CAPITALIST SYSTEMIC POVERTY

JON HELLEVIG—With the stock market at all-time highs, virtually no unemployment (or so they say), and brisk GDP growth (supposedly) in the last decade, economic analysts would declare that the US economy is in excellent shape. But, it isn’t. The stock market is a central bank inflated asset bubble, and what GDP growth there has been, is an illusion brought about by the very same financial bubble and by pumping the economy up with record federal borrowings to finance the deficits that America cannot afford. Rigged statistics showing artificially low inflation serve to hold together the Trumped-up American economic narrative.

FRANK SCOTT—The year begins with an American terrorist attack killing a popular Iranian leader seen as heroic by many of his people, ever more feverish stories of an alleged Chinese capitalist menace to humanity worse than Mao’s communism, and Russian capitalist threats to the multi-billion dollar perverted circus that passes for democracy in America.

PATRICE GREANVILLE—Yes, this deeply intermingled and certifiably sociopathic crowd, this “fortress of cruelty, brutality and mendacity” which, as Wight puts it, has “the temerity to describe [itself[ as a civilised society”, is also quite convinced that nothing radical needs to be done about the cascade of awful things constantly emanating from every pore of its scandalously lopsided arrangements. 

ALASTAIR CROOKE—“In Chile, anger over a 3 percent raise in metro fares revealed a population not merely miffed by “pocketbook issues” – the fare hike pushed transit costs to 21 percent of the monthly salary of a worker earning the minimum wage—but so exhausted by austerity, so squeezed by low wages and long hours and debt, so fed up with the greed and blindness of the wealthy few who run the country that they were ready to burn almost everything down”, observes The Nation.

PHILIP A. FARRUGGIO—By the turn of the new decade, the Sicilian had spent three years doing odd jobs for lousy per diem pay. He had tried, unsuccessfully, to get on Home Relief (welfare) and the waiting list was very long. His wife and son were working full time to keep them in their apartment. He became more and more despondent each day.