By next year, the richest 1% of the
world will own more wealth than the rest of the entire population of
the planet, according to Oxfam. This is a staggering figure, almost
impossible to comprehend. And yet, this fact alone puts into focus a
harsh truth: that we live in a fierce, inhuman, capitalist world
where a handful of the richest people get richer and more powerful,
even as governments across the globe enact austerity measures against
the working class. It is completely ludicrous that governments are
carrying out austerity policies while the global 1% are set to clutch
over half of the world’s wealth by next year.
But here we are, watching the
impossible unfold right in front of our eyes.
In Jamaica, IMF-imposed austerity
measures are the most severe on the planet, according to the Center
for Economic and Policy Research. And, of course, the US is largely
to blame. The CEPR explained, “through its leadership role in
the IMF, the U.S. is imposing unnecessary pain on Jamaica through
harsh austerity and a debt trap." Since 2007, poverty in the
country has doubled, with unemployment currently at 14.2 percent.
While the double stranglehold of debt
and austerity brings Jamaica to its knees, activists in Spain are
also fighting against government cuts. Earlier this year in Madrid,
there was a major mobilization against austerity measures imposed by
the government, policies which have worsened homelessness and poverty
among the poorest. Protesters carried banners reading “Working
for a general strike” and “Bread, work, a roof and
dignity.”
Between 2012 and 2014, the Spanish government made
$162 billion in spending cuts. The country is experiencing an
unemployment rate of 23.7 percent; one out of every four members of
the workforce in Spain are unemployed, and half of all young people
in Spain between ages 16 and 25 are without jobs.
But people are fighting back. Protester
Antonio Colmenar told reporters, “It is a day to claim our
rights.”
While the 1% fills their pockets,
protests against austerity have been rocking the globe. In Montreal,
Canada, students are leading the charge against cuts in healthcare,
education and public services. “Today, we’re proud to launch a
raucous spring,” Fannie Poirier, a spokesperson from the
student protest committee told the Montreal Gazette in March.
“Austerity measures have been presented as the lesser of evils
to confront a deficient economy. But what we’re seeing … is a
massive impoverishment of the population, full-frontal attacks on
working conditions and a loss of security for society’s most
vulnerable people.”
Even in Vermont, a US state known for
its progressive politics, Democratic Governor Peter Shumlin has been
pushing for austerity measures in education, healthcare and among
public sector workers. Steve Howard, executive director of the
Vermont State Employees' Association, commented on Shumlin’s moves
to NPR, “Before you take money out of the paychecks of snowplow
drivers, nursing assistants, custodians and administrative assistants
… we believe you have a moral obligation to ask for a greater
contribution from a broad-based revenue source paid mostly by the
wealthiest Vermonters who have had all the economic gains of the last
decade.”
Austerity is trumpeted by many
politicians as a necessary, though painful step to ensure long term
economic viability. But it’s simply a way of perpetuating, rather
than challenging, capitalist business as usual, a business in which
the global 1% get richer and richer while schools go without
sufficient funding and workers get laid off. Governments enacting
austerity measures are protecting the 1% and global capitalism. And
the 1% has more than its fair share of influence in government policy
development. Oxfam reports that the global elite “spent $550
million lobbying policy makers in Washington and Brussels during
2013. During the 2012 US election cycle alone, the financial sector
provided $571 million in campaign contributions.”
Meanwhile, according the Harvard
Business School, CEOs in America currently make 350 times what the
average worker makes, and 774 times as much as minimum wage workers.
Such a concentration of wealth not only takes place with impunity in
America, it is encouraged as part of free market ideology. Since
1979, Americans have increased productivity by 80 percent. Yet,
according to Forbes, income has not increased at the same rate, if it
has increased at all. Furthermore, “the rich spend about 17
percent of their income traveling for business and pleasure” while
“the lower classes spend about 17 percent of their income on
feeding their families.”
Inequality is not a symptom of the ills
of global capitalism, it is its fuel. Austerity measures won’t
change this; they simply maintain an unjust system that needs to be
transformed from the bottom up. The global 1% and their allies in
government need to be confronted and overturned. The entire system
needs to be overhauled in a way that puts people, not profits and
greed, first.
from Telesur here
The socialist message can be heard all around the world. Let's keep working to amplify it until everyone has heard it and the majority understands it and echoes it loud and clear. The capitalist system needs to be confronted and overturned in order to serve the global population instead of a tiny minority. Let there be no mistake, we are the majority. We are many, they are few.
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