The world is undergoing a populist revival. From the revolt against austerity led by the Syriza Party in Greece and the Podemos Party in Spain, to Jeremy Corbyn’s surprise victory as Labour leader in the UK, to Donald Trump’s ascendancy in the Republican polls, to Bernie Sanders’ surprisingly strong challenge to Hillary Clinton – contenders with their fingers on the popular pulse are surging ahead of their establishment rivals.
For the majority of people of the planet, but not for the super, super rich, things have gone backwards since the first Davos meeting was held. That’s no coincidence as Davos – for all the ’progressive’ waffle about ‘stakeholder theory’ and the ’global public interest’ – is all about maintaining an elite-friendly, neoliberal economic order which has caused so much economic, social, cultural and environmental damage.
As the New Year gets underway, the highest-paid CEOs of many large corporations have already paid themselves more than the average worker will earn in the entire year! By the end of the first week of January, the highest-paid CEOs had already made as much as their average workers will earn over 8 years.
More than 30,000 junior doctors across England have staged a walk-out in a dispute with the government over new contracts. RT spoke to trainee medics in London who fear the crippling changes will “kill” the National Health Service (NHS).
The Washington Post‘s Catherine Rampell devoted a column to a popular Washington pastime: trying to get young people angry at their parents and grandparents so that they are not bothered by the enormous upward redistribution of income taking place in this country.
British state pensions are among the lowest in the world, paying out a mere 38 percent of what the recipient earned when working, according to the Organisation for Development and Cooperation (OECD).
The OECD report, Pensions at a Glance, makes a comparative study of pensions in 34 countries. Only in Chile and Mexico was the replacement income as a proportion of average earnings lower than in the UK. The figure of 38 percent compares with 90 percent in the Netherlands and 80 percent in Spain and Italy.
Hundreds of suicides and thousands of prescriptions for anti-depressants are directly linked to the government’s “fit -for-work” assessments, a study by Oxford and Liverpool universities showed yesterday.
In total, it showed that the Tories’ work capability assessment policy could be associated with 590 suicides, 279,000 mental ill-health cases and 725,000 prescriptions for anti-depressants across England between 2010 and 2013.
George Orwell’s nightmarish vision of a totalitarian society casts a dark shadow over the United States. As American society has moved from a welfare to a warfare state, the institutions that were once meant to further justice and limit human suffering and misfortune and protect the public from the excesses of the market have been either weakened or abolished.
In one part of the study the owner of a massage parlour in Leeds who admitted employing large numbers of students, remarked, that in her day, people went to University in order to avoid this kind of life – whereas now they lead this kind of life in order to go to University.
Irony indeed. And one the government, the universities and banks should be utterly ashamed of.
The scarcity of jobs and the low pay are direct consequences of jobs offshoring. Under pressure from “shareholder advocates” (Wall Street) and large retailers, US manufacturing companies moved their manufacturing abroad to countries where the rock bottom price of labor results in a rise in corporate profits, executive “performance bonuses,” and stock prices.
According to brand new numbers that were just released by the Social Security Administration, 51 percent of all workers in the United States make less than $30,000 a year. Let that number sink in for a moment. You can’t support a middle class family in America today on just $2,500 a month – especially after taxes are taken out.
The junior doctor contract is supposed to be “cost neutral” but for someone who works part time, it means I will likely never see my salary improve. It means I could not have afforded to have either of my children. It means the female doctors who look up to me so much, will have to choose children or their careers.
