Here we go again ...

[Celerity]

The cost-of-living crisis, Kate Pickett writes, follows a familiar path of hugely unequal burdens. It’s time to change course.

https://socialeurope.eu/here-we-go-again



I’m feeling outraged, with a strong sense of déjà-vu. From my vantage point in the United Kingdom—where inequality and social injustice are in particularly sharp focus—we’re on the brink of yet another social and economic crisis. Even more so than in the rest of Europe, energy prices and the cost of living are rocketing. Yet what is happening at the top? What are our leaders doing? Why are some people, yet again, making eye-watering financial gains while others face destitution and a real fear of being cold and hungry this winter?

The image springs to mind of Nero fiddling while Rome burns—a depraved, corrupt and wildly unpopular emperor, blithely playing music while the populace suffers and failing through inertia to provide any leadership in a crisis. On a wider canvas, it encapsulates the inadequacies of so many political leaders over recent years, from the global financial crisis to the pandemic, in the face of the climate emergency and now the spiralling cost of living.

As a child, I thought the ‘fiddling’ Nero was up to related to the other English meaning of the word—obtaining money dishonestly, by embezzlement or corruption. I mistakenly assumed he had raided the imperial treasury and made off with his ill-gotten gold. It turns out, however, that my infant misconception makes for exactly the right metaphor of how business figures and investors have profited from the hardship of others. And that provokes even more moral outrage than the passive failures of hapless political leaders.

Unscrupulous practices

Look at who suffered from the global financial crisis. It wasn’t the rich, who had caused the problem through unscrupulous financial practices. It was the rest of us who paid the price, as average real incomes declined—and the poorest who suffered the most, with the lowest-paid workers seeing the steepest falls in wages. Meanwhile, the pay of top chief executives shot up. In the years following the crash, the world’s richest 1 per cent increased their wealth until they owned more than the bottom half of the world’s entire population.

snip

[Ocelot II]

1. Liz Truss, Britain's new Maggie Thatcher wannabe, isn't likely to improve anything.

Not sure what's going on elsewhere in Europe - the energy situation resulting from the Ukraine war and climate change is obviously a huge problem - but Britain looks to be in a huge mess.

[Demsrule86]

3. Trump in a dress...wants tax cuts.

[Rebosuro]

2. Rich get rich and the poor get poorer.

Last edited Mon Sep 12, 2022, 06:12 PM - Edit history (1)

Same as it ever was. Every single policy set forth by governments on every inch of this rock are set to make that continue. Anyone who thinks or says otherwise - regardless of political affiliation- is either benefitting from that policy of theft and corruption or severely deluded. Seniors and the disabled on fixed incomes, the working poor, and those on the bottom of the income pyramid are treated and viewed as nothing other that useless eaters and collateral damage. The global plantation must continue to funnel wealth into the hands of the masters at all costs. In the US right now we see the laughable narrative that inflation is being tamed. How convenient and miraculous that this coincides with third quarter calculations used to calculate the pittance of a raise called Cola for seniors and the disabled on Social Security and fixed incomes. Manipulation and corruption is the order of the day on every economic issue and level. Meanwhile, bills that boost benefits and bring millions over the poverty level sit idle and in mothballs, as trillions are funneled to the rich and top of the income pyramid by various useless feel good schemes and war mongering. There is ZERO that is ever done that doesn't benefit the rich masters of this global plantation.

This asshole put the intent and perspective of the parasites at the top pretty well over a century ago.

"I believe in the division of labor. You send us to Congress; we pass laws under which you make money…and out of your profits, you further contribute to our campaign funds to send us back again to pass more laws to enable you to make more money.

–Senator Boies Penrose 1896


The final analysis is a very simple one.

“The history of mankind shows that from the beginning of the world, the rich of all countries have been in a permanent state of conspiracy to keep down the poor of all countries, and for this plain reason – because the poverty of the poor man is essential to the riches of the rich man. No matter by what means they may disguise their operations, the rich are everlastingly plundering, debasing and brutalising the poor. All the crimes and superstitions of human nature have their origin in this cannibal warfare of riches against poverty. The desire of one man to live on the fruits of another’s labour is the original sin of the world. It is this which fills the world with faction and hypocrisy and has made all past history to be what Gibbon so justly described ‘a record of the crimes, absurdities and calamities of mankind’. It is the parent injustice from which all injustice springs.”

--James Bronterre O’Brien

[llashram]

4. we as a democracy

is still evolving, as should be. Fixation on just one point of one's distaste for anything precludes having hope for the total picture. I reject your total argument about our leaders minus the conman grifter that I hope ends up in prison for a time.

Humankind has a violent and confusing nature, true. Yet the evolution of the spirit has not stopped. Our flawed evolving democracy is still one of the best experiments in governing many, many human beings that this world has ever seen.