Tag: 99%

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- Governance - Oppression Development Discourse Justice Oneness

Globalization: Good or Bad?

Friends, listen up. The end of the 20th century discloses to the eyes of humanity a vista of stupendous opportunities and grave perils. Allow me to explain. Some of the more striking phenomena are those associated with globalization, a designation that arouses strong emotions and lends itself to a variety of interpretations. But here is the truth. There is no doubt — and this is true irrespective of one’s views on the subject — that the forces of globalization have set the nations of the world on a new and irreversible course. There is no going back. We’ve passed the point of no return. Economic activity, political structures, and culture are all undergoing profound change. This is not our parent’s world any longer. A global society is being born as barriers that have kept peoples apart crumble and are swept away. Planetary civilization beckons. The transformation is made possible by accelerated technological advance, an early fruit of which is a mode of communication transcending national boundaries and operating at staggering speed. For example, the internet. However thrilling future prospects may be, present patterns of behavior do not inspire confidence in the process. People are critical about the role western governments and corporations have played on the global stage. It is only natural to wonder whether globalization will, in fact, unify the human race without imposing uniformity or simply propel the universalization of the culture of consumerism. Skeptics say globalization involves exporting materialistic values, consumer propaganda, and economic hegemony from the west. Can globalization really be the bearer of prosperity for the masses or the mere expression of the economic interests of a privileged few? Will it lead to the establishment of a just order or the consolidation of existing structures of power? Share your opinions below!

Globalization

 

Categories
- Governance - Oppression Justice

Tax Code 101

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The top 10 US tax deductions, credits and exclusions ensure that over $12 trillion in tax revenues will be granted to multinational corporations over the next decade. The tax loopholes have been written into the tax code by a bought-and-paid-for Congress that receives its marching orders from the multinational corporations that dominate campaign-finance. The study below shows that the top 20% of American income earners will receive more than half of the $900 billion in benefits from these tax breaks in 2013 alone. Exactly 70% of the total benefits will  go to the top 1% of income earners – families that earn a combined $450,000 or more.

US fiscal policy could achieve a significant amount of deficit reduction by limiting tax loop-holes to the highest income earners.

Three of the top five biggest tax breaks, a $2 trillion dollar exclusion of net pension contributions and earnings over 10 years, the $1 trillion deduction for mortgage interest, and the $1.1 trillion deduction for state and local taxes also disproportionately benefit the top 20% of income earners.

These tax breaks that disproportionately benefit only the very wealthiest Americans are not only blowing up our deficit, but are providing unnecessary tax relief to those that need it the least, and do no work for the economy.

revolution

Categories
- Empowerment - Governance - Human Body - Religion Justice

Abdu’l-Baha on Economic Policy

According to Abdu’l-Baha, wealth inequality, can be attributed to the “extreme greed and rapacity of the manufacturers and industrialists.” He furthermore  identifies  the root cause of income disparity as the defunct operations of the legislative branch of government:

“The principal cause of these difficulties lies in the laws of the present civilization; for they lead to a small number of individuals accumulating incomparable fortunes, beyond their needs, while the greater number remain destitute, stripped and in the greatest misery.”

Abdu’l-Baha introduces concepts into His discourse that rarely find equivalent parallels in the modern discourse on economic policy. Instead of dominant values such as “economic growth”, He emphasizes “justice”; instead of  “profits” He emphasizes “humanity” and “equity”. His appeal to new concepts is grounded in a metaphysics that transcends the modern foundations of economics, which are outdated. The remedy to economic injustice He specifies lies in legislation designed to ensure that private profits go to meet the needs of the impoverished masses:

“…Rules and laws should be established to regulate the excessive fortunes of certain private individuals and meet the needs of millions of the poor masses; thus a certain moderation would be obtained…”

The exact proportion of workers wages as a function of CEO or owner income that is most conducive to justice, Abdu’l-Baha specifies as 20-25%. Therefore the average laborer should earn 20-25% of the total income earned by an owner or CEO. The majority shareholder of a corporation for example could expect to see approximately 4-5 times as much share in the profits as the average worker would. No more.

“Laws and regulations should be established which would permit the workmen to receive from the factory owner their wages and a share in the fourth or the fifth part of the profits…The body of workmen and the manufacturers should share equitably the profits and advantages…”

Today the average CEO “earns” 360 times as much as his average employee.  According to Abdu’l-Baha’s vision, the ratio of reward for investment vs reward for labor is not as distorted in favor of investment as is today’s market. The power balance between the labor and capital markets today is not tenable in the context of justice. Furthermore, honest labor should come with the guarantee of social security and retirement packages for aging populations. According to Abdu’l-Baha,

“The capital and management come from the owner of the factory, and the work and labor, from the body of the workmen… Either the workmen should receive wages which assure them an adequate support and, when they cease work, becoming feeble or helpless, they should have sufficient benefits from the income of the industry; or the wages should be high enough to satisfy the workmen with the amount they receive so that they may themselves be able to put a little aside for days of want and helplessness.”

The accumulation of excessive wealth is itself a burden and carries with it natural and moral dangers for individuals. Extremes of wealth and poverty engender social unrest between classes. Violence and crime become means of survival for the poor as well as weapons of retribution for their suffering against the rich. Wealth in itself is a transient entity that will not endure beyond its utility in this world. Large sums of wealth carry with them the burden of responsibility and administration for its owner. In the words of Abdu’l-Baha:

“If the fortune is disproportionate, the capitalist succumbs under a formidable burden and gets into the greatest difficulties and troubles…[for] the administration of an excessive fortune is very difficult and exhausts man’s natural strength”

Abdu’l-Baha advises people who control vast means of production that they exercise moderation in the acquisition of profits, instead diverting the majority of their funds to the infrastructure of their company, the needs of employees, or the welfare of society:

“It lies in the capitalists’ being moderate in the acquisition of their profits, and in their having a consideration for the welfare of the poor and needy”

For Abdu’l-Baha, the profits of a corporation do not belong to whoever arbitrarily purchased more of their stock. On the contrary, there is a moral right intrinsic to the workers who created the products to ownership of a fixed and definite proportion of the profits:

“Workmen and artisans receive a fixed and established daily wage—and have a share in the general profits of the factory…” “And it is from the income of the factory itself, to which they have a right, that they will derive a share…”

Moderation in the profits of the owner are linked to the retirement security of the laborers as well as the cost of caring for and rearing the worker’s offspring. The social security net of work covers not only the individuals who work but their family and children until they become old enough to be independently financially responsible:

“It would be well, with regard to the common rights of manufacturers, workmen and artisans, that laws be established, giving moderate profits to manufacturers, and to workmen the necessary means of existence and security for the future. Thus when they become feeble and cease working, get old and helpless, or leave behind children under age, they and their children will not be annihilated by excess of poverty.”

Abdu’l-baha advises congress to legislate on matters of workers rights and the share of profits to be apportioned to owners vs laborers in a just and impartial manner. By this statement He rules out the legitimacy of lobbyists or special interests swaying the partiality of the law-makers. It would be important for them to remain “impartial” in this regard and to legislate laws of profit distribution in accordance with principles of justice.

“But the mutual and reasonable rights of both associated parties will be legally fixed and established according to custom by just and impartial laws.”

If owners oppress laborers by refusing to pay them their share of the profits or treating them poorly or providing abusive working conditions, the judicial branch is responsible for passing a ruling in defense of the laborers, and the president and department of justice would be responsible for penalizing the corporation, procuring the profits due to the unpaid workers and establishing measures for the continuation of a just relationship:

“In case one of the two parties should transgress, the court of justice should condemn the transgressor, and the executive branch should enforce the verdict; thus order will be reestablished…”

Abdu’l-Baha clearly situates the relationship between employers and employees within the public sector, endorsing the validity and importance of state-run workers rights regulations:

“The interference of courts of justice and of the government in difficulties pending between manufacturers and workmen is legal, for the reason that current affairs between workmen and manufacturers cannot be compared with ordinary affairs between private persons, which do not concern the public, and with which the government should not occupy itself.

A coherent conception of society underlies Abdu’l-Baha’s vision of the relationship between the private and state sectors and the role of governance and law in ordering and regulating capital and labor markets:

“If one of these suffers an abuse, the detriment affects the mass. Thus the difficulties between workmen and manufacturers become a cause of general detriment.”

The Baha’i principle of unity is the nexus through which all things are connected. Pain of the part necessitates pain of the whole. Prosperity for the whole implies prosperity for each part. Can any body part maintain the position that only some distant body part is in pain, but that it itself is immune to the feeling? Surely not. The body experiences pain and pleasure as one. Likewise, the body politic experiences prosperity or privation as one. Abdu’l-Baha explains:

“In reality…these difficulties between the two parties produce a detriment to the public; for commerce, industry, agriculture and the general affairs of the country are all intimately linked together.”

pies

Categories
- Governance - Oppression Justice

Colonial Coercion vs. Corporate Consumerism: Replacing the Stick with the Carrot

About a century ago, in the free world, the ruling classes became aware they couldn’t control the population by force any longer, the spirit of the age was shifting and violence only bred further civil disobedience. Too much freedom had been won by struggles for democracy around the world, and it had altered the collective consciousness. Rulers in every nation began to realize and strangely grew self-conscious about it. This alienation of colonial rulers from their own means of coercion is discussed in their literature. The rulers never gave up their identity however, they just reformed their appearance. The dominant class recognized they had to shift their tactics to control of attitudes and beliefs instead of just through force and coercion. Baha’u’llah writes: “Wherefore do ye wear the guise of shepherds, when inwardly ye have become wolves, intent upon My flock?”

The dominant class didn’t completely dismantle the apparatus of coercion, they just replaced a substantial portion of its function with another system – advertising. Their aim was to control attitudes and beliefs. This period saw the birth of the public relations industry, in the United States and England. These nominally free countries are where physical coercion was replaced by a major industry to control beliefs and attitudes, to induce consumerism, passivity, apathy, and entertaining distractions.

Passivity is bred by the forces of society today. A desire to be entertained is nurtured from childhood, with increasing efficiency, cultivating generations willing to be led by whoever proves skilful at appealing to superficial emotions. For example, in educational systems students are treated as though they are receptacles designed to receive information, reinforcing a posture towards life accustomed to being told what to do and what to believe.  Regional training institutes around the world are succeeding however in developing a culture which promotes thought, study, and action among diverse collaborators in way that they consider themselves treading a common path of service. Against the dominant culture, the Ruhi system has developed an empowering culture, which constitutes an accomplishment of enormous proportions. Therein lie the dynamics of an irrepressible movement for change.

television

Categories
- Governance - Oppression Justice

Prophecy And Policy

The economic recession is linked to a recession in democracy. If we continue this way, we will be ruined by class warfare and the wrath of global warming. We must seek a different way of living that is based not on maximizing how much we can buy but on maximizing values important to life. True happiness is a transcendent experience, not inherent in material things. Groundswell in grassroots spirituality holds the solution. Countless small actions of unknown people are the foundation for those great moments that ultimately enter the historical record without mention of the people that created them. Change is made in such ways.

Before the 1970’s there was a sense that the US was a socially progressive society, albeit there were setbacks and economic downturns,  but most people seemed to believe in a spirit of progress, change, and development that was inherent to the narrative of US life. The despair that characterizes society now is like a burn-out after a long and hard period of endurance after hopes have been dashed and dreams gone unfulfilled. Injustice no longer has promise of resolution in, for example, the manufacturing industry that is facing similar levels of unemployment now as it was in the great depression: back then there was an assumption that honest labor was still fundamental to productivity and so there was general confidence that the market would eventually recover. Unfortunately, policies being crafted now in the US and western Europe enable off-shoring of jobs to foreign countries that lack organized labor unions. This incentivizes the abuse of workers and makes it possible for corporate exploitation to continue indefinitely by hopping around the globe, trading investment capital with countries that agree to deregulate workers rights. Only unification of the entire globe as one nation with one government and the formation of multinational labor unions will be able to stop the assault on masses of helpless workers by globalized capital markets. Hence, unity is the chief steward of achieving justice. The term coherence encompasses the concept of prosperity that is born of justice whose surest means is increasing levels of unity.

Further death blows to US hopes came with the financialization of the economy since the 1970’s. Work is worship is a concept that encompasses the belief that true work, or labor, when performed in a spirit of service to one’s fellow humans, constitutes worship of God and possesses sacred value. With the transition away from a productive economy, in which people once manufactured things of worth to others, the rise of the financial sector and the conversion of profits based on labor to profits earned by manipulating financial systems the demise of the US economy was guaranteed, along with the spirit of service that once animated it.

Before the 1970’s banks simply stored a family’s savings and used the extra funds in the meantime to offer loans to other families to send children to college or mortgage a home. Now banks have become hegemons of the entire financial system that own 60% of the GDP, conducting millions of wire transactions per day that produce no fruit for humankind or society, and manipulating sophisticated stock exchanges and financial packages for personal profit. Concentration of wealth entails concentration of political power. Tax reduction, corporate personhood, and business deregulation ensued. Banks borrow billions from government credit at no interest and loan it to taxpayers for substantial interest rates and profits. They corrupt governments, lobby congress, and distort legislation to their own ends, in a vicious cycle that further deregulates their behaviour.

Unimaginably costly campaigns for elections have driven government politicians deep into the pockets of the corporate sector, corrupting the very structure and function of democracy. Wealth inequality has become extreme in the US with wealth concentrating mainly in the top tenth of 1% of the population: owners of corporations and health systems, elite bankers and big-oil. Extreme disparity in incomes, wealth, and lifestyles is not good for the economy, and creates social unrest. A healthy middle class fuels the consumers who drive economic stability by purchasing necessities and goods lacking negative externalities. The production of necessities in turn ensures job security for many. The real picture is that the poor increasingly are unable to meet basic survival needs and the wealthy increasingly waste the society’s resources on personal entertainment and extravagant past-times. Average wages for workers have not even kept up with inflation over the past 40 years, yet US GDP has doubled in that time, and corporate profits are at an all time high – built on the backs of those uncompensated laborers. The gap between public policy and public will has never been larger. As Abdu’l-Baha explained, wherever you find great poverty, look close and you will find extreme wealth. One cannot be eliminated without the other.

Figure: “Death’s Embrace” – Workers found in the rubble of a factory in Bangladesh after it collapsed. Signs of building collapse prior to the tragedy were sensed by many. Bankers were evacuated from the 1st floor of the building. Workers were told that if they left they would not receive wages for the day. Over one thousand workers were killed due to deregulation of the business sector and lack of worker’s rights.
Bangladesh factory deaths embrace

Categories
- Empowerment - Governance Discourse Health Care Justice

Trickle Down Fail

The sequester decreased federal investments in national infrastructure resulting in lay-offs and more unemployment. Only 88k jobs were created in march — the least jobs created per month in the past 9 months. The Labor Dept report showed that the U.S. Postal Service, for example, lost 12k positions. The pace of job growth this year is slower than its pace last year. Effects of the sequester are expected to continue mounting well into spring. The economic recovery was gaining momentum before the arbitrary and unnecessary cuts to government services took place. Congress legislated the sequester as a means of motivating itself to compromise on partisan national budget differences. It failed to compromise. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has estimated the sequester will cost the economy 750,000 jobs, ultimately.Although thousands were laid of off, unemployment has not increased, offset by the exodus of personnel from the workforce. Unemployment is paradoxically down to 7.9%, because the number of people in the workforce has declined. Nearly half a million people have stopped searching for jobs recently. If you’re not looking for work, you can’t be counted as unemployed. The low unemployment figure belies the weakness of the labor market. The labor market’s weakness is evident in the small percentage of Americans currently active in the labor force. The percentage of working-age Americans with a job or looking for one has dropped to 63.3 %, the lowest it has been since 1979.Most of the 88k jobs created in March were from the construction and health care sectors. The construction sector, which is usually propelled by housing market growth, only generated 18k jobs in March. This is half the number reported in the previous month. Health care created less jobs than last month as well, at only 23k. Typically 36k retail jobs were created per month for the past 6 months. However, even the retail sector lost jobs in March for the first time in 6 months.

Trickle down economics is failing — statistically speaking. Evidence shows that cutting government spending and reducing taxes on the wealthy did not create jobs for the middle class. Statistics from March in the wake of the sequester show that companies won’t hire if consumers aren’t buying enough goods to justify the new hires. And consumers don’t have enough money to buy when they are unemployed. A growing economy depends upon an employed middle class. Employment leads to consumption which drives the need for job creation. Not vice versa.

The hike in the payroll tax (January), the government budget cuts due to the sequester (February), and gas price increases to maximize Big Oil profits (March), are all robbing the middle class of its income. People therefore, are not able to consume. Explicit evidence for this can be seen in that Retail Department Stores have cut their staff by 24k jobs this March.

The booming stock market should not be touted as evidence that the entire economy is recovering. A small segment of society is affected by the stock market. The top 1% of wealthy Americans own 35% of all stock shares. The wealthiest 10% of Americans own 90% of all stock shares. So the rest of the 90%, own less than 10% of stock shares. There is no generalizability in looking to the market as a gauge of middle class economic growth and stability. Even this is evidence trickle down economics is a cultural hoax, which has been foisted on the American people to abet the swindling of wealth by the elite from the national labor market.

Furthermore, the recent recovery in the housing market is not due to employed families mortgaging new homes. The recovery is from wealthy investors buying up real estate and renting it out to middle class families who can no longer request mortgages from banks. Again, middle class wealth and consumer confidence are undercut, and as demand shrinks so goes production and supply. The effect is bottom up.

The American recession mirrors the structural reform in Europe, known as austerity measures, which has exacerbated wealth inequality there. The middle class is asked to live more austerely, while wealth is concentrated increasingly in the hands of a shrinking few. Fewer people are working and generating wealth, thus there is a smaller pie to go around. The wealthy abide this situation, nay even enable it via lobbying congress to legislate trickle down economic tax codes, because their market share of the wealth increases. As long as the market share of the wealthy increases faster than the rate at which the pie is shrinking, they will not be moved to lobby against this state of affairs. Austerity economics is squeezing the average American and European.

A labor-based economy, that rewards work and empowers the central government to tax and create middle class jobs is the best hope for a sustained economic recovery. Economies, like organic bodies, grow bottom up.

Rain Dance

Categories
- Governance - Oppression - Prevailing Conceptions - Three Protagonists Discourse Justice

New World Order

Corrupt incentives drive people’s contribution to the public discourse. Politicians, businessmen, financiers, are all guilty. The discourse no longer represents an honest viewpoint of reality, the dominant slogans on TV and radio are a designed smoke-screen to hide the real structure, decision-making, and motives at play in the world of economic policy, legislation, and campaigning. The derangement in  economics, political deceit, and social manipulation is reaching unrecognizable proportions. Popular culture is responsible for making itself gullible to such influence. Our society nurtures a desire to be entertained from childhood, cultivating generations eager to be led by priests, politicians, advertising, pop idols, and whoever proves skillful at appealing to superficial emotions. Hence the increasing efficiency with which political marriages to the finance sector manipulate mass perceptions in the electorate during campaign season and drive up consumer demand with commercial advertising. The world’s social, economic, and political Order is in an irreparable downward spiral. Nothing can salvage it except a broad reconceptualization of our fundamental conceptions of society, self, government, global interdependence, the rule of Justice and Law, the reviving of the spirit of brotherhood in Religion, wide-scale increase in education and the free-flow of knowledge, robust discourse amongst the masses, self-sacrifice for unity, and a sense of  obedience to One Universal Cause.

Framing the problem and a plea to begin rethinking society’s fundamentals begins here with Professor David Harvey:

NWO
Categories
- Governance - Oppression Discourse Health Care

What is the Definition of Capitalism?

I didn’t know it was called capitalism to work for someone else’s money.

I thought capitalism was the harder you work the more money you earn. In fact, i was told communism is what we call it when you work day in and day out and someone else gets the check. How did this get confused?

The middle class is where all the producers and professionals are located (doctors, teachers, farmers, engineers). So, according to capitalism, because producers do all the work, they should be the richest. Why aren’t producers the wealthiest?

Also, if the upper class is the wealthiest, they should be the one’s performing all the important jobs requiring labor and education in society, right? Like MD’s, RN’s, agriculture, teaching, and electrical and software engineering. There must be some confusion.

Otherwise, how could it be possible for a capitalist economy to reward the top 1% with all the national rewards, and tax and burden the middle class who are the backbone of the economy.

If capitalism is the harder you work the more you earn, then the middle class should probably be the wealthy class, and the upper class should be the poverty line. Does owning hospitals, banks, and corporate business require the most amount of stress, labor, education, degrees, effort, creativity and intelligence?

Does setting up a business, or ordering around middle management, or consulting on which CEO hire will maximize short term profits — is this harder than being a surgeon, a professor, a software engineer, or a farm laborer?

Does membership on a venture capitalist board stress one out more than performing open heart surgery? How bout being a major share holder in a hospital stake holding — is that harder than being the ICU nurses who clean, draw blood, and resuscitate patients daily?

How bout owning a farmland — is that harder than working the fields all day to pick fruit and vegetables for less than minimum wage?

Oh, right, its not hard work that’s rewarded, its investment capital. And its not a capitalist economy that we are employed in, its an oligarchy. And its not congress’s job to represent the interests of the american public in legislating tax codes, its the bribery and corruption of lobbyists that do that. And its the job of “capitalism” to be misused to mean communism, its exact opposite, by those who benefit from control of the economy.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

Categories
- Oppression Discourse Justice Power

Are You Working for Someone Else’s Money?

GDP has doubled in the past 30 years, yet workers wages haven’t even kept up with inflation, let alone increased.

The 1.9% increase in wages was  surpassed by inflation in 2012 marking the 40th consecutive year that wages have declined below their 1972 peak. Wages fell 0.2% in 2012, from $295.49 per week, (in 1982 currency value) to $294.83 per week, according to the 2013 Economic Report of the President.

Data for production and non-supervisory workers in the private sector from “Hours and Earnings in Private Non-Agricultural Industries, 1966-2012” (taken from Appendix Table B-47) shows that this decline in wages is affecting 80% of the current private-sector workforce (as detailed in table below). At this same time, during these same years in which wages stagnated,  private non-farm productivity has doubled (in the fashion illustrated on the graph below). Therefore, higher productivity coupled with lower wages implies increasing wealth inequality. This fuels the gap that separates the rich minority from the poor majority widening into abyss.

The great irony is that the middle class is doing all the work that is enriching the top 1%. The audacity of the rhetoric from the rich minority is to accuse the poor of mooching off society and not taking responsibility for their lives — however the obvious reality is that the laborers and educated services classes are doing all the work that booms the economy. And the economy has boomed — doubling in productivity over the past 30 years. With none of the profits going towards those who do the actual work or those who deserve the increased salaries. The profits have one and all flowed like streams of increasing income into the sea of an already wealthy elite’s bank accounts. If they would only stop calumniating the poor, the situation would be almost tolerable.

If minimum wage had merely kept up with inflation for the past 30 years it would have been over $25 an hour by now. Comparatively, minimum wage is still in the sub-ten-dollar range and corporations ownership incomes are exponentially higher than they were just 5 years ago. Who is mooching off society now?

Year     Weekly Earnings (1982-84 dollars without taking into account inflation)

1972     $341.73 (peak)
1975     $314.77
1980     $290.80
1985     $284.96
1990     $271.10
1992     $266.46 (lowest point; 22% below peak)
1995     $267.17
2000     $285.00
2005     $285.05
2010     $297.79
2011     $295.49
2012     $294.83 (still 14% below peak)

Graph of Nonfarm Business Sector: Output Per Hour of All Persons