Capitalism

Faced with the mounting economic crisis, European leaders have promised aid to the hardest-hit member states. But there’s always strings attached. For France Insoumise MEP Manuel Bompard, the proposals for loans and grants ignore the real scale of the crisis — because they all put debt repayment above the needs of average Europeans.

[Not only are existing pensions too few, too poor, and/or facing increased downward pressure with repeated stock market crashes, but some of our pension funds actually invest in high objectionable businesses. Another needed element of a "green recovery"....Gene McGuckin]

May 21, 2020

 April 12, 2020

May 17, 2020

One might have hoped that the very severity of the threat posed by the pandemic would compel the elites who manage capitalist societies to behave more responsibly and decently. The return of the pre-neoliberal “nanny state” (however inadequate it was) seemed to some a real possibility. But while the capitalist state may be concerned with maintaining social equilibrium, preserving a basic level of public health and upholding its own legitimacy, it remains utterly devoted to ensuring the conditions in which businesses can function and profits can continue to flow.

MAY 7, 2020

The shitweasels are multiplying.

The rush to reopen the economy highlights a divide between those motivated by public health and those who would sacrifice minimum wage workers to protect profits

Last week John Ivison wrote a lazy screed for the National Post arguing that the CERB was too generous and would prompt minimum-wage workers to stay home rather than return to work in the middle of a pandemic.

May 2, 2020

I am getting sketched out. I am wearing a bandana on my face. I feel totally stupid that in frikken 2020, all I can find to protect my face is a piece of fabric. I am in the crowded elevator, breathing everyone else’s air. Mostly, people are making fun of me, or acting like I’m a paranoid weirdo. But one worker I don’t know well, a foreman from another trade, he looks at me with compassion in his eyes. I can see that he takes it seriously, as well.