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Category: poverty

  • 31 days later and Truss makes Johnson look like a genius

    Just over a month has passed since the Tory party made Liz Truss prime minister. And, it’s been hell on earth for everyone involved – including her. She has lurched from one crisis to another as the UK falls apart. But how bad is it really? And what has gone on in the past month that you may have missed? The Canary takes a look at 31 days of the new PM – where she’s made Boris Johnson look like a genius.

    Climate chaos

    The Tories installed Truss on 6 September. Now, as of the 7 October, the UK is facing pre-planned energy blackouts this winter, even after Truss said during the Tory leadership race that she wouldn’t let that happen. The National Grid has warned that due to capitalism’s fossil fuel crises, it may have to impose three-hour intentional power cuts on “pre-defined periods during a day”.  The news comes after Truss repeatedly lied about energy bills, saying her £2,500 ‘cap’ was the most households would pay – a claim groups like Full Fact repeatedly corrected. She even stopped the new king, Charles Windsor, going to the Cop27 climate summit – weaponising the climate and ecological crisis for her own, climate crisis-denial agenda when our planetary boundaries are collapsing and we’re in the midst of the Holocene (sixth) extinction event – which started at the end of the last ice age but has been turbocharged by human activity.

    Under Truss’s leadership the state is already continuing the drift to far-right authoritarianism. Madeleine Budd could face 18 months in jail after pouring human faeces over a memorial to Tom Moore. She admitted criminal damage and a judge denied her bail. The sentence seems ridiculous – and as the Canary‘s Joe Glenton alluded to – if Budd had poured the faeces into a river she probably would have gotten away with it. Because under Truss water companies have continued to violate the environment by pumping raw sewage into our rivers and seas.

    Economic chaos

    Truss has continued with the Tory policy of freeports – but upped the capitalism stakes by changing them to “investment zones” (onshore tax havens to the rest of us). This encapsulates her neoliberal approach to economic policy – with hers and chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng’s mini-budget nearly causing a financial catastrophe. After the Tories announced the package, the value of the pound collapsed, mortgage lenders pulled countless rates, and the Bank of England had to step in to save pension funds. But that wasn’t the end of it, even after Truss’s now-infamous U-turn. By Thursday 6 October the pound sunk again against the dollar after a credit rating agency warned of further problems with the UK economy.

    All this is without Truss’s other potential policies which could have disastrous consequences for the poorest people. As the Canary previously reported, her government is planning to cut social security in real-terms next April. Johnson’s government had already indicated it would increase benefits by around 10%. Now, Truss wants to change how April 2023’s rise is worked out – and track it to pay rises. This would mean social security would only go up by around 5.4% – which is a real-terms cut. Think tank the Resolution Foundation says this would mean households could see up to £500 a year wiped-off their incomes. This is on top of years of real-terms cuts Tory governments have already meted out.

    Truss: worse than Johnson?

    Director of campaign group Global Justice Now Nick Dearden summed the situation up. He wrote for Al Jazeera that:

    It might be hard for those outside Britain to believe we now have a worse government than that of Johnson. But we do. Johnson was deceitful, venal and incompetent but, in his desire to stay in power, he spent money. He knew it was popular. In fact, it was this lack of adherence to free market principles, as much as the shambolic nature of his government, that turned the Conservative Party membership against him.

    Dearden makes an interesting point. Previous Tory leaders were not neoliberal in the true sense of the word. David Cameron’s brand of capitalism was very much a globalist corporatism – where companies hold power over government, and the government therefore acts in their interests. Looking back, there was unease at this at the time from those that are now closest to Truss’s administration. For example, controversial think tank the Institute for Economic Affairs (IEA) criticised Cameron’s MO in 2011  – comparing him to Ted Heath and even Tony Benn. Theresa May then took a more moderate line of capitalism.

    But Johnson trashed all of this, as Dearden noted – and now we see the free market ideologues in charge. Truss’s agenda is in many ways more extreme than Johnson’s. Because even he realised shrinking the state and slashing public spending during a socioeconomic crisis was far-right conservatism too far. Of course, the current so-called cost of living crisis is now affecting the middle classes, hence the uproar. But even angering ‘Middle England‘ hasn’t discouraged Truss. After all, her ideology is so extreme that the middle classes are expendable, too.

    Classism, the Truss way

    This will not end well. Truss has infuriated mainstream corporate capitalists – to the point where even the nation-destroying International Monetary Fund (IMF) sounds moderately reasonable. Her economic policies are classism on steroids – designed to create a society of the dazzlingly rich versus the destitute, disposable poor, with everyone else in between simply ‘getting by’. Truss will be a disaster – and make Johnson look positively reasonable. Make no mistake, though – contrary to some opinions, she is not “incompetent“. Because if you look at her approach to economics – and therefore by default her approach to social security, the climate crisis, and criminal justice – it reveals what actually drives her to make decisions which seem ludicrous to most people.

    Her unfettered free market neoliberalism is ideological. Truss is a conservative who’s socially authoritarian, but her economics are that of libertarianism, by all accounts. She believes society should be free to do what it wants; people can get as rich as they desire – but only if she approves of their views. This of course includes a disdain for poor and marginalised people – because under Truss’s worldview it’s their fault they’re that way. The problem she’s faced is that this ideology is too extreme for the system (hence interventions from the likes of the IMF). Its proponents rely on the system seeming “human” or “inclusive” to get buy-in from most of the population. And Truss’s brand of worldview is neither of these things.

    The Financial Times posited that the Tories were now the most economically right-wing political party in the so-called “developed world”. So, like we saw with Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour on the other end of the political spectrum, the system will attempt to crush Truss, too – hence her breakneck speed U-turn on tax cuts for the rich. She’s too neoliberal even for corporate capitalists.

    No-one is coming to save us

    Of course, the obvious problem with all of this is that no-one is coming to save us. Labour is dead; the SNP will evacuate the United Kingdom as soon as it can, and the Green party are still on the fringes. Even with Labour’s current polling, under our system, the party may still not win a majority – due to boundary changes that favour the Tories and the SNP’s strength in Scotland. And if they did, Keir Starmer’s brand of politics would still be a disaster for us all.

    After just a month in charge, Truss has shown the hell that is facing most of us. So, the fight against both her and the system has to continue from our communities and organisations – it just needs stepping up several more gears, now.

    Featured image via PoliticsJOE – YouTube 

    By Steve Topple

    This post was originally published on Canary Workers’ Co-op.

  • New report finds renters are ‘broke, cold and stressed’

    A new report has found that “overwhelming numbers” are “struggling with high rents and large rent increases, with profound impacts for their health”. Isaac Nellist reports.

    This post was originally published on Green Left.

  • This man wants to give $1,000 to every poor person on Earth – but could his plan really work?

    By: Will Brown 

    More than a trillion aid dollars have been pumped into the continent since the 1960s. Famines have been averted. Hundreds of millions have been vaccinated. Yet the total number of Africans surviving on less than $1.90 a day has hovered around 400 million for about 40 years. 

    But could the solution have been staring us in the face the whole time? Could we get rid of the white United Nations 4x4s, arcane development plans dreamt up in Western capitals and concentrate on one thing: giving poor people money?  

    Rory Stewart, former UK cabinet minister and one-time Conservative leadership contender, thinks so. He has just been appointed President of GiveDirectly, an American NGO trying to shake the foundations of the aid world.  

    “Instead of giving a tent to people in poverty, which they sell for cash to buy what they want, or moving wheat halfway around the world from a farmer in Idaho, we’re actually letting people determine what their needs are,” Mr Stewart tells The Telegraph in Kilifi, a drought-stricken county in southern Kenya.  

    GiveDirectly’s pitch is as radical as it is simple. They argue that if you give every family in an impoverished community a no-strings-attached one-time payment of $1,000 (£865) – roughly four days’ salary for a typical UN staffer – you can transform their lives for the better in almost every way.  

    “Cash has this magic multiplier effect. It gets the general economy going,” says Stewart. “It allows people to buy a roof for their homes. “A cash donation lets people get a cow which produces milk and gives calcium to their kids. It lets them set up a small business or get their children through school. It improves their diets, so they’ll have fewer sick days,” he says.  

    There is a quiet revolution couched in his words. For half a century, the aid industry has revolved around legions of Western expatriates, with fancy master’s degrees, parachuting into far-off places to tell locals what they need to get out of poverty.

    ‘Now I have some dignity’

    UN agencies and NGOs will sometimes play dazzling accounting tricks that give the illusion that most of their donations go directly to those in need. But ineffective projects, huge overheads for contractors and dodgy officials often suck up resources, leading to widespread disillusionment among rank and file humanitarians. 

    Stewart, who was Secretary of State for International Development in 2019, is damning in his criticism of patronising attitudes in the aid sector. “We dress it up in fancy words like best practice and capacity building. But basically, ‘best practice’ means we know what’s best. And ‘capacity building’ means we need to teach you what to do. And then if you fail, we say there’s a lack of ‘political will’. In other words, you’re lazy,” he says. “At some level, these are fancy jargon words for suggesting that communities in Asia or Africa are ignorant, unskilled and idle.” 

    By effectively cutting out the highly paid middlemen, GiveDirectly claims that its work has a better bang for its buck than almost any other intervention. But many national governments are cautious of the idea. The international community has already been sold many dud silver bullets and giving out cash to poor people is not a popular political decision. Could this really work on a grand scale?  

    Five years ago, almost everyone in the Mgandamwani village lived in fragile, leaky huts. There was no electricity and women used to walk three hours a day to the nearest reservoir to get water. Most men earned a pittance – £3.50 to £7 – working the occasional hard labour job in town.  

    Villagers say their lives transformed overnight when they received $1,000 on their mobile money accounts. They got local builders to get tin roofs, concrete floors, solar panels and lights so their children could read in the evening. Some young men went on training courses to become electricians or welders. Three middle-aged women – Kanze, Dama and Kadzo – pooled their cash together to lay water piping in the village for the first time. 

    “It’s the genius of the market. It’s very pure market economics,” says Stewart excitedly after coming back from seeing a new herd of goats.

    “Most people in extreme poverty have spent their entire lives thinking about what they would do if they got a bit of money and they can get it much cheaper than we can.” 

    Broader research backs up the improvements at Mgandamwani. A major study by academics at the Universities of California San Diego and Georgetown found that a simple $500 transfer reduced the child mortality rate by 70 per cent and improved child growth. A review of seven studies in Africa found that cash transfers reduced risky sexual behaviour, increased the use of antenatal care and increased the likelihood of having a nurse on site when a woman gave birth.

    The villagers in Mgandamwani are all still brutally poor on a level almost unimaginable to anyone in Britain. But that’s not how recipients see it.

    “I spent all the money on my house,” says Zawadi Kitsao, an illiterate woman who is probably much older than the 36 years written on her ID card.

    “Before, I didn’t even have a door on my house for privacy. Now I have some dignity,” she says as she walks around her newly constructed breeze block home. 

    One fear many critics of cash payments have is that men will end up spending the money on drugs, alcohol and cigarettes. While this happens in some isolated cases, researchers say this is a tired cliche and that most people seize the opportunity to change their lives for the better. But several broader problems remain. Most countries where GiveDirectly have been working are stable and relatively law-abiding. 

    It is hard to see how the lean NGO can guarantee security for cash recipients in war-ravaged nations like South Sudan, where whole villages are sometimes taken hostage for the money stored on their digital mobile wallets. The next problem is one of scale. 

    Since the organisation was founded by four students at Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2008, they have reached more than 300,000 households with large payments across Liberia, Kenya, Malawi, Rwanda and Uganda. Could the massive investment of liquid cash cause rampant inflation? 

    The answer is not entirely clear, although Stewart cites economic modelling showing that you would need to dump about 20 per cent of GDP to have a serious impact on inflation. Many aid workers still need to be convinced. But in some ways, it is easy to see why the simple idea of giving people cash has faced so much resistance. 

    “It’s difficult. It’s not just that people are selfish; it’s psychological. People have dedicated their whole life to the idea that they have a unique set of knowledge and skills and that they are necessary to save people,” says Stewart. “If you have to confront the fact that actually the villagers have a better idea about what they need than you do, your whole life is called into question.”

    This post was originally published on Basic Income Today.

  • 1 Person Dies of Hunger Every 4 Seconds

    An open letter signed by over 200 humanitarian groups calls on world leaders at the United Nations General Assembly to urgently take action on world hunger, citing that one person dies of hunger every four seconds. We speak with Abby Maxman, president and CEO of Oxfam America, one of the letter’s signatories, who just returned from Somaliland, where a famine may be declared as early as next month. Climate change, COVID and conflicts such as the war in Ukraine are largely to blame for rising hunger, she says, and “those who are the least responsible are suffering its worst impacts.”

    TRANSCRIPT

    This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

    AMY GOODMAN: One person is dying of hunger every four seconds. That’s the warning from a coalition of humanitarian groups, who say global hunger is spiraling out of control. Oxfam, Save the Children and other groups say 345 million people are now experiencing acute hunger — double the number from 2019. Humanitarian groups from 75 countries sent an open letter to world leaders and high-level diplomats gathering this week for the United Nations General Assembly here in New York Ciy. This is the first U.N. General Assembly since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and a key meeting Tuesday focused on how the war is contributing to skyrocketing levels of hunger. This is the U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

    SECRETARY OF STATE ANTONY BLINKEN: At the outset of 2022, conflicts, COVID-19, the effects of the climate crisis had already driven more than 190 million people into acute food insecurity. According to the World Food Programme, President Putin’s brutal war of aggression in Ukraine may add 70 million people on top of that — an already staggering number becoming even more staggering.

    AMY GOODMAN: This comes as the United Nations is warning of a looming famine in Somalia, where a searing drought fueled by the climate crisis has withered crops, killed livestock and left nearly 8 million people, or half of Somalia’s population, in need of humanitarian assistance. The U.N. says millions more are at risk of hunger and famine across East Africa, including Kenya and Ethiopia.

    For more on the world hunger emergency, we’re joined in New York by Abby Maxman, president and CEO of Oxfam America. She recently returned from a trip to Somaliland, where a famine may be declared as early as October. Oxfam is one of the signatories to an open letter submitted by over 200 NGOs to world leaders this week, calling on them to take immediate action.

    Welcome to Democracy Now!, Abby Maxman. Can you start off by laying out the scope of the problem and what you’re calling for?

    ABBY MAXMAN: Thanks so much, Amy. Good to be with you.

    Having just returned from Somaliland last week, I’m able to connect what we’re seeing in the lived, real lives of people and how they’re affected, and connect them with those global numbers you already outlined. Three hundred and forty-five million people are facing extreme hunger as a result of that confluence of climate, COVID and conflict — and that number, in and of itself, 345 million people, more than the entire population of the United States, and this in the 21st century.

    Now, we know that we have been calling the alarm for several years. And we’ve had used our early-warning systems to trigger, to show — that have showed drought has continued to erode the lives and livelihoods of pastoralist and agropastoralist communities. Someone I saw in Somaliland, the stories were very similar. A woman named Safia, mother of eight, divorcée, who had stayed in her community as long as she could over the past several years, and ultimately went to a displaced persons camp near Burao called Durdur after she had lost 90% of her livestock. And hyenas were literally circling her family and her community as the livestock weakened. They had no choice but to move.

    What is so egregious about this is the cause of this is climate change. The increasing frequency and ferocity of intense climatic shocks, droughts, floods and heat waves, that we’re observing from Pakistan to Puerto Rico and, of course, across East Africa, are evidenced in all of the news. But we know it’s people like Safia and the 74-year-old farmer who said this is the worst drought he has ever seen in his lifetime, they are down to one meal a day. And they need and deserve our help.

    JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Abby Maxman, you mentioned conflict, as well. To what degree has the Russian invasion of Ukraine affected the food supply, especially to the Global South? And also, to what degree, from your sense, is it the corporations taking advantage of situations? We see the secretary-general mentioning oil companies or energy companies exploiting the current crises. Your sense of these two things — the conflict between Russia and Ukraine and general super profits sought by some international companies?

    ABBY MAXMAN: Yeah, Juan, thanks for pointing those two things out. Yes, the war in Ukraine has exacerbated an already dire situation. The economic consequences of COVID and the climate crisis have been supercharged by the war in Ukraine. Prices have gone up exorbitantly. And people in Somaliland who I was talking to and seeing were spending more than 90% — 90% — of their income on food just to survive, and they were using coping strategies, down to one and two meals a day. That just is one anecdote of many about the impacts, direct and indirect, of the global crisis and conflict and its impact on those in East Africa and Somaliland.

    Your point on fossil fuel profit and others, it can’t be understated. It is extraordinary that as humanity faces this existential crisis of climate, that there is still more incentive by fossil fuel companies to destroy our planet and people than to save lives and to save the planet. Now, we know that the oil and gas industry has enjoyed staggering profits as they have wrought havoc on the planet. They’ve been amassing $2.8 billion a day. That’s more than a trillion dollars a year over the last 50 years. And just let me contrast that against the fact that 18 days of fossil companies’ profit could cover the entire U.N. humanitarian appeal for 2022, which has been woefully underfunded.

    JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And you also mentioned that you were in Somaliland recently. Particularly, could you talk about the situation in Africa? Obviously, there are major conflicts still raging there, especially in Ethiopia. Your sense of the impact of those regional conflicts in terms of hunger and poverty in Africa?

    ABBY MAXMAN: Yeah, Juan. Well, that confluence of those toxic three Cs — COVID, climate, conflict — are just supercharging the situation. And those who are least responsible are suffering its worst impacts. So, we need to make sure — we know that when humanitarian access is limited, that exacerbates people’s lives and livelihoods and the ability to get basics of their human rights — food, shelter, water, safety, protection. So, that is part of the cocktail, if you will, the toxic one, that people who — are experiencing, people like the countless pastoralists who are facing existential crisis to their lives, livelihoods, and that of their ancestors. They have rights and dignity that we need to protect and support in crisis. And the international community has a responsibility and a moral duty to act. And this week, in New York, around the U.N. General Assembly, we are calling on those in power, member states and policymakers, to take action now.

    We need to do three big things. Save lives — and there’s a number of ways of doing that: make sure we resource the humanitarian appeals and get the resources to people who need them, support local organizations, women-led organizations. Second, we need to build resilience. We cannot repeat this pattern of pulling resources to respond to crises that we know are coming. And we need to invest in both now. It’s an investment in the future. It’s an investment in protection. It’s an investment in promoting lives and livelihoods and dignity. And third, we need to invest in that future, beyond the resilience. We need to double climate adaptation funds. We need to make sure that special drawing rights are modified so that countries are relieved from debt and debt burden. And we need to fund nutrition and other fundamental issues that need to be supported at this time.

    AMY GOODMAN: Let me ask you about the growing inequality in the world and how this relates to the crisis of hunger around the world. According to a report just released by the investment bank Credit Suisse, the number of “ultra-high-net-worth” individuals, UHNW people, also increased exponentially last year to a record 218,200. Can you comment on this extraordinary rise in wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, while hundreds of millions are dying from hunger and hunger-related causes? And how must this be addressed?

    ABBY MAXMAN: It must be addressed. And I appreciate there’s an acronym now, UHNW, though that’s sad, a sad fact that that needs to be called out. This is a failure in our economic system, a system that is broken and serving a privileged few. It’s not — it’s immoral, it’s wrong, and there’s an opportunity to fix it. It’s not happening by chance. It’s happening intentionally by those in power and political capture and those who are wreaking profits to benefit themselves.

    There can be an opportunity to have a global wealth tax, to ensure that fossil fuel companies’ profits can be fairly taxed so that things like the U.N. humanitarian appeals, at a minimum, are funded. This is — nobody suffers. This is a race to the bottom versus a race to the top. And extreme inequality is harmful to all of society and all of humanity. It is very frustrating, it makes me very angry, to hear that, “Oh, there are no resources. That’s why we cannot save lives, build resilience and invest in the future.” That is not accurate. In the 21st century, there are enough resources to ensure the integrity and dignity of people’s lives and livelihoods and a more equal world. And there’s an opportunity to end extreme inequality by changing this failing economic system.

    AMY GOODMAN: Well, Abby Maxman, we thank you so much for being with us, president and CEO of Oxfam America, recently returned from a trip to Somaliland, where a famine may be declared as early as October.

    Next up, Adnan Syed has been freed after spending 23 years behind bars. His case gained international attention when it was the subject of the podcast Serial. We’ll speak with the first attorney to represent him. Stay with us.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • UK: Fragmentation and Decline Under Conservative Rule

    After 12 bleak years of various Conservative governments, led by inadequate Prime Ministers, the UK is on its knees. Democracy is under attack like never before; the disaster of Brexit, which has resulted in a catalogue of negatives including social polarization, isolationism and rabid tribalism.

    Years of grinding austerity, underinvestment in public services, frozen wages and staggering levels of incompetence have culminated in the unmitigated mess we see before us: A country in terminal decline, poverty growing, inequality entrenched, and  to cap it all The Wicked Witch of the raving Right, Liz Truss, has now been elected leader of the Conservatives, and, as they are in office, the new Prime Minister. A totally undemocratic electoral process, but hey, ‘that’s the way it’s always been’.

    She was voted in, in a country of around 69 million people, by 81,326 (57.4% of the total gaggle) Conservative members. A tiny group, overwhelmingly old, posh, white, male, anti-Europe, anti-immigrant, anti-environment – pro-fossil fuels, backward-looking nationalists. A crazy bunch operating within  a dysfunctional system that, like much of the UK parliamentary structure and the primordial electoral model, desperately needs reforming.

    The revolting campaign rhetoric spouted by Truss, was we hoped, just that, ranting rhetoric aimed solely at the conservative golf club nobs. Alas, in her first pronouncements as PM, surrounded by baying Tory sycophants, it was clear that Truss lives not in the real world at all, but in a crumbling castle for one, built on a foundation of Neo-Liberal doctrine, situated further to the right than any UK Prime-Minister in recent years.

    Despite decades of disappointment, whenever a new PM/government takes office, naivety gives rise to a prickle of optimism: surely now things will improve, surely social justice will be prioritized, peace and environmental action imperatives. Well, PM Truss swiftly crushed any such childish hopes with her first speech in parliament and her wooden responses during Prime Minister’s Questions. Arrogance masquerading as certainty imbued every cruel statement of policy intent, and, as opposition parties shook their heads in disbelief, people around the country, millions of whom are struggling to pay rising energy bills and increased food prices, were again crushed.

    Truss, her cabinet, and thanks to a purge of moderate voices undertaken by Boris Johnson to quieten dissent, most, if not all of the parliamentary party, is now firmly wedded to an extreme version of Neo-Liberalism and the failed doctrine of Trickle Down economics. After forty years of most boats being sunk by the rising tide, the Ideology of Injustice has been shown to deepen inequality, intensify poverty and further concentrate wealth in the pockets of The Already Wealthy.

    In addition to economic plans designed to benefit corporations and, by her own admission, intensify inequality (‘I’m not interested in re-distribution’ she told the BBC), she plans to increase military spending, allow global energy companies to restart gas extraction in the North Sea, end the moratorium on fracking and abolish green levies, which are used to fund energy efficiency and renewable electricity. She despises labor rights and the Trades Union movement, peaceful public protest and immigrants, all of which she is threatening to criminalize or clutter with so much bureaucracy as to make such human rights unenforceable.

    Her policies, dogmatism and the doctrine that underpin them are, in many ways, terrifying. And with the  suspension of parliament and consequently, any form of scrutiny, resulting from the death of The Queen, there is a danger, or for her, an opportunity, that she attempts to introduce legislation under cover of national mourning. If Truss and her gang get their way, the limited form of democracy that exists in the UK will become a distant memory, rather as ethics and honesty in public office, compassion and honoring international commitments have in recent years.

    Rising misery

    The list of national crises that the Truss government inherits, most if not all of which she had a grubby hand in causing, is long, and growing. As is public anger. It is a list resulting from ideological obsession, gross incompetence and absenteeism.

    The National Health Service (NHS) is in crisis – years  of underfunding, lack of training and Brexit, which saw thousands of NHS workers from Europe leave the UK, have led to around 135,000 vacancies, including 40,000 nurses and over 8,000 doctors in England alone. The service has the longest waiting lists for routine treatments on record; if you dial 999 for an ambulance, it could be hours, or in extreme cases, days before it arrives. Social care is dysfunctional; there is a housing crisis, property prices are sky high, rents are unaffordable, tenancies offer no security, homelessness is increasing – according to Government figures, “between January to March 2022, 74,230 households were assessed as homeless or threatened with homelessness,”up 5.4% in the same period in 2021, a further 38,000 were regarded as at “risk of homelessness”.

    Inflation is at 10.1% and rising, recession predicted, poverty booming. Thousands of people/families (many of whom are in full-time employment) rely on food banks for basic supplies – over two million people visited a food bank last year, and this doesn’t include independent providers – local charities, churches etc. Ten years ago food banks barely existed in the UK, now there are estimated to be 2,572, and constitute a growth area.

    The privatization of utility companies including water in 1989 under Thatcher, has led to energy and water companies making huge profits for shareholders (£72bn in dividends), but neglecting consumers and failing to invest. Since water was privatized no new reservoirs have been commissioned (in 33 years), and, The Guardian reports,“2.4bn liters [of water] a day on current estimates have been allowed to leak away.” Airports including Heathrow, have had to limit the number of flights due to lack of staff; the airport authorities and airlines use the ‘It’s not us, it’s Covid’ excuse, so loved by companies and government agencies who laid off too many employees during the pandemic and either haven’t re-hired enough, or employees refused to return unless wages and conditions improved.

    The judiciary is in crisis, as is the prison system and the police, particularly in London; childcare and nursery education is shambolic, unaffordable for most, hard to find, limited places, particularly for those on average incomes; again due in part to lack of properly trained staff. It is, it seems, an endless list, shameful and intensely depressing, There may, however, be a glimmer of light within the storm; a positive effect of this cacophony of chaos is a growing movement of resistance to economic injustice, and Trades Union industrial action.

    Enough is Enough

    Wages for most people in the UK have been effectively frozen for years; and now, with rising inflation income is reducing in value, economic hardship intensifying, fury rising. Unions, which have been greatly weakened in the last thirty years through restrictive legislation, have rediscovered their courage and purpose, and in response to members’ demands have organised strikes in a number of areas. Most notably, railway and Transport for London workers have withdrawn their labor on a number of occasions in disputes over pay and conditions; refuse workers in Scotland have been on strike over pay; postal workers have also been striking; junior barristers are on indefinite strike over pay; workers at the UK’s largest container port, Felixstowe, recently withdrew their labour for eight days in another dispute about pay. Nurses and doctors working in the NHS are threatening industrial action, as are teachers.

    The leader of the RMT union, Mick Lynch, who has emerged as a leading voice for the people, has suggested that, “unions are on the brink of calling for ‘synchronized’ strikes over widespread anger at how much soaring inflation is outpacing wages.” If such a positive step were taken, it would be a powerful act of resistance against  years of exploitation and injustice, and may further empower working people, who for years have been silenced.

    In parallel with the workers revolt is a social movement of defiance. Initially triggered by high energy bills, rising costs and low wages, the scope of disquiet is expanding to include outrage at huge profits for energy companies and other corporations, increasing payments to shareholders whilst the majority struggle to feed themselves and their families; i.e., it’s about social injustice, exploitation and greed. Two movements of resistance and change have emerged from the widespread disquiet – ‘Don’t Pay’, which aims to empower people to not pay increased energy bills, and ‘Enough is Enough’, which is a broader social movement founded by union leaders and MPs.

    The appearance of these groups is deeply encouraging and could prove to be a pivotal moment. Many people, the majority perhaps, are worn down, ashamed of where the country finds itself, and have had enough. Enough of being ignored and manipulated; of being told to ‘tighten their belts’ and ‘carry on’, whilst corporations, public/private companies including energy firms, pay out huge dividends and government ministers, spineless, unprincipled puppets, who live in the silk-lined pockets of big business, including most notably the media barons, lie and lie and lie again.

    In the face of increasing levels of social injustice, government duplicity and economic hardship, eventually the people must unite and revolt. If, after the endless pantomime of the Queen’s funeral, people do come together, refuse to pay rising energy costs; refuse to work, refuse to be exploited and marginalized; refuse to stand by while the natural world is vandalised; if the unions do take coordinated action, and many of us would support such a progressive act, there is a chance, slim, but real, that years of frustration and anger, can be turned into empowerment and hope.

    The post UK: Fragmentation and Decline Under Conservative Rule first appeared on Dissident Voice.

  • The Poor Are Being Doubly Hit by Inflation and Policies to Combat Inflation

    For the past several months, the Federal Reserve has used a traditional toolkit to attempt to rein in the high inflation that was unleashed by the pandemic and worsened by Russia’s attack on Ukraine.

    This traditional model for responding to inflation, hewed to by economists for decades, posits that inflation is triggered by excess demand, and that the way to rein in demand (and thus to put the brakes on inflation) is to raise the cost of borrowing. Hence the rush upward in the interest rate set by the Federal Reserve, and, by extension, the increased cost of borrowing for companies looking to finance new investments and for consumers looking to get mortgages from banks. In the summer of 2021, for a buyer with good credit, a 30-year mortgage could be approved at a 2.75 percent interest rate. Last week, those mortgages headed north of 6 percent. For a family with, say, a $400,000 mortgage, that’s a difference of roughly $14,000 per year. Not surprisingly, millions of people are deferring home purchases. Between the moment when mortgage rates hit their lows last summer and now, the demand for mortgages has declined by nearly a third.

    The idea is pretty straightforward: If it costs more — perhaps a lot more — to borrow, people will defer purchases. Fewer new cars, fewer house purchases and fewer big-spending items put on credit cards lead to companies needing fewer employees, which in turn recalibrates the labor market away from worker-power, making it harder for employees, in a soft labor market, to bargain up their wages. That particular circle will, the idea goes, rapidly put the squeeze on inflation.

    The theory, which is epitomized by an economic graph known as the Phillips Curve, says that a little bit of short-term consumer pain, and a willingness to tolerate higher levels of unemployment for a few months or even a couple years, ought to do the trick in putting the inflation genie back in its bottle. Proponents of this model argue that workers’ short-term pain is more than compensated for by the longer-term gains that come with stable prices.

    Yet, a strange thing is happening in this current bout with inflation, as many progressive economists, such as Joseph Stieglitz and Dean Baker, had predicted would be the case. As interest rates soar, housing demand is, indeed, easing back, as the model would predict. But the broader labor market remains tight — in part because so many Americans dropped out of the job market during the pandemic, either out of fear of exposure, because they couldn’t find child care, or in many instances, because they ended up suffering debilitating effects from long COVID. And, despite momentary optimism that inflation was peaking in June and July, the recently released numbers for August, which sent the stock market into a swoon last week, suggest that a higher-than-wanted level of inflation (the Federal Reserve aims for inflation in the 2 percent range) is firmly entrenched at the moment.

    Similarly bad inflation numbers are also being posted by other major industrial democracies: The inflation rate in the U.K. is slightly higher than in the U.S., and some models predict it could hit as much as 18 percent by year’s end, although these worst-case scenarios are likely to have been muted somewhat by Prime Minister Liz Truss’s recent announcement that the government would cap energy prices. In the EU, the inflation rate is above 9 percent. In Canada, it is just under 8 percent. In Australia, inflation is hovering at around 6 percent. And even in Japan, which has extraordinarily low levels of inflation due in part to decades of stagnant growth, and in part to the government subsidizing a wide range of consumer products, all the inflation indicators have gone up in recent months, though price increases still remain far less of a problem there than in most other wealthy nations.

    This stubborn persistence of inflation globally oughtn’t to be surprising: the traditional model assumes inflation is triggered by excess demand, and thus can be curbed by reining in demand. But the last couple years of supply chain disruptions have shown that when an unpredicted but catastrophic “black swan event” such as a pandemic holds the world in its grip, prices around the world get driven up by a cascading series of glitches that make it harder both to produce goods and then to ship the finished product to stores and to consumers.

    Why, for example, are consumers paying so much more for cars? Not because there’s suddenly been a spike in the number of drivers on the road, but because at every level of the supply chain — from rubber and steel to semiconductors — there are shortages or delivery bottlenecks. In the globalized economy, a consumer in an import-heavy economy such as the U.S. is particularly vulnerable to, say, price spikes caused by supply shortages triggered by COVID lockdowns half a world away in China.

    Given this, raising interest rates ad nauseam is an extraordinarily clumsy way to deal with the problem. Sure, eventually demand will be curbed so much by the unaffordability of borrowing money that it will tamp down inflation. But before it does that, it’s likely to cause a huge amount of pain. And that hurt won’t be evenly distributed.

    Since the labor market remains tight, those higher up the economic ladder, those with more marketable skills and higher education qualifications, are more frequently able to largely neutralize the loss of purchasing power that comes with inflation through successfully negotiating for wage increases, for starting bonuses, and for other compensation.

    As a result, the inflation spiral will most heavily impact poorer residents, who have less money saved; have less power to negotiate wage increases; and have poorer credit to begin with, meaning that they will pay disproportionately more when they seek to borrow during a moment of rising interest rates.

    Meanwhile, low-income residents face particularly dire circumstances in poorer countries, mainly in the global South, whose governments lack the clout to intervene in the energy and food markets to try to lower costs or to cushion the blow on poorer people through implementing price subsidies for food and energy. In much of the world, inflation, triggered by the twinned dislocations of pandemic and of war, is soaring beyond anything experienced in the first world. Argentina’s inflation is roughly 80 percent, Lebanon’s 116 percent, Sri Lanka’s increased from 5.7 percent a year ago to over 60 percent today, and so on.

    Last week, the head of the United Nations World Food Programme warned that up to 345 million people worldwide — or roughly 50 times the number known to have died from COVID so far — could face starvation as food prices soar and as shortages increase. This represents a doubling in global food insecurity since early 2020. Already, roughly 50 million people are facing acute malnutrition. With the recent catastrophic flooding in Pakistan, and the displacement of tens of millions from their homes, that number will surely increase over the coming months. The war in Ukraine, with the resulting disruptions to global markets in grain, wheat, soy and other staples has, the UN estimates, pushed 70 million people closer to starvation.

    The UN’s stark warning ought to have generated headlines around the world; instead, it simply became a side story.

    But, even while economics writers around the world fixate on spiraling inflation in economic powerhouses such as the U.S., the U.K. and the EU bloc, while ignoring even worse inflation — and the damage it causes — in poor countries, there are underlying similarities. To be poor anywhere on Earth is to bear a disproportionate brunt of the impact of failing, one-size-fits-all policies. To be poor is to bear the brunt of inflation spirals; but to be poor is also to bear the brunt of shock-and-awe policy responses designed to wrestle inflation back under control.

    There are, however, alternatives ideas on the table for tackling inflation in a fairer way. Last week, the Center for American Progress released a report detailing how the supply chain could be strengthened so as to reduce disruptions and thus rein in prices. The authors called for ramping up COVID vaccine distribution; expanding the child care system so that parents could return to work; increasing immigration levels in countries such as the U.S. to fill jobs left empty by the contracting workforce; going after price-gouging trusts; and ramping up investments in renewable energy so as to wean the economy from fossil fuels and from the profiteering companies who have made such fortunes during the price-increase months since Russia attacked Ukraine in February.

    The authors concluded that the Fed’s approach, looking to gently tamp down demand without sinking the economy into a deep recession, was unlikely to work to knock excess inflation out of the economy. They warned that if the Fed keeps raising interest rates, eventually the landing could be extremely hard and painful — in other words, this strategy risks crashing both the housing and the job markets, which would hurt poor Americans the most. Better, they argued, to craft an economic policy that “addresses the supply issues brought into high relief during this recovery.”

    Because of the Fed’s outsized influence on global economic policy, the rest of the world is likely to follow where the U.S. goes on interest rates. Raising interest rates moderately may make sense as one tool among many to tackle this rather unique inflationary moment, but raising them immoderately — and excluding more unorthodox supply side anti-inflation interventions — risks doing long-term damage to those at the bottom of the economy. Doing so poses an acute threat to the poor both within the U.S. and in less affluent countries overseas, which could end up plagued by persistently high inflation, rising unemployment and ever-greater difficulties accessing loans for businesses and for house purchases. That’s the sort of lose-lose proposition that could create cascading problems for decades to come.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Biden’s Actions Are a Start, But the US Is Still Sacrificing Poor People

    In the American ethos, sacrifice is often hailed as the chief ingredient for overcoming hardship and seizing opportunity. To be successful, we’re assured, college students must make personal sacrifices by going deep into debt for a future degree and the earnings that may come with it. Small business owners must sacrifice their paychecks so that their companies will continue to grow, while politicians must similarly sacrifice key policy promises to get something (almost anything!) done.

    We have become all too used to the notion that success only comes with sacrifice, even if this is anything but the truth for the wealthiest and most powerful Americans. After all, whether you focus on the gains of Wall Street or of this country’s best-known billionaires, the ever-rising Pentagon budget, or the endless subsidies to fossil-fuel companies, sacrifice is not exactly a theme for those atop this society. As it happens, sacrifice in the name of progress is too often relegated to the lives of the poor and those with little or no power. But what if, instead of believing that most of us must eternally “rob Peter to pay Paul,” we imagine a world in which everyone was in and no one out?

    In that context, consider recent policy debates on Capitol Hill as the crucial midterm elections approach. To start with, the passage of the Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) promises real, historic advances when it comes to climate change, health care, and fair tax policy. It’s comprehensive in nature and far-reaching not just for climate resilience but for environmental justice, too. Still, the legislation is distinctly less than what climate experts tell us we need to keep this planet truly livable.

    In addition, President Biden’s cancellation of up to $20,000 per person in student loans could wipe out the debt of nearly half of all borrowers. This unprecedented debt relief demonstrates that a policy agenda lifting from the bottom is both compassionate and will stimulate the broader economy. Still, it, too, doesn’t go far enough when it comes to those suffocating under a burden of debt that has long served as a dead weight on the aspirations of millions.

    In fact, a dual response to those developments and others over the past months seems in order. As a start, a striking departure from the neoliberal dead zone in which our politics have been trapped for decades should certainly be celebrated. Rather than sit back with a sense of satisfaction, however, those advances should only be built upon.

    Let’s begin by looking under the hood of the IRA. After all, that bill is being heralded as the most significant climate legislation in our history and its champions claim that, by 2030, it will have helped reduce this country’s carbon emissions by roughly 40% from their 2005 levels. Since a reduction of any kind seemed out of reach not so long ago, it represents a significant step forward.

    Among other things, it ensures investments of more than $60 billion in clean energy manufacturing; an estimated $30 billion in production tax credits geared toward increasing the manufacture of solar panels, wind turbines, and more; about $30 billion for grant and loan programs to speed up the transition to clean electricity; and $27 billion for a greenhouse gas reduction fund that will allow states to provide financial assistance to low-income communities so that they, too, can benefit from rooftop solar installations and other clean energy developments.

    The IRA also seeks to lower energy costs and reduce utility bills for individual Americans through tax credits that will encourage purchases of energy-efficient homes, vehicles, and appliances. Among other non-climate-change advances, it caps out-of-pocket costs for prescription drugs, reduces health insurance premiums for 13 million Americans, and provides free vaccinations for seniors.

    As the nation’s biggest investment in the climate so far, it demonstrates the willingness of the Biden administration to address the climate crisis. It also highlights just how stalled this country has been on that issue for so long and how much more work there is to do. Of course, given our ever hotter planet and the role this country has played in it as the historically greatest greenhouse gas emitter of all time, anything less than legislation that will lead to net-zero carbon emissions is a far cry from what’s necessary, as this country burns, floods, and overheats in a striking fashion.

    Pipelines and Sacrifice Zones

    Earlier iterations of what became the IRA recognized a historic opportunity to enact policies connecting the defense of the planet to the defense of human life and needs. Because of the resistance of Democratic Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, as well as every Senate Republican, the final version of the reconciliation bill includes worrying sacrifices. It does not, for instance, have an extension or expansion of the Child Tax Credit, a lifeline for poor and low-income families, nor does it raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour, even though that was a promise made in the 2020 election. Gone as well are plans for free pre-kindergarten and community college, in addition to the nation’s first paid family-leave program that would have provided up to $4,000 a month to cover births, deaths, and other pivotal moments in everyday life.

    And don’t forget to add to what’s missing any real pain for fossil-fuel companies. After all, coal baron Manchin seems to have succeeded in cutting a side deal with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer for a massive natural gas pipeline through his home state of West Virginia and that’s just to begin a list of concessions. Indeed, the sacrificial negotiations with Manchin to get the bill passed ensured significantly more domestic fossil-fuel production, including agreement that the Interior Department would auction off permits to drill for yet more oil and gas in the Gulf of Mexico, Alaska, and possibly elsewhere, all of which will offset some of the emissions reductions from climate-change-related provisions in the bill.

    It’s important to note as well that, although progress was made on reducing fossil-fuel emissions, expanding health care, and creating a fairer tax system, for the poor in this country, “sacrifice zones” are hardly a thing of the past. As journalist Andrew Kaufman suggests, “One thing that does seem assured, however, is that the arrival — at last — of a federal climate law has not heralded an end to the suffering [of] communities living near heavy fossil-fuel polluters.” And as Rafael Mojica, program director for the Michigan environmental justice group Soulardarity, put it, the IRA “is riddled with concessions to the big carbon-based industries that at present prey on our communities at the expense of their health, both physically and economically.”

    Keep in mind that Michigan is already anything but a stranger to sacrifice zones. Case in point: the water crisis in the city of Flint as well as in Detroit. The Flint Democracy Defense League and the Michigan Welfare Rights Organization have battled lead-poisoning and water shut-offs for years in the face of deindustrialization and the lack of a right to clean water in this country. Such grassroots efforts helped sound the alarm during the Flint water crisis that began in 2014 and have since linked community groups nationwide dealing with high levels of toxins in their water supply so that they could learn from that city’s grassroots organizing experience. Meanwhile, so many years later, Michiganders are still protesting potential polluters like Enbridge’s aging Line 5 oil pipeline.

    And there are many other examples of frontline community groups protesting the ways in which their homes are being sacrificed on the altar of the fossil-fuel industry. Take, for example, the communities in the stretch of Louisiana between New Orleans and Baton Rouge that contain hundreds of petrochemical facilities and has, eerily enough, come to be known as Cancer Alley. There, among a mostly poor and Black population, you can find some of the highest cancer rates in the country. In St. James Parish alone, there are 12 petrochemical plants and nearly every household has felt the impact of cancer. For years, Rise St. James and other local groups have been working to prevent the construction of a new plastics facility near local schools on land that once was a slave burial ground.

    Then, of course, there are many other sacrifice zones where the issue isn’t fossil fuels. Take the city of Aberdeen in Grays Harbor County, Washington, once home to a thriving timber and lumber economy. After its natural landscape was stripped and the local economy declined, that largely white, rural community fell into endemic poverty, homelessness, and drug abuse. Chaplains on the Harbor, one of the few community organizations with a presence in homeless encampments across the county, has now started a sustainable farm run by formerly homeless and incarcerated young people in Aberdeen as part of an attempt to create models for the building of green communities in places rejected by so many.

    Or take Oak Flat, Arizona, the holiest site for the San Carlos Apache tribe. There, a group called the Apache Stronghold is leading a struggle to protect that tribe’s sacred lands against harm from Resolution Copper, a multinational mining company permitted to extract minerals on those lands thanks to a midnight rider put into the National Defense Authorization Act in 2015. Along with a growing number of First Nations people and their supporters, it has been fighting to protect that land from becoming another sacrifice zone on the altar of corporate greed.

    On the east coast, consider Union Hill, Virginia, where residents of a historic Black community fought for years to block the construction of three massive compressor stations for fracked gas flowing from the Atlantic Coast Pipeline. Those facilities would have potentially subjected residents to staggering amounts of air pollution, but early in 2020 community organizers won the fight to stop construction.

    Consider as well the work of Put People First PA!, which, in Pennsylvania communities like Grant Township and Erie, is on the tip of the spear in the fight against an invasive and devastating fracking industry that’s ripping up land and exposing Pennsylvanians to the sort of pollutants that leaders in Union Hill fought to prevent. Note as well that, in many similar places, hospitals are being privatized or shuttered, leaving residents without significant access to health care, even as the risk of respiratory illnesses and other industrially caused diseases grows.

    Such disparate communities reflect a long-term history of suffering — from the violence inflicted on indigenous people, to the slave plantations of the South, to the expansion (and then steep decline) of industrial production in the North and West, to pipelines still snaking across the countryside. And now historic pain inflicted on low-income and poor Americans will increase thanks to a growing climate crisis, as the people of flooded and drinking-water-barren Jackson, Mississippi, discovered recently.

    In a world of megadroughts, superstorms, wildfires, and horrific flooding guaranteed to wreak ever more havoc on lives and livelihoods, poor and low-income people are beginning to demand action commensurate with the crisis at hand.

    Dark Clouds Blowing in From the “Equality State”

    While reports on the passage of the IRA and student debt relief dominated the news cycle, another major policy announcement at the close of the summer and far from Capitol Hill slipped far more quietly into the news. It highlights yet again the “sacrifices” that poor Americans are implicitly expected to make to strengthen the economy. Just outside of Jackson, Wyoming, one of the wealthiest and most unequal towns in this country, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell committed his organization to take “forceful and rapid steps to moderate demand so that it comes into better alignment with supply and to keep inflation expectations anchored.”

    Couched in typically wonkish language, his comments — made in the “equality state” — may sound benign, but he was suggesting capping wages, an act whose effects will, in the end, fall most heavily on poor and low-income people. Indeed, he warned, mildly enough, that this would mean “some pain for households and businesses” — even as he was ensuring that the livelihoods of poor and low-income people would once again be sacrificed for what passes as the greater good.

    What does it mean, for instance, to “moderate demand” for food when more than 12 million families with children are already hungry each month? It should strike us as wrong to call for “some pain” for so many households facing crises like possible evictions or foreclosures, crushing debt, and a lack of access to decent health care. It should be considered inhumane to advocate for a “softer labor market” when one in three workers is already earning less than $15 an hour.

    It is disingenuous to say that the economy is “overheating,” as if what’s being experienced is some strange, abstract anomaly rather than the result of decades of disinvestment in infrastructure and social programs that could have provided the basic necessities of life for everyone. Nonetheless, Powell continues to push a false narrative of scarcity and the threat of inflation to smother the powerful resurgence of courageous and creative labor organizing that we’ve seen, miraculously enough, in these pandemic years.

    At this point, as a pastor and theologian, I can’t resist quoting Jesus’s choice words in the Gospel of Matthew about how poor people so often pay the price for the further enrichment of the already wealthy. In Matthew 9, Jesus asserts: “I desire mercy, not sacrifice.” The Greek word “mercy” is defined as loving kindness, taking care of the down and out. In Jesus’s parlance, mercy meant acts of mutual solidarity and societal policies that prioritized the needs of the poor, which would today translate into cancelling debts, raising wages, and investing in social programs.

    Despite the encouraging policy-making that hit the headlines this summer, America remains a significant sacrifice zone with economic policies that justify their painful impact on the poor and marginalized as necessary for the greater good. It’s time for us to fight for a comprehensive, intersectional, bottom-up approach to the injustices that continually unfold around us.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • 2021 Had Lowest-Ever Supplemental Poverty Rate, Thanks to Stimulus Provisions

    Poverty rates hit a record low by some measures in 2021, the Census Bureau found in a new report released Tuesday, thanks in large part to the direct aid provided in stimulus bills passed by Congress over the first year of the pandemic.

    The Census Bureau found that the poverty rate hit an all-time low of 7.8 percent last year, while the child poverty rate fell to an all-time low of 4.5 percent, according to the Supplemental Poverty Measure.

    The Supplemental Poverty Measure takes a more holistic view of poverty, taking into account aid provided by public programs like Social Security and costs like food, shelter and utilities, rather than just looking at income and food costs like the Census’s traditional poverty measure. Because of the increase in costs taken into account, the supplemental poverty rate is typically higher than the official poverty rate, but dropped below the official poverty rate for the second time in history last year.

    The programs that drove the largest reductions in poverty were Social Security, refundable tax credits like the expanded child tax credit and the stimulus checks, the agency found; these measures moved about 26 million, 10 million and 9 million people out of poverty last year, respectively. The expanded child tax credit, which expired at the end of 2021, lifted 5.3 million people out of poverty alone.

    These findings are an astounding show of the efficacy of the measures put forth in the stimulus packages.

    Not only did the aid help to keep millions from experiencing poverty, the Census measurements show, they also appear to have staved off losses that were expected from economic instability and unemployment rates last year. Indeed, the massive reductions in poverty rates came despite the fact that median household income remained statistically unchanged from 2020, adjusted for inflation.

    “This has been a large-scale experiment that shows that child poverty is a solvable problem in the United States, and that poverty more broadly is,” Alix Gould-Werth, director of family economic security policy for the Washington Center for Equitable Growth, told The New York Times. “So in order to see these changes last, we really need sustained public investment.”

    The Agriculture Department similarly found earlier this month that child food insecurity declined to an over two-decade low last year, thanks in large part to expansions in the U.S.’s social safety net.

    Although the stimulus measures had a massive hand in reducing poverty and child poverty, conservatives in Congress fought to lessen or eliminate the direct aid in negotiations for the bills. Progressive lawmakers fought to keep the expanded child tax credit alive and continued to advocate for the program after it expired, but the program is effectively dead due to Republicans’ and Sen. Joe Manchin’s (D-West Virginia) opposition.

    Republicans argue that continuing programs like the expanded child tax credit would provide aid to those who don’t truly need it, or that it would cost the government too much money.

    But these arguments are fallacious; the Census analysis shows that the program helps millions of children who would otherwise experience poverty, while an investment into a version of the program would pay off 10-fold for the government, massively increasing health and education outcomes for both children and parents.

    On the other hand, progressives have long argued that poverty is a policy choice, and that reducing poverty is not only the moral thing to do but also an economically sound choice to raise up low-income people and help rebuild the middle class.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • John Minto: Where are the journalists to tackle NZ’s prime ministerial spin on state housing?

    COMMENT: By John Minto

    Deception and political spin crossed new boundaries this week with Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, under pressure to explain the housing catastrophe in Rotorua, making the absurd statement:

    “Our long-term plan is to get them into sustainable, long-term safe housing. It’s why for instance we’ve worked so hard to now have built 10 percent of all the state houses in New Zealand.”

    Meaningless, ludicrous and irrelevant.

    Why was she not challenged by journalists on this preposterous statement?

    The government has been demolishing state houses almost as fast as it builds them so that the net increase in state houses over the last five years stands at a piddling 1100 per year for a waiting list of 26,664. The waiting list has increased five-fold since Labour came to power in 2017.

    Labour is taking us backwards on state housing at a spectacular rate.

    And neither is it the fault of the previous National government. Labour has kept the policy settings for state house building the same as applied under National — right down to maintaining the same tough criteria to enable a low-income tenant or family to get on the waiting list.

    Largest Labour privatisation since 1980s
    The awful reason Labour is demolishing state houses and selling the land is to provide funding for Kainga Ora. The government doesn’t want to borrow to build, which any sensible government would, so it is forcing Kainga Ora to sell land and properties to do this.

    It’s the largest privatisation of state assets by Labour since the 1980s.

    Where are the journalists to put some simple questions to the Prime Minister?

    • Why has Labour allowed the state house waiting list to INCREASE FIVE FOLD (from 5,000 in late 2017 to over 26,000 in 2022) with no effective policy response?
    • Why does Labour still think it’s OK to produce just 1,100 net new state houses per year for a state house waiting list of over 26,000? (When Labour came to power there were 63,209 state houses which has increased to just 68,765 by June this year).
    • Why are the number of children living in grotty motels STILL INCREASING?
    • Why is the number of children living in cars STILL INCREASING?
    • Why are the number of children in tents STILL INCREASING?
    • Why is Labour still ONLY FUNDING 1600 new IRRS places (for state house and social housing providers combined) each year for the more than 26,000 families on the state house waiting list?
    • Why does Labour still think it’s OK to keep the proportion of state house at just 3.6% of total housing stock when it was 5.4 percent in 1990?
    • Why has Labour not instigated an industrial-scale state house building programme such as the first Labour government did in the 1930s? (Labour then built 3500 state houses each year – equivalent to 10,000 today on a population basis).
    • Why is the government planning to sell 55 to 60 percent of crown land in Auckland to private property developers when we have a housing catastrophe for low-income New Zealanders?

    Where are the journalists to expose this prime ministerial spin?

    Republished from The Daily Blog with permission.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Tapped out: underclass left behind in Australia’s cashless future

    Dave on the Street
    Card machines might be an alternative for Australians who rely on spare change from strangers to stay afloat in today’s increasingly cashless economy, but is this the best way to get ahead?

    This post was originally published on Michael West.

  • Forging tools to challenge gendered financial inequality

    There’s a Jobs and Skills Summit in the offing – the new government canvassing issues and strategies with key stakeholders, and there is pre-caucusing going on to bring specific perspectives to the table.

    This was floating in the back of my head as I drafted an email to a colleague about matters monetary, about the recognition of my skills, and knowledge, and expertise – all of which I know I have. And yet, the level of “agh” and “awwwkward” that I had to work my way through as I drafted the note.

    I’ve had jobs since my teens, but I still have to wade through the sludge of societal and familial stories about what is and isn’t appropriate for “ladies” to discuss, let alone assert. (And, let’s be clear, I had a teenage job to pay for fun things, not food; and when I say “ladies” I’m situating that in the English-Scottish roots of my family, who have moved from working class to middle class in the space of three generations).

    There are powerful family stories wrapped up in how I see money and assert my value. The legacy of the ideas of “pin money” for the wee fripperies of genteel ladies is one. The aspirational mimicking of the power of aristocratic classes in declaring it gauche to discuss money is another, even though it was only the introduction of compulsory education in the 1880s that lifted my family from the floors of the cotton mills of Yorkshire, dirt-poor tenements in Aberdeen, and life on the road as commercial travellers in Somerset.

    There are also complicated stories of relationship status and work and the attendant conceptualisations of financial independent and dependence that have shaped my financial settings. These include the conscious removal of women from the paid workforce in the post-second-world-war period in England that informed the lives of my grandmothers and mother, alongside their navigations of personal preferences for meaning and family.

    And they run parallel with the imposition of spinsterhood that followed the loss of multiple generations of men in the first and second world wars, and the opportunities that opened up in both the traditional (teaching and retail) and non-traditional (stockbroking) fields that my great-aunts pursued.

    Interesting research has been done to help us understand the ongoing impact of these stories, showing that even today women display less financial literacy than men.

    Of course, my white, single, middle-class story as a 70s child tells one version of women and finance. It’s an entirely different story to navigate when the colonial state has systematically and intergenerationally stolen your wages, your land, your culture. And another story again when society tells you that your body or brain has lesser value in a capitalist economy, pushing you to the poverty margins in closed workshops.

    There are, of course, big fat levers governments can, and should, pull to address gender inequalities in jobs and skills – provision of childcare, parental leave, vocational training programs, to name just a few – alongside the levers that can be pulled to address workplace racism.

    But one of the biggest and most slippery is how to start telling new stories – individually and societally – about the gendered and raced and abled stories of our relationship with money. To do that we need a lever that, if we pulled it, would shift not just inequality in jobs and skills, but inequality in all areas of society.

    Specifically, we need tools that help us to name and challenge the gendered, raced, classed myths that we buy in to – for example, the half-lives of the myths that meant whole groups of people in our society were denied bank accounts simply because of their race or because they were female.

    Or that a woman’s economic zenith, to namecheck one of the fathers of neo-liberalism, Milton Friedman, was the moment when she was vacuuming the lounge, dinner in the oven, caring for one child, and pregnant with another.

    We need to value unpacking our Gendered Selves, our Raced Selves, our Embodied Solves – and support people by co-creating tools that enable you go beyond unpacking the stories and step into transforming the stories – for ourselves and for society.

    We need easily accessible, go-to-language to challenge the old stories, safely. We need tools that support families, in all their diversity, to have conversations and gender, care, and their household economies. We need to tell new personal and societal stories of gender, work, and the economy as a critical part of a policy response to jobs and skills.

    • Feature image is a stock photo 

     

    The post Forging tools to challenge gendered financial inequality appeared first on BroadAgenda.

  • Is There a Vaccine for Poverty?

    The post Is There a Vaccine for Poverty? first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • A Decent Level for All: Economic Justice and Universal Basic Income

    By: Tanner Matthews.

    See original post here.

    Demands for “economic justice” in public policy debates are emotionally powerful, imparting a profound sense of purpose and moral urgency to a cause. However, these appeals must be more than a mere rhetorical tactic. Clarity about ends is a prerequisite for choosing effective means.
    Of the three contrasting accounts of economic justice most commonly considered—economic egalitarianism, laissez-faire capitalism, and the “decent level view”—economic egalitarianism and laissez-faire each fall short in their own way. The decent level view constitutes the most plausible account of economic justice.

    Universal basic income is a potential means of implementing the decent-level view. Although dialogue and debate should continue, universal basic income could be a feasible vehicle for achieving economic justice in our society.

    What Is Wrong With Economic Egalitarianism?

    Economic egalitarianism is “the doctrine that it is desirable for everyone to have the same amounts of income and of wealth.”

    Economic egalitarianism is attractive to many people repulsed by the excesses of our economic status quo.

    They survey our society, where some are stuck in abject poverty while others are sitting on more wealth than they could possibly spend in a thousand lifetimes and correctly conclude that something has gone horribly awry. Still, they are mistaken to identify economic inequality as the root problem and an equal division of wealth as the remedy.

    If economic egalitarians were to reflect at length on what bothers them about the current system, I think most would come to see that inequality is not really the issue. Our economy generates astonishing wealth and abundance, yet many remain mired in poverty. This is a scandal.

    But it is not the inequality per se that makes it so disgraceful; rather it is our collective choice to permit poverty despite having at our disposal the resources to eradicate it.

    This line of argument gains support from the following thought experiment. Imagine a society where those at the bottom of the “economic ladder” were millionaires, while those at the top were billionaires. This society is economically unequal–possibly extremely economically unequal–but there is no economic injustice.

    As the philosopher Harry Frankfurt points out, “Economic equality is not…of particular moral importance. With respect to the distribution of economic assets, what is important…is not that everyone should have the same but that each should have enough. If everyone had enough, it would be of no moral consequence whether some had more than others.” Economic egalitarians are correct to see our current economic order as sick. But their focus on inequality misdiagnoses the true nature of the disease.

    The Limits of Laissez-Faire

    Laissez-faire capitalism equates economic justice with the results of free market processes left to their own devices.

    Laissez-faire capitalism holds that a just distribution of income and wealth is identical to whatever pattern the free market produces, even if this spells starvation for some and opulence for others. People deserve whatever they manage to earn in the market—no more and no less. And any government “meddling” with the market distribution of income is unjust.

    Laissez-faire capitalism holds great appeal for many Americans, particularly those who identify as libertarians. However, there are a number of significant problems with this view. To begin with, it fundamentally misunderstands the role of markets. Markets are merely a means to an end and not ends in themselves. When kept within their proper bounds, markets can make great contributions to prosperity and human flourishing. But they are not the barometer of justice. 

    Many people assume that markets necessarily give people what they deserve.

    The line of thinking goes something like this: Working hard and contributing to society makes one deserving of a high salary; the market rewards people who work hard and make important contributions to society with high salaries; therefore, the market distribution of wealth is just. But it is simply not true that the market always allocates rewards in this manner.

    Markets operate in accordance with the laws of supply and demand—not any innate tendency to recognize and reward merit. To see this one need only contrast the phenomenon of passive “windfall profits” with the backbreaking labor of the people who grow our food or compare the earnings of researchers developing life-saving vaccines with those of the Kardashian family.

    Moreover, the market is, in part, a government creation sustained by collective investment in roads, education, a legal system that enforces contracts, and other public goods.

    There would be no functioning free market in an unstable and insecure state of nature.

    Given that the very possibility of acquiring private wealth in the market depends on the social order that government secures, it is only right and proper that a portion of this wealth be subject to taxation and redistribution.

    Finally, laissez-faire capitalism leaves no room for what the philosopher Stephen Nathanson calls “human desert.” We should resist the idea that a decent standard of living must be “earned.” People are entitled to be treated in certain ways and to be provided with a certain level of resources simply because they are human beings with inherent dignity. The decent level view recognizes this truth; laissez-faire capitalism denies it.

    Fleshing Out the Decent Level View

    The decent level view does not seek economic equality and imposes no definite “ceiling” on the level of wealth and resources that individuals may attain. But neither does it accept the unfettered free market as the arbiter of economic justice. In the wealthiest nation in human history, there is a moral obligation to ensure a “decent level” of resources for all, a guaranteed “floor” below which no individual should be allowed to fall.

    It is important to clarify what I mean by a “decent level.” Some thinkers draw a distinction between absolute and relative poverty. “Absolute poverty” refers to circumstances in which people struggle to meet even their most basic human needs for food and shelter. “Relative poverty” describes circumstances in which people who may not be experiencing absolute poverty nevertheless “are deprived of the conditions of life which ordinarily define membership of society.”

    The decent level view calls for the elimination of both absolute and relative poverty. The concept of “dignity,” or what the economist and Nobel laureate Amartya Sen refers to as “self-respect,” is crucial here. We should make sure that everyone has not only food to eat and a roof over their heads but also the resources they need to flourish and fully participate in 21st century American life. The precise details can be worked out, but the aim is to provide to all a level of resources that qualifies as decent and dignified by current societal standards.

    The decent level is at once radical and conservative. It contemplates the end of poverty but keeps the underlying capitalist economy in place. If it were implemented, some would have more than others, but no one would be poor.

    Universal Basic Income: The Decent Level View in Action?

    According to Juliana Bidadanure, universal basic income (UBI) is “a cash payment granted to all members of a community on a regular basis, regardless of employment status or income level. It is meant to be individual, unconditional, universal and frequent.” We could wipe out absolute and relative poverty alike in a single stroke by simply paying people an annual income sufficient to be at a decent level.

    In contrast to our current tangle of means-tested benefits, eligibility for UBI would not be conditioned on adherence to a set of arbitrary criteria. The demeaning scrutiny of recipients’ personal lives associated with many of today’s welfare programs would disappear.

    At last, we would have a social safety net that treats people with dignity and respect. As a universal benefit available to all members of society, UBI would concretize the decent level view’s commitment to “human desert.” Instituting UBI could help us to transcend traditional distinctions between the “deserving” and “undeserving” poor that have shaped poverty policy for far too long.

    The advent of UBI would advance freedom and human dignity across multiple spheres. People would be empowered to turn down or resign from exploitative jobs. Individuals in abusive relationships would find it easier to leave, secure in the knowledge that the UBI will shield them from poverty.

    Responding to Criticisms of Universal Basic Income

    Many objections have been raised against UBI. Some argue that UBI would disincentivize work to a dangerous degree. With legions of people exiting the labor market and electing to live off their UBI payments, the economy will cease to generate the wealth needed to fund a UBI in the first place. Ironically, UBI will then have sowed the seeds of its own demise.

    It bears remembering, however, that while UBI would remove the fear of poverty as a motivation to work, it would not do away entirely with financial incentives. The promise of obtaining a standard of living better than a decent level would still be enticing to many people, as would the status and prestige associated with certain jobs.

    In addition, the objection might take an overly cynical view of why people work. Financial incentives play a role, but being part of a team, engaging in productive activity, and developing professional capacities carry intrinsic appeal for most of us. Some would no doubt opt out of the labor force if they knew they could rely on UBI to support themselves, but the objection may overestimate the frequency with which this would actually happen.

    Another objection insists that people simply should not get something for nothing. This is not so much a pragmatic concern that UBI would undermine itself as it is a moral conviction. Those who raise this objection are uncomfortable with the idea that people would receive an income without being expected to “make some reciprocal contribution to society.”

    However, many who claim to hold this belief fail to apply it consistently. People who choose to live off a substantial inheritance from their parents seem to violate the principle that “one should not get something for nothing” just as flagrantly as those who might choose to live off UBI payments, yet few have stepped forward to propose that we abolish inheritance.

    Besides, as philosopher Matt Zwolinski has observed, holding down a traditional job is not the only legitimate way to contribute to society. UBI would enable people to pursue parenting, caregiving, the arts, or volunteer work. The market does not typically compensate for these forms of labor, but they clearly “give back” to society in important ways. The decent level view provides a cogent interpretation of what “economic justice” requires, and UBI is a serious candidate for making the decent level view a reality

    The post A Decent Level for All: Economic Justice and Universal Basic Income appeared first on Basic Income Today.

    This post was originally published on Basic Income Today.

  • Poll Finds 83 Percent of Americans Want to Expand Social Security

    Social Security, one of the nation’s oldest welfare programs, is set to start running out of money in about a decade — and Americans want Congress to take action, new polling finds.

    In a poll of about 1,300 likely voters, Data for Progress found that a bipartisan majority of Americans — 84 percent — are “very” or “somewhat” concerned that Social Security won’t be able to pay out full benefits to future generations. Eighty-three percent of voters, also on a bipartisan basis, support raising Social Security benefits in order to match current cost of living standards, and to ensure that everyone who has paid into the program will be able to access its full benefits when they’re of retirement age.

    Plans to expand Social Security by taxing the rich are also popular. When asked about lawmakers’ bills that would raise taxes for Americans making more than $400,000 a year in order to pay for expansions of the program, 76 percent of respondents, including 83 percent of Democrats and 73 percent of independents and Republicans, said they “strongly” or “somewhat” support the proposal.

    One such bill is the Social Security Expansion Act, introduced by Senators Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts) last month. The bill would increase Social Security payments by $2,400 a year, and would fully fund the program for the next 75 years, until 2096.

    It would also create more parity in the tax system, as it would eliminate the cap for Social Security payments for people making over $250,000. Currently, the income cap for Social Security taxes is $147,000, meaning that people making more than that stop paying into the program by the time they’ve made that amount of income in the year; for instance, people making a salary of $1 million stop paying into the program by February each year.

    Thanks in part to Republicans’ refusal to raise taxes, the program is set to be insolvent by 2033, meaning that it will have to start paying out only 75 percent of the benefits, which are already low. Though GOP lawmakers likely wouldn’t say it out loud, due to the program’s popularity, right-wingers have been working behind closed doors and in think tanks for years to slash Social Security, often with the goal of privatization.

    This is an unpopular idea, however. Data for Progress found that 68 percent of likely voters oppose privatizing the program, including 75 percent of Democrats and 70 percent of Republicans. Economists also agree that privatizing Social Security would be harmful and lead to yet more poverty — and that what’s truly needed to ensure that the seniors and disabled people who are most in need have the funds they need to survive is a large expansion of the program.

    Meanwhile, when presented with the statement that Democrats are trying to expand the program and the GOP is trying to end it, 55 percent of voters say they would vote for a generic Democrat running for Congress, with 22 percent of self-identified Republicans agreeing as such.

    As it is, Social Security is failing to provide enough funding for many seniors to live off of, as Sanders pointed out in a Senate Banking Committee hearing in June. Over half of seniors are living on incomes of less than $25,000 a year, while many of those same seniors don’t have any retirement savings.

    “Our job, in my view, is not to cut Social Security, is not to raise the retirement age, as many of my Republican colleagues would have us do,” Sanders said at the time. “Our job is to expand Social Security so that everyone in America can retire with the dignity that he or she deserves and that every person in this country with a disability can retire with the security they need.”

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • The Ides of Bureaucrats and Blue State Idiots!

    So., why is the Ides of March bad luck? If you want to avoid death or worse, 1,000 cuts, beware the ides of March. The date was certainly unlucky for Julius Caesar, who was assassinated in front of the Roman senate on March 15. William Shakespeare dramatized the event in his play about Caesar with the famous quote, ‘beware the ides of March.” For us, the 80 Percent, we have 24/7, 365 days a year of those Ides of March!

    As a communist, I have deep understanding of the hate toward communists throughout history, and why countries in Africa and elsewhere are, were, and will lean toward socialism: kicking out the prostitutes, pimps and purveyors of chaos and terror. Bankers and Bombs. Viruses and Lockdowns. Neoliberal or Neocon. The purveyors of pain are at the top.

    And, well, in the middle. So, I quit a job November 3 when my supervisor hung up on me. I was stationed 80 miles from where she was headquartered, where the HR was headquartered and where the Executive Director was headquartered.

    This woman was a complete disaster as a human and professional (sic). She had already had issues with the fellow I replaced, who stormed out, quit. Her forked tongue and broken personality, well, she was the nonprofit’s two year wonder, her son worked for the nonprofit, and she had control of the small satellite office in my county.

    My job was to take over case management for adults with developmental disabilities. That system is county run, with state DHS funding. It is a broken system, understaffed, and staffed with broken humans. So, one month on this job I was subjected to this supervisor’s personal life, her homophobia even though her Air Force son was marrying a man. She called herself a beaner, as she has some Latina in her bloodline. She asked me if I drove like an old man. On and on, and so, when I heard her voice, heard her warn me she was hanging up on me, and the fact that she would not listen to my concerns about a client who complained about shorted checks for a janitorial job we were not managing for him, I knew it was time to go.

    Oregon’s judges:

    So, this is my thinking — it was a just cause quit, to use the parlance of the dirty Unemployment Insurance/Employment Department lingo.

    A job at $20 an hour, benefits like health insurance and PTO, and, I was expecting to be there for two years, three? But, for my physical health and mental health, bye-bye toxic and unprofessional people and organization. I was thinking this would be a legit quit making me eligible for some pittance of unemployment, as in $180 a week. Covid benefits had ended last November. Quitting or termination from a job after only one month looks bad to the future employers. Age 65, now, and alas, living in a rural county, and here we are, I am dead in the water as a worker, a man, a contributor to “society.”

    Then, the application for Unemployment Insurance. Hoops to jump through (easy), and then applying for jobs as part of the deal. Then, the hell of Idiots Rule, the Bureaucrats. The adjudicator was unprofessional, taking my statements in his home (Zoom Doom), I heard him drawing on cig after cig, and he had to tell me he was gay, a real liberal (he thought I was a liberal — fucking comedy hour: Read, Communist!). Real bizarre. Real Portland Bizarro

    The bastards got my story, and this dude had to get my statements over a span of three phone calls. He went off topic beyond stupidity, but he found against me: not eligible for UI, unemployment insurance. Then, I had to file an appeal.

    That was more hell, and three hours with a judge (sic) and the HR director came on the line. Five days later, the judge, again, found against me.

    Then, an appeal of the appeal through the Employment Appeals Board. That entailed sending in any additional information, to both the Board and the former employer.

    Forty days later, again, two out of three judges (the 3rd one was not present to hear my appeal) found against me. They predicate that I had opportunities to deal with the issues I was dealing with through, yep, the HR, which was, again, part of the clique. The Executive Director was already on his way out, heading for another nonprofit ED position in the same place, Coos Bay.

    Now, there is an appeal of the appeal through the state Appellate Court, but that entails a $391 filing fee. Yep, money to keep these blue state bureaucrats paid.

    Irony after irony is that I have been employed to help homeless or developmental disabled to navigate systems of rents, medical needs, employment, and getting through the paperwork hell. I have helped some with their unemployment claims, and to get the Veterans Administration to find they have service – connected disabilities so they might get a few hundred bucks a month from Uncle Sam.

    These are the systems of oppression and penury. This is the system that will never be discussed with gusto in mainstream and left-stream media. This is the system of holding people down and keeping worthless humans in jobs that are the opposite of humane and human.

    Now now, this is not a spilled milk screed, hyperbolic and completely insignificant just because the world is falling apart, Ukrainians are being blowing apart by ZioLensky, and wildfires are rampant, toxicity out the roof, housing homicidal, billionaires drunk on power. This is foundational, readers of DV. Yep, amazing writers here talking about Boris Johnson, lots about Roe v Wade, lots on “the global economies” and tons on Ukraine and the EU and UK and global “situations.” Climate change, climate fatigue, climate chaos in a climate of fear and Stockholm Syndrome.

    It starts locally, at the city and county level, at the state level. We (citizens) are here for a broken system of planned dysfunction, planned obsolescence, planned homicide to sputter ahead, to keep the bad people in jobs and the rest of us at their whim(s).

    Oregon’s lovely housing opportunities:

    Oregon’s growing business opportunities:

    Here, one is title by yours truly: “One Degree of Separation: There Will be Parasitic Capitalism’s Blood“

    But specifically here is one about this shit-hole nonprofit and my right to quit and the rationale for it: “Quitting is a Mental Health Decision”

    So, more shouts into the wilderness, flailing against the windmills of the Byzantine world of state policies, and rationalizations spewed toward the middle managers, the professional office class, the cogs in the systems of pain and begging and absurdity.

    Oregon’s seasonal recreation and employment — smoke jumpers:

    My letter to the two hearing board people: Nothing fancy, nothing a lawyer would write. But life sucks, no, when you don’t have the shekels to pay for criminal lawyers?

    Oregon:

    To an uncaring two-person appeals board – Hettle and Steger-Bentz:

    I wholeheartedly see this decision as both incompetence and lack of empathy. Citing that I as the employee had recourse to not quit a highly toxic work environment shows the lack of creed you have. You are not in the know about non-profits, about the developmental disabilities case management realm. You have no idea how toxic those small nonprofits can get. The new case manager, as I was, had no connection to the actual main office and all of those inner workings of their clique. I had no recourse to thrive or do well at this job after I was hung up on by the supervisor. I had already for a month dealt with her unprofessional commentary and her racist remarks. That was the culture there, and citing some sort of recourse I might have had with the HR head is inane.

    This is not a state or county agency with a more developed culture of workplace stability and professionalism.

    You have no street creed or ground truthing when it comes to workplace cultures.

    This outfit, Bay Area Enterprises, is shoddy, highly unprofessional, and alas, the rationale given in your wrong-headed decision is faulty: I did not have just cause to quit. Absurd. I needed to get out of a toxic and uncompromising situation. You are fools to think there was another option. You are overpaid State bureaucrats with little sense of the real workplaces workers in Oregon have to submit to. Do you realize that this small company, new to me, is all about insider cliques? That my immediate supervisor and the HR head work in the same office, 80 miles from where I was assigned? That the executive director left the company a week after my complaints, so he was already on the outs. That the executive director and the immediate supervisor I was worked in the same office and were in constant discussion back and forth about employee x and employee y? That there are prejudicial allegiances made under those circumstances?

    I was hung up on by my supervisor. She was in the office where the HR director and the ED work. My immediate motion for self-preservation was to resign. Indeed, your bureaucratic mentality is what I teach my students in colleges (and some in K12 as a substitute) to not only watch out for, but to rail against, and challenge. In this case, I went through the Oregon state hoops designed to assist companies to get out of paying some of the unemployment insurance. The system is rigged in favor of the employer.

    You are at fault for this decision, for not taking into account a deeper sense of the workplace, that workplace I was in. In no away was I going to put myself through mental and emotional hell by putting up with the situation I have already laid out. You can sit back and lord over workers, making the same tired decision that occurred first by the Unemployment adjudicator, then by the appeals hearing judge. Here we are, now, a faceless board of three with one absent making the same wrong decision.

    Now, for me to take this to the next level of appeal would require more state rip-off fees — $391 to file. This is why the average person has no faith in the State of Oregon’s so-called agencies for the people. You are dead wrong in denying me unemployment,  and your titles, whatever they might be in this sense, are not worth the paper I am printing this letter on.

    Shame on you, and, well, this is another teachable and journalistic moment for me but it doesn’t compensate for the time and effort I put in filing unemployment weekly, and looking for work in this  county where I live. I will rail against this system, your decision and the process that was so protracted. You will not feel shame because I suspect you are wired to not have empathy when it comes to these cases that indeed are just cause for quitting. Nuance is not something you three probably have as human characteristics.

    And so I have to pay for that lack of humanity.

    Disrespectfully, Paul Haeder

     

    The post The Ides of Bureaucrats and Blue State Idiots! first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Warren Slams McConnell for Saying Labor Shortage Is Due to the Stimulus Checks

    Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) is facing widespread criticism for his recent assertion that the so-called labor shortage in the U.S. is the result of the stimulus checks that were sent out over a year ago.

    At an event in Kentucky on Tuesday, McConnell said that the $3,400 in direct aid sent out to American taxpayers over the past two years has been holding people back from working — a misleading statement in several respects, especially considering the fact that unemployment is currently quite low, with some states documenting record low unemployment over the past few months.

    “You’ve got a whole lot of people sitting on the sidelines because, frankly, they’re flush for the moment,” McConnell said, according to Insider. “What we’ve got to hope is once they run out of money, they’ll start concluding it’s better to work than not to work.”

    Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts) condemned McConnell’s statement on Twitter on Wednesday. “Mitch McConnell’s blaming Americans for not wanting to work. It’s absurdly out of touch,” she said. “More workers have jobs now than pre-COVID. Investing in affordable child care would help parents return to work, but Republicans refuse to support actual solutions.”

    Indeed, it is absurd to suggest that the checks, which were aimed at combating COVID-related financial and employment problems, could be a lifeline for struggling families years after they were sent out.

    Although the stimulus checks and expanded child tax credit did help decrease financial hardship and poverty immediately after they were sent out, the effects of the aid only lasted so long. As of last month — 14 months after the last stimulus checks were approved and six months after the last expanded child tax benefits were sent out — 39 percent of Americans said that it’s difficult to afford regular expenses like bills or rent. That’s up nearly 50 percent from last spring, according to an analysis by The Lever.

    For years now, McConnell and other Republicans have been moaning that the stimulus payments suppress employment. But analyses of the financial aid programs that Congress implemented for the pandemic show that these claims are simply not true.

    In fact, the extra financial aid may have helped people get back into the job market earlier than they would have, as the money helped people afford to pay for child care, as well as expensive measures that make it easier to get a job, like education, certifications, relocation, and more. Last year, economists found that employment recovery slowed down in states that prematurely ended the early COVID-era expanded unemployment insurance checks, in comparison to states that continued giving the checks out.

    In reality, the reason that McConnell and the GOP have complained about the stimulus checks and other federal aid is likely because their ideology hinges upon opposing measures that reduce poverty. For decades now, they have parroted lies that reducing the welfare state will help the economy, while quietly helping out wealthy donors and corporations at every turn.

    McConnell’s implication that there is a labor shortage is also misleading. Employers have been moaning about a lack of people willing to work — a myth that circulated last year and which was likely created by conservative think tanks and corporate lobbyists.

    But workers have said, through surveys and labor activism, that a major factor preventing them from getting or keeping work is that employers aren’t paying nearly enough to survive in the current economy. Data has backed up these claims; when accounting for inflation, workers actually got a pay cut across the board last year.

  • The myth of working-class men blocking gender equality

    As a kid, I was brought up in relative poverty on a working class council estate, and part of that upbringing involved experiencing and witnessing profound violence perpetrated by several working class ‘dads’. And yet, as a researcher of men, masculinities and social class, I have over the last decade or so been interested to challenge the ways that working class masculinity has been framed in popular, media and academic discussions.

    In terms of our everyday imagination, working class men are, perhaps, often the figure that comes to mind when many people think of the impediments to gender equality – a lower-educated man, maybe from a regional town or the ‘less desirable’ city suburbs, perhaps a tradie or factory worker.

    An adherent to regressive, traditional and harmful masculine ideals that perpetuate gender inequality in terms of divisions of domestic labour and enacting violence towards children, women and gender diverse people. In light of the recent revelations of the disgusting prevalence of sexual assault and harassment in Western Australian mining industry, this image might have been further underscored.

    I want to suggest, though, that the image of working-class masculinity operates as a convenient foil that works to obscure or minimise more privileged men’s significant contribution to gender inequalities.

    In a way, it’s strikingly obvious that powerful, wealthy, elite, professional-class men are also significant threats to the autonomy and safety of women and gender diverse people. Such men are the common thread in the evidence brought to light by the now global #metoo movement, 2016’s revelation that Donald Trump self-advocates for non-consensual ‘pussy grabbing’, and last week’s frankly grotesque US Supreme court decision to overturn the rights to abortion.

    Closer to home, we also need look no further than the accounts of misogyny and rape culture in our own seat of government as well as in some of Australia’s elite boys schools.

    Despite these attacks on the rights and bodies of women, as individual and collectives, by more privileged men, the negative stereotype of working-class masculinity remains stubbornly ingrained.

    My colleague, Karla Elliott, and I have recently attempted to illustrate how this remains the case in a lot of academic research, where violence, sexism, and homophobia are often understood as a response to relative (economic) powerlessness and status deficit that is inherent in the lives of working-class boys and men.

    Our individual previous research and collective ongoing studies centres the lives and voices of working class and other ‘men on the margins’.

    Our data has further undermined the idea that men in the margin somehow lag behind the real vanguard of progress: white, middle-class men.

    In particular, the interviews we have conducted in the UK and Australia in the last 18 months or so regularly reveal evidence of, among other things, what is sometimes called ‘caring masculinities’, i.e. ‘masculine identities that reject domination and its associated traits and embrace values of care such as positive emotion [and] interdependence’.

    This does not deny that problematic aspects of masculinity continue in the lives of working class or marginalised men – just as they do in the lives of more privileged men. Rather, the point to stress is that the biographical narratives we uncovered are replete with the commitments to egalitarian gender relations and other practices often passed off as being the domain of educated and/or otherwise privileged men.

    This includes what some academics call ‘lived egalitarianism’ – a significant if often understated contribution to household labour and childcare that is necessitated by the realities of working-class life that demands a dual-income.

    In contrast to working class men, middle class lives are often (though of course not always) characterised by ‘spoken egalitarianism’, where men can easily talk a good game on equality of household tasks, made all the more achievable when a proportion of the domestic and childcare duties are outsourced to poorly paid women domestic workers, often minority ethnic and immigrant women.

    To be clear here, oftentimes even a smaller gender gap in time allocated to childcare duties, or seeming evidence of ‘involved fatherhood’, is not a simple good that reflects middle class men’s commitment to equality, but is bound up with the problematic use of a marginalised workforce that are part of ‘the coloniality of labour’.

    Zooming back out from our own research, the picture of working-class masculinity as a key driver of a stalling gender revolution is complicated further when we factor in that studies repeatedly show that well-educated women, employed in high-earning professional occupations report higher levels of gender discrimination than their working-class peers.

    Coming back to a point above about a common thread: it’s the presence of professional-class men in such organisations!

    Feminism has, in the words of the esteemed cultural theorist Angela McRobbie, become ‘a ubiquitous force in everyday life’.  It has inspired new possibilities for gender relations, evident in the supposedly counter intuitive narratives that Karla and I have found in our interview data.

    Its ubiquity has also, though, been met with ferocious backlash with grim consequences, including the attack on reproductive rights in the US and the possible threat of what is to follow.

    We would do well to keep at the front of our mind that masculinity is centrally implicated in the latter, but we ought to resist any suggestions that it is specifically a product of working-classness. This is not an effort to engage in a form of ‘whataboutery’, but rather to ensure we can train our attention to the core of the problem – the powers, people and structures that sustain and expand gender inequalities.

     

     

     

     

    The post The myth of working-class men blocking gender equality appeared first on BroadAgenda.

    This post was originally published on BroadAgenda.

  • How Many Concussions from Capitalists Can Americans Take?

    America… just a nation of two hundred million used car salesmen with all the money we need to buy guns and no qualms about killing anybody else in the world who tries to make us uncomfortable.

    — Hunter S. Thompson, “September,” Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail ’72, p. 413.

    Imagine, just how programmed are we, and this is it for an excuse?

    The Doctor Who Inspired The Movie Concussion - Truth Doesn't Have A Side

    So, the electricity will be shaky here, there, and everywhere. The excuse is, of course, supply chain. Ports are cloggged. Container ship chaos. They will not admit to the real reason for economic and spiritual collapse:  CAPITALISM and PRICE gouging. It’s Putin’s fault.

    Mass shootings, Roe v. Wade down the drain, empty shelves at hardware and food stores. It’s all Putin’s fault, including the price thieving for these electrical transformers, right? The $6 a gallon for gas in USA and $10 a gallon in Denmark, Putin’s fault. Mindless media midgets, and here we are: Western culture trapped in their own lies, inside their own self-fulfilling nightmares. Or continuous requiems for our dreams!

    Requiem for a Dream: Trailer, Kritik, Kino-Programm u.v.m. | KINO&CO

    The lies and the shallow inquiries and the lack of curiosity, right up there with everyone is a used car salesman.

    Journalism has always been dead in the mainstream:

    The TV business is uglier than most things. It is normally perceived as some kind of cruel and shallow money trench through the heart of the journalism industry, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free and good men die like dogs, for no good reason.

    Which is more or less true. For the most part, they are dirty little animals with huge brains and no pulse.

    — Hunter S. Thompson, Generation of Swine: Tales of Shame and Degradation in the ’80s,  November 6, 2003.

    But back to other lies, and other lackeys lacking an inquiring mind. Local news from the local rag I publish my columns in, has stories about the local happenings. No pushback, just inverted triangle reporting. Referencing the local Public Utilities District here in Lincoln County:

    Like utilities nationwide, Central Lincoln is being greatly challenged by supply chain delays, material shortages and massive cost increases for materials delivered. Demand for electrical supplies is robust, while transportation bottlenecks and raw material constraints are causing us significant concern over our ability to meet construction timelines. As we address these issues, Central Lincoln will strive to maintain supply levels to meet customer needs, while still maintaining emergency inventories.

    We’ve all seen supply chain issues impact many aspects of life today. In some cases, lead times for Central Lincoln have increased six fold in the last two years when we’ve placed orders for materials. For example, new residential transformers typically took four months for delivery prior to the pandemic, and now they take between one year to 20 months to arrive. Costs for materials are also soaring — transformers that were $2,500 two years ago are now $15,000 each, and the cost is continuing to increase. This is not an exaggeration. (source)

    Read that again: $2,500 for necessary transformers two years ago now SIX times more, at $15,000?

    This is what defines USA, Biden, Trump, McConnell, Pelosi, Carson or Maddow, the entire shit show that is the American stupidity show. And how unprepared are we? This is the colonized mind, and this is the state of the American culture, as well as UK’s and Canada’s and EU’s. If all of this were true, and if we were guided (sic) by sane and humane folks, there’d be massive movements and masterful national plans to nationalize industries and rejigger the entire mess of capitalism for a world, a nation, that works for the people.

    Now, shifting over to Scott Ritter, military lover, but still, smart.  He’s not on mainstream TV, in mainstream news. Again, the plastic hair and the Botox lips and the grappling girdles on these airhead TV presenters match their plastic brains. Here (below), he talks about how stupid Americans are (about world issues), and that includes what Yanquis do not know or want to know about the Nazi Ukrainians and this special military operation that Russia FINALLY had to unleash on that disgusting Ukraine and that perverted Zelensky and his crew.

    But before Scott’s interview, how about  a little black robe insanity. Here we are now, with that un-Supreme Court, doing their shit show decision to get into the uterus of the female persuasion. Eichmanns, one and all.

    See the source image

    Imagine that? Supreme (not) Court now determining the legality of obesity, the calories, the sorts of foods, the environmental effects on the male perusasion. Will the male be held criminally libel for what they ingest and what they do to their bodies, their sperm, the RNA?

    Let’s be consistent here, perverts?

    There is substantial evidence that paternal obesity is associated not only with an increased incidence of infertility, but also with an increased risk of metabolic disturbance in adult offspring. Apparently, several mechanisms may contribute to the sperm quality alterations associated with paternal obesity, such as physiological/hormonal alterations, oxidative stress, and epigenetic alterations. Along these lines, modifications of hormonal profiles namely reduced androgen levels and elevated estrogen levels, were found associated with lower sperm concentration and seminal volume. Additionally, oxidative stress in testis may induce an increase of the percentage of sperm with DNA fragmentation. The latter, relate to other peculiarities such as alteration of the embryonic development, increased risk of miscarriage, and development of chronic morbidity in the offspring, including childhood cancers. (source)

    Preparing for American Roe v. Wade protests in DC. Imagine that, Plywood USA. DC Police Gauntlets. AmeriKKKa.

    Washington, On Edge About the Election, Boards Itself Up - The New York Times

    This all connects, really, these issues of local electrical power outages, and war. War against Russia, and, well, local costs soaring: War against the people. Supply chain excuses. Oh, where oh where are those Republican pukes and Democratic pukes serving us, the people? Electrical outages? Check that one failure of leadership for massive deaths and injuries in simple households?

    Ritter talks about Nato using nuclear weapons, talks about the stupidity of Americans, and actors and the cultural cancelling.

    Here you go, Gonzalo Lira: Israel Provokes Russia

    Because I’ve lost access to all my accounts and channels to the SBU (Ukraine’s secret police), I don’t have any way to promote my content—so please be so kind as to share this video with anyone whom you think might learn something. GL

    He talks about how Jews, not just Zionists and those in Occupied Palestine, seem to collectively hate Russians. It’s racism, of course, to hate an entire people: Russians? And, will this YouTube be taken down? For the opinion of Lira saying that Jews seem to hate Russians, or, for, another reason?

    So, on the Scheer Post, we get all sorts of mixed bag aggregated articles on Russia and Ukraine. Many are like this: “China Will Decide the Outcome of Russia v. the West: Is Putin the Face of the Future or the Final Gasp of the Past?”

    John Feffer wrote it, and he is bought and sold — co-director of Foreign Policy in Focus at the Institute for Policy Studies. He is a fellow at the Open Society Foundation and a member of the Democratic Socialists of America. The original article came from Tom Dispatch. Feffer is self-described Jewish gay.

    Look up George Soros and his Open Society Foundation. Look up DSA’s stance on pouring weapons and death into Ukraine. DSA is all for billions of weapons to Ukraine, and billions for ZioLensky to “operate” the Ukraine government, err, Mafia. This is how these pencil necks see their world:

    In its attempt to swallow Ukraine whole, Russia has so far managed to bite off only the eastern Donbas region and a portion of its southern coast. The rest of the country remains independent, with its capital Kyiv intact.

    No one knows how this meal will end. Ukraine is eager to force Russia to disgorge what it’s already devoured, while the still-peckish invader clearly has no interest in leaving the table.

    Here some comments at Scheer Post, pushing back on this guy, and I won’t republish mine:

    Robert Sinuhe:

    This is what happens when you are seriously ignorant of facts. He seems to know what Mr. Putin is thinking which should prompt Mr. Putin to ask this fellow what he’s thinking. Complete nonsense!

    Roger Hoffmann:

    What a disappointing read from Scheerpost. As others have already noted the repeated falsehoods (Russiagate) and baseless claims (Russia wants to swallow Ukraine) and others, I won’t waste the time addressing them either.

    I will only say that it is apparent that this writer, in stating a narrative that overlaps much with that of Washington and its mouthpieces, seems oblivious to (or else, dishonestly chooses to ignore) much of the actual history of this conflict- the context in which it emerged, the pleas and warnings not only by Russia but of many seasoned U.S. officers from military, Intel and Diplomatic corps alike, and that of Russia-expert western scholars; and the actions of the U.S. since 2014 at least.

    My advice to the writer: please don’t write about things that you know so little about, especially if you want to persuade those who’ve taken the time to become informed.

    Terrence Bennett:

    Tom Dispatch is a now sadly Pro Nazi source for regressives.
    I urge Robert Scheer to monitor and reject many former progressives who now appear on organs like the late great Tom Dispatch

    So, taking it in the rear? The back alley abortions. The behind the box store automobile trunk deals for prescriptions and diapers. The people have a choice in what money goes here and there? No massive strike, rolling strikes, rebellion? Our lives are gutted more and more each day!

    Rents? Is that on the Republicans’ and Democrats’ agenda?

    Gerardo Vidal, who has lived in the same apartment in Queens, New York, with his family for 9 years, recently received a $900-a-month rent increase this year.

    “It means having to uproot my entire family, given the fact we’re still having a difficult time earning money due to the pandemic and loss of jobs,” said Vidal. “It’s unfair that we are being basically forced out of places we lived in for nine years and that landlords can get away with this.” (source)

    We’ll finish with Richard Wolff, on Capitalism and US Empire now that USA-Klanada-EU-UK are dumping their weapons on the world, and then a Brit who has been in Donbass reporting on the ground:

    “The Economic, Political and Social Crisis of the United States.” One hour!

    Here you go, the Nazi Zio-Zelensky using USA-French-German-Nato weapons to, well, bomb neighborhoods, bomb apartment blocks, bomb universities, bomb bomb bomb, and there are NO military targets in these volleys.

    Graham Phillips: “20+ Minutes in Donetsk Under Shelling Just Now – Uncensored, Love Donbass, do what you can to help Donbass.”

    Reality therapy. So, those transformers cost so much, uh? How many transformers in Donbass have been imploded by the USA-UK-France-Germany? Keep reading:

    “National Security State Censoring of Anti-Imperialist Voices… the Latest Phase of its Long-Term Strategy to Divide and Control the Left” on Dissident Voice, by Stansfield Smith 

    These secret US government and CIA operations have been detailed in The Mighty Wurlitzer: How the CIA Played America, Finks: How the C.I.A. Tricked the World’s Best Writers, The Cultural Cold War, and AFL-CIO’s Secret War against Developing Country Workers: Solidarity or Sabotage?

    In 1977 Carl Bernstein revealed CIA interconnections with the big business media. More than 400 journalists collaborated with the CIA, with the consent of their media bosses. Working in a propaganda alliance with the CIA included: CBS, ABC, NBC, Time, Newsweek, New York Times, Associated Press, Reuters, United Press International, Miami Herald, Saturday Evening Post and New York Herald Tribune. The New York Times still sends stories to US government for pre-publication approval, while CNN and others now employ national security state figures as “analysts.”

    Reuters, BBC, and Bellingcat operate similarly, participating in covert British government funded disinformation programs to “weaken” Russia. This involves collaboration with the Counter Disinformation & Media Development section of the British Foreign Office.

    The CIA pays journalists in Germany, France, Britain, Australia and New Zealand to plant fake news. Udo Ulfkotte, a former editor at Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, one of the largest German newspapers, showed how the CIA controls German media in Presstitutes: Embedded in the Pay of the CIA. Ulfkotte said the CIA had him plant fake stories in his paper, such as Libyan President Gaddafi building poison gas factories in 2011.

    The CIA was closely involved with the long defunct National Students Association and with the trade union leadership. The AFL-CIO’s American Institute of Free Labor Development, received funding from USAID, the State Department, and NED to undermine militant union movements overseas and help foment murderous coups, as against President Allende of Chile (1973) and Brazil (1964), as well as defended the rule of their masters at home. This continues with the AFL-CIO Solidarity Center, which receives $30 million a year from NED.

    The CIA created publishing houses, such as Praeger Press, and used other companies such as John Wiley Publishing Company, Scribner’s, Ballantine Books, and Putnam to publish its books. It set up several political and literary journals such as Partisan Review. This CIA publishing amounted to over one thousand books, mostly geared to a liberal-left audience, seeking to bolster a third camp left, and undermine solidarity with the once powerful world communist movement.

    Ahh, those transformers:

    This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is image-197.png

    No national movement to, well, nationalize the construction and deployment and installation of these valuable electrical units? Summer, heat, fridges, AC, fans, oxygen machines, well, you get how valuable electricity is and how dangerous disruption of it kill.

    No Marshall Plan for that? For clinics in all neighborhoods? Social workers and counselors for millions of students? Aging in place adults, no help for them? All those with Complex PTSD?

    Again, one little Oregon County, and, shit-show number 9,999,999, coming to a city-town-county-place near-by.

    Footnote: So, I went to pick up some vital medications at the Walgreens in Newport. Lo and behold, that electrical outage a few days ago fried the Walgreens’ computer — here, in Newport, and then, in Lincoln City. So, there were  people lined up, freaked out since some of their meds are, well, life saving. That’s it for America, and it will only get worse as I wait in a line of 20 at the small USPS office in Waldport, where signs say, “Don’t leave junk mail here since we do not have a janitor . . .  We are short staffed so we have to cut Saturday pick up window services . . . Please be patient as we are understaffed.”

    USPS, and Trump and Biden. Whew! Ben Franklin is turning in his grave. The light is out on his kite. Remember, USPS is a public service, and it is one foot in the grave:

    What this report finds: The United States Postal Service is a beloved American institution that provides an essential public service to communities and good middle class jobs for workers. It is a model of efficiency and responsive to changing customer needs. But the conflicting demands made upon it by Congress and regulators put it in a precarious financial position even before the pandemic. Anti-government ideologues and special interests have long sought to privatize, shrink, or hobble the Postal Service. The Trump administration revived these efforts, spurred by the president’s opposition to mail voting and his animus toward Amazon, a major customer.

    What needs to be done: The Biden administration and Congress must act to undo the damage and allow the Postal Service to adapt to meet unmet needs, including the revival of postal banking. (source)

    Is Louis DeJoy's 10-Year Plan the Death Knell for the U.S. Postal Service?

    The post How Many Concussions from Capitalists Can Americans Take? first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • The hot takes on Labour’s Wakefield win are laughable

    Labour has won the Wakefield by-election, taking the seat from the Tories. But the data shows this isn’t any kind of resounding victory. Yet if you believed the party and the pundits then the result was ‘beyond their wildest dreams’.

    Wakefield: wild?

    As Britain Elects noted, Labour won Wakefield with 47.9% of the vote:

    Across the media and on Twitter, Labour MPs are oozing positivity about the result. For example, shadow transport secretary Louise Haigh told BBC Breakfast:

    We were obviously hoping for victory last night in Wakefield, but the result went beyond our wildest dreams. It was a higher turnout than we expected, a much bigger swing, and a much bigger vote share as well.

    Haigh must have pretty tame dreams if the Wakefield result was beyond her “wildest” ones. Because actually, as pollster John Curtice noted, what actually happened was the Tories’ vote share collapsed more than Labour’s share rose. Never mind, though – because Keir Starmer branded the result as:

    A historic victory — this city deserved a fresh start.

    “Historic” is debatable. Because given the scandals surrounding Boris Johnson – Labour should have hammered the Tories. Plus, based on the size of the electorate in 2019 and the turnout – in reality only around 19% of the voting public voted for Labour.

    Status quo, maintained

    Ultimately the Wakefield by-election is useless as a public opinion gauge. Because the turnout was just 39.5% – way down on the general election. This is much like 2021’s Batley and Spen by-election, where Labour spun-it as some sort of victory when turnout was less than 50%. Both constituencies have higher rates of poverty than other parts of England. Hartlepool was a similar story: poverty met a by-election and the result was a turnout of less than 50%.

    Our systems of politics and democracy, and their proponents, disenfranchise the poorest people. So much so, that they rightly feel voting will change nothing. The difference in a richer area, like Tiverton and Honiton, is clear. Its by-election saw a 52% turnout and the Lib Dems got in – while the constituency has much lower rates of deprivation.

    So, no – the Wakefield election wasn’t a victory for Labour. It was a victory for the political and media class, who’ve maintained the status quo. And it’s all thanks to their disenfranchisement of the poorest people.

    Featured image via Good Morning Britain – YouTube

    By Steve Topple

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • Solving poverty takes more than just talk

    By: Michael Tubbs

    Original post here.

    If you want to solve poverty, you can’t do it without listening to women, and particularly women of color. As my wife, Anna Malaika Tubbs, has noted, women of color are the folks most consistently treated as invisible, whose histories are ignored or erased. They also absorb the brunt of policy violence — legislative decisions that keep families trapped in poverty: over-policing, mass incarceration, family separation, low wages, no good jobs, lack of health care or child care, and more.

    End Poverty in California recently launched our statewide listening tour at the Young Women’s Freedom Center in Los Angeles. Through 2022, we will visit communities experiencing poverty, hear community members’ stories and ideas, and explore solutions. For 30 years, the freedom center has delivered opportunities to young women and trans youths of all genders who are affected by social systems such as incarceration and foster care — a perfect place to begin our tour.

    At the freedom center, we were welcomed by more than 50 Sister Warriors joining us from across the state. While the freedom center develops new policy, the Sister Warriors Freedom Coalition is the army fighting to see these policy changes realized. The coalition has 2,000 members in 14 chapters across California, and they share their stories with legislators to try to make policy proposals responsive to their needs.

    Many have grown tired of sharing stories.

    As coalition co-founder Krea Gomez said, “We have conversations with legislators who say, ‘I’m so glad you shared your story!’ and then they water down legislation [and] we have to wait years to revise it.”

    So my promise is that we aren’t listening for listening’s sake. We are listening to build power and to take meaningful action together.

    Many Sister Warriors talked about the “benefits cliff” — financially getting ahead just a bit only to have progress result in the loss of a child care subsidy, or food or housing assistance. There are opportunities for reform. 

    In Stockton, we worked with the county to obtain waivers so people who participated in our guaranteed income pilot wouldn’t lose other benefits. The “benefits cliff” issue is on the radar of state officials and some county welfare directors, and conversations to pursue positive reforms are happening. End Poverty in California will bring Sister Warriors into those conversations to inform design.

    Women also discussed their experiences with incarceration. Angelique Evans spoke of earning seven to eight cents an hour while working in jail, deepening her family’s poverty.

    The freedom center is working to amend the state Constitution so that involuntary servitude is no longer permitted, and to ensure that people are paid a wage comparable to that received for similar work outside of prison to help families and support reentry into the community.

    There is anger at resources being used to punish struggle rather than prevent it. Jessica Nowlan, executive director of the freedom center, noted that the cost of incarcerating a juvenile in San Francisco is astronomical — the San Francisco Chronicle reports that it is  $1.1 million annually per juvenile — and most are Black and from a few neighborhoods. What if these resources instead had gone to families to provide a guaranteed income floor? How might a family’s trajectory change?

    Finally, a Sister Warrior spoke of advocacy organizations being afraid to talk about the lack of resources available to undocumented immigrant families. There is no solution to poverty in California without finding ways to be more inclusive of immigrants.

    Gov. Gavin Newsom’s budget proposal would expand Medi-Cal eligibility to all income-eligible undocumented immigrants, and food assistance to all immigrants who are 55 or older, as would the Legislature’s budget blueprint.

    There also are legislative proposals to extend unemployment benefits to undocumented workers, and to expand food assistance to all income-eligible immigrant families and individuals. We should continue to explore these reforms as well.

    We departed the session in Los Angeles with a sense of the exhaustion people feel from sharing their stories, but hope that their voices might make a difference. Beyond hope, we know that poor people and allies must organize so that our constituency one day will be as powerful as other interest groups that maintain outsize influence in the state.

    On Tuesday in Sacramento, we have an opportunity to do just that. There will be a rally prior to the inaugural hearing of the Assembly’s Select Committee on Poverty and Economic Inclusion, chaired by Assembly member Isaac Bryan, a Democrat from Baldwin Hills. We will make our voices and our priorities heard. Please join us.

    _______________________________________

    About the author: Michael Tubbs is the founder of End Poverty in California and the senior fellow at the Rosenberg Foundation. He is the special adviser to Gov. Gavin Newsom on economic mobility and former mayor of Stockton.

    The post Solving poverty takes more than just talk appeared first on Basic Income Today.

    This post was originally published on Basic Income Today.

  • Anti-poverty campaigner: We need to stop ‘harmful’ new employment system

    Anti-poverty campaigners have called on the Anthony Albanese’s Labor government to scrap the controversial new Workforce Australia program, reports Isaac Nellist.

    This post was originally published on Green Left.

  • Calling For A Radical Break With The Status Quo Of Incrementalism

    While Democrats march around in Washington DC pretending they care about quality of life for poor people, it’s important to remember who actually walks the walk as opposed to just talking the talk.

    A joint press conference held by the Philadelphia-based Poor Peoples Economic Human Rights Campaign with the Black Alliance for Peace, shared these words of wisdom via zoom on June 16, 2022. Note that the PPEHRC operates as the Poor People’s Army, a well-established organization that has struggled and won housing for single mothers and their children. Details about attending their August boot camp to learn how it’s done are at the end of this post.

    The post Calling For A Radical Break With The Status Quo Of Incrementalism appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • “Poverty Is Violence!” Thousands March on DC to Demand Economic Justice

    Led by the Poor People’s Campaign, advocacy groups and low-income individuals gathered in Washington, D.C. on Saturday to demand that policymakers “fight poverty, not the poor.”

    “We are the 140 million poor and low-wealth people, standing together to declare we won’t be silent anymore,” said Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis, co-chair of the campaign. “Poverty is a policy choice and we will hold our leaders accountable.”

    Fellow campaign co-chair Bishop William Barber echoed that message in a speech at the Mass Poor People’s and Low-Wage Workers’ Assembly and Moral March on Washington, which drew thousands to the nation’s capital.

    Barber declared that as long as essential workers are treated like they are “expendable” during a public health crisis, as long as federal lawmakers block pandemic relief for families, “as long as we have the stealing of native lands and unjust immigration,” and as long as millions of people nationwide face hunger and homelessness, “we won’t be silent anymore.”

    “Let us be clear: We are not simply here for a day,” explained Barber, who also highlighted voter suppression efforts and the United States’ significant military spending. “This assembly is to declare the full commitment of a fusion coalition.”

    “Now is the time for a Third Reconstruction. We are the rejected — who’ve been rejected by the politics of trickle-down economics and rejected by neoliberalism,” he continued, sharing the history of the first two reconstructions.

    “This is a movement — until children are protected; until sick folk are healed; until low-wage workers are paid; until immigrants are treated fairly; until affordable housing is provided; until the atmosphere, the land, and the water are protected; until saving the world, and diplomacy, and living in peace is more important than blowing up the world,” he added, “we won’t be silent anymore.”

    Participants in the event shared updates on social media with the hashtag #MoralAssembly2022:

    The event featured testimonies from people like Vivian Henry of the Minnesota Poor People’s Campaign, who spoke of her fears about losing her Medicaid due to politicians who don’t care whether she lives or dies.

    “I’m here to say that if Congress can repeatedly afford to give corporate welfare to the rich, then Congress can afford universal healthcare for all so that people don’t go bankrupt or are forced to use a GoFundMe to cover medical expenses,” Henry said. “Scarcity is a massive lie!”

    “My children are survivors just by being alive. It is not enough to be resilient and survive, it is our human right to grow and thrive,” declared Maya Torralba, an Indigenous mother who spoke at the assembly, followed by her daughter, Kateri Daffron.

    Describing her experience growing up in Anadarko, Oklahoma, Daffron said that “although I moved away I am still in poverty. I cannot leave poverty. I am a 17-year-old child and my country has already failed me.”

    Kevin Queen, who traveled to the rally from Nebraska, told North Country Public Radio that “it’s kind of sickening to me that we’ve come to the capital of the richest country on the planet and we see homeless people in tunnels and living on the streets.”

    “And so just to be able to be here and participate is an honor as well as something that’s very upsetting, because here we are, what, 60 years later, and we’re still marching for the poor — we still haven’t fixed this problem,” he added, referencing the 1963 March on Washington — where Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech.

    Ahead of the assembly, Barber said that people were coming to D.C. “to say not only do we need a moral reset… we represent 32% of the electorate now, poor people do, and 45% of the electorate in battleground states. And it’s time for that power to be organized, mobilized, and felt in every election throughout this country.”

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • IN THE STEPS OF FRANCIS OF ASSISI

    Tomorrow, Sunday, my local church, the Aspley Uniting Church, at which I have been an Elder for 63 active years, celebrates ACTS SUNDAY, as we do every year at this time. ACTS is the community service arm of our small Church which has about 100 regulars attenders. Obviously named after the New Testament book, ACTS …

    Continue reading IN THE STEPS OF FRANCIS OF ASSISI

    The post IN THE STEPS OF FRANCIS OF ASSISI appeared first on Everald Compton.

    This post was originally published on My Articles – Everald Compton.

  • Tomorrow’s March on Washington Will Target Poverty, Voter Suppression, Climate

    We speak with Bishop William Barber and Reverend Liz Theoharis, co-chairs of the Poor People’s Campaign, about plans for Saturday’s Moral March on Washington and to the Polls to demand the government address key issues facing poor and low-income communities. The march will bring together thousands of people from diverse backgrounds to speak out against the country’s rising poverty rates, voter suppression in low-income communities and more. “To have this level of poverty that’s untalked about too often … is actually morally indefensible, constitutionally inconsistent, politically insensitive and economically insane,” says Barber. Theoharis says the lack of universal healthcare in the U.S. is a major source of economic insecurity and has contributed to the COVID-19 death toll. She asks how a rich country “that spends more money on healthcare than any other nation with a comparable economy still has [these] kind of poor health outcomes.”

    TRANSCRIPT

    This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

    AMY GOODMAN: Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman.

    As the United States experiences its worst inflation in decades with skyrocketing food, gas and energy prices, we end today’s show in Washington, D.C., where the Poor People’s Campaign has organized a massive Moral March on Washington Saturday. The demonstration is being led by low-income people and workers demanding access to stable housing, healthcare, living wages, gun control, and reproductive and voting rights.

    For more, we’re joined in Washington, D.C., by Bishop Dr. William Barber II, co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign, president of Repairers of the Breach. We also hope to speak with Dr. Liz Theoharis, co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign.

    Bishop Barber, welcome back to Democracy Now! If you can talk about what you’re doing in Washington? As inside the Capitol there is this epic historic hearing around the previous president’s attempted coup, the man who would not let go of power but was forced to in the end, I’m wondering if you could contrast what we’re seeing exposed there with what you’re doing this weekend.

    BISHOP WILLIAM BARBER II: Well, thank you, Amy.

    We are not the insurrection. We are the resurrection, and a resurrection of thousands, of every race and creed and color and kind and geography, who are coming nonviolently to Washington, D.C., from all across this great land, to say that the 140 million poor and low-wealth people in this country, 43% of this nation, 52% of the children, 68% — 60% of Black people, 33% of — 30% of white people, 68% of Latinos, and so forth and so on, 87 million people who are uninsured or underinsured, 32 million people that get up every morning and work jobs that do not pay a living wage, less than $15 an hour — we won’t be silent or unseen anymore.

    The time has come for us to have a Third Reconstruction. We had one in the 1800s, one in the 1960s. We need one now, that’s about policy, reconstructing a moral framework, political framework in this country, because to have this level of poverty, that’s un-talked-about too often and unseen and unheard, is actually morally indefensible, constitutionally inconsistent, politically insensitive and economically insane. So people are coming. But poor people are coming to say not only do we need a moral reset — and low-wage workers are saying it — we represent 32% of the electorate now, poor people do, and 45% of the electorate in battleground states. And it’s time for that power to be organized, mobilized and felt in every election throughout this country.

    Now, when we look at what you see in these hearings, we have to ask the question, I think: Why were Trumpism or Trump and his team fighting to hold onto power? Why wouldn’t McConnell and them impeach him when they had a chance? I believe, Amy, and we believe, this isn’t just about personality, but policy. We’re witnessing a crisis of democracy, because some of the people who didn’t go along with Trump in this and didn’t go along with Eastman’s scheme still took the time to see if it was right, if there was a way they could do it. They still voted 99% of the time for Trump’s policies of extremism. And they still believe in a political policy coup d’état to suppress the vote, to rob the government of its resources by giving tax cuts to the wealthiest and to the greediest and the corporate interests, that disempowers the government from doing the things it needs to do for the least and the left-out and the workers and women. They are still the group that wants to take — to have a political coup d’état and take women’s rights to their own body. They’re still the group that wants to block living wages, block healthcare, block addressing climate change, block police violence. And all of these policies produce a policy murder. And we found out just this week that the denial of universal healthcare during COVID, for instance, has cost 330,000 lives. We found out, because of Trump and his allies’ policies in the beginning of COVID, poor people died at a rate of two to five times higher than anyone else in this country.

    So, we are the contrast. What you saw January 6th was the insurrection. What you see on Saturday is a resurrection. It’s a resurrection of people coming together, the Mass Poor People’s, Low-Wage Workers’ Assembly and Moral March to the Polls. And we are calling on people to still join us at Third and Pennsylvania at 9:30 a.m. on Saturday morning.

    AMY GOODMAN: Liz Theoharis is also with us, the Reverend Dr. Liz Theoharis, who is co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign and president — also executive director of the Kairos Center at Union Theological Seminary.

    Liz, welcome back to Democracy Now! If you could talk about the significance of this march, and this coming at a time where a Yale study just came out saying that something like 338,000 people who died of COVID-19 during the pandemic in the United States — a third of the people — died unnecessarily, could have been saved if the U.S. had Medicare for All? Can you talk about how healthcare is a basic right, as one of the tenets of what people are calling for in Washington?

    REV. LIZ THEOHARIS: Well, thanks so much, Amy, and it is great to be back.

    And as Bishop Barber said, and as you just referenced, this study came out this week that says that, yeah, a third of the people who did not have healthcare would not have died from this pandemic. What we in the Poor People’s Campaign have been putting out, and we did a study with Jeffrey Sachs and with folks over at Columbia University that showed that between two and five times the number of poor people from poor communities died from the pandemic than richer communities and richer people. And again, this is because of these underlying issues of health inequality, of poverty, of low wages.

    And so, indeed, when we gather on Pennsylvania Avenue on Saturday and we hear the voices, the stories, but also the solutions coming out of poor and low-income people’s experience and lives, we will surely hear about the need for healthcare. As Bishop Barber has said, we need healthcare to be connected to people’s bodies, not to their jobs. And how is it, in this rich nation, that spends more money on healthcare than any other nation with a comparable economy, still has the kind of poor health outcomes, still has 87 million people who before the pandemic were uninsured or underinsured, and even some more who have — you know, tens of thousands who have lost their healthcare coverage in the worst public health crisis in generations?

    And again, this just does not have to be. It actually — you know, we could spend less on healthcare and lead healthier lives, and everyone could have universal coverage. We need to expand Medicaid, but we also need to implement a single-payer universal healthcare system. And again, this will lift society from the bottom.

    And so, this and then the cry and demand for living-wage jobs, for adequate housing, for immigration reform, for protecting this democracy, they’re all connected. And we see the interconnections, the intersections of the denial of healthcare, the destruction of our environment, the militarization of our communities, and the problems of poverty and low wages that are infecting almost half of the population, and, therefore, bringing this impoverished democracy to a real crisis.

    AMY GOODMAN: Liz Theoharis, you’ve also said that declaring war is a declaration of war on the poor. Explain.

    REV. LIZ THEOHARIS: So, you know, that actually comes from Dr. King and from many that have come before. But Dr. King, you know, when he comes out against the Vietnam War all those years ago, says that war, in all its form, is a war on the poor, and it’s cruel manipulation of the poor.

    And we’re seeing this today. I mean, we don’t have a draft in this country, but we have a poverty draft. And 22 veterans commit suicide every day in this country because of the moral costs of war. And if we look at our military budget, 53 cents of every discretionary dollar goes to the military. We can’t even spend 15 cents on healthcare and living-wage jobs and investments in our children and in anti-poverty programs combined. You know, this disproportionately impacts poor people. And that’s poor people in the United States, and that’s poor people across the world. As Dr. King said, you know, you have poor people come together from this rich nation to go and kill poor people across the world. And we’re seeing this, you know, across the world in this moment, as well.

    AMY GOODMAN: Bishop Barber, this is Pride Month, and there have been serious attacks or attempted attacks, from Coeur d’Alene to the Bay Area. You had Patriot Front in Coeur d’Alene, a small army stopped by police before they attacked a Pride march. Can you talk about the far right and the white supremacists using Christianity to justify what they’re doing?

    BISHOP WILLIAM BARBER II: Well, I don’t call them “right.” I never use the term “far right” and “far left.” I think those terms are problematic. And one of the things the Poor People’s Campaign is saying is we need to have a moral conversation about right versus wrong, constitutional versus unconstitutional. And that’s part of our problem.

    The reality is that that’s heresy. Any time you use religion to justify violence against gay people, against women, against the poor, against any segment of a community, when you use it to suppress the vote, when you use religion to try to block living wages and healthcare, it is exactly wrong. One of the reasons it’s wrong from a moral and a religious standpoint is because those become the policies of death. You know, every piece of regressive policy costs lives. When you deny healthcare, it costs lives. When you attack LGBT communities, you cost lives. When you allow guns to flourish in the society, people to walk around with AK-47s, you cost lives. When you block living wages and people moving up out of poverty — we knew that, even before COVID hit, poor people were dying at a rate of 700 people a day, nearly 30 people an hour per day, 250,000 a year, from the effects of poverty. That is contrary to the biblical call to life. It is contrary to the call of the ancient prophets that says, “Woe unto those who legislate evil and rob the poor of their rights and make women and children their prey” — P-R-E-Y. It’s contrary to the call of Jesus, that we’re supposed to be about life and good news to the poor. And it’s contrary to the Declaration of Independence, that we are supposed to be about life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and contrary to the Constitution promise to establish justice and equal protection under the law.

    We are a movement of life, though. What we are saying is — and on Saturday, we are having Black people, white people, Brown people, Asian people, Native people, gay people, straight people, Republicans, Democrats, veterans, nonveterans. These are the voices you will hear, poor and impacted people, on the stage. It’s not a march and a rally and an assembly, really, for [inaudible] —

    AMY GOODMAN: We have 10 seconds.

    BISHOP WILLIAM BARBER II: — for people to come and talk for people. People will talk for themselves. We are the resurrection and not the insurrection.

    AMY GOODMAN: Well, we want to thank you both so much for being with us, Bishop Dr. William Barber and Dr. Liz Theoharis, co-chairs of the Poor People’s Campaign, holding the Mass Poor People’s Assembly and Moral March on Washington on Saturday.

    Oh, and, Liz, I also want to congratulate your sister Jeanne Theoharis. The film The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks, based on Jeanne’s best-selling book by the same title, just premiered last night at the Tribeca Film Festival, directed by our former Democracy Now! producer Yoruba Richen, as well as Johanna Hamilton. It is fantastic, not to be missed by anyone. It was at the Tribeca Film Festival.

    And that does it for our show. Democracy Now! is produced with Renée Feltz, Mike Burke, Deena Guzder, Messiah Rhodes, Nermeen Shaikh, María Taracena, Tami Woronoff, Camille Baker, Charina Nadura, Sam Alcoff, Tey-Marie Astudillo, John Hamilton, Robby Karran, Hany Massoud, Mary Conlon.

    On Monday, a Juneteenth special — don’t miss it — on Democracy Now! I’m Amy Goodman. Stay safe.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Killing as policy: Duterte’s bloody drug war that Marcos will inherit

    By Jodesz Gavilan in Manila

    A birth of a child usually draws out changes from people. Parents, and even grandparents, recreate themselves in a bid to better address the demands of the new addition to the family.

    Julio* knew this all too well. He first became a father at the young age of 17, and went on to work odd jobs to fulfill his responsibilities. But along the way, due to mounting pressure and the vicious cycle of poverty, Julio turned to illegal drugs.

    “Sabi niya sa akin hindi ko siya maintindihan kasi ako raw may maayos na trabaho at madali makahanap ng panibagong trabaho kung sakali, samantalang siya, walang ganoong oportunidad para sa kanya,” Cristina, his younger sister, told Rappler in an interview.

    (He told me I won’t be able to understand him because I have a stable job and can get another job if I want to, while he doesn’t have that opportunity.)

    Julio eventually separated from his first wife, and met a new woman who then got pregnant. With a new baby on the way, 39-year-old Julio was determined more than ever to change.

    He planned to start a sari-sari store, buy a refrigerator to sell frozen goods, just about anything to start anew.

    “Gusto niya na iyong iyong nagawa niyang pagkukulang sa unang pamilya niya, hindi na ulit mangyari doon sa ipinagbubuntis ng kanyang kinakasama,” Cristina recalled. (He wanted to avoid repeating the same shortcomings he had with his first family.)

    But President Rodrigo Duterte had other plans for Julio and thousands of others who came from the poorest communities in the Philippines. Drug dependents, for the country’s chief executive, are hopeless and useless to society.

    Enemy out of drug users
    Duterte made an enemy out of drug users and waged a “war” that smudged gutters, roads, and narrow alleys all over the country with blood.

    RealNumberPH, the government’s unitary report on the drug war, shows that at least 6248 people have died at the hands of police during anti-illegal drug operations between July 2016 and April 30, 2022, while human rights groups estimate the total death toll to reach 30,000 to include victims of vigilante-style killings.

    But figures obtained by Rappler show that the Philippine National Police (PNP) had already recorded 7884 deaths from July 1, 2016 to August 31, 2020.

    On December 11, 2018, Julio became one of the thousands slain. One person told his family that their son was standing outside when he and a companion were abducted by men riding a white van.

    Their lifeless bodies were found not long after.

    Cristina was sure it was the police who killed his brother, but they feared going public with this allegation. It didn’t help that the sole witness, who talked to them during his brother’s funeral, was also eventually killed.

    “Masakit ang pagkamatay niya pero iniisip ko na lang na at least nakita at naiburol namin siya, hindi tulad sa iba na nakikita na putol na ang kamay, wala na balita na bigla na lang nawawala,” she said.

    (It hurts that he died but at least we were able to find his body and do a proper burial, unlike others who were dismembered or just disappeared completely.)

    Duterte’s war on drugs
    This is Duterte’s war on drugs, a key policy in his administration that has been scrutinised by both local and international bodies, including the International Criminal Court.

    For Gloria Lai, regional director for Asia of the International Drug Policy Consortium, the bloody trail Duterte will leave behind once his presidential term ends on June 30 was highly unnecessary and preventable.

    “[Killing people] is not a solution,” she told Rappler.

    “What does success look like for the Duterte administration? It kept changing over time [and] there is no way you can say there is success,” Lai added.

    The President and his allies’ rhetoric in the past six years would make one think that the Philippines has become a narcostate where drug users are behind the most violent crimes. For Duterte, they steal, they kill, they take innocent lives.

    The Philippines indeed has issues with the proliferation of illegal drugs, but determining how widespread it is has been hard under the Duterte administration, given the overall lack of transparency and accurate data.

    Duterte himself has been dropping different figures over the years. But a report released in February 2020 by Vice-President Leni Robredo following her short stint as co-chairperson of the Inter-Agency Committee on Anti-Illegal Drugs stated that there “is no common and reliable baseline data on the number of drug dependents in the country.”

    ‘Keeping their grip on power’
    “It really just seemed to serve the administration well… to obtain power, to keep their grip on power, because it creates fear, it creates enemies, it creates scapegoats that justify really brutal and violent actions,” Lai said, adding that the drug issue was “exploited for political gain”.

    Six years into the administration, the Duterte government remains tight-lipped, if not vague, about what it deemed key performance indicators of the bloody war on drugs.

    PNP spokesperson Colonel Jean Fajardo said the police used two approaches in addressing the drug problem in the country. For the last six years, it had focused on reducing supplies and targeting their so-called pushers, up to high-value individuals.

    “Dalawa po ang lagi nating ginagamit na approach dito po sa ating kampanya laban sa ilegal na droga. Ito po ‘yong tinatawag natin na supply reduction strategy and demand reduction strategy,” Fajardo told Rappler.

    (We use two approaches in our campaign against illegal drugs. We call them supply reduction and demand reduction strategies.)

    But despite this, the PNP and its partner Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) only managed to clear 25,061 out of 35,471 barangays it identified as being involved in illegal drugs. As of April 30, 2022, there are still 10,410 drug-affected barangays yet to be cleared by the PNP and PDEA.

    Spike after start of bloody operations
    This means, 29.34 percent of drug-affected barangays are yet to be cleared by drug enforcement authorities. Based on data on drug-affected barangays from 2016 to 2022, the Philippines saw a spike in 2017, a year after the start of bloody operations.

    From 19,717 drug-affected villages in 2016, the number rose to 24,424 the following year. The number of drug-affected barangays then significantly dropped between 2020 and 2022 — the pandemic years.

    In terms of collected illegal drugs, the authorities were able to seize P89.29-billion worth of illegal drugs from July 1, 2016 until April 30, 2022. PDEA, one of the lead agencies for Duterte’s drug war, boasted that they were able to seize 11,843.41 kilograms or P76.55-billion worth of shabu or crystalline methamphetamine.

    The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) has yet to release its 2022 report on synthetic drugs in Southeast Asia. But in their 2021 report, the UNODC reported that shabu was the cause of the majority of drug-related arrests and treatment admissions in the Philippines.

    For six years, authorities were able to arrest a total of 341,494 individuals. Of this number, only 15,096 are considered high-value targets.

    Based on the PNP’s classification, individuals who are considered high-value targets are those who run drug dens, are on the wanted list, and leaders and members of drug groups, among others.

    This means that of the total number of arrested individuals due to illegal drug offences, only 4.42 percent or around four in every 100 people arrested are high-value targets.
    Dehumanizing rhetoric, actions

    Drug users bacame pawns
    Duterte used drug users as pawns in his bid to make violence a norm in state policy and actions, Philippine Human Rights Information Center (PhilRights) executive director Nymia Pimentel-Simbulan said.

    “The legacy that he will be leaving behind would be institutionalization of state violence, this particular government has a proclivity towards addressing societal problems using a war framework,” she told Rappler in an interview on Monday, June 13.

    Staying true to his violent rhetoric, the President has effectively mobilised state resources to use violence and other punitive measures to address issues. Beyond the problem of illegal drugs, this approach can also be seen in the government’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020.

    If the Duterte government was serious about eradicating drugs in the Philippines, Lai said that it should’ve aimed for programs that better suit this intended outcome instead of focusing on killings.

    For one, the state should’ve highlighted how drug addiction is a health problem, therefore producing better health programs. For people who use illegal drugs like shabu to stay awake to work long hours, the government should invest in programs that will keep families out of the vicious cycle of poverty.

    But as it is, Duterte’s rhetoric and actions further dehumanize drug dependents, lumping them together with those who are part of the illegal drug syndicates.

    “If you forced them and placed them into a list where they could be hunted down and randomly interrogated by police, or even just prevent them from getting a job or going to a certain school, you just drastically diminished their life prospects,” Lai said.

    Gap in social response
    PNP spokesperson Fajardo admitted that there is still really a gap when it comes to social response, as well as rehabilitation facilities to cater to drug personalities.

    “Sinasabi natin, we agree on the fact na ito pong drug problem natin ay health problem. Hindi lang social problem. So ‘yong mga pasilidad kulang, ‘yong ating mga livelihood na pupuwede po nating i-offer dito sa mga sumurrender pati na rin po ‘yong mga nagtutulak, ‘yong mga pusher. Hindi po sa wala, pero kulang po talaga ‘yong efforts,” Fajardo said.

    (We say that we agree on the fact that this drug problem is a health problem. Not only social problems. So our facilities are lacking, the livelihood that we can offer for the surrenderees, to pushers. It’s not that we don’t have anything, but the efforts are not enough.)

    There are 64 drug rehabilitation centers in the Philippines as of 2021 — 16 under the Department of Health, nine with the local government units, and 39 privately-owned. Together, these facilities have 4840 bed capacity.

    In a forum in June 2021, DOH’s Dangerous Drug Abuse Prevention and Treatment Programme manager Jose Leabres said there was a need for 11,911 additional in-patient beds for 2021 and 10,629 for 2022.

    Data from the Dangerous Drugs Board (DDB) shows an increasing number of admissions to care facilities across the country. In 2021, there were at least 2344 new admissions.

    A trail of blood
    Duterte is leaving Malacañang on June 30 with a trail of blood from people killed in the name of his violent war on drugs. He also leaves behind thousands of orphaned children in the poorest communities, as well as a much more stigmatised issue of drug dependency in the Philippines.

    It now falls on president-elect Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. to “address all the harms done by the Duterte administration” on the issue of illegal drugs in the country, according to Lai, as well as giving justice to thousands of victims.

    During the campaign season, Marcos said he will continue Duterte’s drug war, but would focus on its being a health issue. He also hinted about shielding it from the International Criminal Court.

    Meanwhile, just this June, during courtesy calls with foreign ambassadors, Swedish Ambassador Annika Thunborg said there was a discussion to continue the drug war within the framework of the law and respect for human rights, among others.

    PNP spokesperson Fajardo said the incoming administration should put focus on demand reduction.

    “Pero ‘yong isa pa pong approach natin na tinatawag po nating demand reduction program, hangga’t may bumibili po, hangga’t may market po ay talagang meron at meron pong sisibol na panibagong players,” she said.

    (But the other approach that we call the demand reduction program, until there are people who purchase drugs, until there is a market for them, there will always be new players.)
    DRUG WAR DEATHS. Families of victims of drug-related extrajudicial killings and human rights advocates join a Mass at the Commission on Human Rights headquarters in Quezon City.

    Not holding her breath
    But Simbulan, whose group PhilRights has documented the victims of Duterte’s war on drugs, is not holding her breath, knowing the Marcos family’s track record and his alliance with Duterte.

    “I am not that optimistic that it will adopt a different method or approach,” she said. “Chances are, it will adopt the same punitive violent approach in addressing the drug problem in the Philippines.”

    IDPC’s Lai, meanwhile, said it’s going to be a massive turnaround if Marcos decides to do away with what Duterte has done. There is nothing preventing the incoming administration from focusing on drug issues, but it has to make sure to alter government response based on evidence and what communities really need, instead of a blanket campaign that puts a premium on killings.

    Most importantly, the new administration should focus their resources on areas that would make a difference on people’s lives for the better.

    “[They should] consider that in a lot of cases, the drug policies and the drug laws themselves have caused a lot more harm to people and communities than the actual drugs themselves,” Lai said.

    * Names have been changed for their protection

    Jodesz Gavilan is a Rappler reporter. Republished with permission.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Land in South Africa Shall Be Shared Among Those Who Work It

    Sbongile Tabhethe works in the food garden at eKhenana land occupation in Cato Manor, Durban, 9 June 2020. Credit: New Frame / Mlungisi Mbele

    In March 2022, United Nations (UN) Secretary-General António Guterres warned of a ‘hurricane of hunger’ due to the war in Ukraine. Forty-five developing countries, most of them on the African continent, he said, ‘import at least a third of their wheat from Ukraine or Russia, with 18 of those import[ing] at least 50 percent’. Russia and Ukraine export 33% of global barley stocks, 29% of wheat, 17% of corn, and nearly 80% of the world’s supply of sunflower oil. Farmers outside of Russia and Ukraine, trying to make up for the lack of exports, are now struggling with higher fuel prices also caused by the war. Fuel prices impact both the cost of chemical fertilisers and farmers’ ability to grow their own crops. Maximo Torero Cullen, chief economist at the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation, said that ‘one of every five calories people eat have crossed at least one international border, up more than 50 percent from 40 years ago’. This turbulence in the global food trade will certainly create a problem for nutrition and food intake, particularly amongst the poorest people on the planet.

    Poorer countries do not have many tools to stem the tide of hunger, largely due to World Trade Organisation (WTO) rules that privilege subsidy regimes for richer countries but punish poorer ones if they use state action on behalf of their own farmers and the hungry. A recent report by no less than the WTO, International Monetary Fund, World Bank, and Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development provided evidence of these subsidy advantages from which wealthier countries benefit. At the 12th WTO ministerial conference in mid-June, the G-33 countries will seek to expand the use of the ‘peace clause’ (established in 2013) to allow poorer countries to protect their farmers’ livelihoods through the state procurement of food and enhanced public food distribution systems.

    Two young girls return to their homes after drawing water from a stream that the farm dwelling community shares with wild animals, 29 July 2020.
    Credit: New Frame / Magnificent Mndebele

    Those who grow our food are hungry, yet, stunningly, there is little conversation about the poverty and hunger of farmers, peasants, and agricultural workers themselves. More than 3.4 billion people – nearly half the world’s population – live in rural areas; amongst them are 80% of the world’s poor. For most of the rural poor, agriculture is the principal source of income, providing billions of jobs. Rural poverty is reproduced not because people do not work hard, but because of the dispossession of rural workers from land ownership and the withdrawal of state support from small farmers and peasants.

    Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research (South Africa) has been paying very close attention to the plight of farmworkers in the region as part of our overall project to monitor the ‘hurricane of hunger’. Our most recent dossier, This Land Is the Land of Our Ancestors, is a fine-grained study of farmworkers from their own perspective. Researcher Yvonne Phyllis travelled from KwaZulu-Natal to the Western and Northern Cape provinces interviewing farmworkers and their organisations to learn about the failures of land reform in South Africa and its impact on their lives. This is one of the few dossiers that begins in the first person, reflecting the intimate nature of politics surrounding the land issue in South Africa. ‘What does the land mean to you?’, I asked Yvonne while we were together in Johannesburg recently. She answered:

    I grew up on a farm in Bedford, in the Eastern Cape province. My upbringing gifted me some of the best lessons of my life. One lesson was from the community of farmworkers and farm dwellers; they taught me the value of being in community with other people. They also taught me what it means to nurture and cultivate land and how to make my own meaning of what land is to me. Those lessons have informed my personal beliefs about the nature of land. All people deserve to live from the land. Land is not only important because we can produce from it; it forms part of people’s histories, humanity, and cultural heritage.

    Six generations of the Phyllis family have lived in this house and worked on this farm. Credit: New Frame / Andy Mkosi

    The process of colonialism by Dutch (Boer) and British settlers dispossessed African farmers and converted them into either landless workers, unpaid labour tenants, or the rural unemployed. This process was hardened by the Native Land Act (no. 27 of 1913), whose legacy continues to be felt today. Seventeen-year-old composer Reuben Caluza (1895–1969) responded to the law with his ‘Umteto we Land Act’ (‘The Land Act’), which became one of the first anthems of the liberation movement in the country:

    The right which our compatriots fought for
    Our cry for the nation
    is to have our country
    We cry for the homeless
    sons of our fathers
    Who do not have a place
    in this place of our ancestors

    The Freedom Charter (1955) of the African National Congress (ANC) and its allies promised those who struggled against apartheid, which formally ended in 1994, that ‘The land shall be shared among those who work it’. This promise was alluded to again in the 1996 South African Constitution, chapter 2, section 25.5, but it excludes explicit mention of farmworkers.

    This is the site of the ancestral graveyard of the Phyllis family on which Yvonne’s father Jacob and their family worked, 6 June 2021. Credit: New Frame / Andy Mkosi

    In fact, right from the 1993 Interim Constitution, the new post-apartheid system defended the rights of farm owners through a ‘property clause’ in chapter 2, section 28. Differences within the ANC led to the abandonment of the more progressive Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) in favour of the neoliberal Growth, Employment, and Redistribution (GEAR) strategy – a self-imposed structural adjustment programme. What this meant was that there were simply insufficient political will and state funds allocated for the land restitution, land tenure reform, and land redistribution programmes. As our dossier notes, to this day the promises of the Freedom Charter ‘have yet to be fulfilled’.

    Rather than expropriate land from the primarily white land-owning class to compensate for historical injustices, the state provides for compensation to landowners and operates on the principle of ‘willing buyer, willing seller’. Bureaucratic red tape and a lack of funds have sabotaged any genuine land reform project. In his 2014 Ruth First Lecture, Irvin Jim, general secretary of the largest trade union in the country, the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA), noted that the centenary of the 1913 Land Act was not commemorated by the government but only by the militant strike by farmworkers in 2012 and 2013. ‘The strike is still fresh in our memories’, Jim said. ‘It continues to highlight the colonial historical fact that the land, and the produce that comes from it, are not being equitably shared among those who work the land’. Due to the neoliberal orientation of the land question, some of the programmes set up for restitution and redistribution have ended up benefitting large landholders over subsistence farmers and lifelong farmworkers.

    Former labourers Freeda Mkhabela, Lucia Foster, and Gugu Ngubane (from left to right) are among the activists struggling against landlessness as well as poor pay and working conditions and for better treatment of farmworkers, 26 May 2021. Credit: New Frame / Mlungisi Mbele

    A genuine agrarian reform project in South Africa would not only meet the cries for justice from the land but would also provide a pathway to deal with the hunger crisis in the countryside. Our dossier ends with a six-point list of demands developed from our conversations with farmworkers and their organisations:

    1. The government of South Africa must consult farmworkers and farm dwellers to incorporate their contributions into the development of a land reform programme which addresses their land needs.
    2. Labour tenants’ claims to land ownership should be given priority in order to avoid land reform that solely enriches Black elites.
    3. The Department of Agriculture, Land Reform, and Rural Development should facilitate the process of white farm owners apportioning some of their farmland to lifetime employees and descendants of families who have worked on farms for several generations.
    4. The government must purchase farms for farmworkers and assist them with capital for start-up costs, farming equipment, and agricultural skills.
    5. Land reform in South Africa must take into account the social factors that contribute to food insecurity and acknowledge the opportunities to rectify it through land redistribution.
    6. The process of land reform must address the marginalisation of women workers in the agricultural industry and the lack of land ownership by women farmers to ensure gender parity in both spheres.

    Loo ngumhlaba wookhokho bethu! This is the land of our ancestors! That’s the slogan that gives our dossier its title. It is about time that those who work the land get to own the land.

    The post Land in South Africa Shall Be Shared Among Those Who Work It first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Imperialism Cannot Solve Our Problems

    In learning more about the Poor People’s Campaign Moral March on Washington set for June 18th, I came across this statement by Bishop William Barber, the campaign’s national co-chair:

    Republicans say poverty is just a personal failure. And Democrats too often talk about the working class and those trying to make it into the middle class but refuse to talk expressly about poverty. Our debates are locked in struggles around and about trickle-down concepts of neoliberalism, and middle-class considerations.

    He concluded that the country’s refusal to address poverty is “the basic moral contradiction” of our time.

    I have to admit that I initially bristled at the idea of a “moral contradiction” because, as a non-religious person, that language sometimes raises red flags for me. But I began to think about how Marxists talk about the concept of contradiction.

    What is a contradiction? All social phenomena contain contradictions. Contradictions aren’t simply accidents but essential features of what those objects are. For example, the U.S. is a society that describes itself as free and touts its wealth but is plagued by the poison of white supremacy and male supremacy. The constitutional system grants due process, but cops kill and beat thousands of people each year. It has 142 million people living in dire poverty or one paycheck, one health crisis, or one disaster away from financial desperation. More than 52 million workers earn less than $15 per hour and often can’t meet their basic needs.

    U.S. leaders and capitalists brag about advanced technology, such as medical technology and knowledge. Still, they couldn’t prevent the loss of 1 million lives from COVID or 100,000 opioid overdose deaths, or 46,000 deaths from guns. We wring our hands while little change takes place. We wonder why we never see these things coming and constantly react only after so many people have been harmed.

    Political leaders boast about an advanced educational system but cannot provide it free or at a reasonable cost to the mass of working-class people. Decades-long debt peonage is the best choice we have. As illiteracy grows and workers score poorly on tests that measure competence with mathematics and language, politicians cut school and university budgets.

    These are essential contradictions that define the U.S. as a social formation. They aren’t just bad choices made by an otherwise just society.

    This reality shapes how I read Barber’s comments. “Moral contradiction” causes one of the major political parties to demand the state control women’s bodies by banning safe abortions claiming the human rights of unborn fetuses. But then, the next day, it votes as a bloc against immediate steps to remedy a baby formula shortage. A baby formula shortage! They will demand pregnant women register themselves to track births and punish abortions but refuse to consider gun registration. The Republicans and fascists built a morally bankrupt political platform. But the moral contradictions of the capitalist market economy, which they cherish even above life itself, are central pillars of the whole system. Abortion, gun violence, and baby formula are just the most recent plain examples.

    Contradictions

    Why do we care about contradictions like this? Social systems change and develop based on how social and class forces address these contradictions and turn a system into a new substance. Many capitalists and their sympathizers see contradictions as mere inconsistencies or glitches. Reformers want to fix these glitches and bring our “values” back into alignment with our actions. Or, they want to mend these problems by creating philanthropic or socially innovative programs that help out the poor but leave the system intact.

    Billionaires and fascists have different ideas about resolving contradictions. Think of Elon Musk’s recent embrace of the Republican Party and its fascist platform. He is mad that the government continues to investigate his suspicious financial activities, and he is afraid unions will weaken his absolute power in his companies. He wants state power that he can personally bend to his will to help him get over his emotional problems. He wants more power to resolve contradictions through coercion and legal force.

    Imperialism uses war to resolve contradictions. Consider the U.S. government’s drive to perpetuate or expand the war in Ukraine. It manufactures images of Russian human rights abuses—some of which are undoubtedly true. But the U.S. record of torture, mass killings, destroying civilians, racist mass incarceration, assassinations, political interventions, and hybrid wars on a global scale, in just the past two decades, embarrass even people like Henry Kissinger, among the vilest of abusers. George W. Bush’s recent verbal slip wasn’t just a gaffe.

    Though immoral, these aren’t simply moral inconsistencies. They are contradictions that comprise the structure of U.S. capitalism and its political system. Its capitalist class, on the whole, believes that it must maintain these structural forms of power if the U.S. is to keep its hegemonic position in the imperialist world system. In simple terms, these contradictions make the U.S. what it is as a country. This structure drives us from war crisis to economic crisis to health crisis and back all the way around again. So far, our only means of psychological survival has been self-induced amnesia. Forgetting, like self-medication, eases the pain of this moral contradiction, which I believe most of us feel very deeply.

    Barber’s terminology about moral contradiction is essential. And amnesia is no longer a practical solution. However, working-class power transformed into social power could be the basis for an answer.

    Imperialist world system

    In the present world system, five fundamental contradictions are interconnected and reveal moral bankruptcy, logical inconsistencies, and anti-human tendencies that make capitalism what it is:

    • a world imperialist system that denies to most humans their national aspirations
    • worldwide poverty that denies human dignity on a scale of billions
    • deepening rates of exploitation that spark frequent crises of overproduction
    • global socialization of labor vs. the anarchy of national systems that rely on the capitalist market economy
    • excess capitalist production without rational planning for the survival of humanity and the planet.

    What is a world system? World system is not a conspiratorial term, nor does it refer to “globalism” or the “deep state” or any mystifying right-wing concepts about evil hordes of racial others dominating the U.S. or Europeans. Those racist and anti-Semitic theories drive right-wing capitalist agendas and fascist violence.

    The world system names the dominant form of global integration of countries into the capitalist-imperialist system in a particular period. For example, the European slave-trade-based capitalist development, led by Spain and Portugal in the 15th and 16th centuries, the Dutch in the 17th century, and Great Britain in the 18th and 19th centuries, formed a world system based on markets in human beings as a financial basis for market and industrial capitalist development. It created a settler-colonial-slavery complex, which also drove Indigenous genocide in the Americas. It made modern capitalism possible. (Gerald Horne’s The Dawning of the Apocalypse, The Apocalypse of Settler Colonialism, The Counterrevolution of 1776, Negro Comrades of the Crown, and Confronting Black Jacobins can be read sequentially as a study of this world system. Joseph Inikori’s Africans and the Industrial Revolution in England is also an informative study of one aspect of that system.)

    These kinds of global interactions gave capitalism a racial characteristic it still relies on to maintain its capacity to accumulate surplus value and recirculate it as new capital.

    By the end of the 19th century, this slavery-settler system transitioned to an imperialist-colonial system. It kept critical features of the former, as settler features persisted in Southern Africa until 1994. And Canada, the U.S., and Australia continue to deny land and sovereignty to the Indigenous people who hold rightful claims. European powers, sometimes with agreement among themselves but always in fierce long-term competition, strove to conquer and dominate the entire earth.

    That system collapsed during the Great Depression and subsequent global war. Fascism—the most extreme form of capitalism and imperialism—pitted Europeans against one another in unprecedented ways. Within two decades, the colonialism system followed suit.

    After this unprecedented collapse of the world system, the U.S. managed to rise to the top of the heap. The debts incurred by the imperialist powers and the U.S.’s skillful management of the shift to dollarized neo-colonial control of former European colonies enabled this transition. (W. Alphaeus Hunton’s Decision in Africa and Walter Rodney’s How Europe Under Developed Africa are essential for this history of U.S./European colonialism and neo-colonialism in African countries.)

    Essentially, the U.S. recreated and managed a world system that expropriated vast tons of raw resources from the colonized world to fuel its own and Europe’s redevelopment after World War II. The collapse of the colonial regimes through national liberation struggles aided by the socialist countries prompted a transition to the domination of finance capital in the neoliberal regime of structural adjustments, privatization, forced labor, and hybrid war.

    That new regime successfully produced wealth and power for U.S. capitalists that one commentator characterized as the “end of history.” Meanwhile, vast billions of the human population suffered from extreme poverty, hunger, lack of health resources, rapid environmental change, disease, war, and conflict.

    The end of “the end of history” came after a series of financialization crises from the late 1990s to the 2007 housing collapse, which ruined the bliss of everlasting capitalist success. The failure to conquer Iraq and Afghanistan, which sucked trillions out of the U.S. economy, further signaled U.S. decline.

    Unlike the 1930s, when the U.S. political system responded to manage the contradictions through “Keynesian” economic theory and New Deal social democracy, the present system blunders along with handouts to the banks, tax cuts for billionaires, and more austerity. Today, we are at the end of 60 years of declining rates of growth that pale in comparison to China’s 8%-9% rates of growth each year for the past 40 years.

    The U.S. political class frequently admits that it can’t afford the record hundreds of billions pumped into military spending and a universal health system each year. It can’t afford to buy new missile systems and quality schools and universities. It can’t provide a meaningful safety net and ensure record profits and wealth accumulation for millionaires and billionaires with low tax rates.

    Even as globalization generates the socialization of labor on a world scale, the anarchy of capitalist market economies within national frames produced new internal contradictions in those ruling-class agendas. (I am indebted to Cheng Enfu’s China’s Economic Dialectic for the phrasing of this contradiction.)

    This contradiction between the needs of the empire and the interests of national economic and political systems is evident in the conflict over Ukraine. Consider how deeply and violently the U.S. ruling class split over the Russia-Europe contest. Trump was willing to dump Europe for an alignment with Russia, while much of the U.S. capitalist maintains corporate ties to Western Europe. We have yet to understand how much this conflict has altered and shaped U.S. domestic politics. (And the impending internal conflict over links to China has only been kicked down the road.)

    Over here

    The U.S. capitalist class aspires to maintain its dominance of the imperialist world system. But this means they have to carefully manage an increasingly expensive military, intelligence apparatus, local police, and border patrol system. The institutions operate strictly for the purpose of global and domestic repression of dissent. These are the only spending priorities for which a nearly unanimous Washington consensus exists.

    At the same time, however, capitalists discovered that their goal of endless higher profits had been little more than accounting schemes and fantasy for some decades. Corporate policies drove record profits with higher prices, lower wages, and benefit cuts, all aided by a significantly weakened labor movement since the 1980s. Further, accounting tricks like stock buy-backs and debt schemes made bubbles and fantasy wealth a mainstay of Wall Street chicanery.

    The capitalist class’s drive to manage the top spot in the imperialist system propels deepening exploitation worldwide, and in the U.S. Initially, globalization of production made the prices of imported goods seem like a boon. But then, the loss of manufacturing jobs meant a weakened labor movement, lower pay, and more frequent cycles of simply not being able to buy things. In some communities, whole neighborhoods became ghost towns. City services vanished overnight. Workers found they needed more than one job to survive. Consumption levels dropped, producing new levels of poverty combined with new demands for higher exploitation rates.

    Racist mass incarceration became a mechanism for resolving some aspects of that crisis simply by cultivating and exploiting racism to punish Black, Latinx, Indigenous, and immigrant people with imprisonments, criminalization, and mass deportations. Euro-American racial solidarity seemed to be an appropriate alternative to multi-racial working-class solidarity.

    Today, the performance of racial reforms (that aren’t reforms) and openly fascistic racist doctrine (great replacement dogmas, ravings about critical race theory, book burnings, and xenophobia) stand in for actual resolutions to deepening exploitation. Philanthropy and the non-profit industrial complex take the place of systemic solutions to poverty.

    The anti-war movements (2002-2008), Occupy Wall Street (2011), #BlackLivesMatter (2014-2020), and worker uprising (2020-2022) have lain bare the crisis of the political system. They have uplifted specific analyses of different aspects of these five main contradictions.

    Imperialist double jeopardy

    Withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan signaled the severe jeopardy of U.S. dominance of the imperialist world system. In contrast to the past, it appears unable to assert its agenda for Eastern Europe, Central Asia, the South Pacific, or even Latin America, which it had long proclaimed its “backyard.” De-dollarization combined with new military blocs appear to be steps toward sovereignty for some countries.

    Will this produce a new, competing imperialist system? Will this unique situation solidify into two new geopolitical and economic blocs? Are we simply witnessing a deadly realignment of imperialist forces? Yes, to each is possible—unless we bring forward internationalist, working-class revolutionary solutions.

    The U.S. intervention in Eastern Europe, specifically in Ukraine, from 2014 to the present, has centered on promoting a proxy military conflict with Russia. State Department officials recently admitted to this. However, like its invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, the results have been mixed for U.S. imperialism. It feels compelled to continue with this dangerous and deadly strategy, unfortunately.

    While the most violent part of that conflict is still in its early stages, many ruling class commentators may already be crying “uncle.” The New York Times recently opined that a negotiated settlement that concedes territory inhabited by Russian-language speakers to Russia might be necessary. Further, to provide promised energy resources to European allies, the U.S. was compelled to walk back its de-humanizing sanctions regime against Cuba and Venezuela.

    On the gain side, the U.S.-Europe faction has drawn more “neutral” Sweden and Finland into its orbit and extracted billions in new contracts for U.S.-based weapons makers from Germany, the U.K., and other countries. But even these gains are fraught with localized contradictions as NATO isn’t an ideologically unified bloc, and its actors hold competing and contradictory interests.

    On the loss side, Russia controls vast amounts of natural gas and petroleum desperately needed in Eastern Europe. Their military power has proven to be far more robust than expected. Their restraint in this war (relative to U.S. “shock and awe” and Abu Ghraib/Guantanamo Bay-level atrocities) has proven disappointing to Western human rights watchers who regularly side with U.S. government interests.

    The petroleum element of this war produces an internal domestic problem for the U.S. government. Rationed resources have driven up prices, even as oil companies look to deepen their already sizeable profits on gas-guzzling U.S. consumers. High prices are another form of deepening exploitation of workers and provoke political instability. The fascists are already exploiting this instability.

    Meanwhile, the Western media and political establishments have soft-pedaled fascist movements that the U.S. has funded and used to spark international conflicts along the Ukraine-Russia border since 2014. Like a page out of the Cold War playbook, the U.S. government has supported extremists painted as “freedom fighters.” Those choices have never ended well for U.S. imperialism, even if it allows them to accomplish short-term goals. Think of the various U.S.-funded drug cartels in Central America (like Noriega’s in Panama), the mujahideen in Central Asia, the “contras” in Nicaragua, and the militarists in Chile, Indonesia, and South Korea.

    End of humanity?

    While the imperialist world system leaders plotted a Ukraine-Russia war, cried crocodile tears about “blonde, blue-eyed” refugees, and pumped billions of dollars into Ukraine to keep the war going. A United Nations call for immediate, urgent global attention to human-caused climate change went almost unheeded.

    UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres stated in April 2022 that if the world continues on its present course, humans can expect new levels of suffering due to “unprecedented heatwaves, terrifying storms, widespread water shortages, and the extinction of a million species of plants and animals.” He referred to a report by the International Panel on Climate Change that showed swift and deep action is needed within the next couple of years to turn back the worst effects of the changing climate.

    Few within the U.S. political class seem concerned, let alone capable of leveraging the sorts of emissions reductions needed to protect human life. Indeed, maintaining world system dominance appears to be their only operating concern.

    What do we do with these contradictions? They show us that imperialism cannot cure itself. Imperialism cannot deliver human rights and dignity to the people it regularly exploits and oppresses. Capitalism cannot end racism or stop mass killers motivated by racist theories. It cannot suspend its need for racist super-exploitation or its exploitation and destruction of natural resources, like the air we breathe, water, and soil in which we plant crops.

    We have no time to celebrate the failure of capitalism to solve the problems it has created.

    The working class, especially its socialist and communist parties, can fight for more prominent organizations, clearer analysis, and class leadership. The socialization of labor on a global scale creates unprecedented levels of working-class power. It is the one lever with which we can move the immovable force of ruling class power and resolve the major contradictions of the present to change this world into something new. When working-class power becomes the supreme power in the world system, we have the means to win peace, avoid climate disasters, reduce exploitation, uplift the national aspirations of the world’s peoples, and bring our values into line with our actions.

    The post Imperialism Cannot Solve Our Problems first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • The entire culture needs to be recycled

    Recently, as I neared my local C-Town supermarket, I saw a middle-aged man standing near a recycling redemption machine. In front of him were several massive clear garbage bags teeming full of the cans and bottles he had collected.

    The man looked bloated, exhausted, defeated — his skin grayish as he went through the motions of securing a few bucks. He reached into one of the bags and pulled out an empty, crumpled liter-sized bottle of Coca-Cola.

    My eyes happened to meet the man’s eyes just as he lifted the dirty bottle to his mouth. Without any hesitation, he wrapped his lips around the opening and blew air inside. The plastic bottle inflated to a somewhat normal size. (Apparently, the bottles need to be close to their original shape for the machine to accept them.)

    I tried to hide it but he saw my grimace. With so much of the world scrubbing any exposed inch of their epidermis in a futile attempt to feel safe, this poor soul had reached an entirely different state of mind. “Taste the feeling” indeed.

    There are multiple supermarkets within a 15-minute-walk radius of my apartment. The prices and selections vary. How friendly the employees are can also fluctuate. The cleanliness level is usually consistently okay. What all these establishments have in common, however, is a recycling station.

    Just outside the entrance are a couple of machines at which locals can load the bottles and cans they’ve gathered. Once the metal and plastic are in the machine, the loader gets a receipt to bring to a cashier inside in exchange for “deposit” money.

    Here’s how the New York Department of Environmental Conservation explains the concept:

    New York’s Returnable Container Act requires at least a 5-cent deposit on carbonated soft drinks, beer and other malt beverages, mineral water, soda water, water, and wine cooler containers. A deposit is required on glass, metal, and plastic containers that hold less than one gallon or 3.78 liters.

    Unfortunately, due to poverty and the ongoing popularity of unhealthy items like soda, this is a common activity. Even during the widespread fear frenzy in NYC during the pandemic, the lines at the redemption machines remained long. Concerns about the virus were easily outweighed by a desperate need for whatever income was available.

    The dull-eyed man blowing into a used, germ-ridden Coke bottle was obviously not concerned about where that bottle might have been. Who touched it? What touched it? How many mouths had been on it? “Germophobia” is a luxury, I suppose.

    Over the past decade or so, bottles and cans have become a form of currency in my neighborhood. I walk to a local gym each day before 6 A.M. At that time, it’s often just me and can collectors alone on the streets (excluding a few stragglers still staggering home from clubs). You can hear the collectors long before you see them. They use supermarket shopping carts to transport their “currency” and the rattling sound is both loud and unmistakable.

    Some locals see them as a nuisance. Others diligently leave their cans and bottles where the collectors can easily find and access them. Just the other day, I saw a woman run after a collector with a large bag of plastic bottles. It was such a sweet interaction, it brought me to tears — of joy and sorrow.

    Social media is filled with examples of such “positive news.” Don’t get me wrong, I get weepy at some of these stories, too. But it doesn’t change the fact that we mostly aim our energy at cheering individual acts of charity but rarely (if ever) point out structural and institutional indifference.

    Projects like mine, for example, should not be necessary for a nation as wealthy as the U.S. But, in the Home of the Brave™, they are required and woefully insufficient. Our government is a failure for everyone below the top few percent.

    Speaking of failures: “Traditional recycling is the greatest example of modern-day greenwashing,” declares Ross Polk, an investigative journalist specializing in environmental issues. “Recycling is championed as the strategy to enable a cleaner, healthier world by those businesses that have profited the most from the extractive, take-make-waste economy. In reality, it is merely a cover to continue business as usual. Corporations espouse the efficacy of recycling via hollow ‘responsibility commitments’ to avoid examination of the broader negative consequences that their products and business models have wrought. Recycling is good for one thing, though — it helps us dodge the responsibility of our rampant and unsustainable consumption.”

    Polk concludes: “After nearly 50 years of existence, recycling has proven to be an utter failure at staving off environmental and social catastrophe. It neither helps cool a warming planet nor averts ecosystem destruction and biodiversity loss.”

    He could’ve added that recycling is also not a moral or effective way of helping poor people achieve any sense of financial security. The business of recycling is a facade. Any belief that redeeming cans and bottles will help individuals “get by” is equally as deceitful and self-serving as the recycling scam itself.

    We’ve spent much of the past two years fearing each other, dreading the act of breathing itself. We went months without seeing smiles, depriving loved ones of hugs, starving children of valuable and necessary non-verbal social input, and viciously turning on anyone who does not march in strict lockstep with the algorithm-induced views.

    Some might say the dull-eyed man at the redemption machine has sunk to a different level. In many ways and for many reasons, he certainly has. I might suggest that he’s also transcended some of what passes for normal.

    Trust me, this is not some misguided fantasy that the poverty-stricken have it “better.” I’m not Mother Teresa who once despicably stated: “I think it is very beautiful for the poor to accept their lot. I think the world is being much helped by the suffering of the poor people.” My supposition is merely a musing about letting go of the illusion of control and “order.”

    If only we could recycle the entire damn culture and start over.

    The post The entire culture needs to be recycled first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • How China Strengthened Food Security And Fought Poverty

    The Covid-19 pandemic, the ensuing supply-chain crisis, and high rates of inflation around the world have led to rising food prices and fears of famine.

    These cascading and interlocking problems have pushed governments to prioritize economic self-sufficiency and food security.

    China is leading the way in this struggle. Beijing has shown how to strengthen food sovereignty, and simultaneously fight poverty, with a multi-pronged approach that combines state-funded agricultural cooperatives, stockpiling of nonperishable staples, a crackdown on waste, and government investment in new technologies.

    While the United Nations warns of “the specter of a global food shortage,” the Chinese government has provided countries with an alternative model to meet the needs of their people.

    The post How China Strengthened Food Security And Fought Poverty appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.