Let's Get This Occupation Started

Let’s Get This Occupation Started

I hope this “Occupy” movement spreads and I hope people stick with it. We tend to feel things about issues like a crackhead flippin' channels while he's bored.

Channel Surfing

Remember the Chilean miners? That was HUGE! But no nobody cares anymore. Nobody asks what the conditions were like at that mine, whether more could have been done, how many previous mining accidents occurred where the miners didn't survive. In fact, there have been 34 deaths per year since 2000 in Chile's copper mines (1). There's a rich history of labour abuse and struggle we know little about. Dickens wrote about it in his novels, Howard Zinn documents it in his writings (2). Labour abuse has been a reality in every land and every era, but we don't care about that. The Chilean thing was a good story, we swallowed it whole, and then emotionally moved on.
BP Oil spill? Fukushima nuclear disaster? Wikileaks? Are these things even still going on? We totally forgot about them! (For the record, they ARE still going on and are still urgent concerns).
Remember the 2008 "Great Recession"? Do you even know anything about it? It has had far more devastating effects than 9/11, OJ Simpson, or the conclusion of Lost. But nobody in politics used it as their 24/7 talking point like they did with 9/11. In fact, no one really talks about it at all. And heaven help us if anyone tries to learn about it or do something about it. We're all in debt. That statement is almost literally true for every person in the industrialized world and every country. The average Canadian consumer debt is over $25,000 per person, not including the national debt and the inflation our children will have to bail our countries out of (3).
Who cares about Greece defaulting and going into chaos? I mean, it's a good story, but who cares about actually asking questions? Who cares why it happened to them or to Iceland? And the London Riots? Who cares that, since 1998, police have killed 333 citizens, yet not one officer was ever punished or charged. Who cares that this riot happened because after an officer fatally shot Mark Duggan -- in gun-controlled England -- police-officers physically harassed a 16 year old girl who was only protesting peacefully. Who cares if the people who live there say that’s what happened (4)? Let's just think of them as young, highly ethnic, hooligans who are being raging, ignorant, anarchists.    

Who Scarifices for Security in this Post 9/11 World?

A Breast Cancer survivor just got humiliated at an American airport when a standard pat-down included a public pat-down of her synthetic breasts (which replaced the ones she had to amputate). For the record, she was not a terrorist or drug-smuggler (5). Who cares? I didn’t even read the whole story, just the headline. It’s just so funny how, after 9/11, Western society swallowed the lesson that we have to give up many of our civil liberties in order to make everything safer in this now dangerous world.
What’s funnier is how the 1% don’t seem to think that they need to sacrifice with the rest of us. Environmental movements are still fiercely resisted (just ask Harper about regulating big business for the benefit of the environment). Does anyone care whether, after the BP Spill, our oil industry is doing things any safer or more responsibly? The Earth? Global Climate Change? Who cares?
Or how about economic safety? Watch Inside Job, Meltdown, Maxed Out, or read a book. Fractional-reserve banking is doomed to bankrupt us all for the benefit of the top 1%. Regulators are bought and paid for. The system creates way too many unnecessary risks for the benefit of the few and the risk of the many. That’s the story of the 2008 Global Recession. Things are the same now, many of the same people are still in charge, and many of those to blame have made MORE money. Remember AIG executives’ sweet getaway right after the bailout money had cleared (6)?
Or how about regular ol’ military safety. The US and its allies continue to make war around the globe for nothing more than strategic advantage and awarding of fat military-industrial contracts. It has little to do with making us safer or benefitting anyone else. If that were the case, we’d fight HIV in Africa and intervene in their bloody civil wars. Or maybe we’d campaign for global peace. The CIA already knows that when Western Powers topple foreign governments for their own selfish reasons, they create “blowback”. Basically, we create terrorists because we give them all the reasons they’ll ever need for hating us. Is it right? No. Is it the reality we face? Yes.
But why would the 1% make any sacrifices for our security? We need to make those sacrifices, not them. Just because they have all the money and make all the decisions doesn’t mean that the 1% can make any difference; it’s us who have to change our behavior.

A Problem of Trust

Well, we do have to change our behaviour. We need to care more about how things are run at every level. We need to be better informed and more demanding of our leadership. We need to strive to live in a world that we can be proud of, that we feel is really being the best it can be. But I think I get why people don’t care. Why people tune out. It’s because, no matter what, life goes on. We are all busy and we are all entitled to relax when we’re not busy. We elect people to take care of this stuff for us. The economy, the environment -- our role is supposed to be small. Don’t liter, find a job, pay our bills, walk a little more. Our lives are complex and demanding enough without worrying about the big stuff.
But, unfortunately, we can’t trust the 1% to take care of the public good -- our good. Hell, we probably can’t trust those who insulate them or those who would replace them. We just can’t trust anyone who controls so much in each of our individual lives. We can’t simply put our faith in anyone who, from afar, directs the affairs of our civilizations and our planet. These people are supposed to be leaders: the most talented and most responsible our society has to offer. They need to start living up to their job descriptions, no matter who they are, because they have the most responsibility on their hands. We need them to be their best. But we can’t trust them. Not our political leaders or our business leaders, at the very least. If we could trust them, if they took their responsibilities seriously, things would be better.

Jesus is Spinning in His Grave!

We potentially have the technology, labour, and moral wisdom to make this world a far better place. Our political discussions should be about how to take care of everyone and how to make ourselves as happy and fulfilled as possible. I mean, we’ve had these moral philosophies around for over 3000 years, and from every different kind of culture. Every religion teaches peace, compassion, unity, empathy. There’s no good reason why we still put up with far less from our leadership, and from ourselves.
We have the means to grow far more than enough food, build far more than enough material things, construct far better infrastructure, produce enough energy, and provide enough services and assistance for everyone. Our governments and voters should be arguing over how to best balance a surplus of resources between everyone. We all have different ideas about how much inequality should exist: how much is necessary and when the gap between rich and poor becomes unacceptable. We all have different ideas on what the details might be like: the mechanisms, rules, and principles. We have the power to force the 1% into these discussions.
Let’s remember, the 1% stand on a huge pyramid. They live in a dream realm that extends far up into the heights. Their wealth and power is just amazing. Yet, they only achieve those heights because of us. Almost 7 billion people laboring, consuming, buying, voting, obeying, serving. No matter how powerful or capable you are in respect to your society, it’s the people who make you. If you’re the king on an island of 11 people, you’re not much. If you are in the 1% who cuts off a huge slice of 7 billion people? Now that’s something. But make no mistake, the 99% hold the real power in our pockets. We are the king-makers. We just forget.
For example, Wal-Mart is huge. We’ve helped make it a king by spending so much of our money there. But if we decided not to buy anything from Wal-Mart ever again, it would shrivel up and die almost immediately. If we decided to say “suck it” to Harper (or Obama) and decide to elect Pete from down the street instead (because, even though he’s stupid, maybe he’d at least be honest with us), than Pete would be the political leader of the free world and Obama (or whoever else) would be a funny but odd footnote in political history (the first president in history to lose to a World of Warcraft addict).
Occupy!
Right now, we need to realize that we hold this system up. Right now, we need to remember that we supply all the power society runs on. Right now, we need to decide that whatever is going on in politics and the economy has to change. We need to take an interest in learning more or, at the very least, demand that our leaders are honest and responsible. We need to make sure that our leaders are -- above all else -- serving the 100% instead of the 1%.    

Links

1) Wikipedia. 2010 Copiapó mining accident. . 

2) Youtube. Howard Zinn on the Ludlow Massacre. . firstrunfeaturesnyc.

3) The Globe and Mail. Average debt for Canadians: $25,597. . June 1st 2011. 

Wikipedia. List of countries by external debt. .

Wikipedia.  List of sovereign states by current account balance. .

The Economist. World Debt Comparison:The Global Debt Clock.

4) Al Jazeera. Nothing 'mindless' about rioters. . Opinion. 09 Aug 2011.

Al Jazeera. Rioting for 'justice' in London. . 09 Aug 2011. 

The Guardian. Deaths in police custody since 1998: 333; officers convicted: none. . 3 Dec 2010.

5) The Globe and Mail. Breast cancer survivor slams ‘humiliating’ patdown at U.S. airport. . 04 Oct 2011.

6) Wikipedia. AIG bonus payments controversy. . 

Against Supply-Side Economics (And the Rape of the Public Good)

In today’s world, the tax burden has been shifted from the rich to the middle and lower classes. This has been done in the name of supply-side economics or trickle-down economics.

According to John Ralston Saul’s The Collapse of Globalism, in order to compensate for the loss of so much corporate and upper-class tax revenues, many governments are now relying more heavily upon stealth taxes. Stealth tax draws revenue from the middle to lower class in ways which aren’t as obvious to the public. One popular form is the taxation and encouragement of gambling. During the globalization period, gambling revenues in most developed countries has risen 10-15% a year. Revenues in New Zealand equal $12 billion a year, Britain is at $25 billion a year. India only spends $7 billion a year in gambling, which is still 2% of its GDP. Worldwide, $900 billion of citizen money is gambled and taxed.

Countries support this trend. The tax revenue that is created by this $900 billion industry is now essential for many countries who have given up their lucrative upper-class and corporate tax base. In Britain, 9.7 billion British Pounds from gambling tax revenue was spent on public services. That is a huge chunk of public money – more than half of what was contributed to the public good through corporate tax.  In oil-rich Alberta, the provincial government sometimes makes more revenue from gambling than from oil-and-gas.

Supply-side theory’s main incentive to reduce upper-class and corporate taxes is the threat that the rich will simply pull their money out if they have to pay high taxes. In the Globalist era (1970’s to present), many multinationals simply set up their headquarters and bank accounts in countries with low or no taxes. For example, the infamous Halliburton, who has made so much money off of Chaney and Bush’s government reconstruction contracts in Iraq and New Orleans – money from the public coffers – have moved their headquarters to Dubai in order to dodge paying higher taxes to the American public.

It seems inevitable that the global community will soon have to remedy the fact that companies can make so much money from a nation’s resources, consumers, and public funds and yet try to avoid having to give any of that money back. One common sense approach could be the creation of international tax laws that force these multinationals to pay a fair amount of tax to the nation(s) from which they generate so much profit and resource.

Another solution can involve fighting the supply-side economic structure. The idea, that giving tax breaks, interest-relief, and bailouts to the wealthy section of the economy is actually healthy for the whole state, has been proven false. There is an almost universal consensus that the gap between the rich and poor is widening, that the middle class is eroding, and that the median Western family is surviving on a tighter budget than in the 1970’s. This fact is plain to see: the average 1970’s family lived off of a single income (usually the man’s), while now households with fewer children require both parents to work in order to maintain a similar lifestyle.   

The supply-side theory has always, hypothetically, held some water. As pure theory, it makes some intuitive sense that if the companies and investors have more money and less expenses, they will then use that money to hire more people, invest in more infrastructure, pay higher wages, provide more benefits, and so forth. Metaphorically, it’s the image of a tree. The wider and higher its branches stretch out, the more sunlight the leaves can soak in, and then the more energy the tree can share through its whole body – branches, truck, and roots.

But the actual practice of this theory has shown us that these benefits do not reach the trunk and roots of the greater public. Instead, we find more of a closed loop of money. This is illustrated through the widening gap between rich and poor. Also, the gap is seen in comparing average executive-to-worker wage ratios. In the 1970’s, in America, the average executive made 30x the salary of his average worker. Today, the average executive makes 300-500x the salary of the average worker. It seems as if supply-side economics has actually pooled at the top as opposed to tickling down. 

Another compelling example against supply-side economics comes out of the American bailout. The American government (as with many other governments) choose to borrow huge sums of money to bailout the large financial institutions instead of the general public ,who were also swimming in debt. The theory was, again, supply-side. IF we keep these institutions alive, more money will be circulated, and thus more jobs and economic growth. Well what did those companies do with their bailout money?

Companies like AIG, an embodiment of the unregulated and greedy actions that directly caused the financial crisis, took the taxpayers bailout and immediately spent it on… bonuses and luxurious retreats for their executives. How is that supposed to help the public good?

Yet still, even after the bailouts and its failure, the public does little to contest supply-side economics in action. The rich still get all the tax breaks and public financing. Politicians, economists, and news pundits still argue that this is the best policy for aiding the public, but the public still gets poorer and poorer while the national debt keeps rising and rising. Rising national debt is another of the stealth taxes. The higher the national debt, the higher the interest payments. And those interest payments, along with the debt itself, is paid through taxpayer money. The corporations get taxpayer bailout money and the corporate taxes stay low, so the public is left paying the interest on these loans as well.

In opposition to the supply-side, trickle-down, theory, I’d like to suggest a Keysonian approach. You know, the type of economics that helped building the West into a financial giant after WWII with the introduction of the Welfare State, universal health care, Social Security, infrastructure projects, and the like. The type of economics like the New Deal, or the Marshall Plan, which donated money to Europe and Japan to help them rebuild, which they did in incredible fashion.

My metaphor is one of watering a tree. When you water the ground below the tree, the roots soak up the water and push it all the way through the tree so that every single cell gets some of that water. If money and wealth are invested into the lower and middle classes, that money does get shared with the upper classes in the form of spending. The more money people have, the more they consume. Especially in our current culture. If the rich get the money, there’s no reason why they have to share it with the public. They might create more jobs, or they might just spend it on themselves. If the public gets the money, then whatever they spend it on creates tax revenue and goes to companies who provide services and products. The money gets soaked up through the roots and goes through the entire tree. In this way, it’s an open loop that truly circulates the wealth.

If the bailout had injected the money into the public, perhaps that money would have more evenly circulated throughout the system. The public is still one of a consumer culture. If the public had the funds to pay off their mortgages and credit cards bills, then many of the financial institutions would have had a resurrected stream of money coming in. As well, the public would have kept up higher levels of consumer spreading, which again stimulates corporations. Instead, the money went directly to the corporations first, leaving them with the option to share with the public or no. In the end, they haven’t. Job growth remains abysmal. Homes are still being foreclosed on at an alarming rate in the US. Instead of the public getting money which they would, in turn, spend on the corporations, the public got shafted. No jobs. A rising national debt. And major financial institutions given life by taxpayer money, not to help the public, but so they can continue to call in the public’s debt through mortgages, foreclosure, and credit card bills.

All while the public gets sued for downloading mp3s because it’s called “theft”.

Sources:

John Ralston Saul’s book The Collapse of Globalism: And the Reinvention of the World.   (2005)

The documentary Maxed Out: Hard Times, Easy Credit and the Era of Predatory Lenders (2006) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxed_Out

CBC’s Meltdown mini-series. http://www.cbc.ca/doczone/meltdown/about.html