Class Struggle

Oxfam Wants To More Than Double The Tax Rate On Our Richest

January 16, 2023 Sam Pizzigati, Inequality.org. Educate! Class Struggle, Finance and the Economy, Taxes, wealth inequality

Every January, the deep pockets of our world who see themselves as deep thinkers gather high up in the Alps to contemplate the world’s most pressing problems at the annual Davos World Economic Forum. Every January, analysts at Oxfam, the global group that champions economic justice, take this annual Davos moment to report out just how much our world’s richest contribute to those problems – and just how many of those problems they outright create. This year’s Oxfam Davos-time report, Survival of the Richest: How we must tax the super-rich now to fight inequality, adds to this pattern a fascinating new twist. Just what do we have to do, this Oxfam paper essentially asks, to keep our super-rich from being super? Central to Oxfam’s answer: a call for a tax rate “of at least 75 percent on all personal income” of those making over $5 million a year, basically those who sit in our world’s wealthiest 0.1 percent.

2022: India’s Workers And Peasants Fight Back – And Fight On

January 3, 2023 Subodh Varma, People's Dispatch. Resist! Class Struggle, Farmers, India, Strikes, Worker Rights and Jobs

In India, the year that has just passed started with hope but ended with anger and discontent. Hope, because it was thought that with the pandemic finally dwindling, the economy would revive and so would jobs and incomes. The mainstream media talked of a V-shaped recovery, the government again started talking of a $5 trillion economy (whatever that means). Although there was no reason to do so, working people, desperate after two years of extreme hardship, hoped against hope. The victory of the farmers’ movement in forcing the government to back down on the three agricultural laws also boosted the morale – perhaps, the government was finally beginning to listen to the people. However, this dream broke down in short order.

Inequality In Annual Earnings Worsens In 2021

January 2, 2023 Elise Gould and Jori Kandra, Economic Policy Institute. Educate! Class Struggle, Finance and the Economy, Wages, wealth inequality

Rising wage inequality and slow and uneven growth in real (inflation-adjusted) hourly wages for the vast majority of workers have been defining features of the U.S. labor market for most of the last 40 or so years. In only about 10 years since 1979 did most workers see any consistent positive wage growth: in the tight labor market of the late 1990s and in the five years leading up to the pre-pandemic labor market peak in 2019 (Gould 2020). Some low-wage workers have experienced disproportionate wage gains in the current business cycle—gains that even beat out high inflation (Gould and Kandra 2022). However, the latest data on annual earnings from the Social Security Administration (SSA 2022a) show that the very top continues to pull away and amass a larger share of the earnings pie, while the bottom 90% continues to fall further behind.

‘Free Speech’ Is Whatever The Rich Say It Is

December 25, 2022 Adam Johnson, The Real News Network. Educate! Class Struggle, Elon Musk, Freedom of Speech, Media, Twitter, Wealthy Elites

It’s been a banner month for people who love invoking the “free speech” buzzword. Whether Elon Musk was promoting it as a catch-all abstract value to justify inviting transphobes and neo-nazis back to Twitter, or mainstream journalists were invoking the idea in response to a petulant billionaire banning his critics from the large social media company he just purchased for $44 billion, everyone these past few weeks has had some opinion on “free speech,” what it means, and who its supposed champion—or, more often than not, its most hypocritical defender—truly is. What the conversation has been largely lacking (other than a coherent definition of “free speech”) is a serious acknowledgment that free speech as a concept means very little if we don’t discuss how massive asymmetries in the distribution of power and the accumulation of wealth in the hands of a tiny few effectively determine who has the right to speak freely and who doesn’t.

The Perils Of Pious Neoliberalism In The Austerity State

December 23, 2022 Vijay Prashad, Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. Educate! Class Struggle, Latin America, Neoliberalism, Worker Rights and Jobs

The International Labour Organisation’s Global Wage Report 2022–23 tracks the horrendous collapse of real wages for billions of people around the planet. The gaping distance between the incomes and wealth of 99% of the world’s population from the incomes and wealth of the billionaires and near-trillionaires who make up the richest 1% is appalling. During the pandemic, when most of the world has experienced a dramatic loss in their livelihoods, the ten richest men in the world have doubled their fortunes. This extreme wealth inequality, now entirely normal in our world, has produced immense and dangerous social consequences. If you take a walk in any city on the planet, not just in the poorer nations, you will find larger and larger clusters of housing that are congested with destitution.

Elites Are Clueless, And So On

December 22, 2022 Editors, In These Times. Educate! Class Struggle, Information, Kurt Vonnegut, Ruling Class

In 2005, Kurt Vonnegut wrote: Most of you, if not all of you, like me, feel inadequately educated. That is an ordinary feeling for a member of our species. One of the most brilliant human beings of all times, George Bernard Shaw said on his 75th birthday or so that at last he knew enough to become a mediocre office boy. He died in 1950, by the way, when I was 28. He is the one who said, “Youth is wasted on the young.” I turned 83 a couple weeks ago, and I must say I agree. Shaw, if he were alive today, would envy us the solid information that we have or can get about the nature of the universe, about time and space and matter, about our own bodies and brains, about the resources and vulnerabilities of our planet, about how all sorts of human beings actually talk and feel and live. This is the information revolution. We have taken it very badly so far. Information seems to be getting in the way all the time.

The Poor, Squeezed By 10 Trillion Dollars In External Debts

December 21, 2022 Baher Kamal, Inter Press Service News Agency. Educate! Class Struggle, Debt, Finance and the Economy, Poverty

The external debt of the world’s low and middle-income countries at the end of 2021 totalled 9 trillion US dollars, more than double the amount a decade ago. Such debt is expected to increase by an additional 1.1 trillion US dollars in 2023. Moreover, the debt-service payments, projected to top 62 billion US dollars in 2022, put the biggest squeeze on poor countries since 2000, according to the World Bank. As defined by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), debt service refers to payments in respect of both principal and interest. Actual debt service is the set of payments actually made to satisfy a debt obligation, including principal, interest, and any late payment fees. Scheduled debt service is the set of payments, including principal and interest, that is required to be made through the life of the debt, OECD goes on.

On International Human Rights Day: Money For Ukraine And War

December 18, 2022 Ajamu Baraka, Black Agenda Report. Educate! Biden administration, Class Struggle, Human Rights

December 10th is recognized globally as International Human Rights Day (IHRD) to commemorate the signing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) in 1948. But how does the U.S. state celebrate this day? Two days before the day of recognition, legislators in the House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed the $858 billion dollar National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which also specifically earmarked another $800 million for the Ukraine war. On IHRD itself, the Biden Administration announced a new set of sanctions while also justifying the continuation of sanctions against 44 nations, thereby contradicting the entire premise of the human rights frame and idea. The working class and poor in the U.S. never recovered from the 2008 capitalist financial crisis before having to face the devastation of the covid pandemic 10 years later.

Corporate Greed At Its Worst

December 18, 2022 Jake Johnson, Common Dreams. Educate! Class Struggle, Corporatism, Energy

With colder winter weather looming, a new analysis released Tuesday shows that the nine largest energy utility companies in the U.S. raked in nearly $14 billion in combined profits during the first three quarters of this year—and dished out roughly $11 billion to their wealthy shareholders—as tens of millions of U.S. households struggled to pay their utility bills due to soaring costs. The watchdog group Accountable.US found that NextEra Energy, Duke Energy, Southern Company, Dominion Energy, Constellation Energy, Eversource Energy, Entergy Corporation, DTE Energy, and CMS Energy Corporation brought in $13.8 billion in the first nine months of this fiscal year. The firms, the nine largest in the U.S. by market capitalization, returned over $11.2 billion to shareholders during that period in the form of dividends and stock buybacks.

Ghost Stories Of Capitalism: Racism Is Real, And It’s A Class Struggle

December 17, 2022 Danny Haiphong, Black Agenda Report. Strategize! Capitalism, Class Struggle, Identity Politics, Racism

In today’s political climate, the word racism has become taboo. Some on the “Left” take issue with the term because of how it has been co-opted by the neoliberal elite. This is understandable, since the neoliberal Democratic Party has indeed exploited race relations in the United States to forward a “lesser evil” but no less dangerous brand of U.S. imperialism. Racism is thus increasingly viewed as an ideological weapon of liberalism rather than a material force of oppression. So-called “conservatives” have pounced on the limitations of neoliberal racial politics to strengthen their own brand as crusaders against the “woke” politics of the Democrats. The problem with all of this is that racism is a very real manifestation of class struggle. Racism isn’t merely the hateful words and behaviors acted out by individuals. It isn’t simply a set of “institutional” problems that can be reformed away at the workplace or the criminal justice system, either. Some on the liberal “left” say that racism is “systemic,” but even this is misleading. Failing to name the system, U.S. imperialism, decontextualizes racism from its roots in class and power.

Eric Adams Prescribes More Cops And Prisons For Poor And Oppressed

December 16, 2022 Mike Pappas, Left Voice. Educate! Class Struggle, Criminal Justice and Prisons, Eric Adams, Human Rights, New York (NY), New York City (NYC), Police

New York City, New York - Last week, New York Mayor Eric Adams announced his new directive allowing cops to forcibly remove people from public areas and involuntarily detain them for transport to hospitals. The mayor’s guidance expands previous definitions which allowed cops and qualified professionals to involuntarily detain someone if the individual is deemed to be a threat. Now, the new recommendations allow cops to detain people if they deem they are “unable to meet their basic needs.” Adams claims this decision is best for public safety and individual well-being, but his decision was never about public safety — it’s about hiding the effects of austerity, cuts in social services, and the vast inequalities created by capitalism in one of the wealthiest cities in the world.

Making ‘The Right To The City’ Real For Urban Dwellers Worldwide

December 11, 2022 Susan Blaustein, Next City. Create! Class Struggle, Homelessness, Housing, Human Rights

This International Human Rights Day, as our mostly urban world is increasingly challenged by rising poverty, migration, inequality and climate risk, let us think about what it would mean to truly enjoy the “right to the city.” From the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights at the end of World War II to the ensuing drumbeat of further international rights covenants, conventions and declarations, the language of protection and universality of rights would seem to be ubiquitous and generally agreed. Yet discrimination persists. In cities, it most often manifests itself against low-income families, women, those in the LGBTQ+ community, those in Indigenous communities, the very young, the very old, those differently abled, non-nationals, the homeless, the formerly incarcerated and those representing other marginalized groups.

Media’s Crime Hype And Scapegoating Led To Crackdown On Unhoused People

December 8, 2022 Julie Hollar, Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting. Educate! Class Struggle, Criminal Justice and Prisons, Eric Adams, Health Care, Housing, Human Rights, Media, New York City (NYC), Police

New York City, New York - For some time now, news media have been conflating crime, homelessness and mental illness, demonizing and dehumanizing people without homes while ignoring the structural causes leading people to sleep on subways and in other public spaces. With New York City Mayor Eric Adams’ latest announcement that he would hospitalize, against their will, unhoused people with mental health conditions—even those deemed to pose no risk to others—in the name of “public safety,” the local papers once again revealed a propensity to highlight official narratives and try to erase their own role in conjuring the crime hysteria that drives such ineffective and pernicious policies. Adams, who made fighting crime the centerpiece of his 2021 campaign, announced his latest plan on November 29, his latest in a series of pushes to clear unsheltered people from the streets and subways of New York City.

Tax The Rich? We Did That Once

December 7, 2022 Sam Pizzigati, Inequality.org. Create! Class Struggle, History, Taxes, wealth inequality

Once upon a time, the United States seriously taxed the nation’s rich. You remember that time? Probably not. To have a personal memory of that tax-the-rich era, you now have to be well into your seventies. Back at the tail-end of that era, in the early 1960s, America’s richest faced a 91 percent tax rate on income in the top tax bracket. That top rate had been hovering around 90 percent for the previous two decades. In the 1950s, a Republican president, Dwight D. Eisenhower, made no move to knock it down. The rich felt those taxes. The high life struggled. Consider what happened to one fabled emblem of that era’s excess, the nation’s first-ever penthouse.

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