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Solidarity against Austerity
Europe |
Austerity
Problems,
Protests,
Progressivist solutions
Editing, excerpting, brief comment by
Carolyn Bennett
Pegged to social, employment, economic, banking, people
crises sweeping Europe, the Mediterranean and America, economist Richard Wolff spoke
today with Amy Goodman on Pacifica’s Democracy Now program.
Notes on Cyprus: Cyprus is the third largest Mediterranean
island, after Sicily and Sardinia, and lies about 40 miles (65 km) south of
Turkey, 60 miles (100 km) west of Syria, and 480 miles (770 km) southeast of
mainland Greece. This island in the eastern Mediterranean Sea has been renowned
since ancient times for its mineral wealth, superb wines and produce, and
natural beauty. In today’s news: AFP: “Cyprus secures bailout at cost of banks,
jobs.”
Cyprus parliament last Tuesday “rejected a levy on bank
deposits demanded in return for aid, raising the specter of a default for the
island nation that could mean enduring wave after wave of spending cuts and tax
rises, just like Greece.” … On Wednesday, “Greeks and opposition parties
inspired by the Cypriot rejection … urged Athens to stand up to foreign lenders
whose demands have resulted in repeated rounds of austerity that have made
Greek life a misery.” [Reuters]
his some of what Richard Wolff had to say regarding the United
States’ “Cyprus” crisis.
Dysfunction upon dysfunction
In the United States, Wolff said, we have a “dysfunctional
government built on top of a dysfunctional economy.”
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Protests against austerity
Greece |
[I call it a man-made crisis.]
“We have millions of people without work, millions of people
losing their homes, an economy that doesn’t work for the vast majority,” Wolff
recounts. And if “the government, the largest single buyer of goods and
services, cuts back on the goods and services it buys, [then] companies across
America will sell less and have less need for workers.” They will lay off workers
and thereby worsen an already severe unemployment situation.
Taxing the overtaxed
“We heard a lot of public debate [among Republicans and
Democrats] about taxing rich people and not taxing rich people,” Wolff said, but
“the tax on the wealthy” that went into effect on January 1, 2013, “is small
compared to the tax on middle and lower incomes that went up on January 1st.…
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Protests against austerity
Teachers, Students, LaborUSA |
Raising payroll tax … from 4.2 to
6.2 percent, raised more than $125 billion—a huge amount of money, much more
than was raised by taxing the rich—savaged middle- and lower-income groups, those whom presidential candidates during the 2012 campaign pledged to save and support.
[Over]Taxing middle- and
lower-income groups attacked them and limited their capacity to buy goods
and services.
he combined middle- and lower-income tax increases and
government-spending decreases amount to “what every European country imposing
austerity has already discovered: the worsening of the problem. These austerity
steps do not better but worsen the economic conditions of the mass of people,
Wolff said. “And that ought to be put as a fire burning at the feet of
politicians, so they [will] stop talking in abstractions and deal with the
reality of what they’re doing.”
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Central Banks
Global |
Enslaving the enslaved
On Democracy Now, Wolff said what is easily observable in the daily debt-driven junk mail that lands in Americans’ in-boxes. Banks “are (still)
trying to get people to borrow more money.”
Government leadership or the masses’ refusal to change “the
wage structure of America,” he said, “means Americans are required to go into
debt to supplement their wages.”
[I call it enslavement in search of medieval debtors’
prisons].
Kick starting the economy, the language used by proponents
of a model of austerity, consumption and more debt, Wolff says, is to put “that
same train back on the track heading toward the same wall. In the first years
of the twenty-first century, he says,
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Launderers’ paradise
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[The U.S.] economy was a train
heading into a stone wall and if we get our economy going again ─ without
fundamental changes ─ we are putting that same train back on the track heading
toward the same wall. Cyprus shows us what’s happening.
owever, contrary to the “no-choice” view of contemporary promoters of
austerity, Wolff penned in his 2012 Guardian (UK) article, there are
alternatives, for the long term.
“Capitalism’s recurring tendencies toward extreme and
deepening inequalities of income, wealth, and political and cultural power
require resignation and acceptance – because there is no alternative?” This is untrue, he says. Alternatives do exist.
“Every society
chooses – consciously or not, democratically or not – among alternative ways to
organize the production and distribution of the goods and services that make
individual and social life possible.
“Modern societies have mostly chosen a capitalist
organization of production. In capitalism, private owners establish enterprises
and select their directors who decide what, how and where to produce and what
to do with the net revenues from selling the output.
This small handful of people makes
all those economic decisions for the majority of people – the majority who do
most of the actual productive work.
The majority must accept and live
with the results of all the directorial decisions made by the major
shareholders and the boards of directors they select.
Major shareholders and boards of
directors also select their own replacements.
“Capitalism thus entails and reproduces a highly
undemocratic organization of production inside enterprises.
What to do: history lesson-plus
olff says in his Guardian article that what is required in the way of alternatives is “a
radical change in policies,” going far beyond simply reversing the austerity
program.
“The last time we had a breakdown of the capitalist system
like this,” he recalls, “we didn’t have austerity; we didn’t have cutbacks. We
had the opposite.” U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt, in the mid-1930s created
the Social Security system. His administration –
Went to everybody over 65 and said,
‘I'm going to give you a check for the rest of your life.’
He created the unemployment
compensation system, for the first time, giving the unemployed checks every
week for a year or two.
He created a public employment
program and hired millions of workers.
Britannica note:
Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR), 32nd president of the United States (b.
January 30, 1882 in Hyde Park, N.Y., d., April 12, 1945, Warm Springs, Georgia;
presidential tenure: 1933 – 1945; the only U.S. president elected to the office
four times, Roosevelt led the United States through two of the greatest crises
of the 20th century: the Great Depression and World War II.
Under his administration came the “New Deal” and “Second New
Deal.” The U.S. economy in 1935 was still bearing the effects of the 1929 Stock
Market Crash. Millions of Americans were unemployed—many had been jobless
for several years.
Roosevelt foresaw the possibility that in the 1936
presidential election he would face a significant third-party challenge from
the left. And in 1935, to meet this threat, he asked Congress to pass
additional New Deal legislation—sometimes called the “Second New Deal.”
The key measures of the Second New Deal were the Social
Security Act, the Works Progress Administration (work program for the
unemployed), and the Wagner Act (National Labor Relations Act, the single most
important piece of labor legislation enacted in the United States in the 20th
century, enacted to eliminate employers’ interference with the autonomous
organization of workers into unions).
The Social Security Act for the first time established an
economic “safety net” for all Americans, providing unemployment and disability
insurance and old-age pensions.
his is “the opposite of austerity,” Wolff says. “So any
politician [who pushes austerity measures] ‘because there’s no option,’ has
forgotten [relatively recent] American history.”
And Wolff wants to go further, “go in the opposite direction”
from the current direction because “the problems run deep.” The economy needs
to be reorganized, he says, “so that, for the first time, we can say we’re not
only going to get out of this crisis; but ─
We’re taking the kinds of steps
that can prevent us from having [the same problems] over and over again as our
unstable business-cycle-ridden economy keeps imposing on us.
As painful as it is, we finally
have to face the more profound change.
After 50 years of a country unwilling to
face these questions, we need basic change.
oday 20 percent of tools, equipment, factory and office
space sits idle. Office space is unused, Wolff references Federal Reserve
figures. People want to work and we have the tools, equipment and raw materials
for them to work with ─ so put people to work. Make this a national issue and
make it happen, Wolff says.
Roosevelt went to the wealthy and to the
corporations and he said to them –
‘You must give me the money to take
care of the mass of people, because if you don’t, we’re going to have a
catastrophe in this country. We’re going to have a social revolution.’
The argument Wolff says he is making is that the United
States should go back to the same or in the neighborhood of the same tax rates
that Roosevelt imposed ─ “which is much higher on wealthy people and much
higher on corporations than we have today. That’s what he did and that’s how he
funded it,” Wolff answering Goodman’s question about cost.
Far from a career-ender, Wolff says, decisions on proper tax
rates together with a federal employment program now missing in this country
would be the best legacy a president could leave history.
rogressivism, in my opinion, takes from the best of what we
know or can know and betters it. This philosophy seems evident in Richard
Wolff’s economics.
Now, if only we could get Americans to read, write and
reflect; to speak clearly and to think independently, rationally, and out of a
sense of social sensibility.
Sources and notes
“Capitalism in Crisis: Richard Wolff Urges End to Austerity,
New Jobs Program, Democratizing Work,” Monday, March 25, 2013,
http://www.democracynow.org/2013/3/25/capitalism_in_crisis_richard_wolff_urges
“Yes, there is an alternative to capitalism: Mondragon shows
the way ─ Why are we told a broken system that creates vast inequality is the
only choice? Spain's amazing co-op is living proof otherwise” (Richard Wolff ,
guardian.co.uk), June 24, 2012 10.13 EDT, http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jun/24/alternative-capitalism-mondragon
Richard Wolff and some of his most recent works
“Capitalism Hits the Fan: The Global Economic Meltdown and
What to Do About It” (book, film/DVD, 2009)
Books:
Democracy at Work: A
Cure for Capitalism (2012).
Contending Economic
Theories: Neoclassical, Keynesian, and Marxian (with Stephen A. Resnick, 2012)
New Departures in
Marxian Theory (with Stephen A. Resnick, 2006)
Class Theory and
History: Capitalism and Communism in the USSR (with Stephen A. Resnick, 2002)
Re/Presenting Class: Essays
in Postmodern Marxism (with J.K Gibson-Graham and Stephen A. Resnick, 2001)
Class and Its Others
(with J.K Gibson-Graham and Stephen A. Resnick, 2000)
Other
Host of weekly one-hour radio program “Economic Update” on WBAI,
99.5 FM, New York City (Pacifica Radio)
Regular contributor to The Guardian, Truthout.org, and the
MRZine; interviews: on RT-TV, Democracy Now, Al Jazeera English, National
Public Radio, Alternative Radio, and many other radio and television programs
in the United States and abroad. His work can be accessed at rdwolff.com.
Well known for his work on Marxian economics, economic
methodology, and class analysis, Richard D. Wolff (b. April 1, 1942) is an
American economist; Professor of Economics Emeritus (University of
Massachusetts, Amherst) and Visiting Professor in International Affairs
(Graduate Program, the New School University, New York). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_D._Wolff
CYPRUS
Cyprus, the third largest Mediterranean island, after Sicily
and Sardinia, lies about 40 miles (65 km) south of Turkey, 60 miles (100 km)
west of Syria, and 480 miles (770 km) southeast of mainland Greece.
This island in the eastern Mediterranean Sea has been renowned
since ancient times for its mineral wealth, superb wines and produce, and
natural beauty.
AFP news ─ “Cyprus secures bailout at cost of banks, jobs”
(by Charlie Charalambous), March25,
2013,
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/last-minute-deal-resurrects-cyprus-bailout-020846041.html#nLhPZ95
“Cyprus clinched a 10-billion-euro bailout on Monday
averting a chaotic eurozone exit, allowing most banks to reopen after a 10-day
closure, but at the cost of its status as an offshore banking centre.… The
11th-hour agreement deals a major hit to investors and depositors in the
island’s biggest bank, the Bank of Cyprus, many of whom are Russian, and will
also effectively shut down Laiki, its second-largest lender.
“Cyprus has become heavily reliant on banking deposits,
including those of dubious origin, which have swollen to roughly four times the
size of the island’s entire economy, and the biggest investors stand to lose
the most.…
“Cyprus could now be in for a ‘deep recession caused by the
shrinkage of the banking sector and severe de-leveraging,’ or paying down of
debt, UBS economist Reinhard Cluse said. The fallout will begin immediately
with food and medicine shortages likely in coming weeks as businesses struggle
with a lack of cash in Cypriot banks, which were hammered by the agreement,
said economic experts.
he final bailout will also probably involve a government
austerity program, privatizations and tax increases at a time of deepening
recession given job losses at banks and companies losing out on deposits.
Economists have forecast the Cyprus economy could now
contract by at least 10 percent this year and by 8.0 percent in 2014.
Also http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/03/20/eurozone-cyprus-greece-heat-idUSL6N0CC79G20130320
orldatlas on Cyprus ─ Dateline: Monday, March 18, 2013 ─ “I
mean, who is next? America? Canada?
“Cyprus President Nicos Anastasiades announced today (last
Monday) that he is battling against eurozone demands that all Cyprus bank
customers pay a one-time levy in return for a bailout. Mr. Anastasiades said he
shared people’s unhappiness with the terms, whereby ALL BANK CUSTOMERS would
pay a levy of 6.75percent or 10 percent on their bank deposits.
“The EU and IMF have demanded the levy in return for a
10bn-euro ($13bn; £8.6bn) bank bailout. Mr Anastasiades said it was the worst
crisis since Turkey invaded in 1974. The worst crisis is that politicians are
in charge!
“Cyprus, a onetime Greek colony and the site of many
military incursions over the centuries, is still today an island in conflict
between two opposing factions.
“…If the island of Cyprus is to refresh its reputation
around the world, the Greek and Turkish leaders are going to have to make some
very courageous decisions because they share one small island.
“Somehow this ancient island of sunny weather and
fascinating history has survived, and with some of the most popular beaches in
Europe. Travelers do journey to Cyprus in large numbers.” http://www.worldatlas.com/webimage/countrys/europe/cy.htm
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Bennett's books are available in New York State independent bookstores: Lift Bridge Bookshop: www.liftbridgebooks.com [Brockport, NY]; Sundance Books: http://www.sundancebooks.com/main.html [Geneseo, NY]; Mood Makers Books: www.moodmakersbooks.com [City of Rochester, NY]; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center: www.enlightenthedog.org/ [Buffalo, NY]; Burlingham Books – ‘Your Local Chapter’: http://burlinghambooks.com/ [Perry, NY 14530]; The Bookworm: http://www.eabookworm.com/ [East Aurora, NY] • See also: World Pulse: Global Issues through the eyes of Women: http://www.worldpulse.com/ http://www.worldpulse.com/pulsewire
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The 18-member panel includes Republican and Democratic
lawmakers, retired military admirals and generals and the adjutant general of
the California National Guard. Their positions on the panel are unpaid.
Between 2007 until 2012, “California’s
community college system sustained about $1.5 billion in state budget cuts” leading colleges to cut staff, increase class sizes and reduce the number of courses ─ a 21 percent course reduction and
corresponding decrease in student enrollment during the latest academic year studied. 
In the 1980s, Brown opposed calls for universal national
health insurance and an employer mandate to provide catastrophic private health
insurance.
In his latest hold on office, this entrenched legacy-ascended
politician has occupied California’s top executive office since 2011. He also
held it in the years 1975-1983. But his occupation of California office extends
to 1969. 
