EMAIL SIGN UP!
Most Popular This Week
Popular content
Today's Top News
Don’t Tell Us It’s Not a Class War
The entire world seems to be one huge advertisement for The Shock Doctrine. Naomi Klein showed in her revelatory book how the corporate-political-military-media complex exploits crises to further impose their harsh right-wing agenda – even when they themselves created the crisis. In a sane world, the economic meltdown and deep recession of the past four years would have led at minimum to stringent regulation of financiers and speculators plus programs to assist their victims. But in this world, you have to be nuts to believe in a sane world.
In reality, everything that’s happened in the past several years has gone to further empower and enrich the 1 per cent (or maybe the 5 per cent) at the expense of the rest of us. Look anywhere you want. What else does the universal demand for austerity programs mean? What else does the sudden concerted attack on public sector workers mean? What else does the intransigent line taken by multinational corporations against their unions mean? What else does the demand for “right-to-work” laws mean? What else does the widespread attack on seniors’ pensions mean?
Police in riot gear descend on an anti-austerity protest outside the Greek parliament in Athens on Feb. 19, 2012. REUTERSLook at poor Greece. Ms. Klein could have invented it as a pure case study for her thesis. Big economic problems, it’s true. So how do you fix them? As a Greek journalist wrote matter-of-factly in The New York Times, the latest bailout program imposed by the IMF, the European Union and the European Central Bank “almost guarantees recession.” And this will be on top of the punishment that had already been inflicted on the 99 per cent, including deep cuts to private-sector wages, layoffs in the civil service and significant reductions in health and social security.
Throughout, economists like Joseph Stiglitz and Paul Krugman, whose forecasts have repeatedly been borne out, assured the few who would listen this was a guaranteed recipe for exacerbating Greece’s economic woes. It meant, after all, instead of growth, a guaranteed contraction of the economy. Which is exactly what happened. But apparently these critics, while correct about the consequences of enforced austerity, were wrong about the proper solution. The punishment, it seems, had not been crushing enough. Now a new and improved package of pain will be inflicted, a condition for the country receiving bailout funds at sky-high borrowing costs. For the vast majority of them, it’s a Greek tragedy.
At least 21 per cent of Greeks are unemployed. Yet the thumbscrews are to be tightened once again: more austerity, more spending cuts, eliminating another 20 per cent of all government jobs and slashing the minimum wage by another 22 per cent. All this, in a country in its fifth year of recession.
Spain is not far behind, collapsing under the same burden of salvation. The economy’s contracting, unemployment has soared; 350,000 newly out of work, giving a jobless rate of 22.8 per cent, including almost half of all young Spaniards. These are staggering figures. In Britain too, David Cameron’s punishing economic strategy had led to a shrinking economy.
How exactly ordinary Greeks and Spaniards and Brits will endure, get by, pay for their rent or groceries or transportation, or offer their kids a hopeful life – this has become the greatest question of the early 21st century.
In Canada, Stephen Harper's attack on old-age pensions may not be in the same league as the plagues being inflicted on Greece, but it’s a start. It took no time at all for his entire rationale to be repudiated by real data. As The Globe reported on its front page, “Expert advice commissioned by the federal government [itself] contradicts Stephen Harper's warnings that Canada can’t afford the looming bill for old age security payments.”
Soon enough, from all directions came other credible reports all showing that our Prime Minister had been inventing his own reality, not for the first time. As Robert Brown, a maven on actuarial science, quaintly suggested: “Old Age Security reform needs to be based on facts rather than alarmist fantasy.”
He was wasting his breath. When Parliamentary Budget Officer Kevin Page flatly contradicted the Prime Minister’s assertion that benefits for the elderly were neither sustainable nor affordable, he was slandered by Finance Minister Jim Flaherty, who called Page’s research “unbelievable, unreliable and incredible”.
In a paper for the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, Monica Townson, a long-time expert on seniors, also identified the fictional qualities of Mr. Harper's statement, but reminded us as well of the human consequences of his little initiative: “This is the worst possible time to be considering cutting back on the basic benefit that provides the foundation for the retirement income of all Canadians. It could well reverse the progress Canada has made in reducing the poverty of older Canadians.” Here was the real point, of course. Exactly who will be hurt by either increasing the age of old-age pension entitlement or decreasing the amount of the benefit, and who won’t even know anything’s changed?
As if the attack on pensions weren’t threatening enough, in true shock-doctrine fashion Conservative ministers soon launched their strategy of creating a phony intergenerational war among Canadians, who don’t yet realize that all but the deeply-privileged need be very wary.
The same is true in Ontario, thanks to Don Drummond’s remarkably hyped report on how the Ontario government should operate. Mr. Drummond insisted mightily that the tough measures he recommends should hit everyone in order to be seen as fair. But as the Toronto Star’s Tom Walkom pointed out, there’s no way that will happen or was ever intended to happen. “The well-off will fare better than the poor and middle class.” If enacted, his recommendations “would throw tens of thousands more Ontarians out of work … and push the provincial unemployment rate into double-digit territory.” Isn’t that what happened in Spain and Greece?
I wonder how many Ontarians know that Premier Dalton McGuinty actually chose to instruct Mr. Drummond not to look at surtaxes on high-income earners, and that Mr. Drummond chose to accept that mandate. Yet the wholly predictable consequence of these choices was a report that calls for austerity only for those already most vulnerable.
Finally, in the United States, where the President is hysterically accused of inciting class war every time he hiccups, the old pinko has just announced that he wants to lower the top corporate tax rates significantly. Take that, you greedy 1 per cent!
Comments
Note: Disqus 2012 is best viewed on an up to date browser. Click here for information. Instructions for how to sign up to comment can be viewed here. Our Comment Policy can be viewed here. Please follow the guidelines. Note to Readers: Spam Filter May Capture Legitimate Comments...
35 Comments so far
Show AllIf this was a failed mortgage or bad investment, no one would blame you for walking away, letting the Bank take the property, and starting over under a new name.
But when it IS the Bank and the Government that is this corrupt, this criminal, and has the tools and manpower to enforce their twisted version of 'reality' on you, what do you do?
It is time and past time to do everything in our power to knock the legs out from under this rigged game, and to truly let the chips fall where they may.
Our entire society is utterly dependent upon technology external to our control, and if it's taken away from us by either Corporate malfeasance (very likely, in the case of water and electricity) or by circumstance (also possible in the case of catastrophic economic collapse), the vast majority of Western technologically dependent populations will have about three days before they are out of food and water. And then the real catastrophe will begin.
And the Elite will be laughing in psychopathic glee behind their walls and electric gates at the suffering they have created...
John Brunner in The Sheep Look Up, predicted this disaster in 1972.
i read that book in 1972
i read that book in 1972
Yes, it is a class war...and this time the rapacious nobility is corporate upper management. CEO's, CFO's, COO's, etc. are this era's Dukes, Earls, and Barons.
...and the plutocrats are changing the laws, especially of taxing inherited wealth, to create a hereditary aristocracy here. History may not repeat, but it does rhyme.
How to set public policy, and choose to be debt-enslaved or not to be debt-enslaved, and such? Here is the elite logic: If ekonomic experts can't figure it out, regular people can't figure it out. But how true is this? Obviously, expertise isn't cutting it. Why don't we try what regular people got instead? What do regular people have on the experts? Maybe regular people are more grounded. More determined to have stability, and universal fairness. Maybe the ethics of the people, the average ethic, is better than that possessed by the experts? Maybe ethics matter? We direct this argument not at elite psychopaths. We direct the argument at the people, who inadvertently or not find themselves apologizing for elites, for the ideas elites sold them, ideas they invested their energy in, and are frustrated to find little to no real gratification out of in return. Maybe the regular folks can do a better job than the experts. We on the far left are fully committed to this idea of the mass wisdom. An idea that is not being taken seriously by those who plant das kapitalist bombs... and reap das serial katastrophes!..., year after year!...., no end in sight! Daaaaa!
rtdury , You are not far left, you are far ahead. Ethics is the heart of the matter and modern quantum physics backs you up all the way. Your mind is focused upon a rational vision and that very act effects reality clear to the other side of creation. Viva la Evolution !
In addition to being an attempt to handle current energy crises, such as "Peak Oil," our endless wars serve as distractions from realities such as: the Plutocracy's consolidation of political power and the government's usurpation of our fundamental freedoms as a way of "getting an early start" on responding to the coming economic-ecological collapse and the chaos that can be predicted to ensue. Duane Elgin's work spells out much of what we're up against.
endless war is part of their profiteering. most americans don't even think about the wars as media doesn't spend much time on wars and war machine profiteering except for now that two higher ups were killed after soldier inadvertently(?) burning the Koran. The war is part of the elites plan for transferring of wealth and strengthening the military to serve as protectors for the Plutocracy around the world. They are raping and pillaging the resources of other nations (nothing new as this has been happening for century or more) paying off dictatorship and communists whom do not value the dignity of man and have no human rights for their people. Taxpayers have been paying for all this increasing the profits and power of these corporations. Enough is enough
JUJU & AMMA: Good posts. Your points are well-taken.
Police in riot gear decend, WTF. Enough said, they take orders from the wealthy, keep the peace no matter how they fuck the working class, elderly and poor. The republican Unregulated free market, in the name of GOD, up your ass RAPE! Just ask women that want health care rights, Pray to the Koch Brothers, wall street, insurance CEO's, big pharma, corporate farms, John Boehner, Bitch McConnell, Scott Walker, Rick Scott, the list goes on and on, the republican war against the American people, for profit, servival of the richest, class war fair!
What you said, Constititonal, is true, apart from leaving out the Democrats who have signed onto ALL of the items you mention. If they don't voice their assent, certainly the way they finesse the various insidious bills and policies says it all. They are complicit. Of course if you can retain the Cowboy-Indian frame, it makes it easier to believe that the good sheriff, champion of both law AND The People, will ride up any minute now to right all those wrongs!
For some time I've used the frame that corporations have assumed the role of 21st century pharaohs, and in doing so, have rendered the rest of us slaves. If we're not tethered to work that's lost all meaning (given what's mostly funded and considered viable to the Disaster Capitalism economic model), then we're rendered debt slaves. Plus without the need for Debtors' Prisons, the elites save money forcing us to maintain our own upkeep. Meanwhile they bend law to seize more and more of the commons, along with what the public at large has labored for.
And all of this is done with ease when media is Captured so that the truth of our circumstances is instead delivered in the form of blaming already marginalized groups. How many still think IT'S about all those Mexican immigrants working the most strenuous (or low level) jobs, rather than that elites have crafted tariffs that forced farmers off their own lands?
Meanwhile, the church pushes the old Calvinist axiom that each must prove himself (or herself) worthy to God through ostensible signs of well-being. This is quite an ingenious maxim, for its holds those who are not doing well accountable for their own fates, rather than:
1. Jobs off-shored
2. Money aggregating at the top of the fiscal pyramid thanks to tax laws favorable to those who got it all
3. College loans being too costly
4. The economy imploding from the engineered bubble that was made to pop, while bets made on this, added to fraudulent housing loan packages meant reverberations would continue for years
5. Racism & sexism factoring into wages and job availability
6. Cutbacks to public worker employment niches
7. Attacks on unions
Feel free to add to this list.
The economics in view are there by DESIGN. The same 1% that has a long historical legacy for assuming, by turns, the status of kings, pharaohs, czars, dictators, despots, and presidents... now has used the global corporation to assume the same ends.
Very well written. It is nice to know there is such good energy still alive in Canada.
All governments are united against democracy evolving to include the economy. We share the knowledge that the economy is merely the commercial aspect of civilization. Corporate pirates are attempting to steal more and more of the huge profits of social wealth which we know exist because civilization is here to prove it.
The basic model going forward is education which leads to a gently declining population and allows the planet to heal and return to full bounty for fewer and fewer people who will still reach for the stars.
"All governments are united against democracy evolving to include the economy."
Democracy already evolved that far, during the New Deal, and in postwar Europe. We're seeing devolution since then, as a new generation of idiots, thieves, and petty tyrants took over ...
Obama lowered corporate taxes because the republicans will not let the democrats pass any bills to help the economy unless the rich get their taxes lowered. But Obama said he will close the loop holes of the corporations.At least that is how I understood Obama's policy.
He's a fast talker, don't go buying any used cars from him.
"... don't go buying any used cars from him."
Not unless you're getting the Wall Street insider's price, as opposed to the common people's price ...
As to Obama lowering the corporate tax rate... his fund raising might be going slower than hoped.
Never hurts to show the people you work for that you really care....
Sort of like sending flowers or a card to the significant other....
As to closing tax loopholes... they are big enough for corporate tax lawyers to drive an Abrams tank through ... maybe they'll get them down to Hummer size. They'll still get through easily without scratching any paint off.
Razor sharp insight and metaphor, Randy G. You're often ON the money.
versus who????
HuffingtonPost
02/24/2012
Banker Leaves 1% Tip On $133 Lunch Bill In Defiance of 'The 99%'
A banker left a 1% tip in defiance of 'the 99%' at a Newport Beach restaurant the other week, according to his dining companion and underling who snapped a photo of the receipt and posted it to his blog, Future Ex Banker. (Update: the blog is now offline.)
In posting the photo, the employee gave some background on his boss and the receipt:
'Mention the “99%” in my boss’ presence and feel his wrath. So proudly does he wear his 1% badge of honor that he tips exactly 1% every time he feels the server doesn’t sufficiently bow down to his Holiness. Oh, and he always makes sure to include a “tip” of his own.'
The "tip" of his own in this case was to tell the server to "get a real job." Pleasant.
The whistleblower's Future Ex-Banker blog (now offline) included additional background on his boss, and some insight into why he would out his gross behavior, likely resulting in an employment status of current ex-banker:
I work in the corporate office of a major bank for a boss who represents everything wrong with the financial industry: blatant disregard and outright contempt for everyone and everything he deems beneath him. On top of that, he’s a complete and utter tool. At the same time, I’m still cashing paychecks, an admittedly willing—albeit reluctant—cog in the wheel of this increasingly ugly industry, so I’ve created this blog as a confessional of sorts. It won’t entirely clear my conscience, but hopefully it’ll help. I’m sure I’ll get fired eventually. Until then, enjoy.
UPDATE: In a conversation with the Huffington Post, Mike Wilcox, the vice president of operations for True Food Kitchen, gave some insight into how the company was treating the incident since the receipt began receiving attention online. Wilcox said that the restaurant was "absolutely" treating the receipt as real, but to confirm its authenticity for certain, they were in the process of tracking down both the physical receipt at the restaurant and the computer-generated copy in their credit card system.
"The first thing we're going to do is to make sure the server is taken care of," Wilcox said, "and make sure the server wasn't treated badly or insufficiently tipped." He explained that they would be asking Breanna, the server named on the receipt, if she recalled the table and how her service was. "If her service was up to the level" they assume their employees would deliver, Wilcox said, "they would do everything they can to make it up to her somehow." Referring to online comments posted about the receipt, Wilcox remarked, "people are asking us to ban the person from the restaurant -- if more information came through on who the person is I first would love to talk to him."
UPDATE II: As many have noted, a true 1% tip correctly rounded to the nearest penny would have been $1.34, leaving this tip just shy of that threshold, mathematically speaking.
And the freedom to learn as much as we can about sociopathy and the authoritarian personality.
Servers in the US should at least have the right to the federal minimum wage but instead often work for less than $3.00 an hour, so please think twice before you take your problems with quality of service out on them. Also, the restaurants often report their servers' tips to the IRS at 18%, when in reality it's closer to less than 10%. You obviously have never waited tables or you wouldn't be so snobby.
Yes, it's class war all right. The 1% have been waging a vicious class war against the rest of us for thirty years and now they sense that they have the final victory in their grasp, and they're moving in for the kill. Obama is just the perfect Judas Goat to keep us moving along to our slaughter. That's why they chose him.
Forums like this one is where we bleat out our terror, pain and confusion, driven into a state of hysteria by the smell of death in our nostrils, and by the sure knowledge that if we're not already dead economically, we're next.
Many (Most?) here just demonstrate that they're still sound asleep, lost in their dreams and illusions. They assert and reassert endlessly their paltry faith in Reason and Truth against opponents who are operating at the level of cave men with clubs, and never wake to the real truth: that what they're doing isn't working, has never worked, and never will.
Bah! Power only yields to countervailing power. The 1% laugh and grind Reason and Truth under their heel, or maybe sprinkle a bit of them on their lambburgers.
Organize! Resist! Fight!
But how could we have known?
"From now on the bankers will rule." Jacques Lafitte, August 1830.
Marx provides the only way to fully understand what's happening. It is indeed a class war, pursued by a global capitalist class bent on lowering labor costs everywhere. It is time to rise and fight back.
What strikes me about all this is its international nature, something I've noticed repeatedly in the last decade. Everywhere, protests are met with repression--and always the same kind of repression. The remaining difference is that countries that pretend to be democracies, after illegally arresting protesters, release them after a few days, and rarely actually kill demonstrators. But they're all busy enacting laws to enable this sort of thing, under the rubric of "fighting terrorism." Suddenly, everywhere, austerity and anti-union policies are being imposed and benefits cut. At the most recent meeting of nations to deal with climate change, several counties announced going in that they would seek no deal before 2016, and nothing binding before 2020--right after a fresh scientific report saying we need drastic cuts in emissions within 5 years or we'll face a catastrophe. When we have the spectacle of Canada repressing dissent, slashing benefits in the face of data showing the plans are based on lies, and threatening the US over accepting a pipeline cutting across the entire country to ship dirty oil to China--and threatening the EU if they classify this dirty oil as dirty...I mean, in the US we used to make jokes about how polite and reasonable the Canadians were. Well, I suspect they still are. But they no more genuinely selected "their" leaders than we chose ours, or anyone else does. Often, computers count the vote, making simple fraud easy--but everywhere, the choices are narrowed to a few puppets all vetted by the ruling class, and subject to choice based on the corporate media. Elections are a sham.
The paranoid right worries about world government. Seems to me we've already got world government, although we can't know who the people are who make the decisions, or where they actually meet. Our supposed leaders are frontmen and women, selected for their willingness to play that role.
It's time for a global revolution, against the global corporatocracy.
It is only considered a class war when poor people complain.
Got it right! NDP-- good deal!
Sadly - or amusingly, dependent upon one's sense of irony - things have always been this way. Whether the wars were for "democracy", "our way of life", or "king and country", for at least the past millennium they have been for the very rich. The Capitalists, be they peers, professionals or the uncaught con artists manipulate the "official" powers and if necessary the public into doing their dirty work for them.
The original Boston Tea Partiers were roped into fighting on behalf of the colonial traders against the regulations of the "crown" imposed at the request of the British East India Company.
It is unlikely people will learn.