Poverty

It’s A Small World, After All

Corruption, Economy, liberalism, Life under Capitalism, Poverty, Women
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Now see, this is the reason I blog, so that someone else will take the ball and run with it.

Yesterday I posted a rather flip comparison using the latest global wealth inequality figures and a letter to the WSJ. but Belledame took those figures, broke them down, and extended her research to show how those global inequities are actually mirrored in the US and how, despite the continued mass delusion of belief in the Americam Dream, it’s no accident that the American rich keep getting richer and the poor, poorer.

And that ‘poor’ means you. What? You didn’t really think you were middle-class did you? Do you own your own means of production? No? Could you survive independently beyond maybe one or two last paychecks? No? That fat pension fund you’re were relying on, is it invested in the markets? Then it could disappear tomorrow: you’re working class just like the rest of us. Deal with it.

So many are in denial of this reality though. As Belledame says:

I’ll be honest. I had a bunch of reasons for not tackling this shit before; dunno if they’re the same as y’all’s or not. Well, one, I suppose relatively speaking I am comfortable enough to sort-of pretend this isn’t actually happening (although denial works in mysterious ways, doesn’t it); certainly more so if you factor in my family background, who by now i expect is in, oh, i don’t know what percentile, but i suspect it’s up there. Not in the supra-wealthy micro-fraction percentile, no, but…and especially globally…so.

And, gender stereotypes or not, I’ve always had issues with numbers, personally. I wasn’t kidding: math and anything related literally gives me nightmares. (I dread my upcoming statistics class).

And let’s face it: this shit’s boring compared to, oh I don’t know, blowjobs.

And yet.

Somehow, you know, call it a hunch; i have the feeling that even if I, we, most, all? of us? don’t start concerning ourselves with this shit pretty soon?

It’s gonna concern itself with us.

Well yes, it is going to. It’s inescapable. Create an unsustainable global economic system and everyone suffers whenit all goes pear-shaped.

As a long time Euroweenie socialist these sorts of glaring inequalities are not news: they are the reason for our huge protests at every G8 summit. So I posted the link rather glibly assuming it was recieved wisdom.

From a European perspective it does sometimes seem as though America is living in its own self-created bubble and doesn’t see or even want to see the self-created potential wave of global misery headed its way and which according to your figures, is already lapping at American feet.

Schadenfreude, though tempting, is pointless at this late stage because we’re all affected by this new reality of resource wars, declining quality of life and a fucked-up planet. On the streets of Amsterdam you can see people from all over the world who’ve had to flee to safety for whatever reason, economic, climatic or political, from their home countries, largely as a result of the rampages of international capitalism and the arms trade.

And every day drowned young Africans wash up on the shores of Italy and Spain, or Eastern Europeans and Asians asphyxiated in containers at Dover or Calais, desperate to get away from grinding poverty and warfare. So far the US has been insulated from many of the worst effects of global capitalism like these, but not for much longer.

If not for posts like Belledame’s about the way the current economic model affects Americans personally they’d never know it’s happening till it’s too late. Is there any reporting of this on US TV? I certainly haven’t seen it on Fox or CNN.

Americans’d be surprised at the goodwill that’s still out there though: we still don’t hate Americans per se, despite Iraq, despite everything – we know you’re just like us. Mostly. We just loathe what the guzzling juggernaut that your nation has become is doing and the way it’s driving the rest of the world into poverty to fuel its own temporary comfort and prosperity and its insane competition with China and India.

BTW, I’m British, and Britain is as prime an offender as the US. Our government talks about tackling global poverty, but Brown & Blair’s Britain’s right in there hoovering up capitalism’s crumbs, making money from moving all the money around, all the while applying free-market US business models to public services like the NHS and water supplies and being one of the biggest arms traders on the planet. Oh, and don’t get me started on the GATT agreements…

We’re also completely exasperated by US media and governments’ refusal to see the looming danger – even when the facts and figures are staring them in the face – because it doesn’t fit the mythical national narrative they’ve constructed, of ever expanding profits, military glory and boundless influence.

Unfortunately for that narrative and those who still beleive in it, so far history is heading exactly in the way Marx predicted.

How angry are the American people going to be when they realise this and that they’ve been had? Will they even realise it? And if they do how will that angry realisation manifest itself, if at all? I think all bets are off on what happens in US and consequently global, politics in the next 5 years. Events are moving so fast now any prediction is contingent and the rollercoaster is accelerating.

Is socialism the answer to such gross inequalities? Revolution? What? Is it too late already? I don’t bloody know, I’m just a blogger. At least some of us are attempting to create some equity even if it’s only by making the current obscene situation better known.

But whatever your politics, surely our common humanity says that such massive inequalities as these are totally unjust, unsustainable and something has to give globally, and soon.

Read more: Global inequality, Capitalism, Anticapitalism, Marxism, US

But Some Are More Equal

Policing, Poverty, Race
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Watertiger :

Oh yeah. That’s punishment

fitting the crime:

A New Orleans judge sentenced three people who looted liquor from a grocery store after Hurrican Katrina to 15 years in prison, saying he wanted to send a message.

and yet:

Two men each have been sentenced to a year in prison, a $5,000 fine and two years of supervised release in a Hurricane Katrina fraud case, U.S. Attorney Dunn Lampton said.

I’m not even going to speculate on the skin color of the people involved. That would be irresponsible, no?

more here.

Death, War, Pestilence & The Free Market

Economy, Poverty, War on Iraq, Women
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According to neoliberal economists, the free market’s a panacea for all ills, including. apparently, civil war. The Iraqi government, holed up in Baghdad, is unable to govern day to day and on the verge of collapse, but one thing it can do is push through neoliberal structural adjustments to usher in a free market.

I wonder whose idea that was?

On the face of it it’s a totally pointless move, given the breakdown of Iraqi civil society and the fact that there’s a bloody civil war on – but then again, the free market’s ultimately what this war’s about, so it could be argued that this economic tinkering is relevant, if only in a sick sort of way.

Of course the people it will affect most will be women and children, as usual.

I can hardly conceive how it must be to be female in large parts of Iraq. I don’t have the guts of a Jill Carroll, so I have to use my sketchy imagination, news reports and blogs – but what with disease, death squads, neighbours turned enemy, seemingly random suicide bombings, family members dragged away by troops, your children’s teachers murdered in front of their eyes, potential rape and having to go back to the chador, life must be terrifying. I can barely imagine the physical difficulties, but what’s really hard to comprehend is just how scared people must be all the time.

Against this horrific backdrop meals have to be cooked, children fed, laundry washed and dried – all the usual tedious routine of life, of feeding and clothing a family and running a household. Even when income, fuel and supplies are erratic and the threat of sudden death omnipresent, all that and more has still got to be done and it’s the women who have to do it.

There’re regular food shortages and meat is scarce and expensive. Some products have seen their prices increase by as much as 300 percent or more. In 2002, lentil beans were sold for about US $0.50 per kilogramme. Since then, the retail price has jumped to around US $2 per kilogramme, but at least there were the rations to rely on.

Until now.

Food Rations Cut Hurting Poor

The government has slashed subsidised food, despite rising poverty.

By Daud Salman in Baghdad (ICR No. 170, 29-Mar-06)A government decision to cut food rations has hurt poor Iraqis who cannot afford high prices on the open market, say economists and Baghdad residents.

Despite rising poverty, the government has decided to cut the food ration budget from four to three billion US dollars in 2006, as the country shifts from a socialist to a free market economy.

The Iraqi government has provided subsidies on basic food items such as flour and sugar for decades. The United Nations expanded the programme when the country was under crippling economic sanctions.

However, subsidies have now been cut on staples including salt, soap and beans. Trade ministry spokesman Faraj Daud said the government will continuing to supply Iraqis with free rice, sugar, flour and cooking oil.

The ministry claims that items that were once scarce during sanctions are now widely available on the open market and therefore do not need to be distributed by the government.

Approximately 96 per cent of Iraq’s 28 million people receive food rations managed by 543 centres. The UN World Food Programme estimated in a 2004 report that one-quarter of the population is highly dependent on the rations, warning that without them “many lower-income households, particularly women and children, would not be able to meet their food requirements”.

Daud, however, insists that the ministry has studied the impact of cancelling the subsidies and found it would not hurt families economically.

For Qadiryia Mohammed, a mother of eight with a disabled husband who cannot work, the cuts are devastating.

“We have no income and totally depend on the rations,” said Mohammed, 48, from Baghdad’s al-Karkh neighbourhood. “The cut on some items and problems with food distribution might force us to beg.?

The ministry of labour and social affairs reported in January that more than two million Iraqi families are living below the poverty line and that poverty had risen by 30 per cent since the US-led invasion in April 2003.

[…]

What exquisite timing.

Oh well, I guess when the babies are crying for food, their mothers can give them their purple fingers to suck while singing them lullabyes about the wonders of western capitalism.

Read More: Iraq War Iraq Women Feminism Neoliberalism

The Culture of Life (But Only If You’re White and Rich)

Parenting, Policing, Poverty, Race, Sensible Liberals, Women
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Riggsveda at American Street ties together the stories of the Kenyan Dog who mothered an abandoned baby, the ‘do not rescuscitate’ order, and the fate of an abused child, in this moving report on the so-called ‘culture of life’, as practiced by Florida Family & Children Services.

“In Kenya, a baby is thrown away in a plastic bag, but rescued by a stray bitch and adopted into her litter.

In Florida under the watchful eye of the famous Dept. of Children and Families (who fought so hard for Terri Schiavo), a baby is battered and abused, sent to the hospital for 2 months, then despite the enormous amount of evidence of her torment, released back into the custody of a mother who didn?t want her, whereupon she is again beaten so badly that DCF sends a lawyer out to the hospital to request a Do Not Resuscitate order..”

Unfortunately it only gets worse.