POVERTY IN THE USA

It is common for the mass media to speak of world poverty as something that only occurs in some far-off backward nations, but the reality is somewhat different. The USA is the most developed capitalist country in the world yet it too suffers from poverty that forces many of its citizens to exist on food stamps and government hand-outs. "While the mainstream media has all but convinced most Americans that the nation is slowly climbing out of the "recession," new statistics released by the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) suggest otherwise. According to just-released participation numbers for the agency's Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), known more commonly as "food stamps," nearly one in six Americans now participates in the program, which represents a new record high. Rising from 14.3 percent of the US population participating in the program back in February, the new numbers are a bit shocking when considering how many of these new enrollees actually are. It is not simply the very poor and chronic abusers that are taking advantage of the program -- many former middle class families now struggling just to get by are having to sign up for government assistance." (Natural News.com, 9 July) RD

Taking the pain

A report showed 43% of Scots say they struggle to make it to pay day.
The report by insolvency trade body R3 showed that, over the past three months, 539,000 Scots have taken on additional debt through credit cards, loans and increased overdraft facilities. According to the quarterly personal debt snapshot that equates to 13% of the Scottish population.

More than 200,000 Scots had taken out a high interest payday loan in the last year. But one in five Scots say that after receiving payday loans they then struggle to repay them.

R3 Scottish council member John Hall said: “It is extremely worrying that such a large percentage of people are struggling to make it to pay day and that many are using pay day loans to bridge the gap. These loans tend to have high interest rates and often those who use this type of credit find themselves in a vicious debt cycle, especially if they then experience a sudden job loss.”

John Dickie, head of the Child Poverty Action Group in Scotland, said: “With Government policies slashing family incomes and food and fuel prices soaring it’s not surprising that Scots are racking up more debt."

The Scottish anti-poverty network, Poverty Alliance, said there were issues surrounding the 400,000 Scots who are earning less than what is considered a living wage, estimated to be around £7 per hour, at a time when living costs are rising. Eddie Follan of Poverty Alliance said: “It is clear that increasing numbers of Scots are under pressure to make ends meet as the price of essentials like food and energy continue to rise. At the same time low pay continues to be a blight on too many of our citizens. The number of people who are in work and live in poverty is increasing.” He said those on low pay were “no doubt supplementing their low incomes with unsustainable and expensive debt”.

CAS chief executive Lucy McTernan said: “Our evidence shows that across Scotland, debt levels increased by 50% over the period of the recession, with the average debt among our clients reaching more than £20,000.”

Citizens Advice Scotland says four out of five young Scots have been in debt by the age of 21, and a third have owed more than £5000.

sharing the pain?

In 2006 Andy Hornby was appointed chief executive of HBOS. One analyst wrote in a City circular: "Andy Hornby is a superstar." He was said to have been devastated by the collapse of HBOS in 2008. But within nine months he was back with Alliance Boots. He was the highest paid member of the Alliance Boots' board, with a pay package of £2.4 million which included £750,000 of bonuses, plus bene-fits and pension supplements. But he quit Boots after less than two years in charge, stating that he needed to step back from corporate life. Executive chairman Stefano Pessina said that Hornby was stressed and required a break. At the time the company said he would not receive a pay-off but the annual report revealed he received a £450,000 cheque to stop him joining a rival healthcare group.

Hornby is back in another top job - the head of the bookmaker chain Coral. He joined Gala Coral Group as chief executive with the job of reviving the bookmaking arm of the gambling company. He will take control over 1,670 shops as well as online and telephone betting services.

So from the stock market casino to the bookies, Hornby gambles on and while we lose , he wins.

http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/scotland/Andy-Hornby-lands-a-top.6804297.jp

NET PROFIT, SOCIAL LOSS

In the mad struggle for bigger and bigger profits the owning class have no regard to what social problems may arise from their ruthless pursuit to net profits. Thus we have the decimation of fishing stocks around Iceland and the Faroe Islands. "Mackerel could vanish from Britain's fishmongers and supermarkets within three years because giant foreign trawlers and factory ships are being allowed to strip out the entire stock, scientists have warned. ..."There were about 3m tons of mackerel in the northeast Atlantic at the start of the year but by the end we will have removed about a third of the entire stock," said Paul Fernandes, a leading fisheries researcher at Aberdeen University." (Sunday Times, 17 July) RD

Who owns the North Pole - Part 36

Norway’s decision to move its military command centre 1,000km north from its former location last year highlights the rising strategic stakes in the Arctic amid predictions that global warming will unlock icebound resources and shipping routes.

“More than half of Norwegian waters are north of the Arctic Circle,” says Maj-Gen Rune Jakobsen, deputy chief of staff at the headquarters, gesturing at a map showing Norway’s maritime borders converging with those of Russia, Canada, the US and Greenland around the North Pole. “So it’s only natural that it gets a lot of our attention.”

Norway is not the only country turning its military’s attention to the frozen north. Russia’s defence ministry announced plans last week to create two army brigades to defend its polar territory, and Canada is sending more than 1,000 troops to the region in August for its biggest Arctic. After a quiet period at the end of the cold war, the Russian air force has become more active around Norway’s Arctic airspace. Norwegian officials claim Russia has even carried out mock bombing raids off the coast near Bodø.

The build-up is fuelling fears of conflict in a region estimated to hold up to a quarter of the world’s undiscovered oil and gas. Norway is counting on polar resources to prolong its oil boom as North Sea reserves decline. Statoil, the Norwegian state-controlled energy group, already has one Arctic project on-stream – the Snohvit gas field in the Barents Sea – and in April announced a big oil discovery 100km farther north. The country also stands to benefit from the opening of new shipping routes as polar ice recedes. Last summer, a mine in the far north of Norway delivered 41,000 tonnes of iron ore through Arctic waters to China, shaving 18 days off the time it would have taken via the Suez canal.

“If you put together resources, transport routes and people you have the mix you need for potential conflict,” says Jonas Gahr Støre, Norway’s foreign minister. “But it is up to the Arctic states to manage this responsibly and make sure that is not how it ends up.”

"If you want peace, prepare for war" is the age-old adage - Socialist Courier thinks that the idea of ensuring peace by military build-ups rather ominous and fool-hardy.

SOME CHILLING FACTS

Politicians are fond of painting a picture of social improvement. They love to tell us how lucky we are to live in a modern progressive Britain. The latest figures about the plight of the old and poor show what a piece of fiction this will prove to be this winter."One in five households in fuel poverty as energy prices soar. 5.5m homes spend over 10% of income on fuel, and bills will rise further to fund new power networks. Figures show a huge rise in UK households in fuel poverty, even before expected rises in the price of gas and electricity, and charities predicted that this winter would see millions more people struggling to keep warm at home. The Department of Energy and Climate Change statistics show 700,000 more UK families fell into fuel poverty in 2009, bringing the total to 5.5 million - one in five of all households." (Guardian, 15 July) RD

FUELLING POVERTY

Scotland is on course for “crisis levels” of fuel poverty with one in four struggling to pay their bills, it was claimed. Nearly one third of all homes north of the Border are now classed as “fuel poor” when the cost of rising bills is set against family incomes, according to a Government report.

750,000 Scottish households live below the fuel poverty line. This is where households spend more than 10% of their income on keeping warm. And 900,000 could soon be below the line due to recent rises.

http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/home-news/fuel-poverty-crisis-warning-scottish-fuel-poverty-crisis-warning-1.1112254

POLITICAL REALITIES

We are taught by the media that politicians are clever, devoted people whom we should respect. However from time  these politicians often reveal themselves as complete idiots. The vice-president of the USA Dan Quale once portrayed his grasp of geo-politics when he declared "I would like to visit Latin America but I don't speak Latin". Michele Bachmann, the Republican presidential hopeful recently signed her agreement to the statement that a black child born into slavery "was more likely to be raised by his mother and father in a two-parent household than was an African-American born after the election of the USA's first African-American president." This ridiculous claim was made despite the fact that slaves in the USA were forbidden to marry and were often separated from their family when sold. "It is not the first time that Mrs. Bachmann has found herself at the centre of controversy over her historical interpretation. She was widely criticised for asserting that American Founding Fathers, the authors of the Constitution, had "worked tirelessly" to end slavery, when more than half were slave owners and all signed off on a document that counted slaves as only "three-fifths" of a person." (Times, 11 July) It would seem that Bachmann's political knowledge is on par with Quale's. RD

MODERN SLAVERY

Capitalism is an awful society, not only does a tiny minority legally exploit the vast majority it also allows criminals to brutalise and dehumanise vulnerable workers. This is not a petty matter - it is a worldwide scam that affect millions. "Anyone who thinks slavery ended with the 13th Amendment is not paying attention. According to the latest State Department statistics, as many as 100,000 people in the United States are in bondage and perhaps 27 million people worldwide. The numbers are staggering. These victims of human trafficking are vulnerable men, women or children coerced into servitude for sex or labor. They might be transported from Russia to Europe, from the Philippines to Dubai, or held in their hometown. The stories are heartbreaking. The Cambodian girl sold to a brothel who was stabbed in the eye by the brothel's owner when she fought back. The Middle Eastern woman hired as a domestic in London whose employers seized her passport and locked her away in the house. The teenager in Dallas forced into prostitution." (New York Times, 1 July) RD  

Reading Notes

From "The State and the Socialist Revolution" by J.Martov,
"In reality, the state is nothing more than a machine for the oppression of one class by another, and indeed in the democratic republic no less than in the monarchy; and at best an evil inherited by the proletariat after its victorious struggle for class supremacy whose worse sides the proletariat, just like the Commune, will have at the earliest possible moment to lop off, until such time as a new generation, reared under new and free social conditions, will be able to throw on the scrap heap, all the useless lumber of the state." (Engels in his introduction to 'the
Civil War in France").
"From the ground provided by such economic illusions, we see rise again the fallacy that the liberty of the working class can be accomplished by the destruction of the State and not by the conquest of the State. This belief throws back the revolutionary working class movement toward the confusion, indefiniteness and low ideological level that characterized it at the time of the Commune of 1871."
" In her polemic against Edouard Bernstein, Rosa Luxemburg declared, quite correctly, that 'there never was any doubt for Marx and Engels about the necessity of having the proletariat conquer political power."

chinese crackers

ZhengYonggang's $600m (£377m) fortune was built by taking a state-owned firm into the private sector. Zheng does not owe his success to sheer hard work.He has insisted on working no more than eight hours a day and has a 20-minute nap on weekdays. Zheng has developed his own management strategy which he calls "pagoda structure management". Instead of micro-managing, he adopts a more Western style, with a team of senior staff responsible for their own departments.

Lamborghini sales tripled in China. Rolls-Royce's rose 146% overtaking the UK and on course to soon surpass the US. Bentley's sales almost doubled, making it the firm's third-biggest market. Porsche up 60% from 2009. Despite the surge in sales of 300kmph cars, the rush-hour speed in Beijing is rarely above 25kmph.

Discussion Meetings in Glasgow

Discussion Meeting Programme

(3rd Wednesday of month).

Community Central Hall, 304 Maryhill Rd. . 8.30 PM

See a map here on Glasgow's website

20 July Another Look At Marxism. R.Donnelly.

17 August The Socialist Party's Record - Warts And All. V.Vanni.

21 September The Role of Trade Unions. J.Cumming.

19 October Resistance, Reform or Revolution. B.Gardner.

All Welcome

SAME PAGE, DIFFERENT WORLDS

That we live in an ugly class-divided society was well summed up on one page of a recent issue of the Times. There on page  41 was an advert for Medicins Sans Frontieres begging for funds to deal with the awful threat of millions dying on the frontiers of Somalia and Kenya of malnutrition and lack of clean water. On the same page we could read of the lavish preparations for the 40th birthday party of Nat Rothschild that is taking place in Porto Negro and is expected to cost £1 million pounds. "Set to inherit £500 million, Mr Rothschild has already notched up a fortune of of $1 billion (£620 million) on his own account." (Times, 9 July) RD

Scottish suicides

The true depth of the problems facing Scotland's young unemployed has been laid bare in a report which reveals that more than a quarter are so depressed they have contemplated suicide. Others turn to drink or drugs in the face of serial rejection and bleak prospects, according to The Future You.

28 per cent said they had contemplated suicide. A third of Scots often felt their "life was being wasted", while two-thirds said being classed a "Neet" - Not in Education, Employment of Training - made them "feel bad about themselves".

Citizens Advice Scotland found the unemployment rate for young people to be around 20 per cent, almost three times the overall figure.

The human impact of the recession was also laid bare by new research showing the number of suicides during the economic crisis increased by as much as 29% in parts of the U.K. and also spiked in the worst affected countries in the European Union. The increase in suicides was most apparent in countries that had been badly affected by the financial crisis: Greece and Ireland. In those countries, the number of suicides increase by 17% and 13% respectively between 2007 and 2009.

Dr David Stuckler, from the University of Cambridge in the U.K, one of the researchers, said: "There was a complete turnaround. Suicides were falling before the recession, then started rising in nearly all European countries studied. Almost certainly these rises are linked to the financial crisis..."

THE WASTEFUL SOCIETY

One of the illusions beloved of supporters of capitalism is that while it may have problems it is the most efficient way to run society. So what do those lovers of capitalism make of the following news item? The Indian government fearing a potential shortage of grain banned its export in 2007 and this combined with a bumper crop this year has left them with a bizarre problem. "Millions of tons of grain - enough to feed more than 100 million for a year - are at risk of rotting because India's stockpile is too big to be held in government warehouses. ... Prakash Michael, who works for Spandan, a non-governmental organisation in Madhya Pradesh, said: "On the one hand, they have grain rotting in stockpiles and, on the other, people are still dying of starvation in India." (Times, 30 June) That is capitalism's efficiency in action for you.RD

Food for thought

The NDP party, recently elevated to official opposition status for the first time in its history, held a party convention on the occasion of its 50th. Anniversary. On the agenda was a proposal " to debate a change to the preamble of the constitution that would replace a commitment to democratic socialist principles – including an explicit aversion to profit making – with the soft language of social democracy." (Joanna Smith, Toronto Star (18/June/11). The decision was deferred to party caucus to
decide later and a merger with the Liberal Party was also discussed. The two items show exactly were the NDP stands – with the capitalist parties, ready to change anything and merge with anybody to get elected. The NDP has never been socialist and probably its members have no idea what socialism stands for. At least, if this proposal passes, the pretence will be over.

 Bono of the rock band U2, a leading anti-poverty campaigner, experienced a small protest at his latest concert. Apparently the band switched its operations to the Netherlands from Ireland several years ago to avoid paying Irish taxes. Now many more Irish are under the poverty line with the current poor economic situation of the former darling of the capitalist world, the former 'Celtic Tiger', and there is no money for social programs. Bono is just doing what every capitalist tries – maximize your wealth – poverty does not enter into the decision. John Ayers

Food for thought

 In a strange article (Toronto Star, 18/June/11) entitled "Take This Job and Shove it – to Asia", Heather Mallick writes how much she admires workers such as 15 year-old Chinese worker Yufeng who works in a factory making bra underwires by placing 57 steel bands into a heating machine. She is such a human dynamo that she earns 80 cents per hour, double the minimum wage. Then there is Caitlin Kelly, 53, who wrote a book, "Malled" where she tells her story of working two days a week in a suburban mall, then as a waitress for $2.43/hour plus tips. Kelly, according to Mallick is a 'mean-eyed, Class-A malcontent who resents people with more money. Kelly finally winds up at a Walmart that she considers as a hazard and was in no way going to risk her life climbing the high shelves in a poorly lit stockroom for $11 per hour. I think the whole point of the article is to contrast the stoic tornado Yufeng with the lazy and insolent Kelly who earns fifteen times as much. Are we supposed to dumb our jobs down to Chinese standards? Capital would love it but why would another worker, Mallick, be so supportive? After all, they could hire Chinese journalist for 80 cents per hour! John Ayers

THE REALITIES OF WAR

War is often depicted in films, books and TV as a heroic endeavour that brings out the best in human beings. We are taught to believe that war produces heroic bravery and sacrifice, but the realities of war are far from noble. When President Barack Obama announced the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan the cost of that conflict - $2 billion (£1.2billion) a week must have figured large in his decision. "Much less discussed are the invisible costs such as the psychological strain on soldiers who have served repeatedly in Iraq and Afghanistan. One in five returning troops is diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Suicides in the US military are at unprecedented level - an average of five troops attempt suicide every day, says the PTSD Foundation of America, based in Houston. Last year a record 301 soldiers committed suicide." (Sunday Times, 3 July) War is not heroic it is just another tragedy of capitalism. RD

Food for thought

John Cartwright, president of the Toronto & York Region Labour Council, bemoans the lack of good jobs (Toronto Star, 18/June/11) and blames the problem on the CEOs saying that, according to them, young people don't deserve good pay and benefits. Of course, he is way off mark as it doesn't matter what the CEOs think, capital will decide who gets what. Cartwright does tell us that the trend to contract and temp workers is all in the name of lower pay and greater profits (Surprise!)– the difference in pay and benefits between a permanent employee and a contract worker is 13%, and between the employee and the temp worker it is a staggering 34%! John Ayers

safe as houses?

House prices in Edinburgh and Glasgow have slumped in the past three months and are set to fall further.

The average price of a home in Edinburgh in the three months to the end of June was £219,530 - down 3.6 per cent from the same period last year. The average selling price of a flat in the Leith Walk and Easter Road area of the capital is now under £100,000 for the first time since 2006.

House prices in the west of Scotland have also tumbled. Prices were 2 per cent lower in the last quarter than in the same period last year, taking them back to 2006 levels. The average selling price of a home in Strathclyde is now £136,000, almost £3,000 lower than a year ago.

There were sharper falls elsewhere in east-central Scotland. The average price of a home in Midlothian in the last quarter was 10.8 per cent lower than a year ago, while the West Lothian average plummeted 9.5 per cent.

David Marshall, business analyst at ESPC explained "There are around 30 per cent more properties available for sale than you would normally see at this time of year, and the number of properties selling is around half that seen prior to the credit crisis,"

Martin Ellis, housing economist at Halifax, said the market faced "significant headwinds" that would constrain housing demand. "Low earnings growth, higher taxes and relatively high inflation are all continuing to put pressure on household finances."