Refugees deserve help, but what about the EU poor?

A great opinion piece confirming my own thoughts, which I've been detailing here, on this blog. Ironically enough, the refugee crisis has not ended at all, or even getting close to an end, & the media has moved on; reporting on the refugee drownings in the back pages somewhere, if at all.

The refugee crisis didn't start with Aylan Kurdi's drowning & didn't end with the EU's refugee settlement agreement with Turkey in 2016 or with Canada & US taking a few thousand refugees. The Western media didn't bother to cover refugee crisis when refugees were making dangerous journeys across the Mediterranean & over European lands through 2011 to 2015. Of course, if the media doesn't cover these stories, the Western public is the kind that will keep sleeping, blissfully, in their ignorance. I've never seen such ignored public like the Western public; ignorance coupled with very short-term memory (most of the public has forgotten about the refugee crisis, & has moved on).

On top of the refugee crisis, which the Western countries created in the first place by supporting Assad regime & destroying Iraq, & dithering further in coming up with solutions to resolve the violence & the consequent refugee crisis, they try to absorb as many refugees as they can. Now, as I've said before, helping refugees should definitely be done. No questions about it.

BUT, as a Western government, it also needs to help its own citizens. Forcing your own people to suffer in a very austere economic climate, while doling out millions on refugees, will only going to fan the flames of hatred, animosity, & enmity. The Donald Trumps, Nigel Farages, & Marine Le Pens of the Western political arenas did, & are still doing, exactly that; spreading the hatred of refugees & Muslims (since, refugees are mostly from Islamic countries) by courting to those kinds of groups in their countries who are disenfranchised, marginalised, & left to fend for themselves in this latest economic crisis. Ironically enough, even Islam teaches that an individual has much bigger responsibility of taking care of its family, first & foremost, before it starts to dole out its fortune on all its neighbours.

The last two paragraphs succinctly summarize the whole opinion piece. This refugee crisis is indeed a global humanitarian crisis because refugees are not only Syrians & Iraqis but also in SouthEast Asia (Rohingyas, for example) & in Central Asia (Afghans, Hazaras, Kazakhs etc.) & in South Sudan, Nigeria, Libya, Zimbabwe, Uganda etc. They are all in refugee status because their livelihoods has been taken away from them, with the help of world's powerful countries of the Global North (US, Canada, UK, France, Germany, Italy, China, Russia etc.) who are selling arms & weapons, by the ship loads to these already-impoverished countries, implementing & enforcing trade rules which help their own trade balances, & are not willing to severely curtail their environmental footprints, which in turn leads to environmental disasters in Syria, Iraq, & the African continent. Did you know that drought & climate change were factors in this Syrian uprising?

It is true that justice cannot be enforced through armed interventions. Every refugee is indeed made because a) he/she is the victim of the "might is right" foreign policies of the Western world & b) that he/she is not getting any justice, whatsoever.

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https://www.rt.com/op-edge/314665-hypocrisy-austerity-refugees-poor/ 

Aylan Kurdi has achieved more in death than he ever could in life. The image of his three-year old body lying just beyond the waves on a Turkish beach, will forever taunt the West with the lie of its claim to being synonymous with civilization & justice.

Ignorance

It says much about the ignorance that permeates Western culture when the picture of one dead child can cause so many to emote over their lattes, compel others to embark on collections & aid missions to refugees in Calais, Hungary, Greece, & Turkey, without eliciting the slightest understanding of why Aylan & countless others like him have perished; & why so many human beings are all of a sudden desperate to come to Europe, despite the huge risk such a perilous journey involves.

The mass exodus of refugees from the Middle East did not begin with the death of this three-year old Syrian boy. He is not the first child to have drowned in the attempt & nor will he be the last. This exodus has been taking place for 3 or 4 years – years in which European governments have extended themselves in doing their utmost to deepen the conflict, societal collapse, & instability that now scars a large swathe of the Middle East & North Africa (MENA).

In this they have been aided by a complicit media, which has succeeded in reducing the world to a struggle between the West - that pillar of human rights, democracy, & civilization - & everyone else, by implication those who are against human rights, democracy, & civilization. This narrative could only succeed with the acquiescence of a populace that has willingly suspended disbelief when it comes to the chaos & conflict that in recent years has been the rule rather than the exception across much of the world.
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Difficult dilemma

Across Western Europe, after the wave of pro-refugee sentiment we are witnessing inevitably dies down, wherein people previously welcomed with the fist of fury are for the first time being treated as human beings in desperate need of help, governments are going to be faced with a difficult dilemma.

Under the policy of austerity that has reigned across Europe over the past few years we have seen workers, the poor, disabled, & the most economically disadvantaged hit with cuts to their incomes, cuts to the public services upon which they depend, resulting in many cases in the imposition of poverty & despair. This has all been done in the name of tackling an economic recession brought to the world courtesy of a banking & financial system that has more in common with a casino on the Las Vegas Strip than institutions entrusted with the pensions & investments of millions of people.

The point is that austerity has been sold & implemented on the basis that there is no alternative, that the money required to fund public services, pay salaries & benefits is no longer available. Yet now, all of a sudden, people forced to suffer the worst under austerity are finding out that this is nonsense - that when it comes to absorbing thousands of refugees from the Middle East there actually is money available.

This contradiction is pregnant with danger inasmuch as the absorption of thousands of refugees from the Middle East & elsewhere, unless accompanied by immediate investment in infrastructure, services, housing, & so on, may only succeed in raising cultural & social tensions, providing ammunition for the far right & those for whom refugees, migrants, & foreigners are deserving of nothing but enmity.

Hypocrisy of mainstream politicians

As for those politicians now clambering to announce they would be willing to invite Syrian refugees into their homes, or into their second homes, how many homeless people do you think they walk or drive past in London, Berlin, or Paris on a daily basis without so much as a thought for the despair so many of their citizens are experiencing each & every day?

This is not to suggest these refugees are not deserving or worthy of help. They clearly are, especially from those countries whose hands are covered in the blood of millions across the Middle East with their role in devastating the region, leading directly to the birth of ISIS & the proliferation of terrorism & the resulting refugee crisis, one that is now biblical in scope.

But by the same token, we cannot allow hypocrisy to prosper. There is a direct & causal relationship between the West’s foreign policy & a world that has never been so polarized & divided between rich & poor, developed & undeveloped. Indeed the wealth of the northern hemisphere is predicated on the poverty & immiseration of the southern hemisphere. As such, it could be argued that those arriving in Europe in their thousands now are merely collecting a debt of obligation that has been long overdue.

Here we come to the most nauseating aspect of this crisis. For years now the West has extended itself in trying to isolate the Assad government, demonizing it as morally equivalent to ISIS & other terrorist groups that have written a new page in history when it comes to barbarity & evil. They have facilitated this evil and until we see a reorientation of Western policy towards Syria, this barbarity will go on & on.

EU now functions in name only

... As for the EU, it now functions in name only, with its disunity, division, & dysfunction incredible to watch. Unable to arrive at a coordinated, cohesive response to this crisis, we now have a situation that demands the involvement of the UN.

This refugee crisis is not a European crisis it is a global humanitarian crisis caused by those in position of power who view the world through a skewed lens, reducing it to one giant chessboard upon which governments can be moved around, removed, & replaced at will.

‘Might is right’ can never supplant justice as the basis of international affairs. Each & every refugee is the victim of the former & a consequence of the absence of the latter.


John Wight has written for newspapers and websites across the world, including the Independent, Morning Star, Huffington Post, Counterpunch, London Progressive Journal, and Foreign Policy Journal. He is also a regular commentator on RT and BBC Radio. John is currently working on a book exploring the role of the West in the Arab Spring. You can follow him on Twitter @JohnWight1

Jamaican trek convinced me development schemes rarely work

The main problem is that the public, around the world, still thinks that the developed countries built major international financial & trade organizations, like IMF (International Monetary Fund), World Bank, & WTO (World Trade Organization) to help in the development of developing countries of Africa, Asia, & Latin America. That is so not the case.

Actually, these organizations were made to make it seem like transferring money from developed countries to developing countries, in the name of a good cause, & of course, making it look like the developed countries are contributing their fair share to make the world a better place. But this is not the case. IMF & World Bank do transfer money to developing countries but with such restrictive terms & conditions that the organizations who are supposed to work in the field with those loans etc. have their hands tied behind their backs. Interest payments on those funds are also astronomical due to several factors; political volatility, civil unrest, lack of proper governance, corruption, market volatility etc.

But, then, why do IMF & World Bank hand billions of $$$ to corrupt officials in developing countries, who are well-known corrupt, thanks to organizations like Transparency International (I have a problem with them, too, but that's for another place & time)? First, these international financial organizations hand over billions to corrupt officials without any questions asked, & when those officials are pushed out of the government, & people want a change for the better, that same poor public is hit with economic sanctions (which further raises interest rates on those billions of loans) & are asked to pay back those loans (which were given to well-known corrupt officials) through hard austere budgets. WTO also works in tandem with these organizations by directly / indirectly advocating for trade barriers, which help the incumbents (developed countries) expand their economic might all over the world while keeping the economies of the developing countries tied up in knots from which they can never try to get out or severely change their economic system.

Of course, in such dire economic times, like we are currently seeing in Greece, the public starts to filter out of the country to seemingly better prospects in terms of life, economy, jobs, education etc. Those economic migrants are then hired as general labourers in developed countries, which provided those loans in the first place. With no / scarce jobs & educated people out of the country, that developing country has its back against the wall, with hands & feet tied behind its back. The public which is left behind in the country are financially constrained to grow the economy, which in itself, running on a very austere budget, & government can't pour money in the economy because of austerity, & hence, crime, civil unrest, corruption, political & market volatilities rear their ugly heads, which in turn, require the country to always essentially have its hand out for more loans & funds. Hence, the developing countries are always stuck in the mud, so to say, & can never seem to get out of it to become a developed country.

So, who really benefits with these international organizations? Developed countries. They get their interests on those loans. They get cheap & educated labour from these developing countries. Their companies have the world to expand their markets & export all over the world, which in turn, helps keep the trade balances & monetary value of their currencies in a healthy shape. All the while, the developing countries stay in the "developing" pool & get the blame for not being able to ever develop itself.

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https://www.theguardian.com/global-development-professionals-network/2015/sep/17/jamaican-development-imf-world-bank-climate-change-earth-walk

Jamaica is a small country full of clever, intelligent people who are being poorly served by the world that historically shaped it. Remarkably, this painful past has somehow led to an ability for it to punch far above its weight.

In February 2015 I had the opportunity to experience first hand the mood & feeling of the people by walking Jamaica from east to west accompanied by 10 local people on the One-Love One-Step walk. We hiked from Morant Point to Negril, through the most neglected parishes over the mountains & into farming communities. This is a country full of stories & folklore & to understand the people, it is critical to listen to them.

The focus of the walk was to highlight the local issues surrounding climate change & to feel the pulse of people’s lives. We interviewed & filmed over a hundred Jamaicans talking about how they feel & what their expectations are for their future & those of their children. The only word I can distil to share with you is hopelessness. It is endemic & it is corroding the heart of this nation.

The economy is built on the extraction of natural resources, sugar, bauxite, people. Most of the money earned from tourism leaves the island & a modern-day exodus is killing the country, a classic brain drain towards the provision of a low-cost labour force of farm workers & chambermaids in the US & Canada, working on temporary visas doing the jobs no one else wants to do.

Now in the third year of an IMF-backed economic programme, Jamaica is running the most austere budget in the world, with a primary surplus of 7.5%. Even Greece, which is facing a tense standoff with the IMF & European authorities over its debt, is only expected to run a primary surplus of 3% of GDP this year & 4.5% for years thereafter – & this is widely considered to be politically unsustainable.

I have seen millions of dollars wasted in Jamaica & across the Caribbean, I have also seen this happen in India when I was working there developing primary healthcare opportunities. In my experience, much of the waste is not caused by local bodies but by the organisations that provide the funding. They inadvertently wrap local people up in red tape, creating unrealistic outputs based on feeding their own need to hit internal & international targets.

Again & again I have seen fantastic local people frustrated by a system that is not designed to fit them, that is not built on their story but some self-serving development corporation that purveys a one-size-fits-all approach. These agencies then blame local people & organisations for failure. An example is the coffee industry, focused only on Blue Mountain (BM) coffee which received investment & development, both internal & external, & has led to the desertification of many small coffee farms throughout Jamaica – 80% of all BM coffee is sold to one major Japanese customer.

There is a slow re-introduction of freshwater Tilapia farming & Cassava processing plants but they are built on crumbling & undeveloped sites because of the tragic mismanagement of the Financial Sector Adjustment Company (Finsac) & the last big hurricane to hit the island. Development money in these sectors rarely reaches the small farmer. This has led to increasing the crime & praedial larceny rates (the theft or agricultural produce or livestock).

The time has come for a slow development movement, built on the stories & realities of local people. Last year I commissioned Uncovering Authentic Jamaica, a piece of social research, to better understand the Jamaican people & their development needs.

“People are our greatest asset. But they want to get out,” said one hotelier at Treasure Beach tourist trap. We discovered many tangible opportunities, most of which existing development agencies ignore or do not understand as they do not fit the standard model. For example, only focusing on women’s development doesn’t fit a country like Jamaica where the young men are falling woefully behind the women both in job opportunity & educational attainment. Much is left un-researched in Jamaica because it is a proud country full of patriotic people & Brand Jamaica has to be maintained.

There are good things happening & Jamaicans do have an indomitable spirit. A group of young men are changing their world & creating an eco village in the middle of Kingston & organisations such as Farm-up Jamaica are ringing slow but steady change.

As all good gardeners know, it is best to water a tree at the drip line, the area under the outer circumference of the branches. This is where the tiny rootlets are located that take up water for the tree. Trees should be watered here, not at the base or they may develop root rot. Applying this thinking to development would consider how interventions are initiated at the right place at the right time. Present intervention often has a scatter-gun approach. There is a lack of robust, focused & brave investment.

If we apply “drip line” thinking to emerging economies, then we identify exactly where key interventions should be applied. Support this with an impactful business development model, increasing value chain share, & thinking beyond fair-trade, we could create a pivotal change.

The future is bright, but only if we work bravely to restructure debt interest payments & find a better solution for Jamaica than crushing austerity, declining living standards & growing hopelessness.


Dee Kyne is a social entrepreneur & environmentalist working to end ecocide.

The Interview: Nobel laureate & economist Joseph Stiglitz

What I liked from this interview is about a little discussion on economic & financial inequality among the public. Politicians & economists of the world are trying to increase demand, & hence, GDP, but they are not trying to resolve the root problems of the recession & slow recovery, & keep trying to put in place harsh austerity measures for the poor public & tax cuts for the rich. These measures are counter-intuitive & decrease the national demand & hurt the national & international economies even further.

The tax cuts for the rich doesn't entice the rich to take that extra cash & increase the minimum wages or provide more benefits to their workers, & instead, they invest in their private yachts, sports arenas, sports clubs, racing animals, real estate, stock portfolios, or simply horde it all away in tax havens. The harsh austerity measures, coupled with more taxes in some cases, for the poor public reduce the free cash available to them, for discretionary purchases, & in many cases, even for needy purchases, which in turn, reduces aggregate demand in the country.

These measures create economic, financial, & social inequality. People cannot move up the social ladder, since they don't have enough money, but they can definitely move down, which is happening all over the world. The young populations of the world are seeing their dreams crush after spending a fortune on their education & building that dream where they would be owning their own homes, have families, build up their wealth, & finally, retire to a relaxing future. Instead, they are seeing their degrees pretty much worthless & jobs that pay so little that owning homes & building up wealth is becoming a very far-fetched dream. All the while, these same poor youths are also seeing people with no discernible talent making a lot of money, for instance, celebs like the Kardashian family or the rich billionaire kids of new billionaires in Europe, China, India, & Russia.

That inequality starts to breed hatred in these young minds. That hatred then tries to find an outlet in terms of violence; be it gun violence in America or Canada or gang warfare in Latin America or refugee crisis of Europe or ranks of terrorist groups like ISIS & Al-Qaeda in Middle East & Africa swelling up with young Westerners.

So, the root problem of violence in Middle East, Latin America, Europe, & in North America are all due to inequality all over the world. If only politicians & economists try to resolve this one major problem, we won't be having these fears of recessions hounding us all the time, & violence would definitely be down all over the world, which in turn, would save billions in arms & weaponry purchases, safety & security apparatus, & of course, millions of lives around the world. Those billions of money can then be used towards helping students in post-secondary institutions with their tuitions, improving infrastructure, creating more companies with subsidies, for instance, for green economies, which in turn, create more well-paying jobs, which in turn, would increase aggregate demand & reduce inequality. If only ... !!!

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http://www.amazon.com/Great-Divide-Unequal-Societies-About/dp/0393248577/

Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz, a professor of economics at Columbia University, has written extensively about inequality in America, including his latest book, The Great Divide: Unequal Societies and What We Can Do About Them. He’ll be a visiting scholar in the new Lind Initiative U.S. Studies at the University of British Columbia this fall.
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Q: You’ll be lecturing at UBC on global inequality. Why should people be worried about inequality?

A: Inequality is very related to the problems we’re talking about. People at the top spend less money than those at the bottom so when you have redistribution toward the top, aggregate demand goes down. Unless you intervene, you’re going to have a weak economy unless something else happens. That something else could be a bubble. The US tried a tech bubble & a housing bubble, but those were not sustainable answers. So I view inequality as a fundamental part of our macroeconomic weakness. There have always been two theories about inequality. One is that it reflects just deserts. The other is that there are large elements of exploitation & inequality of opportunities. The evidence is overwhelmingly that the increase in inequality is associated with those negative factors. If it were all social contribution, then when the top did better, they would be contributing to everybody’s well-being. That trickle-down hasn’t happened. We’ve seen median income, people in the middle, actually worse off than they were 25 years ago.

Q: You’ve said that inequality is fraying the bonds that hold the US together. That sounds scary. Is it that bad?

A: Oh, I think it is. [It’s behind] a lot of what you see as dysfunctional behaviour & extremism. Particularly, young men are angry. You know, how can people like Donald Trump be so politically successful, running ahead in the Republican primary with no policy other than a sense of anger? What he’s been doing is pointing out the corruption in our system. I mean, Jeb Bush has Florida put $250 million of pension funds into Lehman Brothers & then when he leaves as governor he gets a job at Lehman at a salary of $1.3 million—those things resonate with Americans. The system looks broken.

What I argued in The Great Divide is that societies can’t function without trust, both politically & economically. And in the context of politics, what you see increasingly is young people not voting. The voter turnout in the last election was the lowest it’s been since the Second World War, when a lot of people were off fighting. In 2010, voter turnout among young people was 20%. Americans like to say we’re fighting for democracy, & yet young Americans have come to the view that democracy doesn’t deliver.

Q: It’s been 4 years since you wrote, “Of the one per cent, by the one per cent, for the one per cent,” which gave the Occupy movement its slogan “We are the 99 per cent.” Is inequality getting more attention now?

A: Very much so. You see Hillary Clinton has emphasized it in her campaign, but even the Republicans have said inequality is the major issue. To me that’s one of the optimistic things, that it’s finally moved to the top of a political agenda. The other optimistic note is that you see, across the country, 70% support for increasing the minimum wage. Congress can’t get it through because it’s dysfunctional & so we’re having strong grassroots movements to raise it, in Seattle, Los Angeles, New York. The grassroots people are saying our national government is broken; we have to do something about it.
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Q: What about Canada? Do you think we have an inequality problem?

A: Oh, yes, clearly. But it’s in the middle of the OECD pack. It’s not as good as the Scandinavian countries. It’s not been doing as good a job as it did in the past in taking inequality of market income & reducing it. Also, you are a natural resource economy, & natural resource economies, with a couple of exceptions, tend to be very unequal. You can, in principle, tax the natural resource rents at very high rates & use that to create a more equal society. The country that’s been most successful at that is Norway. The more typical countries are those in the Middle East where a small group seizes those resources, uses it to buy arms to make sure that they can oppress the remainder, & you get these great inequalities. So Canada is among the better performing of the natural resource economies, but it’s still not up to the best performing.

Q: In Canada the share of income going to the rich has been falling for several years. We have better social mobility than in the US. Why is Canada better on inequality?

A: You have a more egalitarian education system, & I think your health care system is so much better than ours. A third aspect that clearly is part of American history is our racial issue. But the problems of inequality are even within the white group. 20% of American children grow up in poverty, & that means they get inadequate nutrition, inadequate health care, & because we have a very local education system, they get inadequate access to education. With those as a starting base, you perpetuate inequality. That’s why, here in New York, Mayor de Blasio has made a big deal of trying to focus on preschool education, because by 5 years old, there are already huge differences. We’ve finally begun to recognize it.
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This endless quest for growth will see Greece self-destruct

Although, this article is focused on Greece & its financial & economic woes, I really liked the author's view on how there is an "inherent contradiction of capitalism". I, myself, don't have a problem with capitalism, but the modern capitalism in itself does have a problem of continuously trying to make profits (which are essentially, surpluses -- gross revenue less costs = profits), which are not being re-invested in the economy but are being filtered up to few wealthiest individuals. Profit then stops there & more profits have to made for the other 99% to survive. Of course, since, the other 99% are making minimum wage or barely scraping by in life, the economy will eventually grind to a halt. Paragraphs 6 & 7, in the opinion piece below, very succinctly summarize this.

Think of it like a machine (for example, your car engine). If you keep driving your car for longer & longer distances & keep trying to extract as many kilometers (or miles) you can extract out of it before you need to service your car, or try to slowly reduce your frequency of regular car maintenance, you will eventually destroy your car engine & its related machinery, because your car's machinery is working harder for fewer servicing. It's the same case for human labour.

Anyway, so then the government is faced with only 2 choices (kind of being stuck between rock & a hard place) that it either try to juice up the "dead" economy through stimulus (like US did) or try to save billions through harsh austerity programs like Southern European nations did or are still doing. These two solutions are interlinked & become sort of a catch-22 problem. Government's primary source of revenue is taxes, but it can't really tax the public which in itself is not earning enough to survive. So tax revenue falls off the cliff. If tax revenue is insufficient for the government to institute stimulus programs, then it's only option is to bring more money from outside; either print more or borrow more. Either of these options will reduce the value of the national currency (assuming it's not part of a regional monetary bloc), & the price of everything essential in the marketplace for the public will rise, which will cause the general public to save more, instead of spend, which is required to revive the dead economy. Hence, we are back at the start of the problem, where the economy is still dead, & neither austerity nor stimulus is working to their full potential.

However, while the government is either cutting social spending or reducing the value of the currency, few individuals in its country are still becoming wealthier by the minute. That's why, the recession didn't hit the hardest all those wealthy 1-percenters. Heck, in their own little world, they didn't even feel it. Their wealth actually grew multiple folds during the recent recession.

Problem is that this inherent problem of modern capitalism & the social inequality it causes is only going to grow until there's chaos & anarchy on the national & global levels. There's no way to resolve this problem since the governments are now controlled by those same wealthy individuals who love this "inherent contradiction of capitalism," since it makes them wealthier & wealthier, & frankly, why would they care if a few millions of the general public suffers because of inequality. Prepare yourself for much more pain & suffering if you are one of those 99%.
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http://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2015/jul/07/this-endless-quest-for-growth-will-see-greece-self-destruct

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For many following the crisis for ... months, it has become clear that it is not just about Greek debt. Beneath the cultural tensions & ugly stereotypes, an ideological war is taking place. This battle is happening because the current economic system has only 2 answers to debt crises, recessions & slow economic growth: stimulus & austerity.

Stimulus is about the government pumping money into the economy to encourage consumer spending, which will theoretically lead to economic growth. In recent times, stimulus efforts have taken the form of the government spending money on infrastructure & other socially beneficial projects (think the New Deal) & quantitative easing. Austerity is a set of measures that aim to cut government spending & shrink the public sector to make the economy less dependent on it, which in theory should make room for & encourage a burgeoning free market (ie neo-liberalism).

The argument against government-led stimulus asks how the economy can grow if the government has to keep expanding its debt &/or money supply in order to start new projects & stimulate the economy. Surely the stimulation it provides will never compensate for growing levels of debt? Anti-austerity advocates, on the other hand, ask how the economy can grow if people make less money & taxes are higher – people will save, not spend, & economic growth is based on consumer spending.

The issue of austerity versus stimulus is often framed as the entire debate – if you don’t support one, you must support the other, because there are no alternatives. This is the same binary debate that has been going on for more than 100 years between the state versus the market. Yet, these dichotomies distract people from thinking about what’s really important – the goal of these policies, which is to grow the economy.

No analysis I’ve read thus far has questioned the damaging role that the endless quest for economic growth plays. Neither austerity nor government stimulus will ever be able to address the debt crises & recessions of the twenty-first century because what we’re dealing with here is an inherent contradiction of capitalism.

This contradiction comes from the surplus of the system (profit) being taken out of the real economy (the economy of physical goods and services) and put into the financial sector to generate more wealth for people who are already wealthy. This requires the economy to continually grow to compensate for the extraction of profit, which is essentially the extraction of the economy’s surplus.

However, this extraction of profit is the same mechanism at the root of soaring levels of inequality. A recent Oxfam report estimates that, by 2016, the richest 1% of the world’s population will own more than the other 99%. If the average person is making relatively less every year, or struggling just to maintain the same financial state, they can’t afford to buy ever more products & services, so the economy can’t grow as it did when we had more financial equality. Thus capitalism has always carried the seed of its own demise.

We are seeing this self-destruction in Greece. The ... Syriza government wants to go back to the negotiating table & create a new bailout agreement that will cut the debt to a more manageable size & reform the public sector in ways that won’t affect the most vulnerable. This would still be austerity, albeit a much milder version than that of the past 5 years. ...

If an agreement can’t be reached, Greece might well go back to the drachma. However, the government has no clear plan for this & an unplanned exit from the euro would be painful, with the poorest hit the hardest.

In all of these scenarios, the government’s goal would still be to re-start economic growth, even at the cost of creating more inequality. None of these options gets to the roots of capitalism’s inherent contradiction. There’s no way to grow ourselves out of this crisis; not for Greece, not for the rest of the world. What we are witnessing is the beginning of the collapse of capitalism.

So what is a sustainable path forward for Greece? If the Greek government could see that it won’t be able to re-start growth, and that GDP growth is a means to an end, not an end in itself, there are steps it could take to start paving a new path to prosperity for its people.

In addition to the basics – restructuring the Greek debt, deep reforms in the public sector to make it more transparent & accountable, & the strengthening of the solidarity economy – I suggest the following:
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2.The government should nationalise the banks & encourage people to start credit unions. This will re-align the banking sector with the needs of citizens & make the banks more resilient. Credit unions would empower people to take financial matters into their own hands.

3.Greece should keep for-profit interests from buying up its common wealth. This could be done via land trusts, not-for-profits & amending the constitution to make it unconstitutional for the government to sell off the commons.

4.The Greek government should start using a wellbeing or happiness index to measure success, as Bhutan does. In this age of inequality, working class people & the unemployed can easily slip through the cracks of GDP growth.

5.Businesses & the government should shorten the working week & encourage job-sharing, so more people can have part-time employment. This would counter the current problem of some having no work while others work 50 hours a week.

6.Finally, the government should create legislation & encourage not-for-profit enterprise in every sector to prevent the extraction of profits from the real economy & encourage social entrepreneurs & innovators to start up their own not-for-profits. These enterprises would help alleviate the humanitarian crisis in Greece, create a more stable economy & keep the financial surplus in the real economy. By building an economy around social purpose, Greece could usher in the post-capitalist era, rather than fall victim to the unavoidable collapse of capitalism we are witnessing.


Jennifer Hinton is the co-author of How on Earth: Flourishing in a Not-for-Profit World by 2050, which will be published in October 2015.

"No Peace on Earth" by Rick McKee

"No Peace on Earth" - Rick McKee, The Augusta Chronicle, Augusta, GA, US

Avg. American household is WORSE off than in 1983

Everywhere Rich getting richer & Poor keeps getting poorer. Inequality keeps increasing. A tiny portion of the population (in a country & in the world) keeps increasing its wealth w/o regard to any thoughts of how the majority will survive. This sense of entitlement of money will further increase the wealth gap between rich & poor, up to a point, when the majority poor will violently take over the reins of the financial, political, & judicial systems, which in turn, can mean bad times for the rich.
 
This economic injustice & social inequality is already causing lots of rift & chaos in European societies (austerity measures & unemployment giving rise to far-right political parties, which in turn, giving rise of hatred & discrimination in the society for minorities; religious, ethnic, racial etc.). Greece is threatening to exit EU, & we all have seen the protests in Athens, Madrid, Rome, & of course, who can forget the worldwide occupy movements.
 
Governments already angling to quell that chaos & before a large section of the society take up arms against the elites, by bringing in "anti-terror" legislation, in which, the definition of word "terrorist" has been deliberately kept vague, so anybody rises up against the elites of the society will be swiftly put down.
 
Be it international or domestic terrorism, one of the primary reasons is not any religion or power grab. The primary reason is this social inequality. ISIS keeps increasing in numbers because youth unemployment is so high all over Europe & North America. Youths are not seeing a bright future in front of them. They are burdened with education debts & no future with good, secure, permanent employment. On an international scale, whole continents like Africa are still largely undeveloped & have bleak futures.
 
This hoarding of wealth by a small minority of the world also causing some worldwide problems, like water, food & energy. There is enough wealth in this world that if that wealth had been used appropriately, instead of being hoarded & hidden away in tax havens, our society would have found innovative solutions to water conservation, growing food for the growing population, & new & sustainable ways to power our homes & factories. But much more severe problems like pollution, food shortages, & water shortages will not only becomes much more severe in our future (they already are with whole continents like Australia & US state, California, suffering severe droughts) but much more violence & chaos is awaiting us when a huge majority will finally grows tired of their respective governments & take arms against rich themselves. It will be the French revolution on a worldwide scale.
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The wealth of the average American household declined between 1983 & 2013, according to a leading economist.
 
Writing in a paper entitled Household Wealth Trends in the US, 1962-2013: What Happened over the Great Recession?, Professor Wolff claimed that America's worth rose partly because technology has improved & productivity has increases.
 
This means that society as a whole has become better & generating wealth.
 
The issue, for many, is that this extra wealth has been funnelled into the top 20% of the population, with the top 1% finding themselves 82% better off. However, the bottom 60% has become poorer, Vox.com reported.
 
Wolff found that the median wealth figure for middle-income families - that means it's been adjusted for inflation - for 1983 was $78,000 & the median wealth figure for 2013 was $63,800.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2931509/Average-American-household-WORSE-1983-study-claims-bottom-60-population-suffering-super-rich-82-CENT-better-off.html