Subjects Archives: Inequality

As Republican politicians distance themselves from the white supremacist violence in Charlottesville, the former chairman of Trump’s Virginia campaign blames the victims.

Once again Trump obscures reality. He either ignores the violence and terrorism carried out against traditionally oppressed groups, e.g., attacks on mosques, or he uses evasive language in order to avoid pointing the finger at the real perpetrators of racist violence.

After the deadly clash between hundreds of white supremacists and counter-protesters today in Charlottesville, Virginia, President Trump called for Americans to “come together.”

Understanding there is extreme income and wealth inequality that has been growing and having negative impacts on our society is one thing, but having the majority of the proposed solutions fail to address deeper systemic drivers isn’t going to help get us on a better track.

The US health care system produces healthy profits while leaving growing numbers of people without access to affordable, quality health care.

Without understanding the particular plight of trans women, only a blunted and partial view of gender is possible. And without a systemic view of gender, political solutions to that plight will be equally limited.

The global labor arbitrage means the only competitive “advantage” available to most countries is forcing workers to accept slave wages and environmental standards low enough to lure in multinationals. If the population resists, the only means available to diffuse it is brutal repression.

Trump sent a message to Latinos in America — both unauthorized immigrants who are liable to be arrested by ICE at any time and might be falsely accused of gang membership in the process, and legal immigrants and citizens who nonetheless might “look like a gang member” to the wrong person based on the color of their skin. Trump is telling them there is no one who can keep them safe.

The decline in unionization is one of the most important factors promoting the concentration of income at the upper end of the income distribution. The statement may not surprise you, but the fact that this was the conclusion of an IMF study of the causes of inequality might.

How does race relate to class in capitalism? Is it intrinsic and essential to the reproduction of capital, or merely an accidental feature of particular capitals? In this recent essay by Richard Seymour, and originally published on his Patreon, Seymour considers a debate within Marxism on the relationship between class, race and capitalism.

Class is primary—not in the sense of more important, but in the sense of being the limit, the foundation, the point where profit is extracted and the point where it can be challenged. The centrality of class is tactical, not moral.

These racial/ethnic differences mean that our general push for more and better jobs must be accompanied by policies designed to overcome the discriminatory and segmented nature of the US labor market.

A white woman from Australia was gunned down by militarized police in Minneapolis – part of the collateral damage that flows from the U.S. mass Black incarceration regime. The intended targets are Black women like Charleena Lyles, killed by Seattle cops, last month. “Although Black women and girls make up only 13 percent of the U.S. female population, they account for 33 percent of all women killed by police.”

The Venezuelan Foreign Ministry in a statement rejected the U.S. government’s “unbelievable” comments on Venezuela that “shows its absolute bias towards the violent and extremist sectors of Venezuelan politics, which favor the use of terrorism to overthrow a popular and democratic government.”

There are three types of work places governments, there are public, private and the other. Public government simply means that the power of the business is spread between the higher ups and the regular employees, while private is where the big guy up top has all the power and the business is his and his alone. The other is everything from family owned and operated to employee owned and opporated. This in turn is how a small government is ran or dictated.

The worst case scenario is now coming to fruition for DACA participants. All of the personal information needed to carry out deportations of these children and their families is conveniently in the hands of the Department of Homeland Security. The thousands of children who lined up for the chance at the limited rights offered by the program gave their names, addresses, countries of origin, their personal histories and signed a document admitting to being in the country illegally.

In 1912, more than 1000 working class men, mostly members of the Metal Mine Workers Industrial Union of the Industrial Workers of the World, being loaded into cattle cars in Bisbee, Arizona, July 12th, for the purpose of being deported from the state of Arizona.

In one amendment, we have taken the land of the free to the land where 1 of 4 people are shackled and held as a slave.

For many socialist feminists, critiquing liberal feminism is easy. Many of us came to socialism from liberalism and have a clear understanding of its limits and flaws. However, the history and substance of radical feminism is less well known. While the “radical” in radical feminism seems to suggest a politics that socialists would embrace… [it is] incompatible with socialist feminism. Plagued by a narrow understanding of gendered oppression and a misguided strategy for change, radical feminism ultimately fails to offer women a clear path to liberation.

Although reluctant to say it, a recent IMF report on the state of U.S. economy makes clear that U.S. policy makers have failed to protect majority living conditions. While the IMF generally pulls no punches in criticizing the policies of most member governments if it determines that they threaten to slow capitalist globalization dynamics, it tends to tap dance around disagreements when it comes to the policies of its more powerful member countries, especially the United States. If we want improved living conditions we are going to have to fight for them. Perhaps greater awareness of just how bad things are in the United States will help speed the effort.