The Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government has at long last unveiled their ‘welfare reform’ plans, which are already touted as being “the “most significant reform” of the coalition so far”.(1) As expected, the reforms are mainly centered around the Work and Pensions Secretary Duncan-Smith’s pet project, the implementation of a single benefits system. Under this system, all benefits would be put essentially into one ‘package’, the universal credit – with the notable exception of disability benefits – and be immediately linked to the payroll deductions tax database. The advantage would be that doing so would allow the government to no longer have to rely on the old ‘all or nothing’ approach to benefits, and thereby eliminate the possibility of part-time or short-term work causing an actual decrease in overall annual income compared to unemployment. Instead, people under such partial contracts would be allowed to keep part of their universal credit so they would not lose out on the move towards regular work. Continue reading “The Schizophrenia of Mr Duncan-Smith”
Tag: Economics
Boycotting Israel: What Is To Be Done
Electronic Intifada has run an excellent article outlining the historical background of the divestment and boycott campaign against Israel. When the regime of the NP in South Africa implemented the ‘apartheid’ policy of racial segregation, total disenfranchisement of non-whites and open and concealed warfare against left wing forces, the head of the African National Congress openly called for a campaign to boycott South Africa. This campaign was extraordinarily succesful on the part of the common people as well as intellectuals in Europe and America, despite ongoing support for the reactionary dictatorship in South Africa by the US government and some right-wing European parties. From the early 1960s on, the boycott first and foremost took the form of a campaign to ‘divest’ from South Africa, that is to say to withdraw any capitalist investment in that country on the part of pension funds, city boards, and individual corporations in order to economically undermine the basis of the South African regime. The United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution in 1961 to the effect of calling for economic sanctions against South Africa for the apartheid crime, but predictably, rather than taking economic action against a ‘friendly country’, the Western countries decided to boycott the GA meeting instead. Because of the persistent refusal to implement divestment or sanctions on the part of Western governments, whether of the right or ‘left’ (such as Harold Wilson), it took until the early 1980s for the international campaign for boycotting South Africa to reach the necessary critical mass. Eventually the strength of the anti-apartheid movement was so great that a Republican US Congress passed the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act in 1986, overriding their own President Reagan’s veto. Continue reading “Boycotting Israel: What Is To Be Done”
European Strikes Confront the Assault of Capital
All throughout Europe the organized peoples have been on strikes and protest actions against the massive assault of capital against the so-called ‘welfare state’. Governments from the United Kingdom to Greece have sought to greatly reduce the meaning and scope of the variegated systems of protection that exist in Europe against the depredations of the ‘free market’, using the great financial crisis produced by that same ‘free market’ as an excuse. They seek to support private capitalists such as banks and insurance companies by aiding them with enormous loans, while at the same time using the state debt this entails as a pretext for declaring insolvency in the face of popular demands for relief against the effects of the crisis and the rising unemployment. In so doing, they have however been forced to show their true face more than in these days most liberal governments like to do: they have brazenly and openly declared the maintenance of the profit system to be of greater importance than the well-being of the citizens whom they supposedly represent. This is the true ‘dictatorship of capital’, and more and more the peoples of Europe are seeing it for what it is. Continue reading “European Strikes Confront the Assault of Capital”
The Red and the Green III: Two Ways Forward
As the world attempts to recover from the current economic crisis and the first prospects for the future are being produced by economic forecasters and bank analysts, it is important not to forget the ecological dimension. As many people have explained before, including an article in this blog, the course our system of perpetual accumulation by means of competition has set is absolutely unsustainable from an ecological point of view. Not just the fact of the sheer consumption of the First World, so excessive that it would require several times the resources of our planet to provide to all, but also the fact that our modern historical period is considered by zoologists to be one of the world’s rare periods of mass extinction should make this clear. Even the most liberal capitalist-inclined politician is now aware of this, and such habitual profit-seekers as the Economist and the Chinese government are acknowledging the matter as serious. But there are still essentially two schools of thought on how the problem might be solved before the catastrophe predicted by most ecologists and climate experts is upon us. Continue reading “The Red and the Green III: Two Ways Forward”
Races and Brains
An important aspect of the newly emerging folk psychology, if that would be the right term, in America is the notion of a racial ladder: one which extends from ‘Asians’ at the top to ‘whites’ in the middle and ‘blacks’ at the bottom. Sometimes the argument is based on studies of IQ scores, other times the argument is based on anecdotal experiences about American colleges and universities, or about supposed Asian special aptitude for mathematics and natural sciences. These ideas are fairly widespread, and not limited purely to bar talk: even such supposedly hip ‘leftist’ magazines as Slate have contributed to it, and they are fairly prevalent at American universities too, including with the admissions departments.(1)(2) As in the Slate article, often these views are defended from accusations of racism by appealing to the fact that the folk psychology does not place whites at the top. Needless to say, this is not much of an argument, but it is commonly believed to be justified. Because of the nefarious nature of this notion, it is time to confront it with a basic understanding of statistics, which will quickly dispel most ideas of this kind. Continue reading “Races and Brains”