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Class Struggle

An Inequality Tale Of Two Capital Cities

March 11, 2025 Sam Pizzigati, Inequality.org. , , ,
Nine of the world’s ten wealthiest billionaires now call the United States home. The remaining one? He lives in France. And that one — Bernard Arnault, the 76-year-old who owns just about half the world’s largest maker of luxury goods — is now feeling some heat. What has Arnault and his fellow French deep pockets beginning to sweat? Lawmakers in France’s National Assembly have just given a green light to the world’s first significant tax on billionaire wealth. “The tax impunity of billionaires,” the measure’s prime sponsor, the Ecologist Party’s Eva Sas, exulted last month, “is over.”

American Lumpen Development: The Data Center Boom

March 5, 2025 Hanna Eid, Black Agenda Report. , , ,
In the Marxist view of economics, the development of the productive forces is a key element which defines the overall development of a certain country or place. This generally means urbanization paired with real industrialization and the reduction of the urban-rural gap through land reform and an agricultural policy that promotes food sovereignty and self sufficiency. All of this paired with schools, hospitals, mass public transit and other markers of the development of social and cultural life can provide people with jobs and livelihoods that are the building blocks for socialist development.

A New Plan To Create A World Without Elon Musks

February 17, 2025 Sam Pizzigati, Inequality.org. , , , ,
Americans these days don’t much like billionaires. Our ultra-rich, Americans overwhelmingly believe, aren’t paying enough in taxes. Polling earlier this month found that nearly three-quarters of the nation’s likeliest voters — 74 percent — feel billionaires are paying “too little’ at tax time. Just how concerned about billion-dollar fortunes have Americans become? Nearly half of us overall, Harris polling found last summer, would like to see a limit on “wealth accumulation.” Among Gen Z’ers, that support for limits on billionaire fortunes runs all the way up to 65 percent.

It’s Time For A United Front To Take On Billionaire Rule

February 13, 2025 Luis Feliz Leon, In These Times. , , , , ,
President Donald Trump relishes deploying the ​“weave,” his vulgar stream-of-consciousness spiels in which his vengeful fantasies and antipathy towards a cast of enemies become punchlines in an insult-comic routine. His far-right former adviser Steve Bannon has termed the Trump administration’s psychological warfare approach ​“flooding the zone.” ​“Every day we hit them with three things,” Bannon told PBS’s Frontline in 2019. ​“They’ll bite on one, and we’ll get all of our stuff done. Bang, bang, bang. These guys will never — will never be able to recover. But we’ve got to start with muzzle velocity.”

Chris Hedges Report: Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism

January 30, 2025 Chris Hedges, Scheer Post. , , ,
The year 2008 signaled to many the weak foundations of modern capitalism in the hands of the greedy, untethered financial sector—the “vampire squid” investment banks as journalist Matt Taibbi called them. Rising from the ashes of the crash, these banks used government money—”socialism for the bankers”—to enrich themselves and Big Business. This money never got to the masses. Instead shares were bought back in traditional capitalist industries and an emerging powerful bloc—the Jeff Bezos’s, the Microsoft’s, the Google’s of the world—invested in what guest Yanis Varoufakis calls, “cloud capital.”

Biden’s Legacy: Genocide Abroad, Economic Despair At Home

January 20, 2025 Natalia Marques, People's Dispatch. , , , , , , , , , , , ,
46th US President Joe Biden officially leaves office Monday, January 20, to be succeeded by former President Donald Trump. Trump’s promises in the name of “saving American workers” have raised alarm for people across sectors of society, including migrant workers who are gearing up for mass deportations, and unionized workers who are preparing for Trump’s attacks on labor rights. Trump’s loyalty to multi-billionaires has also given the working class of the US great cause for concern. Meanwhile, in contrast, the Democrats have attempted to position themselves as the real defenders of working people.

Amid Layoffs, Cargill’s Owners Given $2B In Stock Buybacks/Dividends

January 19, 2025 Brooks Johnson, Portside. , , ,
As Cargill started laying off thousands of employees last month, the company’s owners made $2 billion from stock buybacks and one-time dividends, according to Fitch Ratings. The Minnetonka-based agribusiness announced in December it would lay off 5% of its global workforce, or about 8,000 people, as part of a broader restructuring to counter declining profits. About 475 headquarters jobs were eliminated in Minnesota. At the same time, the private company’s owners — almost entirely members of the billionaire Cargill-MacMillan family — received $500 million from a “special” dividend and a rare $1.5 billion share repurchase completed in December, according to a Fitch Ratings report issued this week.

Over 80 US Cities To Hold Protests On Trump’s Inauguration Day

January 18, 2025 People's Dispatch. , , , , , ,
Conveners of the demonstrations have spoken to the variety of Trump’s promised attacks on working people. “Trump is planning to wage war on immigrant families through a brutal mass deportation campaign,” said Claudia De La Cruz, who ran on a socialist platform in her campaign for president against both Harris and Trump, on the ticket of the Party for Socialism and Liberation. “We will stand up and say NO to these attacks. Trump is a billionaire, was elected with the help of other billionaires, and runs the government on behalf of the billionaire class.

Health Care Profiteers Encounter Protest At ‘Investors’ Gathering

January 16, 2025 Leon Kunstenaar, Indybay. , , ,
One of the wealthiest gangsters, JP Morgan Chase Bank, convened into the posh Westin St. Francis hotel a gathering of fellow "investors" involved in the organized looting known as the "Health care" industry. Sensing public anger inspired by the recent killing of a UnitedHealthcare executive, a heavy police presence surrounded the hotel and the adjoining streets. The largest health "insurer" in the country is UnitedHealthcare. Its 2023 profit was $22 billion. Estimates of what a single payer health care system to care for every man, woman and child in the country are about $20 billion per year.

International Anti-Fascist Festival In Venezuela Ends With Resolution

January 13, 2025 Ultimas Noticias, Orinoco Tribune. , , , , , , , , ,
The International Anti-Fascist World Festival For a New World, held in Caracas, Venezuela, in which more than 2,000 delegates from 125 countries participated, came to an end. At the closing ceremony of the festival, on Saturday, January 11, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro thanked the participants for attending the festival and pointed out that the proposals that have emerged demonstrate the vitality that this movement is gaining. “On behalf of all Venezuela, I thank you for coming to this unprecedented event,” said President Maduro, adding that “we are at peace, in democracy, in full exercise of our national sovereignty, and the people are moving forward in this new stage.”

New York City’s Congestion Pricing Program Sacrifices Human Rights

January 9, 2025 Anthony Karefa Rogers-Wright, Black Agenda Report. , , , , ,
It’s been said that the road to bad policy is paved with good intentions. The case of New York City’s new congestion pricing program puts this aphorism to the task as both the intentions and the program itself raise salient questions about who benefits, who suffers, and if the inchoate initiative even complies with at least two landmark State statutes that purport to position New York State as the national leader in climate action and environmental justice. The congestion pricing program, which charges drivers entering Manhattan from 60th street and below $9.00 between the hours of 5 a.m. to 9 p.m. on weekdays and 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. on weekends.

CEO Salaries Skyrocket 1,085% Since 1978

December 30, 2024 Dax Everly, Kawsachun News. , , , ,
From 1978 to 2023, chief executive officers at America’s largest firms experienced a dramatic 1,085% increase in compensation, while the average worker’s salary rose by just 24%, as highlighted in a recent annual report. The report, produced by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), scrutinizes compensation trends at the top 350 publicly traded U.S. companies measured by revenue. The methodology for assessing CEO pay, which predominantly comprises stock-based components, involves both a retrospective view using realized compensation and a prospective angle via granted compensation.

Resist, My People, Resist

December 27, 2024 Vijay Prashad, Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. , , , , , , , ,
Pain shudders through the arteries of global society. Day after day passes by as the genocide against the Palestinian people continues and the conflicts in the Great Lakes region of Africa and Sudan escalate. More and more people slip into absolute poverty as arms companies’ profits soar. These realities have hardened society, allowing people to bury their heads and ignore the horrors unfolding across the world. Ferocious disregard for the pain of others has become a way to protect oneself from the inflation of suffering. What can one do with the wretchedness that has come to define life across the planet?

A Global Minimum Wage Would Reduce Poverty And Corporate Power

December 27, 2024 Lawrence S. Wittner, Foreign Policy in Focus. , , , ,
In today’s world of widespread poverty and unprecedented wealth, how about raising the wages of the most poorly-paid workers? This October, the World Bank reported that “8.5 percent of the global population―almost 700 million people―live today on less than $2.15 per day,” while “44 percent of the global population―around 3.5 billion people―live today on less than $6.85 per day.” Meanwhile, “global poverty reduction has slowed to a near standstill.” In early 2024, the charity group Oxfam International noted that, since 2020, “148 top corporations made $1.8 trillion in profit, 52 percent up on 3-year average, and dished out huge payouts to rich shareholders.”

US Healthcare Corporations Reap Profit From Human Misery

December 12, 2024 Natalia Marques, People's Dispatch. , , , , , , , , , ,
The assassination of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson on December 4 has sparked a reaction that few may have suspected. The perpetrator has received an outpouring of popular support, and a profound debate on the brutality of the US for-profit healthcare system has been sparked, with many accusing healthcare corporations of reaping their profits directly from human misery. Thompson was shot and killed while heading to an investors meeting in Midtown Manhattan on December 4. Police have arrested 26-year-old Luigi Mangione in connection with the crime, who quickly has become a working class hero in the eyes of many in the US public, especially after his alleged manifesto revealed that he was motivated by outrage towards healthcare corporations.
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