When European Central Bank president Mario Draghi recently told German tabloid Bild ”The worst is over,” he was talking about government budgets and European banks’ balance sheets. It is a completely different story for workers through-out Europe who are finding their trade union rights undermined, their wages squeezed, their retirement age raised and their pensions cut while the employers are granted more and increasing power. 27 European Union members are implementing austerity measures to the tune of about 450 billion euros. Such austerity measures have been portrayed as a necessary part of bringing national debts under control and making European businesses competitive, but...
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The recent visit of the Pope to Cuba has again focussed upon the island and the economic and political changes it is under-going. Ahead of his visit, Pope Benedict had suggested Cuba’s “Marxist” structure ”no longer corresponds to reality” and called for the adoption of a ”new model”. Pope Benedict XVI has urged Cubans to build an ”open and renewed society”. His prayers at the island’s holiest site included a plea for ”those deprived of freedom.” but Cuba is not Poland, where the catholic church was an important influence upon the opposition to the state-capitalist regime. Although around 60% of Cubans are baptised as Catholics,...
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Proverbs 10:22 says, ”The blessing of the Lord brings wealth, without painful toil for it.” The world’s largest Christian TV channel, the California-based Trinity Broadcasting Network, has become embroiled in a multimillion-dollar financial scandal after members of the family that founded it alleged widespread embezzlement. The claims – by Brittany Koper, whose grandfather Paul Crouch founded TBN, and by Joseph McVeigh, another family member – describe exorbitant spending on mansions in California, Tennessee and Florida, private jets and even a $100,000 mobile home to house the dogs of Crouch’s flamboyant wife. The network’s lawyer said the Crouches travel by private...
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Money may not buy happiness, but it can pay for you to avoid the hassle of a doctors or hospital waiting room. Well-off executives and their families increasingly are paying tens of thousands of dollars a year for high-end medical services. ”Wealthy people want to have a little exclusivity and want better service than they can get at their normal health-care facility, and they’re willing to pay for it,” said Rick Flynn, principal and head of the Family Office Group with Rothstein Kass, a Roseland, New Jersey-based accounting and consulting firm. Concierge medicine, a doctor on a retainer, in other words,...
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The Fiscal Times published an article arguing that a family with an income of $250,000 per year is not really rich. When taxes, housing costs, college costs for children and so on are accounted for, even those with an income five times the median family income are just barely getting by, it said. Later the Fiscal Times reported that a study recently found that a middle class family needs at least $150,000 of income just to cover the basics. Subsequently, The New York Times published an article sympathizing with the plight of those making only $250,000. They are certainly...
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One of the more memorable jokes in Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy was the one about the supercomputer which, on being asked the meaning of life, supplied the answer ‘42’. One of capitalism’s most profound illogicalities is its constant need to render unquantifiable things – like knowledge – in monetary terms so that its beancounters can do their sums properly. It’s the same joke, only accountants don’t get the laughs. NASA is pulling out of its agreement with the European Space Agency over the planned ExoMars Rover programme, citing lack of funds. It has already ceased supplying...
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Recently, the New York Times praised Chelsea Clinton’s current successes and commitment to public service. Ms. Clinton is the daughter of current U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and former President Bill Clinton. The Times reported Ms. Clinton is making the sacrifice of leading us because she feels a responsibility to serve the public good and “hopes to make a positive, productive contribution.” Ms. Clinton’s newsworthy steps toward public service, noted by the NYT, include: meeting people such as Elton John and Richard Gere, taking a public role with her father’s Clinton Global Initiative, presenting an award to her...
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The World Socialist Party is frequently lambasted for its opposition to reformism. The workers clamor for something concrete now, it is claimed , not abstract socialist principles. They demand immediate improvements that can be obtained by campaigns for legislation it is argued. The World Socialist Party case that although some reforms may be of material benefit to the working class, advocating party policy to struggle for particular reforms hinders the struggle for socialism and diverts our energies into what often results in dead-ends. We found this article by Stephanie Luce on the Labor Notes website particularly relevant in that it offers some...
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Bankers are unpopular. Not the ordinary bank teller or the back-up IT staff, but the directors and top managers who award themselves huge salaries and big bonuses. They are so unpopular, in fact, that the chief executive of Royal Bank of Scotland, Stephen Hester, has been forced to give up a bonus of nearly £1m while his predecessor, Sir Fred Goodwin, has been stripped of his knighthood. The banks defend themselves by arguing that they bring “wealth” into Britain, and pay a considerable amount of tax on it. Some even describe themselves as “wealth creators”. This is absurd. What...
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Titanic: 100 Years On
This April will witness the 100th anniversary of the sinking of theRMS Titanic. Many words will be written in the capitalist media about the disaster, but what of the class aspects of the tragedy and has anything really changed in the last century? The Titanic came into being purely for the speedy conveyance of the rich and wealthy classes between Britain and the US. Opulence and luxury were the watchwords of her design and construction, rather than safety. Designed around class division and reflecting the extremes of wealth and poverty in Edwardian Britain, the vessel featured Turkish baths, gymnasiums, electric...
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