Why can’t we have a society that works? Why can’t everyone
have good food to eat, have free access to health and medical services. Why
can’t all youngsters get the education they desire, and all seniors receive the
dignity they deserve. The answer is that
we live under CAPITALISM – a global system based on the exploitation of the
majority by the minority. And the solution to all these problems is SOCIALISM –
a global system based on mass democracy. We firmly believe that a socialist
world is not only possible but, most importantly, it is necessary and
achievable. The fight for socialism is more urgent today than ever.
There is a belief that the poor have a notion that “I really
don’t have to work. I don’t really want to do this. I think I’d rather just sit
around.” In reality, a large and growing share of the nation’s poor work full
time — sometimes sixty or more hours a week – yet still don’t earn enough to
lift themselves and their families out of poverty. The ranks of the working
poor are growing because wages at the bottom have dropped, adjusted for
inflation. With increasing numbers of Americans taking low-paying jobs in
retail sales, restaurants, hotels, hospitals, childcare, elder care, and other
personal services, the pay of the bottom fifth is falling closer to the minimum
wage. At the same time, the real value of the federal minimum wage is lower
today than it was a quarter century ago. In addition, most recipients of public
assistance must now work in order to qualify. Is education the solution to
inequality that it’s often presented as? A paper from the Hamilton Project,
co-authored by former Treasury Secretary and former Harvard University
president Lawrence Summers, argues that the answer is no. So much income is
concentrated among America’s richest citizens that a modest increase in
earnings at the bottom end of the income distribution will barely make a dent
in overall inequality. In a simulation in which one out of every ten American
men between the ages of 25 and 64 without a bachelor’s degree suddenly
graduated from college the results show a surge in the earnings but inequality
barely budged.
Increased educational attainment across lower-income
brackets would indeed result in higher income and more economic security for
vulnerable groups, the paper finds. But so much income is concentrated among
America’s richest citizens that a modest increase in earnings at the bottom end
of the income distribution will barely make a dent in overall inequality.
It’s also commonly believed that the rich deserve their
wealth because they work harder than others. For the very rich, the majority of
their income is not from wages they work for, but rather capital gains and
other investment income. Much of the CEO’s pay comes in the form of
share-options. In reality, a large and growing portion of the super-rich have
never broken a sweat. Their wealth has been handed to them. Six of today’s ten
wealthiest Americans are heirs to prominent fortunes. It's so horrible and
we've already been down this road before with Rockefeller, Carnegie, Morgan,
Ford, Astor, and all the others that brought despair to the people. The wealthy
are busily transferring that wealth to their children and grand-children. A
study from the Boston College Center on Wealth and Philanthropy projects a
total of $59 trillion passed down to
heirs between 2007 and 2061 in America alone. Leona Helmsley left $13 million
to her dog!
It is not just inherited wealth. People like Steve Jobs or
Bill Gates, who many people consider actual "captains of industry"
are just the same worthless thieves also who contributed basically nothing to
what really made them successful. In the very best case, like with Jobs, they
added a sprinkle of design or marketing or some other superficial gimmick. And
that is actually a worthwhile contribution compared to the rest of them!
The average American believes that the richest fifth own 59%
of the wealth and that the bottom 40% own 9%. The reality is strikingly
different. The top 20% of US households own more than 84% of the wealth, and
the bottom 40% combine for a paltry 0.3%. The Walton family, for example, has
more wealth than 42% of American families combined. In another study published
last year, Norton and Sorapop Kiatpongsan used a similar approach to assess
perceptions of income inequality. The average American estimated that the CEO-to-worker
pay-ratio was 30-to-1. The reality? 354-to-1. Researchers found Americans
overestimate the amount of upward social mobility that exists in society. They
asked people to guess the chance that someone born to a family in the poorest
20% ends up as an adult in the richer quintiles. Sure enough, people think that
moving up is significantly more likely than it is in reality. 60% believe that
most people can make it if they’re willing to work hard. The United States is
now the most unequal of all Western nations. To make matters worse, America has
considerably less social mobility than Canada and Europe.
Just five percent of Americans think that inequality is a
major problem in need of attention. Americans widely believe that success is
due to individual talent and effort. Unions provided much of the organizational
and financial support that helped deliver victories to millions of working
Americans. Yet none of these wins translate directly into new dues-paying
members. Ongoing attacks by anti-union forces have crippled unions’
organizational models in what were labor strongholds, including Wisconsin and
Michigan. Many of these attacks have taken dead aim at what remains of labor’s
real strength: its public sector membership base. Abetted by recent court
decisions, efforts to defund and defang public sector unions are growing in
size and sophistication by right wing policymakers and lobbying groups.
Curiously, despite serving as a primary source of votes and finances for the
Democratic Party for much of the 20th Century, labour finds itself with few political
allies.
Working people need to realise that the system was never
meant to work for them. If people want a chance, simply just a chance for a
just and equitable society they'll need to revolt against the plutocrats. So we
need to start getting people to accept socialism. That's an important step to
fixing this problem. Capitalism was built on the institutionalised theft of
surplus value of labour and savage inequality for the profits of a ruling class
of the few. And this is not new. It is the normal workings of capitalism in all
its glory. Inequality is a result of capitalism, which is by its very nature
exploitative through wage labour…thus driving class and wealth inequality
The rich are parasites on the working class--and we define
"working class" in the broadest sense: those that go to work to
produce goods and services that people need and want. Our definition includes
engineers, designers, teachers, doctors, lawyers--as well as factory hands. The
wealthy extract money through their ownership of capital which they use
primarily to speculate on the stock market, the commodities market, real
estate, the currency market, and god knows what else. We are bombarded with the
propaganda that makes exploitation entirely acceptable. A part of the solution
we need to build a one unified socialist movement across the diverse movements.
A world socialist project is by no means impossible but we need to give people
hope that there is a purpose to the mobilization.
http://www.gatesfoundation.org/who-we-are/general-information/foundation-factsheet
ReplyDeleteNot sure why you supplied the link to a charity foundation.
ReplyDeleteSurely you are not suggesting that the economic system should be based upon the philanthropic predilections of the rich which of course would confirm we live in a plutocracy ... that civil society is at the direction and the personal whims of the wealthy
Not sure why you supplied the link to a charity foundation.
ReplyDeleteSurely you are not suggesting that the economic system should be based upon the philanthropic predilections of the rich which of course would confirm we live in a plutocracy ... that civil society is at the direction and the personal whims of the wealthy