likely to begin to resemble heaven on earth. Third, the fundamentalist religions that plague many working-class people will disappear because the working-class will no longer consider themselves sinners or need fire and brimstone to make things right.   

Commonalities Between Middle-Class Left Liberals and Socialists

Need for a mass party

We socialists think you’ll agree with us that we badly need a mass party that can speak to the needs of the 25% of us who are middle-class and the 40% percent of us who are working-class. This party will develop a program and a step-by-step plan for implementation of the plan over the next 5, 10 and 15 years. It will be a dues-paying party and we will implement methods for getting input into what the plan will be. The issues will be prioritized, and everyone will have a say in carrying out the plan. Once the plan is set, people will be able to sign up for tasks they agree to carry out over the course of weeks and months. In addition to a thirty-hour work week, approximately five hours per week will be devoted to this “political” work.

Massive support for Unions

We socialists know that you left liberals have supported unions from the 1930s to the early 1970s. However, we also know that it was under liberal presidents that the best organizers of unions, the communists and the socialists, were drummed out of unions in the 1950s. This limited the vision of unions as they turned into “business unions”. We also think you should be very upset with the neoliberals in the Democratic Party who have not supported unions for the last 50 years, causing union representation in Yankeedom to be now less than 10%. We hold neoliberals directly responsible for the fact that wages, working conditions and job security are pretty much last in the industrial capitalist societies. The vision of unions needs to be built back up to the ways of the Industrial Workers of the World who saw unions as workshops for how to run a society, not merely a way to sustain and improve everyday working conditions.

Society can be engineered

Like you, we socialists agree with the great project of the Enlightenment that a better society can be engineered by its members. Unlike conservatives, we do not accept that social organizations should be ruled by kings, aristocrats, priests or any traditional authorities. Neither do we think society is some kind of reform school in preparation for the next life. We also don’t think society is best governed by the automatic preservation of traditional institutions that have been here the longest. Like you, we agree in the notion of progress.

The value of science and technology in producing a society of abundance

Like you we are very disappointed and angry that capitalists have chosen to invest their profits in warfare and in finance capital rather than in scientific research that could make our lives better. We also think you should blame the neoliberals for allowing this to happen over the course of the last 50 years. As socialists we have always felt that the scientific method is the best way to know things and that science is a crucial ingredient in Marx’s call to “develop the productive forces”. For us, the creation of socialism was never any kind of sacrifice or doing with less. Nor are we unrealistic about human nature. We fully understand that the foundation of socialism has to be the production of more than enough wealth to go around. With abundance in place, there is no motivation for stealing or wanting what others have.

The value of the state overview

We socialists are in complete agreement with the value you hold about the importance of the functions of the matriarchically state. We also think it is important that the matriarchal state take over the realm of overall planning. This does not mean that all social production and distribution is centrally planned with no feedback from the local and regional levels. We see the relationship between the three in a dialectical manner. The local and regional levels feed up to the state level what products and services are needed. The state incorporates our feedback but then makes adjustments based on the fact that at the local and regional level we cannot see the whole. Once the state produces an over-all plan, that is then fed down to the local and regional levels. It will no doubt take a number of times for there to be a smooth “cybernetic” rhythm established.

Micro-level – the value of cooperative learning and authoritative parenting

We socialists are well aware that you middle-class left liberals have always supported public schools. Some of the more visionary of you might have had the money to send your children to a Montessori school. Some of you might have heard the name Lev Vygotsky and associated him with cooperative learning, which is used in Montessori education. What you probably were never told was that Vygotsky was a communist and he and his followers, Alexander Luria and Aleksei N Leontiev, founded a whole school of psychology, the “socio-historical school of psychology”. They developed a theory of cooperative learning that has been applied not only in school settings but in the design of social intelligence tests, the development of theories of cognitive development and in working with the deaf. Vygotsky’s work could be massively applied to the fields of social psychology, and possibly to therapy, as one group in New York City is currently doing.

Lastly, we admire the way that many of you have raised your children using authoritative child-rearing methods. You have avoided both extremes in child rearing. On the one hand are the authoritarian methods of conservative child rearing which raises children who are repressed, frightened and lack curiosity. On the other hand, it is the permissive parenting of upper-middle-class neoliberal parents that has turned out a generation of narcissistic, entitled, ungrateful brats who are the product of neoliberal schooling where the focus was on raising self-esteem in every school program. We think the authoritative (as opposed to authoritarian) method with its flexible structure, welcoming of dialogue, appeal to reason, rather than emotion is the best way to raise children. We are on the same page with you.

Deeper Differences between Middle-Class Left Liberals and Socialists

Commitment to an antiwar international policy

We socialists have always been against wars because we know they are usually turf wars between capitalists about resources and that it is the workers and the poor people who do the fighting, not the capitalists. As far as wars go, we know that your class has supported the Cold War and the war in Vietnam. Beyond the 1970s you seem to have treated these wars with less enthusiasm except for perhaps, the war on Iraq. As it stands now, the capitalists in Yankeedom not only make a fortune in military warfare to “protect our borders” but they also arm the entire world. If counties decided to end their wars the capitalists here would be destitute. These wars need to end, not just because of the senseless deaths at home and abroad, but for pragmatic reasons. All this money could go into the trillions of dollars’ worth of infrastructural work that is left undone. Suppose the military was employed on these infrastructural projects. Suppose the military was employed to build low-cost housing in every city. Living in a society of abundance requires the reinvestment in the military from wars abroad to infrastructure and natural disaster relief at home.

Anti-imperialist international policy

We socialists are also against imperialist wars where capitalists invade other countries to steal their political or economic resources, land and labor to make a profit. This can be most blatantly seen in Africa. Yankeedom also continues its imperialist ventures in Latin America, regularly attempting to overthrow governments there. Why? For the simple reason that freely elected governments (socialist or not) may have the nerve to set their own economic policy, which might not necessarily be friendly to transnational corporations.

Yankee capitalists want to rule the world and they don’t want any competition.

China, Russia and Iran refuse to tow the line and have formed an alliance. The Chinese represent the best hope of the world now. Why are they such a threat to the United States? Because they are making a profit through building infrastructures, not just in China but in other parts of the world. China, Russia and Iran have also withdrawn from the US dollar as a use of international currency, which costs the western banks in significant loss of profits. Yankee capitalists are slitting their own throats, and ours as well, by acting like big-shot imperialists fifty years after their time has passed and their own territory is falling apart. As middle-class people we think you can see that nothing good can come from this and we need to rebuild our own society.

Dismantling the Deep State

Unfortunately, most middle-class people don’t know any more about the FBI and the CIA and what these organizations do to promote themselves, including what is on television and in movies. The FBI has upended or ruined the lives of socialists for decades. Their role in undermining the New Left has been documented in David Cunningham’s book There’s Something Happening Here. The CIA is in a class by itself, the world’s most powerful terrorist organization. I will limit myself to three books: The Mighty Wurlitzer by Hugh Wilford; The Cultural Cold War by Frances Stoner Saunders and The Devil’s Chessboard by David Talbot. Funding for these organization should be ended, and the sooner the better.

 Class Dismissed, Where Left Liberals Missed the Boat

For socialists of any stripe, social class has been the foundation for understanding capitalism. The capitalist class makes its profits by exploiting the working-class. As Marx points out, workers produce all the wealth, but they are given only about 40% in the form of wages (the first four hours of their labor) which allows them to support themselves. But the worker works another 6 hours. Who gets the value from that? The employer. The employer uses the rest of the surplus value produced by the worker to pay the middle-class managers, pay landlords for the use of plant and set aside funds to pay the state in taxes. They claim the remainder of the surplus as profit.  Middle-class people have stood structurally between the working-class and the capitalists, giving orders to workers, taking orders from capitalists. There are other social classes as I’ve discussed earlier but the major dynamic is between the capitalist and the worker.

Middle-class people, like most other classes, do not talk about this because class is about political and economic power between groups. It is uncomfortable and middle-class people among others have been afraid to discuss this. Why? Because they feel guilty, that maybe it is their fault they have a better life? Maybe they owe the workers something? Middle-class people need to get over this, because the fact is, you are sliding south, in the same direction as the working-class. In fact, you now have more in common with working-class people than upper middle-class people.

Race relations: Social Movements vs Individualist Identity Politics

Strange as it may seem, middle-class people have been more comfortable talking about race than class. After all, many middle-class people prided themselves as left liberals by supporting the civil rights movement. This was a social movement in which racial minorities joined together to fix objective conditions such as higher pay, better housing, legal rights. I suspect most of you did not know that Martin Luther King, a paradigm of middle-class respectability, was a socialist.

However, since the mid 1970s, but especially from the 1990s on, race relations have turned from a social movement into something different. Identity politics is a psychological spin-off from the civil rights movement with a very different agenda. In the hands of upper middle-class, neoliberals of all colors, including lawyers and university professors, identity politics has been used to win political seats in the Democratic Party. They do this by focusing on the rights of individuals to recognition, the right to be called a certain pronoun and rights to declare being offended by this or that innuendo. Identity politics has crippled the ability of working-class and middle-class people to form alliances by dragging meetings through competitive battles as to who is more offended than whom. When an organization as corrupt as the ruling class Democratic Party starts babbling about “white privilege” it’s time to get off that sinking ship. The mess that race relations are today is made worse by the upper middle-class neoliberals seizing on identity politics. Here is yet another reason to dump the Democratic Party and any alliance with the upper middle-class. A terrific short book that lays out the limitations of identity politics is Mistaken Identity by Asad Haider.

Democracy is economic and participatory more than political representation

Middle-class left liberals in the 20th century have thought of democracy as synonymous with voting. Democracy was having the right to vote for one of the two major parties. For socialists this is a sham. Both parties are ruling class parties and workers have nothing to say about what candidates are running and what they will do after the election. For us, democracy is economic. We think it is ridiculous to imagine we live in a democracy when we go to work to be bossed around from beginning to the end of the day by the employer. For us, democracy begins and ends in the workplace. Workers should have a say in what is produced, how it is produced, where it is distributed, how long we work and how we are compensated. In addition, within socialism democracy is also present by its involvement in city planning. This includes participatory planning councils at the local level, participating in setting agendas and deciding how city revenue should be spent. Under socialism, political parties will still have their place, but they will operate under direct democracy, not representational democracy.

The future of capitalism

All socialists are against capitalism except for some right-wing social democrats who believe in a mixed economy. For us, capitalism is a system plagued by crises and inherently unstable. Various Marxist crisis theorists have developed theories about how and why capitalism will end. Even non-Marxist political economists have theories about how it will end. Please see my article “Name Me One Capitalist Country That Works: A Thirty Year Reckoning” for more sources. Where I think we can agree is that capitalist profits should not be made on wars, or on fictitious capital. It is the neoliberals, not you, who have made profits on fictitious capital and wars over the past 50 years. Rather, capitalist profits should be made on the production of goods and services. We still think that eventually capitalism will fail even if it only produces goods and services, but we can’t convince you of that until we are further down the road.

What is the place of competitive markets? Some of you might feel that having markets is a better mechanism for quickly finding out what people need and how those goods and services have been delivered. As Michael Parenti writes in Black Shirts and Reds, the central planning mechanisms in the USSR were no bargain. At the same time, we know that during the Spanish Revolution, the workers and peasants self-organized in industry and on farms for 3 years, covering millions of people and had better production records than the Spanish government had before the revolution. So, our choices are more than choosing between the state and the market. In the new society perhaps there might be a minor place for markets instead of state planning or worker planning, but the markets should never be among the major players. We can do better than markets.

• Published first in Socialist Planning Beyond Capitalism

This article was posted on Friday, March 26th, 2021 at 2:22pm and is filed under Capitalism, Communism/Marxism/Maoism, Deep State, Democracy, Democrats, Disinformation, Economic Inequality, Elections, Employment, Exploitation, Identity Politics, Infrastructure, Karl Marx, Labor, Labor Theory of Value, Neoliberalism, Political Correctness, Propaganda, Socialism, The “Left”, Unions, United States, Wage, Working Class.

In the relatively short span of the last ten months, societies throughout the world have been transformed beyond recognition. Constitutional rights have been suspended. Protest has been banned. Dissent is being censored. Government officials are issuing edicts restricting the most basic aspects of our lives … where we can go, when we can go there, how long we are allowed to spend there, how many friends we are allowed to meet there, whether and when we can spend time with our families, what we are allowed to say to each other, who we can have sex with, where we have to stand, how we are allowed to eat and drink, etc. The list goes on and on.

The authorities have assumed control of the most intimate aspects of our daily lives. We are being managed like inmates in a prison, told when to eat, sleep, exercise, granted privileges for good behavior, punished for the slightest infractions of an ever-changing set of arbitrary rules, forced to wear identical, demeaning uniforms (albeit only on our faces), and otherwise relentlessly bullied, abused, and humiliated to keep us compliant.

None of which is accidental, or has anything to do with any actual virus, or any other type of public health threat. Yes, before some of you go ballistic, I do believe there is an actual virus, which a number of people have actually died from, or which at least has contributed to their deaths … but there is absolutely no evidence whatsoever of any authentic public health threat that remotely justifies the totalitarian emergency measures we are being subjected to or the damage that is being done to society. Whatever you believe about the so-called “pandemic,” it really is as simple as that. Even if one accepts the official “science,” you do not transform the entire planet into a pathologized-totalitarian nightmare in response to a health threat of this nature.

The notion is quite literally insane.

GloboCap is not insane, however. They know exactly what they are doing … which is teaching us a lesson, a lesson about power. A lesson about who has it and who doesn’t. For students of history it’s a familiar lesson, a standard in the repertoire of empires, not to mention the repertoire of penal institutions.

The name of the lesson is “Look What We Can Do to You Any Time We Fucking Want.” The point of the lesson is self-explanatory. The USA taught the world this lesson when it nuked Hiroshima and Nagasaki. GloboCap (and the US military) taught it again when they invaded Iraq and destabilized the entire Greater Middle East. It is regularly taught in penitentiaries when the prisoners start to get a little too unruly and remember that they outnumber the guards. That’s where the “lockdown” concept originated. It isn’t medical terminology. It is penal institution terminology.

As we have been experiencing throughout 2020, the global capitalist ruling classes have no qualms about teaching us this lesson. It’s just that they would rather not have to unless it’s absolutely necessary. They would prefer that we believe we are living in “democracies,” governed by the “rule of law,” where everyone is “free,” and so on. It’s much more efficient and much less dangerous than having to repeatedly remind us that they can take away our “democratic rights” in a heartbeat, unleash armed goon squads to enforce their edicts, and otherwise control us with sheer brute force.

People who have spent time in prison, or who have lived in openly totalitarian societies, are familiar with being ruled by brute force. Most Westerners are not, so it has come as a shock. The majority of them still can’t process it. They cannot see what is staring them in the face. They cannot see it because they can’t afford to see it. If they did, it would completely short-circuit their brains. They would suffer massive psychotic breakdowns, and become entirely unable to function, so their psyches will not allow them to see it.

Others, who see it, can’t quite accept the simplicity of it (i.e., the lesson being taught), so they are proposing assorted complicated theories about what it is and who is behind it … the Great Reset, China, the Illuminati, Transhumanism, Satanism, Communism, whatever. Some of these theories are at least partially accurate. Others are utter bull-goose lunacy.

They all obscure the basic point of the lesson.

The point of the lesson is that GloboCap — the entire global-capitalist system acting as a single global entity — can, virtually any time it wants, suspend the Simulation of Democracy, and crack down on us with despotic force. It can (a) declare a “global pandemic” or some other type of “global emergency,” (b) cancel our so-called “rights,” (c) have the corporate media bombard us with lies and propaganda for months, (d) have the Internet companies censor any and all forms of dissent and evidence challenging said propaganda, (e) implement all kinds of new intrusive “safety” and “security” measures, including but not limited to the physical violation of our bodies … and so on. I think you get the picture. (The violation of our bodies is important, which is why they love “cavity searches” in prison, and why the torture-happy troops at Abu Ghraib were obsessed with sexually violating their victims.)

And the “pandemic” is only one part of the lesson. The other part is being forced to watch (or permitted to watch, depending on your perspective) as GloboCap makes an example of Trump, as they made examples of Corbyn and Sanders, as they made examples of Saddam and Gaddafi, and other “uncooperative” foreign leaders, as they will make an example of any political figurehead that challenges their power. It does not matter to GloboCap that such political figureheads pose no real threat. The people who rally around them do. Nor does it make the slightest difference whether these figureheads or the folks who support them identify as “left” or “right.” GloboCap could not possibly care less. The figureheads are just the teaching materials in the lesson that they are teaching us.

And now, here we are, at the end of the lesson … not the end of the War on Populism, just the end of this critical Trumpian part of it. Once the usurper has been driven out of office, the War on Populism will be folded back into the War on Terror, or the War on Extremism, or whatever GloboCap decides to call it … the name hardly matters. It is all the same war.

Whatever they decide to call it, this is GloboCap Year Zero. It is time for reeducation, my friends. It is time for cultural revolution. No, not communist cultural revolution … global capitalist cultural revolution. It is time to flush the aberration of the last four years down the memory hole, and implement global “New Normal” Gleichschaltung, to make sure that this never happens again.

Oh, yes, things are about to get “normal.” Extremely “normal.” Suffocatingly “normal.” Unimaginably oppressively “normal.” And I’m not just talking about the “Coronavirus measures.” This has been in the works for the last four years.

Remember, back in 2016, when everyone was so concerned about “normality,” and how Trump was “not normal,” and must never be “normalized?” Well, here we are. This is it. This is the part where GloboCap restores “normality,” a “new normality,” a pathologized-totalitarian “normality,” a “normality” which tolerates no dissent and demands complete ideological conformity.

From now on, when the GloboCap Intelligence Community and their mouthpieces in the corporate media tell you something happened, that thing will have happened, exactly as they say it happened, regardless of whether it actually happened, and anyone who says it didn’t will be labeled an “extremist,” a “conspiracy theorist,” a “denier,” or some other meaningless epithet. Such un-persons will be dealt with ruthlessly. They will be censored, deplatformed, demonetized, decertified, rendered unemployable, banned from traveling, socially ostracized, hospitalized, imprisoned, or otherwise erased from “normal” society.

You will do what you are told. You will not ask questions. You will believe whatever they tell you to believe. You will believe it, not because it makes any sense, but simply because you have been ordered to believe it. They aren’t trying to trick or deceive anybody. They know their lies don’t make any sense. And they know that you know they don’t make any sense. They want you to know it. That is the point. They want you to know they are lying to you, manipulating you, openly mocking you, and that they can say and do anything they want to you, and you will go along with it, no matter how insane.

If they order you to take a fucking vaccine, you will not ask what is in the vaccine, or start whining about the “potential side effects.” You will shut up and take the fucking vaccine. If they tell you to put a mask on your kid, you will put a fucking mask on your fucking kid. You will not go digging up Danish studies proving the pointlessness of putting masks on kids. If they tell you the Russians rigged the election, then the Russians rigged the fucking election. And, if, four years later, they turn around and tell you that rigging an election is impossible, then rigging an election is fucking impossible. It isn’t an invitation to debate. It is a GloboCap-verified fact-checked fact. You will stand (or kneel) in your designated, color-coded, social-distancing box and repeat this verified fact-checked fact, over and over, like a fucking parrot, or they will discover some new mutant variant of virus and put you back in fucking “lockdown.” They will do this until you get your mind right, or you can live the rest of your life on Zoom, or tweeting content that no one but the Internet censors will ever see into the digital void in your fucking pajamas. The choice is yours … it’s is all up to you!

Or … I don’t know, this is just a crazy idea, you could turn off the fucking corporate media, do a little fucking research on your own, grow a backbone and some fucking guts, and join the rest of us “dangerous extremists” who are trying to fight back against the New Normal. Yes, it will cost you, and we probably won’t win, but you won’t have to torture your kids on airplanes, and you don’t even have to “deny” the virus!

That’s it … my last column of 2020. Happy totalitarian holidays!

The post Year Zero first appeared on Dissident Voice.

This weekend, ten thousand people took to the streets in Guatemala to protest the President and Congress over a proposed budget, the largest in its history, that cuts funds for health care and education as poverty rises, and provides slush funds to politicians and governments. In Colombia, the people held a national strike to protest their violent, right-wing government. In Peru, protests against a right-wing power grab have ousted one appointed president and people are demanding a new government and constitution. And people in Chile won the right to a new constitution. Now they are defending the process to make sure it represents them.

Across the Atlantic Ocean in Nigeria, in what began as a response to ongoing and severe state violence, the #EndSARS movement, has evolved to a struggle for full liberation from a corrupt and repressive government. Their new hashtag is #EndBadGovernanceInNigeria. I spoke with Abiodun Aremu, a long time movement leader in Lagos, on Clearing the FOG, about the current conditions and history of looting and exploitation by those in power.

In these countries and more, the people are rising up against the elite power structure to fight for their rights. Across borders, we share a common enemy, neoliberal economies that funnel wealth to the top, deregulate industries so they violate worker rights and destroy the environment, and impose austerity programs to deny our basic necessities. We also share a common vision for a world where the self-determination of peoples is respected and all people have equitable access to a life of dignity and prosperity.

Boxes of food were handed out by the Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank. Gene J. Puskar/AP.

The Center for Budget and Policy Priorities has a new report that finds the economy, which improved slightly over the summer, is stagnating again. As the provisions from the CARES Act expire, poverty is rising, especially for black and brown people. Women are also being adversely impacted because of the lack of childcare. Most of the jobs that have been lost, 52 percent, are low-wage jobs.

They point to a recent study from the Department of Health and Human Services that predicts ten million more people will become impoverished by the end of this year. Currently, 24 million adults say they don’t have enough food in their homes and 80 million adults say they are struggling to afford basic necessities. Without adequate support from the government, the economy won’t recover and people will continue to suffer.

The COVID-19 pandemic is surging with more than 200,000 cases in one day last week and deaths are rising again. Across the country, hospitals are struggling without enough beds and the staff to care for patients. The United States is expected to remain at this crisis level through the winter unless drastic steps are taken such as a national shut down, including all non-essential businesses. At present, that is not an option being considered by either President Trump or President-Elect Biden.

Both Trump and Biden are putting corporate profits over the needs of people by focusing on reopening businesses rather than providing the relief people desperately need. The Institute for Policy Studies reports that billionaires have increased their wealth by nearly $1 trillion since the start of the pandemic while their workers are left unprotected and without increases in their wages. They specifically call out a “delinquent dozen” of “pandemic profiteers.”

David McNew/Getty Images.

As Congress refuses to provide support for the millions who have lost their jobs, their health insurance and their homes, people are calling on the incoming Biden administration to take immediate action. For example, David Dayen points out that a provision in the Affordable Care Act allows the President to use executive power to expand Medicare to whomever needs it.

Biden, unfortunately, has made it clear that he opposes Medicare for All.  I spoke about the COVID-19 crisis and our for-profit healthcare system with Chris Hedges on his program, On Contact, this weekend.

This past week, more than 235 organizations called on Joe Biden to cancel student debt, which can also be done using executive power. Student debt has reached a staggering $1.6 trillion, a burden that is crippling people in the current recession. The groups state, “Cancellation will help jumpstart spending, create jobs, and add to the GDP. Short-term payment suspension alone is not enough to help struggling borrowers who are unemployed, already in default, or in serious delinquency.”

In addition to failing to address the pandemic and economic hardship at home, the United States government also inflicts pain and suffering across the planet through the many regime change efforts and military aggressions. Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies outlined ten steps Joe Biden could take immediately to change our foreign policy to one that is in line with international law, provides humanitarian aid instead of bombs and reduces the threat of nuclear war.

Federal spending on the security state dwarfs what is spent on domestic needs. Only 32 percent of the federal discretionary budget is used for health care, education, energy and housing and the biggest chunk of that goes to the Veterans Health Administration. The rest goes to the Pentagon, Homeland Security, the State Department, and NASA. Imagine what could be done to provide universal health care, child care, fully-funded education through the university level, low-cost clean energy and affordable housing if we stopped our wars and brought the military home.

Sean Rayford/New York Times.

Now that it is clear the next president will be Joe Biden, some people may think it is time to relax and let him go to work running the country. This is the message the power holders want the people to hear. The Biden administration will go to great lengths to give the appearance that it is different and that it will make positive changes, but just as we have experienced over and over again, when it comes to domestic economic policy or foreign policy, there is little difference between Democratic and Republican administrations. Both serve the wealthy class and the military industrial complex.

The power elites are never going to give us what we need. We must demand it. As we see people in other countries doing, we must organize and mobilize with a clear set of demands now. Joe Biden can take immediate steps to relieve suffering, and in a time of crisis as we are in now, he can do it using executive power. We must not give Biden a honeymoon. We must not be fooled by the excuses used to convince us it can’t be done.

This article was posted on Wednesday, November 25th, 2020 at 5:11am and is filed under Activism, COVID-19, Democrats, Economy/Economics, Employment, Health/Medical, Hunger, Joe Biden, Media, National improved Medicare for all (NIMA), Neoliberalism, Poverty, Social Movements, Student Loans, Unemployment, US Congress, US Foreign Policy, US Military, War.

This week, people are planning protests across the nation beginning the day after the election. Some, like Democratic Party-aligned groups and unions, will only demonstrate if President Trump loses and refuses to leave office. Trump will fail if he tries because the ruling class has clearly shifted its support to Biden. Professor Adrienne Pine explains this in her analysis of the opposition to Trump. Others such as issues-based groups, coalitions and community groups are planning to take the streets no matter what the outcome of the election is.

This is good news because a mass mobilization of left and progressive groups is needed to change the rightward direction in which the United States is headed. Michael J. Smith’s explanation of the “ratchet effect” describes the roles both Republicans and Democrats have played in moving our politics in that direction since 1968. In a nutshell, each time the Republicans moved to the right, the Democrats followed with the excuse that it’s necessary to win votes. This locks in the rightward motion, opening space for Republicans to move to the rightward again.

But Smith also writes, “the Democratic Party has assumed the role of ensuring that the countervailing pressure from the Left doesn’t happen. The party contains and neutralizes the Left, or what there is of it. Left voters are supposed to support the Democrat, come what may.” This is one of the reasons why the expression “the Democratic Party is the graveyard of social movements” exists. How do we counteract that?

SignsofJustice.com.

2020 vision on who we are

In a recent episode of Eleanor Goldfield’s series, Deception 2020, she and Eugene Puryear discuss why the trope of “this is the most important election ever” is recycled in every presidential election. It serves as a great distractor that puts the focus on personalities rather than the broader social context of where we are. It pits Republican and Democratic voters against each other while the ruling class plays both sides, putting the most money on the one that has the best chance of winning. The people hold their noses and vote for whomever they consider to be the lesser evil while the wealthy class knows their interests will be served no matter who wins.

The year 2020 has brought into clear focus that we are living in a failed state and can’t afford to be drawn into this distraction.  The number of new COVID-19 cases surpassed 100,000 in one day. The recession is likely to deepen into a prolonged depression due to Congress’ failure to provide supports for families and their businesses and farms. The climate crisis is raging. And structural racist violence goes on in all of its forms while the Pentagon continues its insatiable consumption of the federal budget leaving austerity for the rest of us

Instead of being caught up in this “political ping pong”, as Kevin Zeese would call it, we need to focus on these grave issues before us. I learned some lessons to avoid this ping pong during my involvement with the health reform process in 2009-10 when we were advocating for national improved Medicare for all while the Democrats were pushing their version of a healthcare bill that protected the profits of the health insurers, pharmaceutical companies and big businesses.

The lesson is best summarized using the acronym “ICU.” Think of it as what is needed, especially in a time of crisis. The “I” stands for independent. It is important not to tie our issue to the agenda of a political party but to maintain independence from them while we press for what we need, lest our struggle be co-opted. The “C” stands for clarity, meaning we must be clear about what we are demanding. Members of the corporate duopoly will always try to water our demands down with proposals that may sound positive but are less than what we need. Look at the Democrat’s Green New Deal as a current example that protects the dirty energy industries and is too little, too late. And the “U” stands for uncompromising. The ruling class will always tell us we are asking for too much but we can’t compromise on fundamentals such as health care, housing, education, financial security and an end to violence against us. These are universal basic needs that nobody should be denied.

With this 2020 vision, we can mobilize a broad movement that puts forth a bold agenda of what we need and fights for it, no matter who is elected. This is how we reverse the ratchet effect. We can look to Chile as a recent example of a people succeeding in their struggle to reverse the ravages of neoliberalism. Patricio Zamorano describes how a similar situation to what we face, great inequality and injustice, drove people to mobilize despite severe repression and win the right to remake their Constitution.

Jeff Bachner/New York Daily News.

Violence on the rise

One reality we must prepare for is the continued rise in right wing violence no matter who wins the election. If Trump wins and people continue to struggle to end the injustices we face, right wing extremists will be emboldened by a president who encourages them. If Biden wins, they will be angered at what they view as a threat to the gains they have made and may lash out.

In light of this, communities need to organize to be vigilant to what is happening around them and to be proactive in creating structures that provide safety and mutual aid, particularly for those who are most vulnerable.

We live in an era of great polarization. This is expected because it goes hand in hand with great inequality and it often precedes moments of social transformation. Think of it as heightening the contradictions and forcing a choice. Who are we and how do we want our society to be?

George Lakey puts the polarization into historical context. Almost one hundred years ago, when extreme polarization existed in Europe, some countries moved to fascist dictatorships while others moved to socialized democracies. The difference was how the people organized and mobilized. Lakey suggests a road map.

If people who consider themselves left or progressive fail to organize and mobilize, we may go the way of a fascist dictatorship no matter who wins this presidential election. If Trump wins, he may do what others have done by trying to further consolidate his power into an authoritarian state. If Biden wins, and he continues the neoliberal and repressive policies that have marked his 47 years in elected office, then the conditions will be created in 2024 or beyond for another Democratic Party loss and an opening for a right wing leader who is more effective than Trump at consolidating power.

Either way we must mobilize and protect our rights. While most of our organizing will take place outside the electoral system because that is where we have power, it will also be necessary to focus on preserving whatever democratic rights exist and strengthening them.

Common Cause NY.

Protecting and improving the election process

As flawed as the electoral process in the United States is, it is the system we currently have. Fair election and third party activists have been working to change it for decades. Now, as it is on so many issues, the major problems with that system – voter suppression, lack of transparency and the process for choosing a president – are more evident.

While the United States has never been a democracy, in fact a look at the founding of the country shows the ruling class who wrote the Constitution were afraid of it, the people believe in democracy. Focusing on democratic rights in this election will bring people together and build momentum to change the system.

Focusing on what President Trump says is a distraction. Recall that Trump was also saying that he would not commit to accepting the outcome in the lead up to the 2016 election. The Democrats and the groups aligned with them are amplifying fears to drive voter turn out, and it seems to be working. The latest Gallup Poll finds almost 70% of registered voters are enthusiastic about the election, which is an increase from the 50% who were enthusiastic in 2016 and similar to 2008 levels. This is highest among registered Democrats.

Five Thirty Eight predicts that due to the electoral process in a few states, for example Pennsylvania is not allowed to start counting mail-in ballots until Tuesday, and the way the states are looking right now, neither of the major party candidates could reach the required 270 electoral votes on election night. It could take a few days.

This is not cause for panic. Instead, let’s take a collective deep breath and watch for problems with the process in our states. Documenting these can be used to challenge and improve the process for the next round. Already, people have been challenging the election process with more than 300 lawsuits filed in 44 states.

There is a small chance that President Trump will be re-elected. If that happens, it will be critical to respect that result. To reject an outcome of the election process we have opens the door to a breakdown of that system and a vacuum that could threaten the hope of building more democratic structures.

Remember, no matter what happens on November 3, our struggle goes on. It is a long term struggle against deeply entrenched structures of racism, capitalism, colonialism and imperialism that will have successes and failures. Our best chance for a better future is to keep our eye on the world we hope to create and keep working toward that goal.

This article was posted on Sunday, November 1st, 2020 at 2:38pm and is filed under “The Left”, “The Right”, Activism, Democrats, Donald Trump, Economy/Economics, Education, Elections, Employment, Fascism, Freedom, Housing/Homelessness, Human Rights, Imperialism, Joe Biden, Lesser Evilism, Media, Militarism, National improved Medicare for all (NIMA), Neoliberalism, Peace, Republicans, Social Movements, Solidarity, Violence, Voter Suppression.

Most corporate retail employers view their employees as an unfortunate expenditure they haven’t quite yet figured out how to function entirely without. If they could invent a way to convince their customers to give up their money without having to provide service in exchange, they would discard you and your subsistence-level wage faster than a drunk high school cheerleader dropping her panties on prom night. There’s a good chance your employer keeps just enough low-rent help around to maintain the illusion of a well-stocked store filled with vibrant and eager sales associates who are chomping at the bit to make sure the CEO’s kids are able to keep driving their late-model BMW’s. But a sneak peek behind the Wizard of Oz-like curtain reveals an industry thriving instead on requiring more for less from the very people they claim to care about the most.

Corporate retail employers essentially fall into one of two categories: The Non-Employee Employer and the Anti-Employee Employer. Here’s a brief and thoroughly incomplete summation of the two.

The Non-Employee Employer

The Non-Employee Employer actually does employ people, but views and treats them as non-entities. In the Non-Employee Employer world you exist but rarely matter. Your schedule requests are little more than puffs of wishful smoke and should you require a day off other than what is bestowed upon you from the schedule maker on high you are required to beg and/or bribe a fellow wage slave to cover your shift or instead shut up and show up. Any on-the-job training beyond the bare minimum or long-term professional development is solely your responsibility to source out, because chances are you aren’t going to be around long enough to advance in the company anyway. Your expendability is ongoing, because there’s a slush pile of resumes and applications backlogged in the manager’s office as a reminder of the desperate souls just waiting to fill your temporary shoes. Holidays are little more than another opportunity for you to serve the customer, and weekends are those mythical moments in time reserved for people with real jobs. You are required to park as far away from the job site as possible, regardless of how well lit the area is or isn’t and how that may potentially factor in to your safety. Benefits are for wimps, and the best and most affordable health insurance is you not getting sick. Closing late one shift and opening early the next – the dreaded “clopen” – is a job requirement, and you’re setting yourself up for disappointment if you expect everyone to be treated the same. Consider yourself lucky if the managers know your name, and don’t expect them to ever – ever – come to your defense should you find yourself on the receiving end of a customer complaint. The Non-Employee Employer likes you as much as your ability to make money for him, and the entirety of your relationship is based on that unspoken premise.

The Anti-Employee Employer

The Anti-Employee Employer ups the ante in the I don’t give a fuck about you sweepstakes immeasurably. This inflamed hemorrhoid not only distrusts you, but goes out of his way to remind you that you are one evolutionary step above common pond scum in your current retail predicament. Before you even begin your employment tenure, your new boss will imply that he suspects you of being a borderline crack addict and will require you to prove otherwise by demanding you subject yourself to the humiliations of a urinalysis – all so you can prove that you possess the moral fortitude to make minimum wage selling overpriced claptrap. This paranoid nutdrainer has convinced himself that everyone under his employ exists for the sole purpose of robbing him blind, and he’ll be more than happy to tell you just how much he doesn’t trust you while simultaneously cutting you a paycheck. Walk into any employee break room in the Anti-Employee Employer’s environment, and you’ll be regaled by corporatespeak signage encouraging you to spy on and anonymously rat out your coworkers for the inevitable theft they’re apparently powerless from stopping themselves from plotting. This dumbed-down verbiage usually consists of something along the lines of “Theft Affects Us All” or “Join The Obsessed With Shrink Club.” And those eyes in the sky called security cameras? They exist primarily for your employer to keep tabs on you; not potential shoplifting customers. Mention the words union or organized labor in his presence, and you will be targeted, ostracized and legally terminated before the words have barely left your mouth. This is the same employer who keeps a rotating tab of potential “high shrink candidates” on hand and periodically kicks an hourly employee to the curb for the smallest infraction to keep the remaining staff afraid enough to stay in line and do as they’re told. Within this fetid world, anticipate being occasionally berated in front of your coworkers, humiliated in the presence of customers and reminded of your insignificance on an ongoing basis. Here managers are reduced to spending their hours babysitting systems rather than developing personnel and are incessantly threatened with unemployment behind the scenes if the store’s profitability drops below a certain ratio, regardless of whether they are responsible for the reduction in sales. Shit rolls downhill at an ever-increasing pace within this format, because managers are placed in the precarious position by their bosses of finding someone to blame when sales expectations fall short – and that someone is the most convenient low wage hourly scapegoat who happens to have won the next in the corporate crosshairs lottery. In the Anti-Employee Employer universe, weekly corporate-generated newsletters are rife with examples of customer complaint letters littered with details of customer service failure and all around employee ineptitude. All the while, you and your coworkers are getting paid the bare minimum you’re willing to settle for, and the real prerequisites for anyone’s advancement are kissing ass or being a two-faced unconscionable prick. Allowing you to work overtime is this taskmaster’s version of giving you a raise, and even though your monthly bills likely won’t fluctuate that dramatically from week to week, your scheduled work hours certainly will in accordance with projected business levels and what is most advantageous for the company’s bottom line. You will be referred to primarily as labor, and this impersonalization will make it much easier for you to be defined by what you cost the company to employ you rather than a breathing entity with a life and bills to pay. The Anti-Employee Employer has all sorts of inherent punishments and humiliations built into the system with which to randomly bestow upon you, and these usually come in the form of various third grade level write-up documents and other generic papers designed to fill your employee file to be used as a case against you when the time comes for your inevitable termination.

Overall, today’s average corporate retail job carries with it about as much satisfaction as the average root canal or un-lubricated prostate exam. Far too many of those charged with safeguarding corporate profit margins do so at the expense of the individuals they employ through intimidation and disregard of anything resembling basic human decency. For the average hourly worker, a career in retail is about as likely as a Mormon concubine signing up for a Kama Sutra retreat, so an underlying mentality of I’m only here until I find something better or they shit-can me first permeates most stores and is often passed on to the very customers whom these pusspurse employers profess to worship. And as long as we continue empowering these dinglehorns with our subservience, there will be little impetus for them to regard us with little more than the disdain they’re currently allowed to get away with. In the end, how we allow ourselves to be treated is ultimately up to us. If we can somehow summon the wherewithal to abandon our collective hubris and band together for each other’s common good, the sort of workplace environments we envision and deserve aren’t as farfetched as they sometimes currently seem. If only.

This article was posted on Thursday, August 6th, 2020 at 8:34am and is filed under Employment, Minimum Wage.

According to a study conducted by The National Restaurant Association, the employee turnover rate in the hospitality industry is approximately 66%. Restaurant turnover is higher than the private sector due to several factors, including higher portions of teenagers, students and temporary employees in the industry workforce, according to the NRA’s chief economist Bruce Grindy.

And then there’s plain old stupidity and irresponsible behavior – the two inescapable pillars propping up most restaurant workforces. So if paying your bills or sustaining a semblance of a lifestyle isn’t at the top of your have-to-do list, then perhaps short-term employment at your nearest restaurant is just the thing for you.

Here then are some guidelines guaranteed to jettison you into the ranks of the jobless. All it takes is a little effort on your part. Very little, to be exact.

Call In Sick. A Lot. Especially On Weekends And Holidays. It’s always entertaining to observe individuals who make the effort to get hired for the sort of job they have no idea what they’re signing up for. The hospitality industry is predicated on profiting from special occasions and catering to people during their day’s off from work. To pull this off, restaurants require a flexible workforce who have the ability and desire to work during these times. Being genuinely ill is one thing and most respectable employers don’t want you working around their food if you’re sick. However, if your mystery illnesses coincidently always coincide with Saturdays and major national holidays, do yourself a favor and resign before being unceremoniously invited to never return.

Bait And Switch Yourself. Restaurant managers love liars the same way crack addicts appreciate empty pipes. The road to the unemployment line is paved with the corpses of restaurant employees who promised their hiring managers full scheduling availability then magically couldn’t work weekends and holidays after getting the job. The quickest way to get promoted to customer is to make your boss look like a fool for hiring you, and making promises you have no intention of keeping will do the trick every damn time.

Consistently Give Your Shifts Away. There never seems to be a shortage of people who say they want a job but don’t want to work. Coincidentally, these are also usually the same individuals who constantly complain about not being able to pay their bills while bitching about the infrequency of their scheduled shifts. Granted, part of the enticement of the service industry is flexibility of scheduling and working alongside a pool of people who can take your shift when something unexpected comes up. However, if you fall into the habit of regularly giving your shifts away there’s a better than average chance that your employer will view it as a sign that perhaps there’s someone else out there who’s willing to actually show up when scheduled.

Be Smarter Than Your Manager. The only thing worse than being smarter than your boss is letting everyone know it. Though your supervisor may frequently take up residency in the neighborhood of stupid, you have nothing to gain and everything to lose by pointing out the obvious. One of the primary endearing traits most restaurant corporations look for in their leadership candidates is their willingness to unquestionably take and implement corporate mandates regardless of how mundane or ridiculous they may be. The only critical reasoning that is characteristically required of restaurant managers is their ability to accurately decipher and impact a Profit and Loss Statement, and anything outside of that is about as welcome as a fart in a crowded elevator. There’s a good chance that your restaurant manager is stupid because that’s what the company expects, so not accepting that doesn’t make you appear overly intelligent, either.

Make Theft And Intoxication Your Priorities. Pharmaceutical connoisseurs and crooks are drawn to the service industry the same way personal injury lawyers instinctively sniff out fender benders. Unfortunately, some restaurant employees approach working stoned while simultaneously concocting ways to scam their employer with the same enthusiasm most of us reserve for our next intake of oxygen. Showing up to a hospitality job while intoxicated is a risky proposition due to the abundance of wet floors, sharp objects and dull customers which populate most restaurants, while theft is understandably at the top of every manager’s zero tolerance list. If you’re the guy who can’t make it through a shift without either a flask or a plan to pilfer, then perhaps you should consider a more appropriate line of work. Like politics, for example.

Bang Your Boss. Restaurant workers hooking up with each other is as common as the internet and porn. Though shitting where you eat is seldom advisable, there’s nothing out of the ordinary about restaurant staffs romantically commingling. But the amore line between supervisors and those they oversee is one that should never under any circumstance be crossed. Any restaurant that values the sanctity of its culture has rules in place to prevent this from happening, along with the inevitable drama and potential legal liability such relationships usually pose. However, passion and reason sometimes cohabitate as seamlessly as a Southern Baptist at a gay pride parade and periodically inappropriate workplace indiscretions do occur. If you choose to enter into a romantic relationship with your boss, just be aware that one of you will eventually have to go – and it usually isn’t the person in charge. As always, love comes with a price.

Tell Customers The Truth. The customers may not always be right, but they sure as hell better be tolerated. Like it or not, the condescending “guest” who seems determined to make your life a living hell is also the same nutsack who helps you pay rent and buy beer. Just like the creepy uncle you have to temporarily endure every Christmas, every restaurant shift is filled with surprise visits by incorrigible curmudgeons whose sole mission is to share their misery. If you value your paycheck, your best bet is to swallow the instinct to fly your fuck off flag and instead tell these cretins what they want to hear while sending them on their unmerry way as quickly as possible. Unfortunately, eating periodic shit is sometimes the trade-off for keeping yourself afloat in a world of turds.

Don’t Pretend To Buy In. The person who signs your paycheck expects to purchase a modicum of loyalty in return. Though you may consider the cuisine your employer peddles to essentially be reheated processed Sysco crap, you’re still getting paid to sell it like it just emerged from the kitchen of The French Laundry itself. The same goes for whatever promotional nonsense the marketing geniuses at the corporate office cook up for you to hawk like a curbside snake oil salesman. The condition of your conscience isn’t at the forefront of your employer’s concern so much as the profits you’re being compensated to produce, and the moment you find yourself unable or unwilling to stand alongside the company you represent is also the exact minute you need to begin looking for your next gig.

Be The Guy Who Never Takes One For The Team. Expecting your restaurant job to always be equitable and consistently fair is a little like being surprised when Justin Beiber does something stupid. Sometimes the workplace hole just beckons, and you’re required to take your turn spending time in it. This means that there will be instances when you’re asked to stay later during a shift than what you had originally planned if the business warrants. It also comes in the guise of getting called off unexpectedly if business is projected to be slower, even though you’d rather work. Either way, going with the flow and gaining a reputation for being adaptable to your employer’s needs will go a long way toward increasing your favorability rating and extending your tenure. On the flipside, too many “no thank yous” directed at your boss will place you on the selfish-short-termer list from which there is usually no return.

Make Sure Everyone Knows That The Rules Don’t Apply To You. There’s always that one guy who’s too good to be doing the job he’s getting paid for and isn’t afraid to let everyone know it. This is usually either the aspiring actor whose genius hasn’t quite yet been noticed or the Ph.D. who has magically discovered that his degree qualifies him to wait tables alongside GED graduates. There’s no greater way to strand yourself on a workplace island than to claim superiority over the people you’re working alongside while assuming exemption from collective menial tasks meant for all. Though you may have convinced yourself that you don’t deserve the same fate as your coworkers, your my shit doesn’t stink attitude will land you quick residency in time to look for your next job, asshole purgatory.

This article was posted on Monday, August 3rd, 2020 at 9:08am and is filed under Employment.

Schools were created when books were not available, at least not at the mass scale as it is now. Nevertheless, they are still organized as if they responded to the conditions and circumstances from 200 years ago. The recent advancements in education seem to update the learning process to the technological capabilities of our times. However, they may bring a flattening of the old model using computers to enhance the intake of knowledge. This would imply a regress in understanding what education is for this. Potential digitalization of education also bears some dangers.

It is urgent to discuss the purpose and ethics of education in times of imposed pressure to turn to digital tools in organizing teaching. Naomi Klein warned about strengthening the economic power of digital giants as a result of bringing classroom to online realm, which she calls a Screen New Deal. Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt and Bill Gates have been appointed by New York Governor Andrew Cuomo to advise on a scenario for post-pandemic reforms, including remote learning and telehealth. Bill Gates’ task was to help rethink public schools’ organization for the next fall. In 2014, Cuomo was criticized for including Schmidt in the advisory panel of Smart Schools Commission because of the potential conflict of interest. His Alt School failed in 2015 but coronavirus promises new opportunities.

Current crisis may be seized as an opening towards more control over minds of the younger generations. The Millennials are already being formed by digital media. All the hours spent on YouTube and online social media make them absorb information and shape their cognitive and interpersonal predispositions. Zeynep Tufekci warned that the algorithms aiming at maintaining people’ interest in YouTube content may bring more radicalization and polarization in the society. Television was influencing precedent generations but in a less intrusive way. Since the television did not have an algorithm hooking people into being exposed to the same topic or way of thinking as social media do by creating bubbles of like-minded “friends” and groups, learning process was less effective. YouTube further boosts learning effect by proposing to watch more and more extreme movies once the viewer showed interest in a topic. Furthermore, television did not engage people in interaction. So they may have wanted to discuss what they saw with others. In contrast, online media give a substitute of a debate. When we think about learning, we tend to associate effective learning with a desirable result. However, learning can also cause damage and it is important to think of the opportunities of unlearning and being exposed to opposite interpretations as part of education.

Introducing robotized education may impose similar disadvantages for the development of young people. Innovators familiar with neuroscience may propose gamification of learning process. Online games stimulating dopamine secretion may lead to addictive behavior, especially, amongst socially and emotionally neglected children. It would turn the old model of learning into memorization on steroids. The pleasurable experience may create an inner subconscious attachment to the knowledge absorbed this way. As a consequence, the activity of learning, which suggests engaging with the subjects, is obsolete in this model. It would be replaced by programming with subliminal messages. Such a model contrasts with contextual learning model of transacting knowledge. Research has demonstrated that being exposed to the same word or information through spaced repetition imprints it in long-term memory. These “truths” may be difficult to question because any opposite information may be dismissed by cognitive dissonance. This gives an enormous power to whomever holds it. And this may be engineers and technological giants that will grab it.

One could argue that this subliminal learning is already happening in schools. Professor Peter McLaren pointed to the reproduction of class stratification and the hidden curriculum in the way schooling is organized. The danger of the scenario I am predicting here lurks in the centralization of learning. Decentralized schooling, as we know it, gives more leeway to the teachers. They can organize in unions and subvert the system in their classrooms depending on their level of awareness and non-conformism. It would be more difficult to convince a high number of educators to perform repetitive teaching with well-calculated chunks and intervals, especially if it were serving narrow economic interests. It is easier to corrupt a couple of specialists instead.

Current shortage of over 100,000 teaching staff in the US and the reliance on migrant teachers (mainly from Philippines), who stay on short-term job contracts, may pave the way to digitalized and robotized education. Amidst the urgency to protect the health of families having school-age children, we need to be cautious about reforms that “Corona-crisis” may enable to be sneaked in.

This article was posted on Friday, July 31st, 2020 at 10:31am and is filed under Education, Employment, Science/Technology.

Denis Rancourt is a person who is unafraid to challenge conventional wisdom. For example, he is skeptical about the scientific consensus around climate change, and recently, he looked at the meta-analyses of using masks and questions their effectiveness against viral respiratory infections. Whether Rancourt is right or not in his conclusions is consequential, but more important is that he raises arguments and interpretations of the data that should set in process debate to help steer toward a clearer understanding of phenomena. Rancourt doesn’t challenge for the mere sake of irking the purveyors of the status quo. He challenges narratives he finds contrary to the facts and evidence. He is a scientist, and that is what a trained scientist should do. It is what any person, scientist or not, who wants to engage in reasoned debate should do.

One place reasoned debates should be welcome is at a university. Universities are supposed to be bastions of academic freedom, where thoughts, dreams, conclusions, theories, ideas, politics, and even sometimes nonsense are all open for discussion and debate. Unfortunately, that is just not the case, and even fully tenured university professors have to be aware of how the Establishment might view and react to emerging findings, viewpoints, and facts that threaten to expose — or worse lead to the overturn of — a system that is favored by elitist society.

Rancourt was a distinguished tenured physics professor at the University of Ottawa. Nonetheless, one day he found that he had been dismissed and locked out of his university office. He was persona non grata on campus. Why? The university said it was because Rancourt had assigned high grades to all 23 students in one advanced physics course.

There are plenty of studies that indicate assigning grades as being harmful to learning and destructive of curiosity. Critical pedagogue Alfie Kohn’s book Punished by Rewards: The Trouble with Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, A’s, Praise, and Other Bribes explodes the practice of and need for assigning grades as well as critiquing other forms of behavioral coercion.

In an interview with Jesse Freeston, Rancourt explained his rationale on grading:

JF: Why is it important to you to not grade your students?

DR: With grades students learn to guess the professor’s mind and to obey. It is a very sophisticated machinery, whereby the natural desire to learn, the intrinsic motivation to want to learn something because you are interested in the thing itself, is destroyed. Grades are the carrot and stick that shape obedient employees and that prepare students for the higher level indoctrinations of graduate and professional schools. The only way to develop independent thinking in the classroom is to give freedom, to break the power relationship by removing the instrument of power.

JF: In the classes where students were not graded, how would you describe the work that they accomplished?

DR: The variety of projects, the breadth of topics that were explored by the students is an order of magnitude or more (a lot) greater than what you would normally see in a standard class, because they were the ones that came up with it, they were intrigued by it, they were following their own curiosities, their own self-directed research. Because they were able to find their own intrinsic motivation within the subject itself, I believe their learning was deeper.

Even in fourth year physics, I was able to demonstrate to the class the extent to which they hadn’t really understood many things. We sat there sometimes and reviewed things from first year physics, and I was able to find things that are very fundamental to Newton’s laws that the majority of the class had not understood.

It was to some extent humiliating for students to realize that they had bought into a system which doesn’t work. In which they can be convinced that they’ve learned something even though they haven’t understood it. It was a bit of a shock to them, but that shock is essential. You have to be willing to accept that you don’t really understand something if you’re going to be a researcher who makes great discoveries of how nature functions and so on.

So deep, however, was the U of O’s rancor toward Rancourt that it spent over $1 million, as related by the professor, sponsoring a defamation lawsuit against him.

Rancourt asked, “Just how far can a Western university, in a so-called free and democratic society, go in violating the freedom of expression and the professional independence of a tenured professor?”

During his tenure at U of O, Rancourt wielded his academic freedom, well, freely; he taught activism, and he poked the administrative eye with his “U of O Watch” blog.

The university administration’s actions against Rancourt affected not only him; they also negatively impacted U of O students and researchers. Graduate students were also locked out of the laboratory and, said Rancourt, “the university destroyed my large collections of valuable scientific samples, and immediately made the laboratory inoperable.”

Imagine putting in the years of study to get a PhD, working 22 years for an institution, and then being fired and having one’s work destroyed. Rancourt had amassed an important collection of scientific samples that the university, in apparent vindictiveness, destroyed. Worse, the career of the tenured, full professor with a bevy of publications in peer review journals was seemingly at an end.

However, in the end, there has been some solace for Rancourt, now a researcher for the Ontario Civil Liberties Association, who said,

I’m happy to report that all the matters in dispute between the University of Ottawa and me have been amicably resolved, through voluntary mediation that occurred on January 16, 2019, with the help of expert mediator William Kaplan.

The general public won’t know exactly what the settlement is as the terms of the agreement are confidential. Nonetheless, Rancourt said he is happy about the settlement.

He thanked his union, the Association of Professors of the University of Ottawa (APUO), the many students, friends and others who offered their support to him over the years.

Academic freedom is important. In the 17th century, Italian polymath Galileo Galilei was forced by a Roman Catholic Inquisition to renounce heliocentrism and support the Ptolemaic conception of the Earth as being at the center of the universe. It wasn’t until the 20th century that the Vatican came clean and admitted Galileo was correct.

Unfortunately, censorship is not confined to the past. Case in point was an article by Rancourt that was published at ResearchGate. Later it was removed (The article is available here). ResearchGate called the article, to this writer’s puzzlement, “non-scientific” and complained about the “controversial subject matter.” In essence, it seems that the managing directors of ResearchGate are indeed acting as research gatekeepers.

So, I can’t help but wonder why a more concerted agitation had not manifested itself early on against the U of O. If the faculty and students truly cherished academic freedom, why had they not demonstrated an activist solidarity with Rancourt?

Solidarity has power, but only if it is used.

In recent weeks, the massive outcry against the hellacious police murder of George Floyd has caused the state apparatchiks and their bosses to fret. What will the outcome of demonstrations be? Only time will tell.

Alone, we — the working class — are all rather easy targets within the system. In togetherness we have strength; we have the strength to protect each other. More importantly, we have the strength to bring about changes in the system, and when the solidarity is sustained a revolution can cause a system to topple and raise a new, people-centered system in its place.

This article was posted on Monday, June 29th, 2020 at 7:04am and is filed under Academic Freedom, Employment, Human Rights, Labor.

Here are a few of my favorites.

We Want To Know What You Think

Translation: We want you to tell us what we want to hear. If you want to be classified as a troublemaker and instantaneously rise to the top of the corporate shitlist, tell your bosses your actual opinion of your workplace environment when asked. Though the average employer will try to convince you that your opinion carries as much weight as Kim Kardashian’s panties, your boss wants to know what you really think about as much as you want to walk in on your parents having wild, greased-up animal sex. Being asked your opinion by your employer is mostly little more than an obligatory yardstick used by many mediocre middle managers to measure the degree to which you’re buying into the company crapline. The workplace minefield is littered with the corpses of unsuspecting minimum wage warriors who self-destructed on their own honesty, mistaking we value your opinion with we value your opinion. So if eating and paying your bills have any sort of priority in your life, the next time you’re asked what you think of your job tell your boss that the mere thought of going to work makes you fire orgasms out of your eye sockets. Then quietly go back to imagining yourself introducing a taser to his shriveled gonads. Or her wrinkled labia.

Our Employees Are Our Greatest Asset

Translation: We appreciate your letting us use you to make ourselves wealthier. Though you often treat me otherwise, I’m not another one of your commodities, you lice-encrusted odorburglar. We both know that your most valuable asset in the store is the overpriced drivel gathering dust on the shelves and that my value to you is contingent on how good I am at conning the suckers you refer to as customers into buying it. Without the merchandise to define us, I seriously doubt that you’d one day wake up with a sudden case of philanthropic fervor and decide the one thing missing in your life is paying me to stand around and jack myself off in the middle of an empty shopping mall cubicle. And if I’m such an invaluable piece in your lifestyle puzzle, why am I barely able to afford a steady diet of cardboard and paste on the pittance you call a wage? Shit, your dog eats better than I do, and probably more often. And you better hope this treasured asset of yours doesn’t get seriously sick any time soon, because that porous bandaid you call health insurance covers about as much as the missing g-strings on Larry Flynt’s latest centerfold skank parade.

Service Is Our Number One Priority

Translation: We’re paying you to sell shit. Period. Service is a necessary evil in the retail world, because the greedy fucks haven’t yet figured out a way to persuade customers to automatically choose the stuff with the best built-in profit margins on their own. Without the not-so-gentle nudging of their mostly underpaid army of coercion specialists, most retailers would wither and die on the vine of I wasn’t able to screw you enough to stay in business. Your boss has the same kind of relationship with you that the unlucky slob who contracted crabs has with his pharmacist…They both need to pay someone they’d rather not for fucking someone they probably shouldn’t have. The corporate tit is seemingly swollen with just enough excess profit to allow you the luxury of a suck every couple of weeks to keep you nourished, but the taste it leaves in your mouth is pretty damn close to the unexpected olfactory greeting you get when walking into an unflushed public crapper. It may taste like you’re eating shit, but for some reason you keep reaching for the ketchup to convince yourself it ain’t so bad after all.

You Have Unlimited Opportunity For Advancement

Translation: Your success will be proportionate to your willingness and ability to kiss ass. The service industry in general is one big asskissapalooza, with a lot of unlucky ticket holders competing for the chance to smooch the mosh pit of corporate butt for the dubious opportunity to climb another rung on the way to the front row of subservience. There is never a shortage of ass that is craving the purse of career-climbing lips in the retail world. Customers want it. Bosses need it. Coworkers are appreciative of it. There’s always a line for a surgically-enhanced derriere collagen pucker, and you perpetually seem to be at the tail end of it. So reach for the stars. Be all you can be. Don’t settle for less. Climb the highest mountain. On your winning drive to the end zone, though, don’t forget to periodically high-five the poverty-wage warriors whose shoulders you’re riding on as you circle the corporate arena on your I’m just doing what I have to do to survive and don’t hold it against me victory lap.

Our Letting You Go Is Just Business, It Isn’t Personal

Translation: We’re transitioning you from a full-time employee to a full-time customer. Several years ago, I actually had some semi-significant snot-bloated cockface use this line on me as he was kicking me to the curb. What used to be his conscience had been replaced by a vibrating strap-on he used to fuck everyone else and eventually himself with after his rechargeable batteries wore out their overused welcome. But what he unintentionally taught me on my – and his – way out the door is this…If you ever think that you matter to your corporate employer as being more than a statistic to maintain profit margins, then you probably deserve the fucking you may not see coming. Your worth to your employer is relative to your ability to generate revenue. Your kid has a learning disability? Fuck you. Your wife has some kind of unidentifiable tumor? Blow me. You have the audacity to request two days off in a row to be with your family? Tickle my taint. Look here, boss – Your “letting me go” is nothing but personal, you genetically-challenged jizz machine. I happen to be in possession of this silly thing called a life, and it actually requires my attention outside of your periodic kindergarten-laden tantrums. So every now and then I may need a day off other than the one you required me to request six weeks in advance, and I apologize for any workplace inconvenience the unscheduled part of my existence may contribute. After all, my kid may get unexpectedly sick every now and then. My wife may get a breast tumor we hadn’t scheduled. And my grandmother may die. For the third time this year.

This article was posted on Thursday, June 25th, 2020 at 4:50pm and is filed under Employment, Labor, Language, Opinion.

I’ve seen and participated in more fucked up shit in restaurants and retail stores than I can possibly remember or even care to. My current mom and pop scenario, however, has elevated certain aspects of fucked-upness to heights I’ve yet to have scaled until now. And without the HR stopgap, the shitstorm is randomly raining turd drops on whoever’s head happens to get caught under the crap cloud at any given time.

I answered a Craigslist ad placed by a couple of self-proclaimed “two old dudes that don’t surf” for an upcoming Hawaiian-themed burger joint looking for an experienced general manager to help them get their vision off the ground. Turns out they had amassed enough money from their respective careers in banking and real estate – with the help of a few investor friends – to realize their lifelong dream of opening a restaurant. After a few interviews I was brought on board and promptly began the hiring process.

So I’m sitting in a booth interviewing someone who appears to be a qualified candidate for a server position. Her resume includes several prior jobs at some well-known corporate chain restaurants who I know have great training programs and high standards, which is always something I look for. These are the individuals who usually bring to the table a high degree of maturity and experience regarding what the job entails and requires, meaning less potential drama out of the gate for me.

Oh yeah, she was also African-American. Like that or if she were blue or green or yellow should even fucking matter.

So as we’re sitting there interviewing, in walks Captain Curmudgeon, one of the owners. After giving us the once-over, he gives me the silent head nod toward the other end of the restaurant which is the universal non-verbal “get your ass over here” in owner/general manager speak. I excuse myself from the interview, and when I meet him in the kitchen the first words out of his mouth are, “You don’t plan to hire her, do you?”

“Uh…yeah, probably. She seems pretty qualified.”

“No. Absolutely not. You’re not hiring her.”

“Why not?”

“Because once you let those people in the door, you can’t get rid of them.”

And out the door he walked, smiling at my interviewee and wishing her a nice day as he left while leaving the sort of slimy trail that would make any snail jealous.

Cut to: the following day. A dude came in applying for a line cook position. Again, his last couple of jobs had included stints at what I considered to be reputable multi-unit restaurants that are known for high volume business levels. As a manager, you’re always on the lookout for workers, especially in the kitchen, who are used to orders rapid-firing at them and can kick the food out without getting all freaky-deaky in the heat of battle. Those are really valuable people to have in the trenches with you when the shit is hitting the fan on a Saturday night and the prick on table two is screaming because the chicken he ordered three minutes ago isn’t sitting in front of him yet, and you know you can run to the kitchen and ask the guy behind the line to kick it out quickly and he’s able to do it unfazed while keeping the rest of the 50 orders he’s working on moving out like clockwork as well. I was getting the vibe from him that he was that guy, and I was getting ready to make him a job offer.

When in walks Colonel Crustacean. I get the nod, and the next thing you know we’re huddled in the kitchen again.

“That’s an interesting one. You aren’t seriously thinking about hiring him, are you?”

“Uh…yeah. He’s exactly what we’re looking for.”

“No way. Absolutely not.”

“Why not?”

“You can’t tell? He looks like a Deadhead! The next thing you know, this place will be crawling with drugs.”

He shook the Deadhead’s hand on his way out, leaving me there to finish with the obligatory “we’ll give you a call if we’re interested.”

After that, I began scheduling interviews when I knew Sergeant Shitbag wouldn’t be showing up and was effectively able to bypass his inflammatory contributions and staff the restaurant with qualified individuals in spite of his efforts to otherwise prevent it. Once staff training began, however, he made his presence known and readily gave me his feedback regarding my hiring judgments.

“What am I running here, a Third World Country?”

“I sure hope that Chink doesn’t think we’re gonna be doin’ eggrolls.”

“Keep an eye on that Limey you hired…he might not be right in the head. They’re always a little on edge anyway.”

“I like that one waiter. You know, The Gay. He’s good regardless.”

“I can tell you right now that fat chick isn’t gonna work out. I don’t know what you were thinking with that one – damn, she’s frugly.”

“Keep an eye on that Sand Nigger. Make sure he doesn’t take anything. You know how they are.”

“Make sure the patio furniture is chained together every night, because if you don’t the Armenians will steal it. That’s what they do around here.”

“I expected more of you. From now on, I want to approve anyone you’re thinking about bringing on.”

And so it went. By the time he was through disapproving of and refusing to pay anyone who didn’t resemble his Anglo-prurient sensibilities, our turnover ratio during the first couple of months ran right at 70 percent. Like most racist fucks, his propensity to selectively target and pick on those he sensed were the least likely to fight back has thus far kept him from being sued or prohibited from employing anyone at all – as he should be.

Having a front seat as a witness to workplace discrimination and being able to prove it are two entirely different things, as navigating the law has often made discrimination the norm rather than the exception. Unfortunately, any pale-balled sploogewaffle with a sizable enough bank account can open a business and effectively abuse the people they employ as long as a lack of empiricism exists to put these fucktards out of business where they belong. There are situations that can happen in the workplace that are unfair, unjustified, demeaning and unpleasant. This however, does not make it unlawful discrimination. Discrimination in the workplace can be in your face and it can be hidden in the shadows. That’s what makes it so subtle, destructive and insidious.

Oh, fuck…I have an opening for a busboy and a qualified Buddaheaded-Chingchonged-Cameljockey just handed me his application. You’d think these people would learn…

This article was posted on Saturday, June 20th, 2020 at 8:58pm and is filed under Capitalism, Corruption, Discrimination, Employment, Labor, Opinion, Prejudice, Racism.

Movement politics is how the people flex their power, while electoral politics under the corporate duopoly is the domain of the moneyed classes.

— Glen Ford, Black Agenda  Report

While it’s myth that after the stock market crash of 1929, brokers pitched themselves off of tall buildings in Lower Manhattan (None did. A real buzz killer), there was an uptick in suicides among moguls by less dramatic means for a few years. Today, amidst the cascading bad economic news, investors seemingly have only two worries. First, that further waves of COVID-19 infections and deaths might sidetrack the economy’s  reopening and affect profits. The second is that procrastinators might be left behind — FOMO, the  Fear of Missing Out —as the market continues to rise. One thing that they’re not losing any sleep over is that working class consciousness is rising to the radical level of the 1930s when capitalism faced genuine peril.

In 2020, as in the 1930s, the economy is tanking, unemployment is at Great Depression levels with another 1.5 million workers having filed for  unemployment last week, Federal regulations (600+) having been dismantled, CEO compensation now at 287 times that of workers and of the 11 Fed financial bailouts, 10 went to Wall Street banks. Further, at the inception of the Covid-19 outbreak, over 70 percent of Americans were already living on the financial edge, with lifetime savings depleted, and home foreclosures multiplying. Now, many of the jobs losses are terminal, millions of stores remain shut down across the country, angry protesters throng the streets,  and an exceedingly grim future awaits most of the citizens.

Again, as in 1933, the Federal government is taking bold action. But instead of FDR’s New Deal, this time the decisive action entails a a $4.5 trillion bailout of emergency corporate lending, some pittance payments to workers, and ominous threats about the dire consequences of not returning to their jobs. What accounts for the difference in the government’s response then and now? I suggest that both responses were self-serving actions by the ruling elite and it’s to our peril not to understand that fact.

As I’ve noted previously, big tech companies have proven virtually immune to what’s happening in the economy inhabited by the rest of us.  The tech-heavy NASDAQ recently surpassed 10,000 before retreating and Amazon, Alphabet (Google) and Facebook are soaring. Apple and Microsoft recently became the first to reach $1.5 trillion market caps.  According to investment strategists,  the Fed’s maintaining low interest and inflation rates has been the magic elixir  for these  big tech companies.

Robert Armstrong, writing in The Financial Times (quoted in NYT, 6/11/2020) notes, in a strikingly nonchalant  manner,  that all of this is only more “evidence of an inherent and structural tension between the owning class and the working class.”  In the United States, where a small percentage owns most of the wealth, they reap the gains from a resurgent stock market. Thus, as Armstrong continues, “Covid-19 has put working-and-middle-class people under severe strain, while the asset-owning class have felt relatively little pain.”

The Great Depression’s Legacy: FDR’s Efforts to Save Capitalism

After the Great Crash of 1929, a broad spectrum of prominent American writers, artists, poets, playwrights, and painters offered enthusiastic support for socialist ideas. Concurrently, ordinary citizens were questioning the precepts of capitalism and the traditional U.S. political system. Breadlines, shantytowns and hunger marches were growing along with the growing appeal of left-wing class politics and labor radicalism. Unaffiliated groups were organizing self-help cooperatives and racially integrated Unemployed Councils, organized by Communists, were springing up. Protests blocking evictions were occurring in major cities, often involving violent confrontation with the police. From 1930-1932, over 700 actions by the unemployed were reported to the Communist party’s newspaper, the Daily Worker. (Note: The CP ultimately followed directives from the CP International in joining the “Popular Front” and supporting the New Deal.)

In an article titled, “How FDR Saved Capitalism,” the late, neoconservative political scientist and sociologist Seymour Martin Lipset lavished effusive praise on President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s conscious effort to blunt widespread anticapitalist sentiments and undercut the appeal of left-wing radicals.  At the time, left parties and associated movements emerged in Wisconsin, New York, California, Minnesota, Washington,Nebraska, Oregon, and North Dakota. In Minnesota, Governor Floyd Olson (Farmer-Labor Party) pioneered unemployment insurance, anti-foreclosure laws, public works programs, a pro-worker labor code and public pensions. In one speech he said, “I hope the present system of government goes right to hell” and proposed abolishing capitalism and establishing government control “over all means of production.”

FDR rejected radical politics but the New Deal was deeply influenced by the president’s keen awareness of needing to propose policies that would ween discontented workers away from demanding deep structural changes.The president employed three basic tactics: First, he was masterful in lifting and incorporating left demands into his rhetoric. Second, he sought to co-opt some leaders by extending patronage to non-Democratic Party state and local officials. Part of this involved setting aside references to the Democratic Party, per se, and frequently mentioning farmers, women, labor, minorities and liberals.  Finally, as part of his expedient and temporary tilt toward the left, FDR was not above disingenuously threatening that to save capitalism from itself it might be necessary to “equalize the distribution of wealth” and “throw to the wolves the forty-six men reputed to have incomes in excess of one million dollars.”

This was all presaged in his FDR’s first presidential inaugural address in 1933. Ira Katznelson, author of Fear Itself, a book celebrated by mainstream reviewers, wrote “A climate of universal fear deeply affected political understandings and concerns. Nothing was sure.”. In the fifth sentence of his  inaugural speech on March 4,1933, President Roosevelt uttered the famous phrase: “Let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” He then proceeded to blame the depression on “unscrupulous money changers” who lacked any vision. The president blamed “callous and selfish bankers and businessmen who persisted in engaging  in the “evils of the old order.”

While offering to work with legislators, FDR made clear that if Congress failed to act there would be a need for a “temporary departure from the normal balance of public procedure.” The president would seek “broad Executive power to wage a war against the emergency, as great as the power that would be given to me if if we were in fact invaded by a foreign foe.” Robert Morley, a law professor at Columbia, had created the original “Brain Trust” to advise Roosevelt during the 1932 presidential campaign. He was also  responsible for writing FDR’s inaugural address although the latter never acknowledged it. Later, Morley said that because of the speech, “Capitalism was saved in eight days.” Hyperbole aside, the critical point is that Katznelson and many other liberal historians agree that saving capitalism was a major objective of the New Deal and that some form of “liberal democracy” was the preferred means of accomplishing that end.

W.E.B. DuBois had hoped the incipient New Deal would be the opening, the first step toward socialism. However, by 1938, Roosevelt, perhaps concluding the threat had past, slowed his reforms and even proposed a traditional balanced budget. Tellingly, when the Recession of 1937-38 resulted in Republicans defeating several third party incumbents, FDR responded, “We have on the positive side eliminated Phil La Follete and the Farmer-Labor people in the Northwest as a standing Third Party threat.”

I trust that others, far better versed in the New Deal period will comment and  I’ll only suggest a line of inquiry that needs fleshing out: Unlike  today’s predator class, who’ve little to worry about, their counterparts in the 1930s had more to fear than “fear itself” — and acted accordingly. That is, “…the spectre that haunted the New Deal years … was the fear of the dominant class of a renewed populist  alliance —  this time strengthened by a more combative and a more mature industrial proletariat than had existed in the 1890s.  Liberal historian Arthur Schlesinger wrote of the moment, “It was now a matter of seeing whether a representative democracy could conquer economic collapse. It was a matter of staving off violence — even some thought — revolution.”

Many people now understand that spending on World World II was what “saved capitalism” but I suspect the myth that benevolent motives dominated New Deal thinking is still believed by many. Shedding further light on this matter should prove useful in clarifying and responding to both the diversions and opportunities awaiting us in the near future.

What about today?  Not “A few bad police apples,” but a Rotten Capitalist Tree

If polls are to be believed, a majority of the public agrees with the core positions put forth by Black LIves Matter and support the protests against police brutality. I’ve been encouraged by the fact that hundreds of thousands of young, white Millennials have been in the streets, often outnumbering black participants. For example, between 60-65 percent of the demonstrators in New York and Washington were white youth under age 34.

We are at a propitious moment and the critical question is whether the momentum of the protests will transition to a wider and deeper critique that extends beyond the police. We can be certain that efforts are forthcoming to co-opt BLM supporters with cosmetic, liberal palliatives and to divert protests into the cul-de-sac of identity politics, the most insidiously effective weapon in corporatocracy’s toolbox. Resisting these maneuvers will require a politically astute, creative, and sustained response.

Can we go further and explicitly explain that the police under capitalism can never be reformed to take the side of Black, Brown and working class people? All available evidence suggests that from their inception, the foremost function of the police has been to safeguard the capitalist private property of those who own and rule the country. As Chris Hedges recently pointed out, “The crisis we face is not, as the ruling elites want us to believe, limited to police violence. It is a class and generational revolt. It will not be solved by new police reforms. The problem is an economic and political system that has by design created a nation of serfs  and obscenely rich masters.”

A new mass political formation of people prepared to engage in widespread civil disobedience and face arrest, remains our only hope for secular salvation and much depends upon how we creatively reimagine making our case. It’s a daunting challenge and not the first time we’ve needed to take inspiration from Antonio Gramsci’s invocation: pessimism of the intellect; optimism of the will.

This article was posted on Friday, June 19th, 2020 at 7:47am and is filed under Activism, Capitalism, Civil Disobedience, Classism, Economy/Economics, Employment, History.

The pandemic, economic collapse and the government’s response to them are going to not only determine the 2020 election but define the future for this decade and beyond. People are seeing the failure of the US healthcare nonsystem and the economy. The government was able to provide trillions for big business and Wall Street without asking the usual, “Where will we get the money?” However, the rescue bill recently passed by Congress provides a fraction of what most people need to get through this period. Once again, a pandemic will reshape the course of history.

Last week, we wrote about the failings of the healthcare system and the need for a universal, publicly-funded system. This week, we focus on the need to change the US economic system. The economic crisis in the United States is breaking all records. The class war that has existed for decades is being magnified and sharpened. The failings of financialized, neoliberal capitalism is being brought into focus at a time when people in the United States have greater support for socializing the economy than in recent times.

This Thursday, there was a record 3.3 million applications for unemployment, an increase of three million from the previous week, but on the same day, there was a record rise in the stock market. This contradiction shows the divide between the economic insecurity of the people and investors profiting from the crisis. The 11.4 percent increase in the stock market on Thursday was the largest increase since 1933 while the record rise in unemployment was 40 percent higher than ever recorded. Projections are for 30 percent unemployment this quarter, which is five percent higher than the worst of the Great Depression.

The response to the economic crisis reveals who the government represents. While people’s economic insecurity grew, the government acted to primarily benefit the wealthiest. This realization should spur an uprising like the United States has never seen before. Perhaps the most dangerous to the ruling class is their incompetence has been exposed. As Glen Ford writes, “The capitalist ‘crisis of legitimacy’ may have passed the point of no return, as the Corporate State proves daily that it cannot perform the basic function of protecting the lives of its citizens.”

Disaster Aid: Crumbs For The People, Trillions For The Wealthiest

Congress unanimously passed a $1.6 trillion coronavirus disaster aid bill this week. This is almost equal to the 2009 Recovery Act and the 2008 Wall Street rescue combined. Democrat’s votes were essential to passing the bill so they could have demanded whatever they wanted. This bill shows the bi-partisan priority for big business.

The bill is too little too late for people who have lost their jobs and for small businesses that have been forced to close. The law includes a one-time $1,200 payment to most people. This payment will arrive after rent and other debt payments are due for a US population with record debt. Congress does not understand the economic realities of people in the United States. Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz explained what was needed saying, “The answer is we need no evictions, no foreclosures on all properties, and the government should guarantee pay.” In addition, credit card companies should also put “a stay on interest on all debt.”

When COVID-19 first began, we pointed out that the US healthcare system was not prepared to respond and showed the problems of putting profits before health. The COVID-19 rescue bill did not pay for coronavirus testing or treatment. Millions of people who lose their jobs will lose their health insurance, demonstrating why healthcare should not be tied to employment. Adding to health problems, the law did not increase the SNAP food program for the poor.

Roughly one-third of the funding goes to direct payments to people, unemployment insurance for four months, hospitals, veterans’ care, and public transit. Two-thirds go to government and corporations. Adam Levitin describes the law as “robbing taxpayers to bail out the rich.”

Congress allotted at least $454 billion to support big business in addition to $46 billion for specific industries, especially airlines. Some of these funds will also bail out the fossil fuel industry. According to the way the Federal Reserve operates, they will be allowed to spend ten times the amount Congress allocated to support big business, $4.5 trillion. Jack Rasmus writes that the Federal Reserve had already “allocated no less than $6.2 Trillion so far to bail out the banks and investors.” He summarizes the disparity: “Meanwhile Congress provides one-fourth that, and only one-third of that one fourth, for the Main St., workers, and middle-class families.”

Trump shows the disdain government has for the people and its favoritism for big business and investors as he objected to paying for 80,000 life-saving ventilators because they cost $1 billion while the government provides trillions to big business and investors. Governors and hospitals are issuing dire warnings of what is to come, but the federal government is not listening.

Economic Collapse Shows The Need For Transformational Change

The economic collapse is still unfolding. The US is already in a deep recession that is likely to be worse than the 2008 financial crisis and could develop into a greater depression if the COVID-19 economic shutdown lasts a long time.

Already, the crises, the government’s support for Wall Street and its failure to protect the 99% are creating louder demands for system change. We need to put forward a bold agenda and agitate around it to demand economic security for all. As Margaret Kimberly writes, we are entering a period of revolutionary change because we know returning to normal is “the opposite of what we need.” Or as Vijay Prashad says, “Normal was the problem.”

While the urgent health and economic crises dominate, the climate crisis also continues. The climate crisis already required replacing the fossil fuel era with a clean and sustainable energy economy and remaking multiple sectors of the economy such as construction, transportation, agriculture, and infrastructure. Now, out of these crises, a new sustainable economic democracy can be born where people control finance, inequality is minimized and workers are empowered, along with creating public programs that meet the necessities of the people and protect the planet.

The US Constitution gives the government the power to create money; Article I, Section 8 says: “The Congress shall have power … to coin money, regulate the value thereof, and of foreign coin.” Congress needs to take back that power so the government can create debt-free money. Currently, the Federal Reserve, which was created by Congress in 1913, is the privately-owned US central bank that produces money and sets interest rates. It puts the interests of the big banks first. The Fed can be altered, nationalized or even dismantled by Congress. Its functions could be put into the Department of the Treasury.

Monetary actions need to be transparent and designed to serve the necessities of the people and the planet. Money should be spent by the government into the economy to meet those needs while preventing inflation and deflation. In this way, the government would have the funds needed to transform to a green energy economy, rebuild infrastructure, provide education from pre-school through college without tuition, create the healthcare infrastructure we need for universal healthcare and more.  In addition, through a network of state and local public banks, people would be able to get cost-only mortgages and loans to meet their needs.

Moving money creation into the federal government would place it within the constitutional system of checks and balances where the people have a voice to ensure it works for the whole society, not only for the bankers and the privileged. This could end the parasitic private banking system and replace it with a democratic public system designed for the people’s needs as Mexico is doing.

Globalization must be reconsidered. Corporate globalization with trade agreements that favor corporate power is a root cause of this global pandemic. We need trade that puts people and the planet first and encourages local production of goods. This includes remaking agriculture to support smaller farms and urban farming using organic and regenerative techniques that increase the nutritional value of foods and sequester carbon.

What we need instead is popular globalization – developing solidarity and reciprocity between people around the world. We can learn from each other, collaborate and provide mutual aid in times of crisis as Cuba and other countries are doing now.

As businesses are bailed out by the government, they could be required to protect and empower workers. Workers’ rights have been shrinking since the 1950s as unions have become smaller and more allied with business interests. The right to collective bargaining needs to be included as a requirement for receiving government funds. For large public corporations, workers should be given a board seat, indeed the government should be given a board seat and an equity share in any corporation that is bailed out. For smaller businesses, as they reopen, it is an opportunity to restructure so worker ownership and workers sharing in the profits become the norm.

The US needs to build the economy from the bottom up. The era of trickle-down economics that has existed since the early 80s has failed most people in the United States. The government needs to create a full-employment economy with the government as the employer of last resort. The American Society of Civil Engineers gives US infrastructure a grade of D+ requiring a $2 trillion dollar investment that would create millions of jobs. The Green New Deal would create 30 million jobs over ten years according to the detailed plan put forward by the Green Party’s Howie Hawkins.

The coronavirus disaster aid includes a payment to every person in the US earning under $70,000. While the one-time $1,200 check is grossly insufficient, it demonstrates the possibility of a universal basic income. This would lift people out of poverty and protect them from the coming age of robots and artificial intelligence that will impact millions of existing jobs. The evidence is growing that a basic income works. A World Bank analysis of 19 studies found that cash transfers have been demonstrated to improve education and health outcomes and alleviate poverty

The United States economy is in a debt crisis that demands quantitative easing for the people. Personal, corporate and government debt is at a record high. While the economic collapse is being blamed on the coronavirus, the reality is that the pandemic was a trigger that led to a recession that was already coming. The US needs to correct those fundamentals — massive debt, a wealth divide, inadequate income, poverty — as part of restarting the economy. Just as the Fed has bought debts to relieve businesses of debt burden, it can do the same for the personal debts of people. We should start by ending the crisis of student debt, which is preventing two generations from participating in the economy. While we make post-high school vocational and college education tuition-free, we should not leave behind the generations suffering from high-priced education.

Rise-Up and Demand Change

To create change, people must demand it. Even before the coronavirus collapse, people were demanding an end to inequality, worker rights, climate justice, and improved Medicare for all, among other issues. In the last two years, the United States has seen record numbers of striking workers. The climate movement is blocking pipelines and infrastructure and shutting down cities. Protests against inequality and debt resistance have existed since the occupy movement.

Now, with the economic collapse, protests are increasing. It’s Going Down reports: “with millions of people now wondering how they are going to make ends meet and pay rent, let alone survive the current epidemic, a new wave of struggles is breaking out across the social terrain. Prisoners and detention center detainees are launching hunger strikes as those on the outside demand that they be released, tenants are currently pushing for a rent strike starting on April 1st, the houseless are taking over vacant homes in Los Angeles, and workers have launched a series of wildcat strikers, sick-outs, and job actions in response to being forced onto the front lines of the pandemic like lambs to the slaughter.”

Workers at the Fiat Chrysler Windsor Assembly Plant walked off the job over concerns about the spread of coronavirus. Pittsburgh garbage collectors refused to pick up trash because their health was not being protected. Chipotle employees walked off the job and publicly protested the company for allegedly penalizing workers who call in sick. Perdue employees in Georgia walked off their jobs on a production line over a wage dispute and management asked workers to put in extra hours without a pay increase during the pandemic. Some Whole Foods workers announced a collective action in the form of a “sick out,” with workers using their sick days in order to strike. In Italy, wildcat strikes erupted to demand that plants be closed for the duration of the virus. Postal workers in London took strike actions due to the risks of the virus.

The pandemic requires creativity in protest. Technology allows us to educate and organize online, as well as to protest, petition, email, and call. There have also been car marches, public transport drivers have refused to monitor tickets, collective messages have been sent from balconies and windows. People are showing they can be innovative to get our message across to decision-makers. We can also build community and strengthen bonds with mutual aid.

If the ownership class continues its call to re-open the economy despite the health risks, the potential of a general strike can become a reality. When Trump called for returning to work the hashtags #GeneralStrike and #GeneralStrike2020— calling on workers everywhere to walk off the job — began trending on Twitter. Rather than a strike against one corporation, people would strike across multiple businesses and could also include a rent and mortgage strike as well as a debt strike. The coronavirus has shown that essential workers are among the lowest-paid workers and that they make the economy function. We also understand that if people refuse to pay their debts or rent, the financial system will collapse. Understanding those realities gives a new understanding of the power of the people.

A general strike, as Rosa Luxembourg described it in 1906, is not ‘one isolated action” but a rallying call for a campaign of “class struggle lasting for years, perhaps for decades.” A general strike could take many forms, including a global day of action. Before the current crises, we saw the decade of the 2020s as a decade of potential transformational change because on multiple fronts movements were growing and demanding responses to an array of crises. Now, the triggers for the economic collapse could also be the trigger for transformational revolt.

We are all in this together. We are all connected and share a common humanity. If we act in solidarity during this time of crisis and in this decade of transformation, we can create the future we want to see for ourselves and future generations.

This article was posted on Monday, March 30th, 2020 at 10:00am and is filed under 2008 Financial Collapse, Banks/Banking, Capitalism, COVID-19 (coronavirus), Debt, Democrats, Donald Trump, Economy/Economics, Employment, Environment, Federal Reserve, Infrastructure, Medicare for All, Republicans, Social Movements, Unemployment, Unions, Universal Basic Income, US Congress, Wall Street.

Every attempt at creating a socialist let alone communist society has incurred the bloody violent wrath of the capitalist world, beginning with the Paris Commune of the 19th century, extending to the Soviet Union and China in the twentieth, and continuing to the present when truly electoral democratic attempts at revolutionary transformation in places like Nicaragua, Venezuela and Bolivia are met with external warfare in the form of sanctions and foreign financing of internal opposition reducing populations having finally achieved balanced diets for the first time in their lives to not only scrounging for survival but living under threat of military invasion for doing so.

While this minority created imperial policy that views the world as subject renter and American wealth as royal owner will soon be replaced by real democracy if it doesn’t destroy everything in its process of failing, attempts at creating what is called a “sharing” economy are made by well meaning souls trying to take the merchant relationship away by replacing it with person to person deals, as in the ancient markets which offered humanity a place to bargain as equals. But making a deal with someone at a flea market or neighborhood swap doesn’t really amount to a social change, just as a private non-profit hardly transforms market forces. The non-profit results from massive tax write-offs for the rich making donations that insure their system remains strong, and the innocent personal bartering that takes place among well meaning people is no comparison to a truly collective worker owned democratically controlled enterprise. We might as well claim that McDonalds is “sharing” its burgers and fries with us, as Tesla is “sharing” its autos, General Dynamics “shares” its weapons, and documented pharma and undocumented dope dealers “share” their drugs. The market still rules and it remains under the ownership and control of minority wealth, with the number of dollars they command at a peak never before seen in the history of humanity. The Roman Empire’s wealth amounted to chump change compared to the trillions of dollars owned and controlled by a tiny handful of global, mostly American billionaires.

A philosopher teaching the social values of the capitalist market and calling them democratic is like a pimp teaching social values of the sex market and calling it love, or an economist doing a cost-benefit analysis of dating that skips the expense of dinner and a movie and gets right to the rape. Under the control of such market forces, unless you are the philosopher, the economist or the rapist, ultimately you get screwed. Unfortunately, it is most of the world that has been criminally abused, but rising populations of workers are demanding and taking action for radical change to transform reality before it transforms all of us into lonely souls screeching and tweeting “me-me” while all collapses around “us”.

A real sharing economy will be cooperative, not competitive, involving majority social behavior, not individually imposed anti-social-ism promoted as beneficial for all when it only rewards some at the expense of the many. And too much that passes for “progressive” politics is like the “progressive” tax system which takes far more from the vast majority while rewarding the ruling class of fantastic wealth all manner of deductions, write-offs and constitutionally sanctioned criminality that makes them richer and the rest poorer. That is regressive, not progressive, using words that have nothing to do with the actions, which speak much louder. We need radical economic changes like a 20-hour workweek at a $20 an hour minimum wage, free public transit, worker owned and controlled businesses, public banks, health care for all, and far more. At cries of “how can we afford that? made by the innocent and ignorant under the control of their slick manipulators, try this: Stop spending trillions on war and instead spend it on life. Duh? But, all those jobs will vanish. How will those workers survive? With better jobs that serve humanity – their “identity group” – the environment, and their personal and social lives. Double duh?

We can defend our nation, if such is needed, with a truly defense force that does not involve spending hundreds of billions to place our military in foreign locales. We can save lots of transportation dollars by staying the hell out of other people’s national, political and economic business unless trading with them on a fair, non-superior market forces arrangement but one that treats everyone as having the same rights of pursuit of life and liberty, but in reality instead of just rhetorically.

If we truly mean to aid foreign people in a time of need, we can do it the way Cuba does by sending doctors, nurses and medical equipment at a time of plague or disease, and not the way we’ve always done it by sending bombs, guns and bullets to help prevent looting. And to the really ignorant bordering on stupid charges that we can’t afford to offer our entire population health care under public control because taxes will have to increase: For the rich? Of course. But even if working people see a tax increase of $500, and a health care expense decrease of $1,000, unless their education has exclusively been at private schools, they can see that represents a savings of money, not a loss.

Attempts to transform economic reality have always been, at their core, to establish a class free society of truly equal citizens, with no survival aspect of life denied anyone because it is not affordable. The shame of people living in the street in a society that spends trillions on war and billions on pets should relieve us of any fear of a judgmental, righteous, vindictive Old Testament god. We’d have been wiped out by such a deity, with holocausts, earthquakes, tsunamis and worse until he-she-it was finally rid of us. But our problem is not a deity, nor even the corona virus, which may be a threat to some of us, but  the capitalist virus is a threat to all humanity.

The Sanders campaign is the American equivalent of the growing global demand that ends the hypocrisy of calling minority electoral rule of the rich by the name democracy and using media and political hired help to plant that idiotic notion more deeply into public consciousness.  It wont work anymore. Real democracy means choosing the greater good, not the lesser evil which is the usual choice for the minority that has voted in the past. Hopefully, a majority will show up at the polls and vote for humanity in the majority, contradicting the minority shapers of what passes for conscious reality and beginning the transformation of the nation, in accordance with what is going on all over the world, from a selfish, anti-social and anti-human environment, to one of mutual aid, social justice, peace, and for the first time in human history, rule of the majority. The beginning of that pro-social democracy is dependent on the end of anti-social capitalism.

<p class="postmeta">This article was posted on Monday, March 2nd, 2020 at 12:22pm and is filed under <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/category/bernie-sanders/" rel="category tag">Bernie Sanders</a>, <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/category/capitalism/" rel="category tag">Capitalism</a>, <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/category/labor/co-operatives/" rel="category tag">Co-operatives</a>, <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/category/democrats/" rel="category tag">Democrats</a>, <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/category/economics/" rel="category tag">Economy/Economics</a>, <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/category/elitism/" rel="category tag">Elitism</a>, <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/category/labor/employmrent/" rel="category tag">Employment</a>, <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/category/environment/" rel="category tag">Environment</a>, <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/category/media/fake-news/" rel="category tag">Fake News</a>, <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/category/healthmedical/medicare-for-all/" rel="category tag">Medicare for All</a>, <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/category/militarism/" rel="category tag">Militarism</a>, <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/category/labor/minimum-wage/" rel="category tag">Minimum Wage</a>, <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/category/opinion/" rel="category tag">Opinion</a>, <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/category/language/propaganda/" rel="category tag">Propaganda</a>, <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/category/ruling-elite/" rel="category tag">Ruling Elite</a>, <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/category/labor/unions/" rel="category tag">Unions</a>, <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/category/labor/wage/" rel="category tag">Wage</a>, <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/category/militarism/weaponry/" rel="category tag">Weaponry</a>, <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/category/militarism/weaponry/weapons-sales/" rel="category tag">Weapons Sales</a>, <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/category/labor/working-class-labor/" rel="category tag">Working Class</a>.


This article originally appeared on ProPublica.

Some 55,000 motorists will regain their right to drive this year after Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker signed legislation Friday that ends the practice of suspending licenses over unpaid parking tickets.

The law, known as the License to Work Act, goes into effect in July.

“Tens of thousands of Illinoisans lose their licenses each year for reasons that have nothing to do with their ability to drive,” Pritzker said at a news conference on Chicago’s West Side, an area of the city that’s been heavily hit by ticket debt and license suspensions. “If you’re living below or near the poverty line and you’re looking at a choice between your unpaid parking tickets or your kids’ medicine or your family’s next meal, well, that’s no choice at all.”

The new law ends license suspensions for a number of non-moving violations, including the largest category: unpaid parking, standing and vehicle compliance tickets. Previously, 10 unpaid tickets from those categories could trigger a suspension.

Friday’s bill signing caps the end of a three-year effort by a coalition of advocates who have argued that limiting impoverished residents’ ability to drive makes it difficult for many of them to get to work, much less pay off their ticket debt.

The issue gained traction after a February 2018 investigation by ProPublica Illinois found Chicago’s ticketing and debt collection practices disproportionately hurt black motorists, sending thousands of them into bankruptcy. Filing for bankruptcy was more affordable, ProPublica Illinois found, than signing up for onerous ticket payment plans. Bankruptcy also allows motorists to get their licenses reinstated and regain possession of impounded vehicles.

In a subsequent analysis, ProPublica Illinois found that license suspensions tied to ticket debt disproportionately affected motorists in largely black sections of Chicago and its suburbs. Later, ProPublica Illinois collaborated with WBEZ Chicago and found a variety of problems, including geographic disparities and duplicative ticketing, tied to violation for vehicles that lacked a city sticker.

State Sen. Omar Aquino, a Chicago Democrat, said the reporting “shed the light on how, unfortunately, there were some practices in our own state that we should’ve been embarrassed about.” Advocates leading the demand for reform at the state level include the Chicago Jobs Council, Woodstock Institute, American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois, Heartland Alliance and Americans for Prosperity-Illinois.

Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, who campaigned on ending the city’s regressive system of fines and fees, has already ushered in a number of reforms, including debt relief, reducing some penalties, changing payment plans and ending the practice of seeking license suspensions over unpaid parking tickets. City Clerk Anna Valencia, one of the first public officials to publicly call for reforms, said Friday she plans to continue to push for more changes.

The change to state law couldn’t come soon enough, said Stephen Carpenter, a 38-year-old from Chicago who had been considering filing for bankruptcy for months. Carpenter’s license was suspended about two years ago over unpaid parking tickets. On Friday, he said he’d accrued about $19,000 in ticket debt, mostly for expired plates citations, in the southwest suburb of Palos Hills. He relies on rides from his wife or rideshare services, which he estimates costs him upward of $300 a month.

He called the legislation a “light at the end of the tunnel” and said he now won’t file for bankruptcy. “If I would have [done] that, that would prevent me from getting a house in two years the way we were planning to do,” said Carpenter, who fears ruining his credit. “I’m going to toughen it out until [the law goes into effect].”

The law does not address license suspensions for debt tied to red-light or speed camera tickets; five unpaid camera tickets can trigger a license suspension. Advocates said Friday they are considering proposing legislation to also end those suspensions. A June 2018 Woodstock Institute report found that motorists from low-income and minority communities receive a disproportionate share of red-light camera tickets.

Asked whether he would consider legislation to end license suspensions for camera ticket debt, Pritzker said the issue was “absolutely worthy of consideration. We have to look at the information and make sure we’re doing it in the right way.”