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Coming Soon to America: Big Push for Austerity
Roger Bybee, In These Times
While big crusades for austerity—reserved for workers only, of course—are being waged in France and Great Britain, working people in the United States can also look forward to a major push for cutbacks in social spending and a longer wait before retirement.
Despite the evident need for vastly expanded government spending
and consumer buying power to lift each nation out of recession, the “austerity fad”—as economist Paul Krugman labels it—has been embraced by the corporate and political elites of major nations.
On December 1, the Deficit Reduction Commission, which Obama stacked with opponents of the American social safety net, will be releasing its recommendations. Expect the worst. The battle certain to follow the Deficit Commission will be a test of the AFL-CIO’s resolve and ability to organize on behalf of hard-won workers’ rights to a reasonable retirement age and a secure retirement.
LITTLE FIGHT THUS FAR IN BRITAIN, UNLIKE IN FRANCE
Despite draconian proposals in Great Britain, there have been few visible protests by the labor movement or others to proposals. The new Conservative government, and its Liberal Democratic accomplices, calls for cutting all segments of government—except for healthcare—by 19% They also plan to lay off 490,000 public workers (the equivalent of 3 million in the U.S.) and a more rapid increase in the retirement age.
The destructiveness of such cutbacks on consumer spending power would seem obvious, but the Cameron government is dutifully carrying out the mandate of Britain’s corporate class. No matter that budget-balancing would be both easier and more sensible after conquering the recession and enjoying vastly increased tax revenues. Britain is perversely set on a course which will instead stretch out the recession.
Vive la difference! In contrast, French workers have hit the streets, with 3 million taking part in a general strike in September. In France, despite low “union density” (10%-12%) that is basically about the same as that in the U.S., as long-time labor writer Staughton Lynd pointed out to me, the specter of a higher retirement age has ignited militant workers protests occurring across the nation.
(26 October 2010)
French Lessons for U.S. Workers
Shamus Cooke, CommonDreams.org
The world watches as France once again erupts in protests, demonstrations, and strikes. So much is at stake. If France’s corporate-dominated government is able to increase the retirement age, other governments will be empowered to follow through with their plans to do the same.
If labor, student, and community groups succeed in stopping the pension reform — or toppling the government — workers in other countries will likewise be inspired to fight back and organize in the French fashion.
The worldwide recession has encouraged business-focused governments to pursue the kind of anti-worker policies they’ve been discussing for years. There is common agreement among these governments on a global scale as to the necessity for these polices. Working people disagree.
There have already been massive demonstrations or general strikes in Greece, Ireland, Italy, Spain, Portugal and elsewhere. In England, massive cuts to the public sector — 500,000 job cuts — have been announced that could cause a similar backlash.
In the United States, President Obama has formed his Deficit Reduction Commission, which has in its sights Social Security and Medicare. The Los Angles Times reports:
“Social Security is one of several areas being eyed by the panel [deficit reduction commission] for changes…other commission targets include Medicare, defense spending and a range of tax policies…” (September 29, 2010).
(26 October 2010)
The Tory ‘big society’ relies on women replacing welfare
Selma James, Guardian
Families with children will bear the brunt of privatisation and cuts – leaving carers with more unwaged work than ever
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The welfare state was a legacy of the second world war. After the misery of the great depression and the slaughter that followed, people demanded change: the welfare of people, including working-class people, was to be central. Millions demanded socialism – and the welfare state was what we got. From 1951 to 1979 the Tories were cautious, some even embracing the civilising influence of “entitlement”: every human being’s right not to starve, at least in the UK.
The cuts announced by George Osborne yesterday aim once again to make market forces rather than human beings the absolute social and economic priority, throwing us back to the inter-war years of deprivation.
One crucial advance had been that universal family allowance (now child benefit) acknowledged mothers as vital workers who produced the human race. As soon as suffrage was won, feminist Eleanor Rathbone, from a Liverpool anti-slavery family, had worked tirelessly to establish that mothers and children were entitled to an income independent of what men earned – or didn’t earn. It would recognise the needs of children and the work and financial autonomy of their carers. Family allowance would redress the gross injustice of the penniless mother who had been economically “disinherited”. Mothers and children, though unwaged, were, after all, most of the population.
… As soon as he came in, Blair called single mothers “workless”, and cut one-parent benefit. The job of raising children, it seems, was a time-waster. This framed the recent Welfare Reform Act, which abolished income support, the benefit that recognised mothers’ unwaged work, and in crucial respects frames the present cuts. Harriet Harman presented the one-parent cut; Yvette Cooper welfare reform. With what credibility can they oppose Tory cuts?
It has been noted that families with children will bear the brunt of cuts, while the childless two-income family will not. It is the carer who will carry the heaviest load because she has the greater responsibility. And not only for children who will lose education and other allowances, but for relatives with disabilities and pensioner parents whose local services will either be directly cut or contracted out, to be done by workers paid slave wages not to care, but to meet targets.
(21 October 2010)
For the Conservatives, this is not a financial crisis but a long-awaited opportunity
George Monbiot, Guardian
In a classic example of ‘disaster capitalism’, the cuts are being used to reshape the economy in the interests of business – and to trash the public sector
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We’ve been staring at the wrong list. In an effort to guess what will hit us tomorrow, we’ve been trying to understand the first phase of the British government’s assault on the public sector: its bonfire of the quangos. Almost all the public bodies charged with protecting the environment, animal welfare and consumers have been either hobbled or killed. But that’s only half the story. Look again, and this time make a list of the quangos which survived.
If the government’s aim had been to destroy useless or damaging public bodies, it would have started with the Commonwealth Development Corporation. It was set up to relieve poverty in developing countries, but when New Labour tried, and failed, to privatise it, the CDC completely changed its mission. Now it pours money into lucrative corporate ventures, while massively enriching its own directors. Private Eye discovered that in 2007 this quango paid its chief executive just over a million pounds. The magazine has also shown how the CDC has become entangled in a series of corruption cases. Uncut. Unreformed.
… Can you see the pattern yet? Public bodies whose purpose is to hold corporations to account are being swept away. Public bodies whose purpose is to help boost corporate profits, regardless of the consequences for people and the environment, have sailed through unharmed. What the two lists suggest is that the economic crisis is the disaster the Conservatives have been praying for. The government’s programme of cuts looks like a classic example of disaster capitalism: using a crisis to re-shape the economy in the interests of business.
In her book The Shock Doctrine, Naomi Klein shows how disaster capitalism was conceived by the extreme neoliberals at the University of Chicago. These people believed that the public sphere should be eliminated, that business should be free to do as it wants, and almost all tax and social spending should be stopped. They believed that total personal freedom in a completely free market produces a perfect economy and perfect relationships. It was a utopian system as fanatical as any developed by a religious cult. And it was profoundly unpopular. For a long time its only supporters were the heads of multinational corporations and a few wackos in the US government.
In a democracy under normal conditions, those who were harmed by abandoning public provision would outvote those who gained from it. So the Chicago programme couldn’t be imposed in these circumstances. As the Chicago School’s guru, Milton Friedman, explained, “only a crisis – actual or perceived – produces real change”.
(18 October 2010)
Expect more of the same “Shock Doctrine” as peak oil approaches. -BA
Mapping Global Wealth
Sam Pizzigati, OtherWords
Credit Suisse reveals the world’s staggering inequality.
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Despite our global economic hard times, the world has more than enough wealth to ensure every adult on the planet a significant nest egg.
This heartening news comes from the Swiss banking giant Credit Suisse. Its first-ever Global Wealth Report crunches data for over 200 countries and maps the wealth belonging to the world’s richest people–and everybody else.
Those inclined to see the sunny side will certainly find it in these numbers. They indicate that total global net worth, despite the 2008 global economic meltdown, has rocketed up 72 percent since 2000.
The world’s 4.4 billion adults, note the bank’s researchers, now hold $194.5 trillion in wealth. That’s enough, if this asset stash were shared evenly across the globe, to guarantee every adult in the world a $43,800 net worth.
But the world’s wealth, of course, isn’t evenly divided. And this study helpfully breaks down the arithmetic of our staggering global unevenness.
We’ve got, at the wealth spectrum’s uppermost reaches, just over 1,000 billionaires and another 80,000 “ultra high net worth individuals” worth over $50 million each. We can add into this wealthy summit another 24 million adults worth between $1 million and $50 million.
At other end of the global spectrum sit three billion people–more than two thirds of the world’s adults–whose wealth averages less than $10,000. About 1.1 billion of them have a net worth of less than $1,000.
(25 October 2010)
