The Retson Tedheke's Blog: November 2015

Predatory Capitalism and the System's Denial in the Face of Truth - C.J. Polychroniou

Contemporary capitalism is characterized by a political economy which revolves around finance capital, is based on a savage form of free market fundamentalism, and thrives on a wave of globalizing processes and global financial networks that have produced global economic oligarchies with the capacity to influence the shaping of policymaking across nations. As a result, contemporary advanced capitalist societies are plagued by dangerous levels of income and wealth inequality, mass unemployment, rising poverty rates, social polarization, and collapsing social provisions. Furthermore, democracy and the social contract are under constant attack by the current system and there is an ongoing pressure by the corporate and financial elite to convert all public goods and services into private goods and services.

The rising inequality in advanced capitalist countries is well documented. Most recently, Thomas Piketty’s publishing sensation Capital in the Twentieth-First Century, translated into English and published by Harvard University Press, provides massive data showing a widening gap between the rich and the poor, thus questioning not only the claim that the capitalist economy works for all but also underscoring the point of how dangerous the current system is to democracy itself. Indeed, a few years ago, Larry M. Bartels’s Unequal Democracy: The Political Economy of the New Gilded Age, published by Princeton University Press, pointed to the same gap between the rich and poor in the United States under Republican administrations. The way wealth has changed in the United States over the last few decades, with those in Generation X and Generation Y accumulating “less wealth than their parents did at the same age 25 years ago”, is also demonstrated in a study produced by Eugene Steuerle, et. al. on behalf of the Urban Institute in Washington DC. And in a recent Strategic Analysis released just this past spring by the Levy Economics Institute with the title “Is Rising Inequality a Hindrance to the US Economic Recovery?”, the authors, Dimitri B. Papadimitriou, et al., demonstrate through macro modeling simulations that the current processes of inequality in the United States are unsustainable and that, if they continue, will result in weak growth and increased unemployment.

As for the problem of mass unemployment, the facts speak for themselves. Five years after the alleged end of the global financial crisis, the official unemployment rate in the US remains as of May at 6.3% (it averaged 5.8% from 1948 until 2014) while in the eurozone the official unemployment rate as of May 2014 stood at 11.6%. In the periphery of the eurozone, which has been hard hit by austerity policies conceived in Brussels, Frankfurt and Washington as part of the international bail-out programs that went into effect when several eurozone periphery countries reached the brink of bankruptcy after the global financial crisis of 2008-09 reached Europe’s shores, the official unemployment rates has reached stratospheric levels: 27% for Greece; 25% for Spain; 15% for Portugal; and 12% for Ireland, the nation with the highest emigration rate in all of Europe and whose government was actually asking the unemployed as of recently to leave and take jobs in other European countries. In Greece, six years of an austerity-caused depression have shrunk the nation’s GDP by a quarter. Yet, both European Union (EU) officials and their lackeys in Athens have been trying hard to convince Greek citizens that a “success story” is under way because the enforcement of a draconian fiscal adjustment which dropped the standard of living back to 1960 levels produced a primary surplus. In the meantime, the debt-to-GDP ratio has reached an all-time high, rising from less than 139% in 2009 to nearly 180%.

Ireland’s public debt, which stood at 25% of GDP in 2008, grew to nearly 65% by 2010 and climbed to over 125% by the end of 2013. Yet German Chancellor Angela Merkel also hailed Ireland’s experience with austerity as a “tremendous success story”. Portugal’s public debt, which was slightly less than 70% in 2008, jumped to over 100% by 2011 and then to over 130% by 2013. That’s another “success story”. And Spain’s public debt has surged to nearly 95% of GDP, standing at close to 1 trillion euros – three times as much as it was at the start of the crisis in 2008 – and is projected to go over 100% by the end of 2014. In short, all the bailed-out eurozone countries are sinking under the weight of debt while unemployment spreads like the plague – the result of the “voodoo” economics that the witch doctors of the EU and the International Monetary Fund cooked up in order to formulate the so-called “rescue” plans. However, according to national government and EU propaganda, everything in the periphery is working in compliance with the strategic plan for helping those countries exit the crisis.

Denial of reality, deception and distortion are traditional tactics used by the powers-that-be and their elite intellectual acolytes. We also saw this in the reaction of major media outlets like The Financial Times, Bloomberg, and Forbes Magazine, to name but just a few, to the publication of Piketty’s book. The Frenchman either adopted aflawed methodology, or got his data wrong, or is simply engaging in anti-capitalist propaganda. Indeed, as yet another commentator of the Financial Times stressed, with the belief that he hit a gold vein, upon reviewing Capital in the Twentieth-FirstCentury, even if Mr. Piketty’s data about increasing inequality in capitalist societies are correct, he is not telling us why inequality is bad! In other words, Mr. Martin Wolf was essentially pondering about just what is so wrong with predatory capitalism making the rich richer and the poor poorer? As actually existing capitalism has given up any pretext of being a “socially responsible” socioeconomic system and caters almost solely to the needs and interests of the rich and powerful by enforcing policies that are detrimental to the rest of society, the defenders of the status quo will get even more dangerous by denying the ugly truth about predatory capitalism. They don’t want to hear that actually existing capitalism is a system that favors passionately and defends ruthlessly the interests of the 1% over those of the rest of society. Doing so might jeopardize the goal of the elite to roll back the course of history to the detriment of the working populations so they can further enrich themselves and act like the new rulers of the world.

C.J. Polychroniou is a political economist/political scientist who has taught and worked in universities and research centers in Europe and the United States. His main research interests are in European economic integration, globalization, the political economy of the United States and the deconstruction of neoliberalism's politico-economic project.

The original article can be found here

Nigeria: A Highly Religious Nation in Crisis of Moral Decadence - Sam Aweda

PROBABLE CAUSES (LAMENTATION: PART I)

Nigerians generally are naturally enthusiastic religious people. The minarets blast five times a day simultaneously across the length and breadth of the country, calling the people of the Islamic faith to prayers. Wherever your location is, you cannot claim not to hear it except those living in any of the Government Reservation areas (GRA). A Muslim does not believe he has completed his personal house until a mosque is erected in the compound. Many in the Islamic faith endeavour to perform Umra in far away Mecca as many times as possible to make special prayers. Every street and corner of all our big cities, villages and hamlets, are full of Churches. The Sunday services are filled to full capacity, some running three or more sessions. In spite of all these, corruption, dishonesty, moral decadence, decay, injustice, cheating, bribery, extortion, stealing and looting of government treasuries are on the increase. Could it be people other than these faithful worshippers that are perpetrating these evils? But I once met a policeman who wore a tag on his uniform, with an inscription "Touch not my anointed-----"yet he was harassing and extorting motorists on the high way. I had thought that the religious houses are there to mould the characters of the worshippers in order to have a peaceful and habitable society, where all and sundry will live in brotherly love without being difficult to one another but instead be helpful to one another. Is it that these preaching are no longer emphasized on the pulpit or is it the worshippers that rub them off their ears the moment the services are ended and return to their different businesses as usual?

Nigeria’s wealthiest pastor, Bishop David Oyedepo is always in the news – He was in the news in the United Kingdom. Sadly for him, Britain is not Nigeria, where the corrupt courts absolved him of all wrong doings, his abuses and violence against a young worshipper of his church at Winner Chapel – aka “Cananland” It was the video of his satanic slap of a young girl, probably an uneducated parishioner, who didn't know how best to express her love and witness for Jesus, that exposed the abuse and muddled message that is being promulgated by the bishop to his gullible and biblical ignorant followers. Since then, I have penned a couple of articles calling on the federal government intervention to enact laws and policies to checkmate abuses - physical, sexual, emotional, mental, and moral abuses in places of worship in the nation in order to protect the vulnerable. I'm not too concerned about the learned and intelligent parishioners that sit under such blasphemous teachings every week. Hosea 4:6 says, “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge.” To earn a PhD or have a lucrative job or business does not make one knowledgeable. However, it still baffles me how an educated and intelligent person could sit under such teachers and listen to the junks that some of them teach from their pulpit every week. So, it behoves the government to protect the weak and vulnerable especially from physical and sexual abuses in the name of God.

"The home of freedom has been assaulted by terrorists determined to attack and suppress freedom." - Malcolm Turnbull on the Paris attacks.

France should not be synonymous with the word "freedom". As with all colonial empires, its history is soaked with the blood of oppressed peoples across the globe. And its record of perpetrating violence continues. The size of the territory claimed by the French empire in the 19th and 20th centuries was second only to Britain. From North Africa to South-East Asia, the Middle East to the South Pacific, millions were subjugated, repressed and murdered as French rulers scrambled to secure resources and markets for manufactured goods and profitable investments. It was only in the face of heroic mass struggles by the colonised determined to win their independence that France was eventually forced to cede control in the 1950s and '60s. From the outset of French colonialism in Vietnam, any form of political dissent was met with repression. Books and newspapers deemed subversive were confiscated. Anti-colonial political activists were sentenced to death or imprisoned on island fortresses. The grotesque violence would only escalate. After the defeat of the Japanese in the Pacific War, the French ruling class was determined to re-establish its control over Vietnam. In 1946, the prime minister ordered the shelling of Haiphong, killing 6,000 Vietnamese. It wasn't until the 1954 battle of Dien Bien Phu that the national liberation forces drove the French out of the country.

Violence was part of the fabric of French rule. The best farmland was concentrated in the hands of the colonialists and their collaborators, leaving the majority of peasants vulnerable to famine. Some 2 million Vietnamese died during the Second World War; there was a famine despite the granaries being full with rice. Conditions on the rubber plantations and in the mines were described as like slavery. Attempts at escape were met with hunger and torture. At one Michelin plantation, 12,000 workers died between 1917 and 1944. Vietnamese workers were paid on average 48 piastres a year for their hard labour. This was a pittance, as Vietnamese historian Ngo Vinh Long noted: "Even a dog belonging to a colonial household cost an average of 150 piastres a year to feed". The French claimed a "civilising" mission as false as Britain's white man's burden. Take literacy. Pre-conquest, 80 percent of the population were considered functionally literate. By 1939, the figures had reversed, with 80 percent now illiterate.

The story was the same in Algeria. Before the French invasion in 1830, there was a high rate of literacy. By the time of independence, it had been reduced to a mere 10 percent. The virulently racist French settlers, numbering 1 million by the 1950s, lived a luxury lifestyle. But for the 6 million Arabs and Berbers, French colonialism was a disaster that they resisted by any means necessary. Violence wasn't the terrain chosen by the independence movement. It was given. The crushing of a rising in Setif in eastern Algeria in 1945 paints a picture of a "pitiless war". At least 15,000 were killed by French troops and settler death squads. The National Liberation Front (FLN) was formed in 1954, and quickly became the dominant nationalist organisation. It was committed to military confrontation with the French, including bombings on French soil. But as philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre wrote, "It is not their violence, but ours, turned back". By the end of 1956, 450,000 French troops were on Algerian soil. This build-up was directed by the Socialist Party prime minister, Guy Mollet, the same party as François Hollande's. In 1957, an eight-day general strike was broken by repression. It took another round of mass protests, riots and strikes in 1962 for the Algerian revolution to triumph.

The violence of the French state was not confined to Algerian soil. In October 1961, Paris police massacred up to 300 Algerian immigrants. They were part of a peaceful unarmed protest of some 30,000 called out by the FLN to break an imposed curfew. Confident that they could act with impunity, the police herded panicked protesters onto bridges across the city, where they clubbed and then tossed them unconscious into the River Seine. For weeks, bodies, mutilated by truncheons and rifle butts, washed up on the river's banks. Thousands more were arrested and taken to makeshift detention camps where they were tortured. This dark episode was the worst violence in Paris since the Second World War. The colonial legacy lives on. The children of North African immigrants continue to live on the periphery of the "city of lights". Their shantytowns of the 1960s have been replaced by impoverished ghettoised housing estates. Here, curfews and armoured vehicles are not a historic relic.

The 70 percent of the French prison population that is estimated to be Muslim is testament to the enduring reality of state violence and racism. The policing of oppressed identities is codified into law by various bans on the Muslim veil. Nor is French imperialism a thing of the past. From the Ivory Coast to Mali, the Central African Republic, Libya and Syria, French foreign policy has been increasingly muscular, particularly in its old colonial stomping ground. Today as French fighter jets scream over Raqqa and lifeless bloodied bodies of children are pulled from the rubble of bombed apartment blocks, we would do well to remember the millions who have suffered a similar fate in the name of French "civilisation".

Liz Walsh is a member of Socialist Alternative and has been active in revolutionary politics since the early 2000s. She has played a leading role in social justice campaigns from refugee rights to the struggle against women's oppression.

The original article can be found here

African Arise? Economic Growth Rates Across The Region

Trends in Poverty in Africa: Decade after decade, politicians and international organizations have failed to reduce poverty. Nor have they been able to help Africa generate growth or build basic infrastructure. Worse, between 1975 and 2000 it was the only place on earth where poverty has intensified. It's only recently that the situation started to slowly improve.

Excluding the African continent from the World: In fact, there has been some growth since 1995 but it's been mostly in the very new services sector so it created only a few jobs whereas manufacturing and agriculture could have done much better. As the British prime minister declared in 2001 African poverty is "a scar on the conscience of the world". In recent years, globalization and technological inflation have made it only worse. It only helped further excluding the continent and widening the gaps with the rest of the world. However development economists and experts from all boards are now approaching the problem from new angles to provide innovative ways to fight African poverty. Better yet, some African countries are now emerging as real economic powers thanks to better leadership and deals with foreign investors to build infrastructure. Let's see how all that improves our understanding of poverty in Africa, the plague of a continent.

GLOBALIZATION AND CAUSES OF POVERTY IN AFRICA

Poverty in Africa:
Map of the Places Connected to Electricity Network

Better off rich or poor?: Aside from political and social reasons (e.g. corruption, ethnic violence), many economists argue that the absence of economic growth is in part due to a detrimental geography that impacts on the economy. But in many cases, oil-rich African countries are also more likely to be exploited by other countries or powerful corporations who always find a way to not pay much-needed taxes (billions and billions of dollars). In most developing countries, disparities pose the problem of redistribution of wealth, but many African countries are simply too poor to redistribute anything. The average income level is sometimes so low that even working people live under poverty. So, how do you fix that?

Free Trade Agreements Against The African Continent: International trade policies, for example, are incomparably more important than international aid to end African poverty and help its countries to integrate the global market. Surprising ? Not that much considering the global competition that the continent has to face: not only are the US, the European Union protecting their key industries (especially those that Africa could compete with, like agriculture), but now Asian countries also got in the game, spearheaded by India and China. With each of them seeking to protect their benefits, the international community should rather give preferential market conditions to poor countries (e.g. for export or agricultural development). This would provide them a path to fast development, and hopefully diffuse the benefits to inner regions. In that way the internal market could also thrive and help alleviate poverty in African countries that are landlocked. Read here how African farmers have finally won their case at the World Trade Organization (WTO).

INTERNATIONAL AIDS IN AFRICA

Delivery of Humanitarian Aid in Africa

Corruption and Poverty Reduction: So far local governments, international aid and market reforms had only a minimal effect on the population. Consequence: folks have had to solve their problems on their own, outside the system. It is only recently that new international policies, such as the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goal (MDG) in Africa, have stopped overlooking the effect of politics on local economies: transparent and accountable government, rule of law, public resources management, free and fair election combined with an active civil society are now recognized as a vital factor of poverty alleviation. This whole forms what specialists now call “good governance”. Considering the extent of corruption and violence of local councils and governments, it’s not surprising that a huge part of the African population can only fend for itself most of the time, relying on a makeshift economy. This makes them hard to reach by international aid but at least they have an alternative system to fall back upon: coping through sharing. Not only farmers in rural areas but African urbanites as well manage to avoid the claws of the law. This makes many development policies totally ineffective.

International Aid - More Transparent, Less Corrupt: Another issue is that of international aid. Aid donors obviously want to make sure that their money is put to the right use, rather than to building palaces for individual use. Now how things have changed is that foreign aid has become demand-driven with local communities, governments and NGOs competing to receive the funds. This should help foster competitiveness and efficiency of development projects as well as transparency. In other words it should radically reduce corruption and embezzlement. This model was field tested and can help avoid the case of the African Millennium Villages, blindly “shooting” money in every direction in a local community, like a crazy action hero who doesn't believe in nuances and complexities of real life. What is needed is targeted funding that provides new opportunities and incentives for people to participate in the development of their country. Humanitarian aid remains way too opaque, only the most concrete and effective programs should remain. In particular those that help local entrepreneurs, not multinationals.

GEOGRAPHY AND REGIONAL AFRICAN POVERTY

Geography and Regional Poverty in Africa

Too Poor to Redistribute Anything?: Recently specialists have increasingly taken into account the role of geography to explain the absence of economic growth and the aggravation of poverty in Africa. Whereas in many developing countries there are disparities that pose the problem of redistribution of wealth, Africa is simply too poor to redistribute anything. Well that's not totally true. Africa is full of natural resources, but to give just one example many multinational companies that extract these resources don't even pay any taxes to the country where they operate. In other cases, it's simply that the local aristocracy keeps all the revenues to itself.

The African Paradox: It's Both Rich and Poor: So poverty in Africa is paradoxical: the continent is made of 54 countries of low population density and rich in natural resources. Of course, as usual the resources are not evenly distributed between regions, countries and within local populations. The countries are separated into resource-rich and -poor and into coastal and landlocked ones. Across all categories, most countries have remained stuck with a GDP per capita below $2000 for the past six decades.

The Need for Tailored Development: Unlike other continents, a great share of the population in Africa lives in landlocked, resource-scarce countries which accounts for 1% of its overall growth rate. Another consequence of this is that policymakers need to start thinking in terms of context-based development strategies rather than continent-based ones. In particular concerning the resource-poor landlocked regions which will remain the very core of the African poverty puzzle. A puzzle that year after year became obviously unsolvable in a day. These very countries are the ones that would need a sort of targeted, continuous aid flow in order to steadily raise consumption levels, therefore consistently reducing poorness in Africa. Nevertheless, today's aid flows only focus on short-term emergencies. Read here about the influence of oil on poverty in Sudan and Darfur

HEALTH AND POVERTY IN AFRICA

Almost half of the population in Africa suffers from water-related diseases. On top of insufficient hygiene education, the frequent inundations (and lack of risk prevention) play an important role: in Mozambique over 1 million people were displaced by the floods of 1999/2000 and an unknown number killed.

Diseases - Threat to Development: Diseases in Africa – and in particular HIV-AIDS – are another major threat to economic development. As an academic (Whiteside 2002) puts it: “one of the main consequences of the disease is that it impoverishes individuals, households and communities”, thus further entrenching the roots of poverty in Africa. This is a vicious cycle by which poverty boosts the spread of HIV which in turn increases poverty. The case of the poor in South Africa shows that despite the country's substantial growth, that wealth is still too concentrated in the hands of an "uninfected" minority. That way the gap between the rich and the poor only gets bigger and bigger, making it harder for impoverished populations to catch up with the well-off.

Hygiene and Sanitation First: As for basic sanitation and hygiene, it is first and foremost an educational issue. Hygienic habits have consistently prevented millions of deaths across the world in the past decades. And just like in all the countries where it happened, massive full-scale educational campaigns are needed to significantly alleviate poverty in Africa. Read about the role of HIV/AIDS in worsening poverty in South Africa here.

EDUCATION AND POVERTY IN AFRICA

Education and Schools in Africa

Education - A Neglected Cause of Poverty: Starting to feel slightly overwhelmed? We're just talking about everyday life poverty here! ... So, not only does proper education help eradicate a great deal of diseases (STIs, sanitation, etc), but there is also a direct link between levels of education and poverty. Authoritarian rule in most countries has only made the situation worse, deepening both levels of education and poverty in Africa. For that reason, although some argue that authoritarian regimes can better spur development in some cases (China, Singapore,…), but in this case democracy seems more appropriate for the case of Africa.

Is Democracy Better Suited to Africa?: Experts who hold this argument ground it on several factors including: the multi-ethnics nature of most countries (better representation of everyone’s interests), the need for better governance and redistribution of the riches in absence of strong political will, and pervasiveness of corruption that drives people away from the legal and institutional life. But the experience of democracy in the West has also resulted as we've seen with the protests in 2011 that most of rich countries' wealth eventually ended up in the hands of a very small elite.

Education to gain skills first and foremost: Even though many fancy universities tend to forget it, education is in general about teaching people skills (duh), thereby enhancing productivity, creativity, and exchanges. Higher education is crucial to bring Africa back into the world system (yes it’s been kind of left aside) and bridge the digital gap with other continents. What we need is then consistent education in ICTs on top of developing the infrastructure (optic fiber, antennas, electricity grids,...) so that people can benefit from an advanced use of ICTs and harness their economic potential.

Fighting on all fronts: Obviously on a priority list of fighting poverty in Africa, this comes after meeting the most basic needs such as food, water, health, energy,... How could you possibly charge a computer's battery without electricity in your town? Yet they did that mistake a few years ago and sent thousands of laptops. Read here about education and fighting poverty in Kenya.

HUNGER AND WATER

Hunger and Under-Nourished Population in Africa

Hunger, a typical feature of African poverty?: In the past 30 years only sub-Saharan Africa saw no improvement in fight against malnutrition and hunger in Africa (or several types of malnutrition). Currently there are an estimated 80% of Africans who suffer from hunger, and 30% of whom are children. Despite poverty in Nigeria and in Zimbabwe, these countries were part of the group that manage to reduce its underweight population between 1976 and 1995. On the other hand just as many countries - a dozen - were suffering from sharp rises in under-nutrition. The worst case is that of poverty in Ethiopia which left over a million people underfed. The plight of hunger is undoubtedly one of the most severe effects of poverty in Africa, where it is incomparably harsher than in most other places.

Water, diseases & geography: "All peoples, whatever their stage of development and their social and economic conditions, have the right to have access to drinking water in quantities and of a quality equal to their basic needs". (Action Plan, United Nations Water Conference, Mar del Plata, 1977) More than 30 years after this statement, more than 50% of Africans still suffer from water-related diseases (cholera, diarrhea). Although the continent is blessed with large rivers such as the Congo, the Nile, the Zambezi and the Niger, uneven geographical distribution causes sharp shortages of water in Africa. History has shown that despite technical, financial, economic and institutional support in water-related projects, poor governance has been a major factor in ruining those efforts and resources.

THE END OF THE TUNNEL...?

The causes and effects of poverty in Africa are fueling a seriously vicious cycle that stops Africans from getting the most basic services. It affects simple water supply, sanitation, health care and education in incredibly diverse ways. Ultimately it becomes so all-pervasive that it overwhelms the application of the very best practices drawn from past lessons. The way out of poverty in Africa is therefore hardly imaginable without the constructive and appropriate help and cooperation of the international community, along with (increasingly) that of private businesses from other countries.

The original article can be found here

"Americans need to realize that our economy has thrived not in spite of government, but in many ways because of government. Without a whole host of government rules, capitalism could not exist. Even regulations and social programs help sustain a market economy by fixing many of its serious social and economic problems.”

One of the most common and misleading economic myths in the United States is the idea that the free market is “natural” – that it exists in some natural world, separate from government. In this view, government rules and regulations only “interfere” with the natural beneficial workings of the market. Even the term “free market” implies that it can exist free from government and that it prospers best when government leaves it alone. Nothing could be further from the truth. In reality, a market economy does not exist separate from government – it is very much a product of government rules and regulations. The dirty little secret of our “free” market system is that it would simply not exist as we know it without the presence of an active government that creates and maintains the rules and conditions that allow it to operate efficiently.

With workers around the world burdened by joblessness and stagnant incomes, Marx’s critique that capitalism is inherently unjust and self-destructive cannot be so easily dismissed

Karl Marx was supposed to be dead and buried. With the collapse of the Soviet Union and China’s Great Leap Forward into capitalism, communism faded into the quaint backdrop of James Bond movies or the deviant mantra of Kim Jong Un. The class conflict that Marx believed determined the course of history seemed to melt away in a prosperous era of free trade and free enterprise. The far-reaching power of globalization, linking the most remote corners of the planet in lucrative bonds of finance, outsourcing and “borderless” manufacturing, offered everybody from Silicon Valley tech gurus to Chinese farm girls ample opportunities to get rich. Asia in the latter decades of the 20th century witnessed perhaps the most remarkable record of poverty alleviation in human history — all thanks to the very capitalist tools of trade, entrepreneurship and foreign investment.

Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell –-Edward Abbey

A collection of paper money and coinage from around the world mixed together. Money, and more specifically, the profit motive, have put human life dangerously out of balance, with rampant inequality and poverty. (Flickr / epsos.de)

Capitalism can be defined as a system under which industries, trade and the means of production are largely or wholly privately owned and operated for profit. Following the end of feudalism, it dominated the Western world, and thanks to imperialism this domination extended to the global economic system by the end of the 19th century. Entering the 21st century, it continues to reign unchallenged as the world’s pre-eminent economic doctrine. The world’s richest person (Bill Gates) has a personal wealth of $78.7 billion. This is higher than the(nominal) GDP of 130 countries, including Uruguay (population 3.4m), Ecuador (population 15.9m), Bulgaria (population 7.2m) and Croatia (population 4.3m). The wealth of the top ten richest people combined is $544 billion — higher than the GDP of 172 of the 194 nations for which UN data is available, including Thailand (population 65m), South Africa (population 54m), Egypt (population 88m), Portugal (population 10.4m) and Czech Republic (population 10.5m). Almost half the world’s population, over 3 billion people, live on less than $2.50 a day. According to UNICEF, 22,000 children die EACH DAY due to poverty. They “die quietly in some of the poorest villages on earth, far removed from the scrutiny and the conscience of the world. Being meek and weak in life makes these dying multitudes even more invisible in death.” Nearly a billion people entered the 21st century unable to read a book or sign their names. For every $1 in aid a developing country receives, over $25 is spent on debt repayment. Less than one per cent of what the world spent every year on weapons was needed to put every child into school by the year 2000. [Sources. (Note: site last updated in January 2013. Some data is a few years out of date, meaning it is likely to be worse now as global inequality has widened.)

You’d think with all the “stimulus” from Washington over the fifteen years since the dotcome bust, American capitalism would be booming. It’s not. On the measures which count when it comes to sustainable growth and real wealth creation, the trends are slipping backwards — not leaping higher. After a look at new jobs data in April, we find the number of breadwinner jobs in the US economy is still two million below where it was when Bill Clinton still had his hands on matters in the Oval Office. Since then we have had two presidents boasting about how many millions of jobs they have created and three Fed chairmen taking bows for deftly guiding the US economy toward the nirvana of “full employment.” When you look under the hood, it’s actually worse. These “breadwinner jobs” are important because they’re the only sector of the payroll employment report where jobs generate enough annual wage income — about $50k — to actually support a family without public assistance. Moreover, within the 70 million breadwinner jobs category, the highest paying jobs which add the most to national productivity and growth — goods production — have slipped backward even more dramatically. There were actually 21 percent fewer payroll jobs in manufacturing, construction and mining/energy production reported in April than existed in early 2000.

While identifying the data indicating income inequality, economists have little to say so far as to its fundamental causes—and even less to say about the jobs crisis.

Three global capitalist research institutes recently released reports documenting a growing ‘global jobs crisis’. The World Bank, the OECD, and the International Labor Organization (ILO) all came to the same conclusion. The Group of 20 nations’ employment ministers thereafter meeting in Australia issued a joint statement on the three institutes’ conclusion that “the world’s largest economies are failing to create enough jobs and too many of those that are being produced are of a low quality to generate a meaningful boost to global growth” (The Financial Times, September 10, 2014). As the World Bank’s senior director for jobs put it, “there is little doubt there is a global jobs crisis”. All three reports identify converging trends across all the advanced economies (AEs) of Europe, North America, and Japan. Not only is total unemployment rising long term, but the percentage of youth employment and the chronically long-term jobless are also growing. So too are part time and temp jobs rising sharply as a percent of the labor force in the AEs.

Like an old machine emitting a new and troubling sound that even the best mechanics can’t diagnose, the world economy continues its halting recovery from the 2008 recession. Look at what’s happening in the United States: Even today, 60 months after the scorekeepers declared the recession to be over, its economy is still grinding along, producing low growth and disappointing job numbers. One phenomenon we’ve observed is that, despite historically low interest rates, corporations are sitting on massive amounts of cash and failing to invest in innovations that might foster growth. That got us thinking: What is causing that behavior? Are great opportunities in short supply, or are executives failing to recognize them? And how is this behavior pattern linked to overall economic sluggishness? What is holding growth back? Most theories of growth are developed at the macroeconomic level—at 30,000 feet. That perspective is good for spotting correlations between innovation and growth.

America's Military Empire of African Bases: With AFRICOM, Africans Must Be Afraid - Nick Turse

"AFRICOM’s New Math, the U.S. Military Base Bonanza, and "Scarier" Times ahead in Africa with Destructive US Military, Conflict & War Agenda"

The U.S. Military’s Pivot to Africa, 2012-2013. (Image: TomDispatch/Google)

In the shadows of what was once called the “dark continent," a scramble has come and gone. If you heard nothing about it, that was by design. But look hard enough and -- north to south, east to west -- you’ll find the fruits of that effort: a network of bases, compounds, and other sites whose sum total exceeds the number of nations on the continent. For a military that has stumbled from Iraq to Afghanistan and suffered setbacks from Libya to Syria, it’s a rare can-do triumph. In remote locales, behind fences and beyond the gaze of prying eyes, the U.S. military has built an extensive archipelago of African outposts, transforming the continent, experts say, into a laboratory for a new kind of war. So how many U.S. military bases are there in Africa? It’s a simple question with a simple answer. For years, U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) gave a stock response: one. Camp Lemonnier in the tiny, sun-bleached nation of Djibouti was America’s only acknowledged “base” on the continent. It wasn’t true, of course, because there were camps, compounds, installations, and facilities elsewhere, but the military leaned hard on semantics.

In the wake of last month’s provocative intrusion by the destroyer, the USS Lassen, into Chinese-claimed territory in the South China Sea, US Defence Secretary Ashton Carter toured Asia last week seeking to further consolidate Washington’s military alliances and strategic partnerships against China. As he deliberately stoked up tensions with China, Carter’s constant refrain was that the United States remained a force for peace and stability. Standing on the deck of the USS Theodore Roosevelt in the South China Sea, he declared the aircraft carrier was a symbol of the “stabilising influence that the United States has had in this region of the world for decades.” The US military build-up in Asia, or “rebalance,” was “intended to keep it going,” he insisted. No one should be taken in by this big lie. “Stability,” in Washington’s lexicon, is synonymous with American dominance, which it has always pursued in Asia and the world through ruthless and violent means.

Only one quarter of the world’s working population holds a permanent and stable job, Even as the number of unemployed people worldwide remains significantly higher than before the 2008 crisis, the few jobs that have been created in recent years have been disproportionately part-time, contingent and low-wage. The ILO’s World Employment and Social Outlook—Trends 2015 report found that three-quarters of workers are “employed on temporary or short-term contracts, in informal jobs often without any contract, under own-account arrangements or in unpaid family jobs.” The report notes that worldwide more than 60 percent of workers do not have any sort of employment contract, with most of them working on family farms and businesses in developing countries. But even among those who earn wages or salaries, less than half—only 42 percent—are employed on a permanent basis. In what are categorized as high-income countries, the share of workers employed on a permanent basis has declined in recent years, from 74 percent in 2004 to 73.2 percent in 2012. For males this decline has been even sharper, with the share working on permanent contracts falling from 73.1 percent to 71.2 percent during the same time.

according to a new report published by the International Labor Organization (ILO) Tuesday.

The report likewise found a global rise in part-time employment. “In the vast majority of countries with available information, the rise in the number of part-time jobs outpaced gains in full-time jobs between 2009 and 2013.” The ILO notes, “In France, Italy, Japan, Spain and the [European Union] more broadly, increases in part-time employment occurred alongside losses in full-time jobs—leading in some instances to overall job losses during this period.” Since 2009, the number of full-time jobs in the European Union fell by nearly 3.3 million, while part-time employment increased by 2.1 million. Meanwhile, legal protections assuring workers a stable employment schedule have been slashed, with the ILO noting that, “labour protection has generally decreased since 2008.” “The shift we’re seeing from the traditional employment relationship to more non-standard forms of employment is in many cases associated with the rise in inequality and poverty rates in many countries,” said Guy Ryder, Director-General of the ILO. The report found “a shift away from the standard employment model, in which workers… have stable jobs and work full time. In advanced economies, the standard employment model is less and less dominant.”

This phenomenon was mirrored in developing countries where, “at the bottom of global supply chains, very short-term contracts and irregular hours are becoming more widespread.” As a result, “in emerging and developing economies, the historical trend toward more wage and salaried employment is slowing down.” The report notes that “nearly eight years have passed since the first signs of crisis emerged in the global economy,” yet “the more recent period has seen global unemployment march higher” and has been “characterized by an uneven and fragile job recovery.” The ILO estimates that the number of people unemployed worldwide hit 201 million last year, up by 30 million since the eruption of the global financial crisis in 2008. The report notes that, far from making any significant dent in the number of people unemployed worldwide, “providing jobs to more than 40 million additional people who enter the global labour market every year is proving to be a daunting challenge.” The ILO notes that employment growth has largely stalled worldwide, with the number of jobs available growing by only 0.1 percent each year in developed countries since 2008, compared to a rate of 0.9 percent between 2000 and 2007. This has corresponded with an overall slump in economic growth. For the “advanced economies” as a whole, growth in the period between 2007 and 2014 averaged about 0.7 percent per year, compared with an annual growth rate of two percent in the period before the crisis.

The report warned that falling wages and continued mass unemployment have contributed to a structural weakness in global demand, resulting in a further slump in the labor market. Director-General Ryder added, “These trends risk perpetuating the vicious circle of weak global demand and slow job creation that has characterized the global economy and many labour markets throughout the post-crisis period.” The increasing prevalence of low-wage, part-time and contingent work has coincided with a massive enrichment of the financial elite. Since 2009, the wealth of the world’s richest 400 individuals has nearly tripled, from $2.4 trillion to $7.05 trillion in 2015, according to Forbes magazine. This massive growth of inequality has been the direct outcome of policies carried out by governments throughout the world, which responded to the 2008 crash by pumping trillions of dollars into the financial system while slashing social services and promoting poverty-wage employment. The findings of the report constitute a scathing indictment of the capitalist system, which is incapable of addressing mass unemployment, poverty or any other social problem. Developing countries, robbed and exploited by imperialism, remain backward and impoverished, while in the “advanced” economies the ruling classes have carried out a relentless assault on jobs, wages and living conditions for the great majority of the population. There is nothing in the 155-page report to indicate any prospect for improvement in the near future. This fact constitutes an implicit admission that soaring inequality, falling wages, mass unemployment and increasingly contingent employment constitute essential features of the present social order.

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Corruption, one of the primary impediments to economic growth, yet among the least systematically tackled, undermines the fragile political and economic progress being made by emerging democracies, including Mexico, Indonesia, and Nigeria. Recent impressive growth notwithstanding, corruption also threatens to hold back India’s and Brazil’s drive to join the ranks of the world’s developed countries, and has brought Venezuela and Ukraine to the brink of political collapse. Even China, this century’s economic star, is being handicapped in its long-term quest to overtake the U.S. economically by corruption, so much so that China’s new supreme leader, President Xi Jinpang, has made stamping it out one of the main priorities of his time in office. According to Transparency International’s 2013 Corruption Perceptions Index, nearly two-thirds of the countries surveyed (including all of the aforementioned), were categorized as more corrupt than not. The index scores countries from 0 (highly corrupt) to 100 (very clean). Over half of the survey’s respondents, 55 percent, said that corruption has worsened over the past year. Nearly all of the survey’s most corrupt countries ranked among the world’s poorest. Bribes and backroom deals, the most common forms of corruption, undermine economic development and destroy trust in a country’s political, judicial, security, and business leaders, the report concludes.

CORRUPTION TRIGGERS UNREST: Recent widespread protests in Ukraine and Venezuela have been largely sparked by widespread corruption. Venezuela ranks as the world’s 9th most corrupt country (20) and Ukraine is the 14th most corrupt (25). Corrupt policemen and government officials in Venezuela regularly abuse their power to enrich themselves through bribery and extortion. Ukraine’s economy has stagnated since it broke free from the Soviet Union in the early 1990s. The country’s per capita output, which was roughly equal to Poland’s two decades ago, is now one-third as large. Ukraine’s recently deposed president, Victor Yanukovich, and his predecessor, Yulia Tymoshenko, both closely tied to the country’s billionaire oligarchs, enriched themselves while in office to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars.

GREATER ECONOMIC FREEDOM IN ASIA FAILS TO STEM CORRUPTION: Despite robust economic growth over the past decade, many countries in Asia still rank poorly on international corruption indexes. Between 2001-2010, $2.74 trillion in illegal funds left China (20) through criminal financial schemes, corruption, tax invasion, or other illegal activities, according to a study by the U.S-based Center for International Policy. India (36) and Thailand (35) had nearly $123 billion and $64 billion spirited away, respectively. In China, bribery, uncompensated taking of private property by unscrupulous local Communist Party officials looking to cash in on the country’s real estate boom, poor construction and shoddy goods are the main sources of widespread public discontent. India has not nearly met its full economic potential in large part to widespread corruption permeating every level of government from the national parliament to local police forces. The ruling Congress Party (projected to lose in upcoming parliamentary elections in part because of corruption) regularly demands massive kickbacks from businesses for defense and infrastructure projects. According to the country’s leading business publication, Business Weekly, public corruption cost the Indian economy at least $50 billion annually.

MIDDLE EAST AND AFRICA SWIMMING IN CORRUPTION: The regions most lagging in economic development, the Middle East, Africa and Latin America, contain nearly all of the world’s most corrupt countries. Transparency International’s findings indicate that the Arab Spring uprisings, which were largely caused by anger with unethical government officials, have not brought about a decline in corruption in Egypt (32), Libya (15), Tunisia (41) or Yemen (18). Sub-Saharan African is the region most affected by corruption. All of the region’s countries rank among the world’s most corrupt and nearly three-quarters of the region’s people say they paid a bribe to a public body in the last year, according to Transparency International. In addition, very few expressed confidence that the police, judiciary, or politicians look out after the general population’s interest rather than their own. How bad is it in Sub-Saharan Africa? The world’s most corrupt country, Somalia (8), has a barely functioning government, while the second most, Sudan (11), is fomenting a civil war in the third most, South Sudan (14).

Latin America makes economic progress but fails to stem the tide of corruption: In the Americas, Brazil’s star turn on the global stage – it will be hosting the World Cup this summer and the Olympics in 2016—is being overshadowed in part by corruption scandals involving officials overseeing tens of billions of dollars in infrastructure and stadium construction. Last year’s large-scale protests (which continue albeit less widespread) across Brazil were sparked by the public’s disgust at politicians and businessman lining their pockets at the expense of the country’s middle class and poor. Drug cartel-centered corruption has migrated north from Colombia and south from Mexico to Guatemala (29), El Salvador (38), and Honduras (26), fueling political instability and widespread violence. Numerous politicians and law enforcement officials have been accused of protecting drug cartels, bribery, and money laundering, and more than 100,000 people, including 66,000 in Mexico, have died the last six years in drug-related violence, according to the Los Angeles Times. Drug-trafficking and gang violence have shaved at least 2 percent economic growth in all five countries with Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador particularly hard hit given their relatively low per capita incomes, according the Organization of American States. Latin America’s largest economies Brazil (42) and Mexico (34) ranked in the middle of Transparency International’s 2013 index, yet both were judged as being more corrupt than not. Despite some progress and willingness to reform (the Mexican government recently announced a plan to partially privatize the national oil company, Pemex, for example) both economies are still largely based on cronyism and patronage preventing them from reaching their full potential given their natural resources.

PEOPLE FED UP WITH CORRUPTION TAKES TO THE STREET: Protests around the world (including the Arab Spring and Occupy Wall Street) fueled by corruption and economic instability, demonstrate that citizens, whether they are from relatively rich countries like the U.S. or poor like Egypt and Ukraine, are no longer willing to stand by as political and economic decisions are unduly influenced by special interests, valuable resources are exploited by politically connected individuals for personal gain, and public services are weakened because funds intended for them are stolen. Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty by economists Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson, contends that the wealth of a country is most closely correlated with the degree the average person shares in overall growth of its economy. According to the book’s thesis, when a nation’s institutions, public officials, and business leaders through corruption prevent individuals from benefiting from their own work, no amount of foreign aid, disease eradication or infrastructure development can compensate. Put another way, corruption, abuse of public resources, bribery, and cronyism prevent countries and their people from reaching their full economic potential.

Mark Goebel is a contributing writer at Highbrow Magazine.

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