The Gap Widens ( 4 )

And From the BBC

The rapidly rising incomes of the richest 10% of the population are the major factor contributing to growing inequality in Britain.
According to the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS), an independent think tank, the incomes of the top 10% have risen faster than those of the population as a whole since Labour came to power in 1997. And that increase has been particularly concentrated at the very top of the income distribution - among the half million individuals in the top 1% of the income scale.

Between the 1996-97 tax year and 2004-05, the income of the richest 1% grew at an annual rate of 3.1%, compared to 2.3% for the population as a whole, and the income of the top 0.1% grew by 4.4%. The stock market boom has boosted the income of the rich
The growth was particularly strong in the Labour's first term, where the income of the super-rich grew by 8% per year. The IFS suggests that the rising stock market between 2005 and 2007 may have further boosted the income of the rich - a view confirmed by the 20% increase in the wealth of those in the Sunday Times rich list in 2007.

In contrast, those at the bottom of the income distribution - and especially the poorest 15% of households - saw their income go up at below-average rates, and in some cases even fell.

"It seems there are two interesting phenomena, at either end of the income scale, that are driving trends in overall income inequality" said IFS's Mike Brewer

Overall, the gap between the bottom 10% and the top 10% has widened. The top 10% of individuals in the UK now receive 40% of all personal income, while the bottom 90% receive 60%. The top 0.1% get 4.3% of all income - the highest figure in the UK since the 1930s, and three times as much as they received as a share of income in 1979.

The report says that "income inequality is at its highest level since the late 1940s".

The average income of the top tenth, of £49,950, was double the average income of all taxpayers (£24,769) and triple that of all households (£15,000), one-third of whom pay no tax.
To get into the top 1%, an individual needed an income of £100,000, and to get into the top 0.1%, £350,000. The average income of £155,000, while the top 0.1% of taxpayers had an average income of £780,000.

WHO ARE THE VERY RICH?
Male: 90%
Middle-aged: 80%
Live in London/SE: 70%
Work in finance, property, accountancy, law: 60%
Average income: £785,000
Source: IFS, top 0.1% of GB taxpayers, 2004/5

yet again another bunch of bankers

Just how does all those bank losses bear on the rich rewards that bankers are accustomed to ? Well , for the minions of Merrill Lynch , the investment bank , not very much , at all .

This according to The Independent

Despite plunging $8.6 billion into the red , and writing off a further $14.1bn of its investments in mortgage-backed debts, taking the total write-downs to $22bn and making it Wall Street's biggest loser since the mortgage market collapsed in the summer Merrill Lynch could still pay its executives an average pay of $353,089 per employee and an average bonus of $211,849, just down only very modestly from the previous year when the figures were $364,940 and $218,957, respectively despite the sub-prime mortgage meltdown .

Stan O'Neal , the ex - chief executive of Merrill Lynch received a retirement package estimated at $160 million .

THE GAP WIDENS (3)

The inequalities of capitalism are worldwide, as this recent example from Peru shows.
"Kicking a football around a dusty lot, Judin Quicano looks like any other boy of four. But stand him against a standard growth chart and he is almost a head shorter than he should be at his age. ...Health officials say he is among nearly 30% of Peruvian children in his age group who suffer from chronic malnutrition. The figure rises to 90% in such places as Lliupapuquio, a village in Apurimac department in Peru's heavily Indian southern Andes where Judin lives. The picture is similar in neighbouring Bolivia and Ecuador. What makes the stunting of children's lives and bodies more shocking in Peru's case is that the country is enjoying a boom. The GDP expanded by 8.3% last year alone, and is some 45% bigger today than it was in 2001 ... Although governments have increased spending on social programmes, they have done little to improve their effectiveness. In Apurimac, majors complain of duplication, corruption and lack of local control. But the bigghest problem is that economic growth is not reaching many parts of the Andes. Official figures put poverty in Apurimac at 74.8 in 2006, having increased slightly since 2004." (Economist, 10 January) RD

THE GAP WIDENS (2)

An example of how the gap between rich and poor is growing in China can be seen from the wealth enjoyed by the capitalist class in that country.
"In early December, Beijing's in-crowd converged on the central business district for the opening of the Kunlun gallery. Sipping Veuve Clicquot and Mumm champagne, the real estate tycoons, stock market warriors, and Prada-clad celebrities gawked at Ming Dynasty Buddhist statuary and 15th century scroll paintings. Four Tibetan art works eventually fetched $3.4 million and, at a follow-up auction eight days later, 87 pieces of Buddhist art netted $10.4 million." (Yahoo News, 11 January) RD

THE GAP WIDENS

The gap between rich and poor widens as capitalism develops, so it should come as no surprise that China is experiencing just such a gap. "Beijing wants to give the impression of a "harmonious society", yet the gap between rich and poor is growing. With food-price inflation nudging 20 per cent, some fear protests. The heavy, grey pollution that squats like a toad over the capital has caused the president of the International Olympic Committee, Jacques Rogge, to talk of delaying the marathon. The government's confidence seems brittle. The dissident writer Hu Jia was arrested for "subverting state authority" in late December. Hu Jia sees the problems of the poor, those affected by environmental problems and people with Aids as indivisible, and this government cannot abide anyone who joins the dots. A new decree banning all but state-owned video-sharing sites will hit those showing any anti-government footage."
(New Statesman, 10 January) RD

CHINESE BOOMING DEATH RATE

"Accidents in China's notoriously dangerous coal mines killed nearly 3,800 people last year, state media reported Saturday — a toll that is a marked improvement from previous years, but still leaves China's mines the world's deadliest. A total of 3,786 were killed in mining accidents in 2007 — 20 percent lower than the 2006 toll, indicating the effectiveness of a safety campaign to shut small, illegal mining operations and reduce gas explosions, the Xinhua News Agency quoted the head of China's government safety watchdog as saying. Coal is the lifeblood of China's booming, energy-hungry economy. The mining industry's safety, which has never been good, has often suffered as mine owners push to dig up more coal to take advantage of higher prices." (Yahoo News, 12 January)The development of capitalism in China has led to more deaths amongst the working class. Surprise, surprise? RD

POOR AND DESPERATE

Men and women because of poverty are forced to work for wages. Inside Europe and North America they have to do as they are told by their masters, to turn up on time to be respectful and if asked to do so cringe, but it is even worse for our African comrades.
"Last year roughly 31,000 Africans tried to reach the Canary Islands, a prime transit point to Europe, in more than 900 boats. About 6,000 died or disappeared, according to one estimate cited by the United Nations." (New York Times, 14 January)
Men and women of the working class are dying to be exploited. Let us get rid of this mad society. 6.000 died last year, how many this year? RD

PROGRESSING BACKWARDS

In a sane society technological advances would be looked upon as a step forward for humanity, but we don't live in a sane society we live in capitalism. Simon Caulkin the Management Editor of the Observer reveals some alarming outcomes of such technical progress.
"More than half of all UK employees - 52 per cent - are now subject to computer surveillance at work, according to research from the Economic and Social Research Council's "Future of Work" programme. That's a remarkable figure, and it has lead to a sharp increase in strain among those being monitored - particularly white-collar administrative staff. ... Substantial pay rises for most managers contrast with static or even declining wages for low-end computer-monitored workers, who are working harder, and longer hours, into the bargain." (Observer, 13 January) RD

PROPHETS AND PROFITS

The future of global warming is a complex subject, but many experts believe the growth of carbon emissions could lead to disaster. One of the supporters of that notion is the World Bank with its various schemes to halt or lessen these emissions, but their difficulty is that they also support the profit system so they are left in a contradictory position.
"The World Bank has emerged as one of the key backers behind an explosion of cattle ranching in the Amazon, which new research has identified as the greatest threat to the survival of the rainforest. Ranching has grown by half in the last three years, driven by new industrial slaughterhouses which are being constructed in the Amazon basin with the help of the World Bank. The revelation flies in the face of claims from the bank that it is funding efforts to halt deforestation and reduce the massive greenhouse gas emissions it causes. Roberto Smeraldi, head of Friends of the Earth Brazil and lead author of the new report, obtained exclusively by The Independent on Sunday, said the bank's contradictory policy on forests was now clear: "On the one hand you try and save the forest; on the other you give incentives for its conversion." (Independent on Sunday, 13 January) RD

CAPITALISM BRINGS DESTRUCTION

The history of capitalism is one of death and destruction. Thus the English enclosure acts decimated the agricultural population, the Highland Clearances replaced generations of clans with sheep, the indigenous population of the USA were robbed and murdered, the aborigines of Australia were killed like vermin and now in South America the same pattern emerges."These are the Yanomami; a group of just under 30,000 indigenous people who live in one of the most remote and mysterious regions of the Amazon, a Portugal-sized area of almost pristine jungle, straddling the border between Brazil and Venezuela. For thousands of years the Yanomami have inhabited the region living in an almost identical way, hunters and gatherers, bound by age-old traditions and isolated from the modern world, deep in the world's largest tropical rainforest. But for how long? In the 1980s, some 40,000 illegal wildcat miners poured into the Yanomami's ancestral lands in search of gold. ... According to some sources, before the government expelled the miners in 1992, up to 20% of the Yanomami people died in just seven years. Now the Indians fear history may be about to repeat itself. At the end of last year, the indigenous rights NGO Survival International reported that hundreds of illegal miners - known in Brazil as garimpeiros - were again flocking into Yanomami lands. Activists fear that the miners are likely to unleash a new wave of destruction in the region; bringing violence, alcoholism, disease and prostitution to the region's virtually untouched indigenous villages." Sunday Herald, 13 January) RD

School exam cheats

Soicialist Courier has previously drawn attention to the inequities of the education system that provided for the more privileged sections rather than the poorer students . We now discover that built into the school examination system was a system of appeals procedure against low grades that favoured those who attended larger independents and comprehensives in wealthy suburbs, as opposed to those in deprived or sparsely populated areas.

Thousands of pupils from leading state and independent schools across Scotland were apparently given artificially inflated exam qualifications through a controversial computerised appeal system. Under the scheme, which was scrapped last year, Standard Grade and Higher exam results at certain schools were automatically upgraded without being separately checked by officials at the Scottish Qualifications Authority. New SQA figures reveal that in 2007, when these exam appeals were manually checked for the first time in 15 years, a large proportion were rejected demonstrating that a sizeable number of previous upgrades were questionable. Schools with small class sizes or those where only a handful of pupils were predicted A passes were not eligible. Therefore, bright pupils who just fail to meet their predicted grades from these schools would not be automatically uplifted. Five out of the 10 schools with the most derived grades were private, with George Watson's College in Edinburgh topping the list and Hutchesons' Grammar in Glasgow coming second. Two comprehensive schools from East Renfrewshire, Williamwood High School in Clarkston and St Ninian's in Giffnock, also had a high number of derived grades.

Christina McKelvie, SNP MSP and a member of the Scottish Parliament's education committee, said: "This change in the appeal rate shows the SNP was right to demand the end of the derived grades system which was seen to clearly favour pupils in better-off areas or in private education..."

John Milligan, a science teacher from Sutherland who was responsible for starting a campaign to end derived grades, said the figures vindicated his position. "It was was already hard enough for pupils from poorer areas to overcome hurdles in their path and this system supported that..."

CRISIS, WHAT CRISIS?

The newspapers are full of foreboding about a possible economic slump and cite mortgage re-possessions and credit card debt, but this only applies to members of the working class. As usual the owning class are still rolling in it.
"If the economy is about to hit a rough patch, there was scant evidence of it at the opening day of the Collins Stewart London Boat Show at the Excel exhibition centre in Docklands. Sunseeker, a company based in Poole, Dorset, has the most expensive boat on sale, an £11.5m super yacht (anything over 24 metres is a super yacht) moored outside the hall. The Sunseeker 37 has three decks and four guest berths. It has a professional galley, room for a dozen people to sit around a walnut dining table, two lounge areas and a huge sundeck. Robert Braithwaite, who runs the company, said the firm has sold 10 and that anyone wanting to buy one would now have to wait until 2011." (Guardian, 12 January) RD

Northern on the Rocks

Northern Rock , the bank that is in crisis , has been paying a number of its senior managers secret bonuses according to a report in the Independent .

The bank has sanctioned millions of pounds in confidential "retention bonuses" to managers and management board directors deemed "essential to its continuing excellent operational performance". Some 173 staff out of a workforce of more than 6,000 have been paid the bonuses. An outlay of more than £2 million a month on bonuses to this select band of employees.

As the saying goes "The Devil protects his own"

CASH TODAY, HEAVEN TOMORROW

"The love of money," the New Testament teaches in Timothy 1.6:10, "is the root of all evil." But what about some televangelists' fondness for major bling — such as multiple, multimillion dollar estates, luxury cars, vacation homes, exotic trips and private jets? Does that make them, in the words of one author, "pimps in the pulpit?" Many outside the evangelical movement are puzzled by the apparent lack of outrage following reports of high-living, tax-exempt religious broadcasters. Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, has been looking into six mega church pastors and broadcast ministries, requesting financial records. Richard Roberts has stepped down as president of Oral Roberts University following charges that he used the school's resources for family perks, such as a trip to the Bahamas for his daughter. These charges come as no surprise to those within the evangelical world. Such tales of excess and profligacy have been an open secret for years." (Yahoo News, 7 January)
There is an old bible notion that it will be easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. We imagine some of these holy-rollers will be kicking the camels out of the way come judgement day! RD

MAKING KIDS KILLERS

"Potential recruits to the armed forces are given a misleading picture of military life, including the physical risks and ethical dilemmas involved, according to a report published today. ... Britain is the only European country which recruits youngsters into the armed forces from the age of 16, though they cannot be deployed on operations until they are 18. The Ministry of Defence, which last night criticised the report, says this is the only way it can compete in the battle to attract school-leavers. However, today's report says the armed forces draw non-officer recruits mainly from among young people with "low educational attainment and living in poor communities". More than £2bn is invested each year in recruiting and training about 20,000 new personnel to replace those who leave, it adds. ...The report was written by David Gee, a researcher who formerly ran the Quakers' peace and disarmament programme. It was funded by the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust." (Guardian, 7 January)
The army and the report may be in disagreement, but what cannot be disputed is the statement that recruitment is aimed at those living in poor communities. Poverty was always the most efficient recruiting sergeant! RD

HAPPY NEW YEAR?

The US primary elections have featured many politicians claiming that US forces in the Middle East are now in ascendancy; alas the death statistics give the lie to that notion.
"Many Americans and Iraqis feel that 2007 was the year the war in Iraq turned around: the “surge” strategy has pacified large sections of the country; previously hostile factions like those of the cleric Moktada al-Sadr and the sheiks in Anbar Province have dropped their opposition or even sided with American and government forces; and the number of insurgent attacks has dropped steadily. Still, numbers don’t lie: for those in uniform, 2007 was the deadliest year since the invasion. The chart below — compiled from data provided by the American and Iraqi governments and news media organizations (the independent Coalition Casualty Count in particular) — gives information on the type and location of each attack responsible for the 2,592 recorded deaths among American and other coalition troops, Iraqi security forces and members of the peshmerga militias controlled by the Kurdish government. Since the data on Iraqi security forces killed are not reported systematically by the Baghdad government, these numbers have been accrued through news reports; the actual number of Iraqi deaths is likely to be much higher. And, sadly, civilian fatalities in Iraq last year were simply too numerous to represent on a single newspaper page." (New York Times, 6 January) RD

THIS IS COMMUNISM?

Socialists have always maintained that countries like Russia and China that have claimed to be establishing socialism were in fact building up state capitalism, and now a pillar of US capitalism agrees with us that China has nothing to do with socialism.
"The spending choices for China's rich are multiplying as quickly as the world's fastest-growing major economy can mint new tycoons. In the latest sign of China's rising upper crust and its growing appeal to international marketers, Robb Report, a self-declared catalogue of the best of the best for the richest of the rich, is making its pitch here with a Chinese-language edition. The 200-plus-page Chinese monthly, published under the name Robb Report Lifestyle, is packed with news, product placements and advertising that promotes elite brands such as Volkswagen AG's Bugatti sports cars and Lürssen yachts to an audience." (Wall Street Journal, 9 January) RD

THE COST OF HEALTH (2)

"Last month, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation donated $19 million to the Drugs for Neglected Diseases Initiative to further one of its goals: finding a new drug for African sleeping sickness. Not that $19 million will come close to doing that. Even if a miracle cure is found, it will take lab work and clinical trials that could easily cost $100 million to prove it is really a miracle and not the Vioxx of the African savannah. But the gift spotlights just how tricky the search for new treatments can be when the disease is fearsome but nearly forgotten because its victims are poor and obscure. ...“Sleeping sickness” is too benign a nickname for human African trypanosomiasis, which is caused by a protozoan spread by biting tsetse flies. When the parasites enter the brain, victims hallucinate wildly. They have been known to chase neighbours with machetes, throw themselves into latrines and scream with pain at the touch of water. Only at the end do they lapse into a lassitude so great that they cannot eat, followed by coma and death. About 150,000 people contract the disease each year, but 50 million people in 36 countries live in areas where they are at risk." (New York Times, 8 January)
How typical of capitalism, we have an awful disease but it is not lucrative enough to provide a cure and anyway the victims are all poor! RD

THE COST OF HEALTH

There is an illusion abroad that the NHS is free and available to all, but in fact like everything else inside capitalism health has a price and the wealthier you are the healthier you are likely to be.
"Drug rationing is essential in the NHS, and ministers should back the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice) which plays the key role in deciding which ones are worthwhile, MPs will say today in a hard-hitting report. The health select committee will call for more appraisals, not less, by Nice, which has been castigated by patient groups and drug companies whenever it has banned a new drug from the NHS. In a report following an inquiry into the workings of Nice and the fierce opposition it provokes, MPs recommend that all drugs should be given a rapid appraisal by Nice at the time of launch. Those that clearly work well enough and are cheap enough - probably no more than £20,000 a patient a year, which is lower than the current threshold - would be provided by the NHS straight away. More expensive medicines would have to go through a full appraisal which could take more than a year. Kevin Barron, the committee's chairman, said that might have the beneficial effect of encouraging some drug companies to pitch their drugs at lower prices. The drug industry was not pleased. "British patients already have worse access to new medicines than others in Europe," said Richard Barker, the director general of the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry." (Guardian, 10 January) RD

Blair - politican for hire

Tony Blair has taken a part-time post with US investment bank JPMorgan , one of Wall Street's leading banks, part of JPMorgan Chase & Co, a global financial services firm with assets of $1.5 trillion (£760billion) and operations in more than 50 countries. Blair has been employed "in a senior advisory capacity", the bank said ,

Advising the bank on the "political and economic changes that globalisation brings" according to Blair himself .

It is not known how much JPMorgan will pay him, but some estimates say more than $1m (£500,000) a year. The bank said he had a "unique perspective".

Blair would advise the firm's chief executive and senior management team, "drawing on his immense international experience to provide the firm with strategic advice and insight on global political issues and emerging trends... Our firm will benefit greatly from his knowledge and experience," the bank said.

Blair earlier told the Financial Times he planned to take up "a small handful" of similar roles with other companies in different sectors.
"I have always been interested in commerce and the impact of globalisation. Nowadays, the intersection between politics and the economy in different parts of the world, including the emerging markets, is very strong."

As prime minister he was always a representative of the capitalist class and now , without the need to disguise the fact to the British elector , Blair can openly and shamelessly promote world capitalist interests .