Class Politics

Don't know what to do with your money in these uncertain times? Check out this very short article in the FT. The big money in the UK is going into big companies - about £70 Billion has been switched into these shares since November - helping shore-up the FTSE 100. 

Based on a regular survey of the UK’s wealthiest individuals, it transpires that, "470,000 adults... own more than £1,600bn of cash, bank deposits and investment... two-thirds of the country’s liquid private wealth."

These 470,000 people comprise less than 1% of the UK population.

Ask yourself - in whose interests do you think the Government runs the country? People like you, or people like them?

Or put it another way, who do you think has most influence over Government policy?

Income Inequality - Back to the Roaring 20s! (YCNMIU!)

This (here) is a must-read from the FT of 8 March. The article argues cogently that levels of income inequality between the richest, and the middles and working classes, have become so extreme that we are in "danger" of entering a new and dangerous period of left-right politics.

Here are some snippets. But do read the whole thing.

"Income inequality in the US is at its highest since that most doom-laden of years: 1929. Throughout the main English-speaking economies, earnings disparities have reached extremes not seen since the age of The Great Gatsby"

Bill Gross, managing director of Pimco, the world’s biggest bond fund, is quoted as saying - “When the fruits of society’s labour become maldistributed, when the rich get richer and the middle and lower classes struggle to keep their heads above water as is clearly the case today, then the system ultimately breaks down; ... the centre cannot hold.”

The situation is the most extreme in the US (but the UK is number 2). According to the article, "Between 1979 and 2005 the pre-tax income for the poorest households grew by 1.3 per cent a year, middle incomes before tax grew by less than 1 per cent a year, while those of households in the top 1 per cent grew by 200 per cent pre-tax and, more strikingly, 228 per cent post-tax. (And bear in mind we are talking only about income distribution, not capital ownership - which is even more skewed).

The share of US wealth owned by the top 1 per cent of households rose steadily from 20 per cent in 1976 to 38 per cent in 1998.

In the UK - "economists at the Institute for Fiscal Studies have identified a rising trend of income inequality to historically high levels since Labour took office in 1997." A chart in the article shows that we are just behind the US thanks to the fatuous middle-class air-heads in "New Labour".

"There is anger, too, about a system that permits bankers to earn huge bonuses when finance booms, while taxpayers pick up the bill when banks fail."

As a result, "Much of the old left-right rhetoric is re appearing in the (US) campaign". But worse, much worse, on a global scale, "there are signs that the mix of policies and economic circumstances that gave a protracted laisser-passer to the rich and to business is coming to an end."

And in another article (here) the author suggests that, "The challenge to the globalisation consensus comes from below. Political elites in the US, Asia and Europe are struggling to convince citizens that globalisation is not just a game that benefits the rich. [errr, but it is...] If the argument is lost in any of the major world economies, the political consensus that underpins globalisation could unravel."

Oh Dear.

US in Iraq, China in Tibet. Same?

I think was Hitler who said that the bigger the lie, the more likely it is to be believed. If this is true, it's true because most people simply cannot believe, don't dare believe, what "their" government is doing "on their behalf". 

Have a look at this from Medialens. It compares the way corporate media deals with two contrasting occupations -  Iraq, where we are helping them out (!) - and Tibet, where the Chinese government is an illegal occupier. (If the article has been archived - then look here instead).

At the same time have a look here at just a tiny sample of the photos of Philip Jones Griffiths who died recently. He was arguably the best photographer of the Vietnamese war (and elsewhere). 

Where are the PJGs of the Iraq war? (This is a little unfair, because there are some heroic photo-journalists in Iraq - what I mean is - where are the photographs?!)