US inequality gap hits record high

 by Richard Mellor
Afscme local 444, retired

The inequality gap in the US reached a record high in 2012 according to a recent BBC report.

According to the report, the top 1% of US earners received 19.3% of household income surpassing the previous record set in 1927.  Overall, the pre tax incomes of the top 1% rose 19.3% in 2012 compared to a 1% increase for the rest of us, with the top 10% of all households taking almost half of the national income.

USA Today reported yesterday that according to an AP study, four out of five US adults, “..struggle with joblessness, near poverty, or reliance on welfare for at least part of their lives…”  The situation among white workers is deteriorating as well as they face increased economic insecurity, and pessimism among this group is at its highest in 25 years with 63% of whites regarding the economic situation as “poor”. More than 19 million whites fall below the US poverty line of $23,021 the report claims, that’s 41% of the country’s poor.  This is double the number of blacks for obvious reasons as there are more of them. 

Percentage wise the poverty rate among blacks is much higher: “By race, nonwhites still have a higher risk of being economically insecure, at 90 percent.”, the report states,  “But compared with the official poverty rate, some of the biggest jumps under the newer measure are among whites, with more than 76% enduring periods of joblessness, life on welfare or near-poverty.”

"Poverty is no longer an issue of 'them', it's an issue of 'us'," says Mark Rank, one of the authors of the study. This is of great concern to the ruling class as we outnumber them and it is their ability to provide a significant portion of the population with higher living standards (whites) and opportunity that helps them maintain dominance of economic and political life.  Nationalism, racism, sexism (women still earn 77 cents to a man’s dollar) and other divide and rule tactics are less effective the more people fall by the wayside as capitalism sinks deeper in to crisis.

This is far from the optimistic, I’ll say Jubilant, tone after the collapse of the evil Soviet empire in 1989 when the Wall Street Journal announced that “We Won” and that finally history had come to understand how the world really works. Full Spectrum Dominance was the mantra as US capital was now free to travel the globe, to go where it wanted and when, unhindered by unions, nation states or resistance movements, protected as it is by US military might.

But 95% of all income gains in the last three years have gone to the richest 1% of Americans the BBC report states and this also contributes to the anger and hatred of the rich that exists beneath the surface of US society. The predatory wars on behalf of US corporations have to be financed and the unelected rulers of society ensure that it is workers and the middle class that pay, which is why we see the declining living standards described here.

The US bosses are well aware of the dangers that increased poverty across broader sections of the US population brings.  They are very concerned about social unrest which has led to increased domestic repression and the beefing up of state security forces as I pointed out in an earlier piece.  The situation will worsen and the years ahead will see some serious and protracted battles domestically as Americans are forced to fight back.  A cursory glance at US history and our labor history will remind us of the violent nature of the US state apparatus and the 1% will reveal just how ruthless they are as the working class offensive takes shape.

Despite the shifting of the industrial working class from the US and Europe to Asia and the huge movements against global capitalism that have arisen in Latin America, global capitalism cannot be cast in to the history books without the US working class settling accounts with the US ruling class, the most powerful and heavily armed of the global bourgeois.

The power of the US mass media is a force to be reckoned with as it penetrates every aspect of our lives.  It’s aim is to confuse, to lie to present the world not as it really is but as they would like it.  They sow division in order to weaken and prevent the unity of the working class.  The use of mindless media and sports without end is aimed to numb the mind, “I wish my co-workers could get as fired up about what’s happening at work as they do about sports.”, a young worker said to me recently.  There are a lot of sideshows, but in the last analysis, consciousness has a material base, objective reality reigns, and the traditions of the American working class will emerge with force as workers see no alternative but to fight.  Workers know it means a fight and we always seek the line of least resistance but the bosses won’t let up. 

On a final note, Peter Phillips and Brady Osborne, two Sonoma State University professors, have an interesting piece about the global capitalist class and its composition, the Transnational Capitalist Class. They point out that a “group of 161 individuals represents the financial core of the world’s transnational capitalist class. They collectively manage $23.91 trillion in funds and operate in nearly every country in the world.”

It is worth a read and is at Michel Chossudovsky’s site the Centre for Research on Globalization

Nobody’s investing

ven worse for our long-run health, the UK is still failing to invest. A devastating calculation from The Economist showed that the UK was ranked 159th globally in 2012 when comparing investment as a share of GDP – truly appalling. We were beaten by Paraguay but just managed to do better than Trinidad and Tobago, Sierra Leone, Cote d’Ivoire and Greece. Not all capital expenditure is good: companies can spend money on projects that turn out to be duds, misled by artificially low interest rates. Governments can allocate cash to white elephants, such as HS2 that cost more in foregone resources than generate in extra GDP. But sensible investment projects are the only way to generate sustainable growth. A country’s GDP depends on how many hours are worked, and the productivity of the workforce – and that, in turn, is directly linked to human and physical capital.
There are several reasons for this dearth of investment. Large British firms are flush with cash but feel that they cannot make suitable, tax, inflation and risk adjusted returns from spending more on factories and computers. This is bad news for our future productivity performance.
- See more at: http://www.cityam.com/article/we-must-produce-invest-and-export-more-and-consume-less#sthash.72b8CYqe.dpuf

ven worse for our long-run health, the UK is still failing to invest. A devastating calculation from The Economist showed that the UK was ranked 159th globally in 2012 when comparing investment as a share of GDP – truly appalling. We were beaten by Paraguay but just managed to do better than Trinidad and Tobago, Sierra Leone, Cote d’Ivoire and Greece. Not all capital expenditure is good: companies can spend money on projects that turn out to be duds, misled by artificially low interest rates. Governments can allocate cash to white elephants, such as HS2 that cost more in foregone resources than generate in extra GDP. But sensible investment projects are the only way to generate sustainable growth. A country’s GDP depends on how many hours are worked, and the productivity of the workforce – and that, in turn, is directly linked to human and physical capital.
There are several reasons for this dearth of investment. Large British firms are flush with cash but feel that they cannot make suitable, tax, inflation and risk adjusted returns from spending more on factories and computers. This is bad news for our future productivity performance.
- See more at: http://www.cityam.com/article/we-must-produce-invest-and-export-more-and-consume-less#sthash.72b8CYqe.dpuf

ven worse for our long-run health, the UK is still failing to invest. A devastating calculation from The Economist showed that the UK was ranked 159th globally in 2012 when comparing investment as a share of GDP – truly appalling. We were beaten by Paraguay but just managed to do better than Trinidad and Tobago, Sierra Leone, Cote d’Ivoire and Greece. Not all capital expenditure is good: companies can spend money on projects that turn out to be duds, misled by artificially low interest rates. Governments can allocate cash to white elephants, such as HS2 that cost more in foregone resources than generate in extra GDP. But sensible investment projects are the only way to generate sustainable growth. A country’s GDP depends on how many hours are worked, and the productivity of the workforce – and that, in turn, is directly linked to human and physical capital.
There are several reasons for this dearth of investment. Large British firms are flush with cash but feel that they cannot make suitable, tax, inflation and risk adjusted returns from spending more on factories and computers. This is bad news for our future productivity performance.
- See more at: http://www.cityam.com/article/we-must-produce-invest-and-export-more-and-consume-less#sthash.72b8CYqe.dpuf

by Michael Roberts

In previous posts (http://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2013/02/10/why-is-there-a-long-depression/) I have pointed out the supposed conundrum between profits and investment present in many countries – namely profits are up, but investment is not matching the rise in profits. According to GMO, the financial asset manager, profits and overall net investment in the US tracked each other closely until the late 1980s, with both about 9% of GDP.  But after the recession, from 2009, it went haywire.  US pretax corporate profits are now at record highs – more than 12% of GDP – while net investment (that’s investment after replacing worn out old capital) is barely 4%.


US corporate profits recovered dramatically from the trough at the end of 2008.  They surpassed their previous peak in 2006 by early 2010.  But most of the recovery in profits since the end of 2008 has been hoarded and not spent on new investment.  Undistributed profits have accumulated to $744bn from just $19bn at the end of 2008!   Profits are up around $1trn since then, so only 30% of the increase in profits has been spent on new investment.  This explains why the economic recovery has been so weak, with the US economy growing only barely at 2% a year.  It is exactly the same story in the UK.  According to Treasury Strategies, a body that looks at these things, corporate cash in the US was 10% of GDP in 2000 and is now 15%, while in the Eurozone the corporate cash pile has risen from 15% to 21% and in the UK from 26% in 2000 to 50% of GDP in 2012 (http://treasurystrategies.com/news)!

Companies are stockpiling cash rather that investing.  Take the latest data from the UK.  The amount of cash held on the balance sheets of the UK’s largest companies by market value has reached an all-time high to stand at £166bn, according to Capita Asset Services.  Gross cash balances for FTSE 100 companies have risen by one-third from £123.8bn since 2008.   Yet British capitalist companies are still failing to invest that cash.   The Economist showed that the UK was ranked 159th globally in 2012 when comparing investment as a share of GDP, behind by Paraguay.

But, as Marxist economist Mick Brooks explains (in an email to me – see http://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2012/08/20/capitalist-crisis-theory-and-practice/), cash reserves are a sum, a stock, accumulated over years. They are not an indication of current profitability. The rate of profit is a flow measured over time.  So we need to look at the net asset position of companies – not just their pile of cash and other assets but also their underlying debts and balance the two off against each other. Companies can pay for investment in two ways; by directly investing their own profits or by borrowing and going into debt. In recent years, there has been a tendency for corporations to become more reliant on debt finance. The reason why the ‘credit crunch’ (when bank lending suddenly stopped) had such wide and rapid repercussions on the ‘real economy’ was because firms were head over heels in debt.

US companies are reputed to have a cash mountain of $2trn with another $2trn offshore, according to Edward Luce (Stuck in the mud, Financial Times 13.05.13). This is for both financial and nonfinancial corporations. But, to put this in perspective, America’s GDP is around $15trn. And the corporate debt for nonfinancial corporations alone in the US is 72% of GDP.   So cash assets are small compared to corporate debt.   Perhaps what is more relevant to our enquiry is not the total indebtedness of a country, or of its nonfinancial firms, but how the total debts of nonfinancial firms stack up against their assets.

However, most mainstream explanations of the conundrum do not draw upon the relationship between profitability, debt and investment. Paul Krugman suggests that investment is lagging profits because a general increase in monopoly power. “The most significant answer, I’d suggest, is the growing importance of monopoly rents: profits that don’t represent returns on investment but instead reflect the value of market dominance,” he wrote.  But while more monopolies might explain higher profits with less investment,there is little evidence that monopoly power has risen in the last few years.  After all, capital expenditures are low in competitive industries as well.

Another explanation is the post-Keynesian one: namely that high profits are mirrored in reverse by a fall in real incomes and in labour’s share of total national income. Stewart Lansley argues that the sustained squeeze on wages in recent years “sucked out demand”, encouraged debt-fuelled consumption and raised economic risk.  (http://www.newleftproject.org/index.php/site/article_comments/wage_led_growth_is_an_economic_imperative).

Austrian school economist Benjamin Higgins reckons that businesses won’t invest because they may be more or less “uncertain about the regime,” by which he means, they are worried that investors’ private property rights in their capital and the income it yields will be attenuated further by government action: regulation, taxation and other controls.   In a way, this explanation is similar to that of Michal Kalecki, at the other end of the spectrum of political economy.  Kalecki reckoned that full employment and economic recovery under capitalism could not be achieved because capitalists feared government stimulus policies to boost demand through spending and investment would encroach on capitalist power (see his famous essay, The political aspects of full employment (http://courses.umass.edu/econ797a-rpollin/Kalecki–Political%20Aspects%20of%20Full%20Employment.pdf).  Capitalists would (irrationally) prefer no recovery to one led by government.

But there is no need for the ‘fear of government’ argument, rational or irrational.  It’s not fear of government that stops investment picking up, but the objective reality of low profitability. Cash flow and profits may be up for larger companies, but the rate of profit has not recovered in many capitalist economies, like the UK and Europe.

This argument is backed up by several studies.  JP Morgan economists recently made a study of global corporate profitability. They concluded that what they call “profit margins” have fallen in Europe and in emerging economies over the past two years. They also concluded that US profitability has stagnated over the last six quarters, on their measure. JP Morgan’s measure of profitability is not a Marxist one and it is not even a measure of corporate profits against corporate capital. But even so, it does produce a global measure of corporate profitability that shows a fall from near 9% before the Great Recession down to under 4% in the trough of 2009 before recovering to 8% in 2011. But in 2012, it declined again to 7%, 13% below its peak in February 2008 when the Great Recession began. This decline in global profitability was mainly driven by Europe and by a fall in emerging economies. Similarly, my own analysis of profitability as measured by the EU AMECO net rate of return on capital and US data, indexed from 2005 shows the same thing (see my post, http://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2013/02/25/deleveraging-and-profitability-again/).

The EU Commission has also commented on corporate profitability and investment in Europe. In its Winter Economic Forecast report (2012), it noted that non-residential investment (that excludes households buying houses) as a share of GDP “stands at its lowest level since the mid-1990s”. And the main reason: “a reduced level of profitability”. The report makes the key point that “measures of corporate profits tend to be closely correlated with investment growth” and only companies that don’t need to borrow and are cash-rich can invest – and even they are reluctant. The Commission found that Europe’s profitability “has stayed below pre-crisis levels”.

The EU report also found a “strong negative correlation between changes in investment since the onset of the crisis and pre-crisis debt accumulation, suggesting that the build-up of deleveraging pressures has been an important factor behind investment weakness”. The Commission reckoned that Eurozone corporations must deleverage further by an amount equivalent to 12% of GDP and that such an adjustment spread over five years would reduce corporate investment by a cumulative 1.6% of GDP. Given that gross non-residential investment to GDP is at a low of 12% right now, that’s a sizeable hit to investment growth.

According the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), in its latest annual report of June 2013, the level of debt in the world economy has not fallen much despite the Great Recession. Indeed, the average non-financial debt to GDP ratio for the major developed markets is currently 312% (June 2013) compared to 280% in March 2007. While the household debt ratio has declined from 97% of GDP to 88% now, non-financial corporate debt has risen from 101% to 105% now and government debt has rocketed from 83% to 120%.

The BIS also found that of 33 advanced and emerging economies, 27 have non-financial debt to GDP levels above 130%. Two of those have ratios above 400%, four between 300-400%. Only six have ratios below 130% and only three below 100% of GDP – namely Turkey, Mexico and Indonesia.  Of the 33 economies, 18 have rising debt ratios, 11 are flat and only four have falling debt ratios. Of those four, three are in IMF or Troika bailout programmes (Greece, Ireland and Hungary). Only Norway has reduced its overall non-financial debt ratio ‘voluntarily’.  Only Mexico and Thailand have reduced their overall debt levels in the last 15 years.  Household debt ratios have fallen in some developed markets, including the UK and the US, as well as some peripheral EMU countries. But 27 economies have experienced a rise in private debt-to-GDP ratios since the global financial crisis.

Large multinationals have preferred to invest in emerging economies rather than in the domestic economy. And cash-rich companies have taken advantage of credit-fuelled (QE) stock markets to buy back their own shares rather than invest and boost dividends.  In contrast, small businesses cannot invest because they cannot borrow on current terms and many are zombie companies just able to pay the interest on their debt. They have been hoarding labour rather than invest in new equipment and labour saving systems. Overall corporate debt levels just remain too high to allow new investment – paying down debt or holding cash is safer.

The conundrum of rising profits and stagnant investment in productive assets shows that the “recovery” is weak and partly ‘artificial’. It depends much on central bank liquidity injections, which find their way into the financial sector, not the real economy.   Until there is a sufficient rise in profitability in the productive sectors and fall in net debt for corporations, private sector investment will continue to fall behind profits and cash piles will rise further and companies hoard rather than invest.

Luis J Rodriguez offering the youth a future

Luis J Rodriguez

by Richard Mellor
Afscme Local 444, retired

Myself and a young friend paid a visit to our local youth center last Thursday. It's a relatively new center and I have been there before to watch or pick up my grandson at his little league game. The occasion was to hear a presentation by a former LA gang member who has written numerous books about gang life and also speaks to young people and other audiences about his experiences.

I had not heard of Luis J Rodriguez before despite  having been involved in a campaign some years ago to free an imprisoned gang member framed by the LAPD at or around the time he was organizing truce's following the Rodney King beating. 

I was very skeptical as it is so common for reformed drug addicts and ex prison inmates to find Jesus, urging the rest of us to do likewise while admonishing young people and gang members for their bad behavior and individual choices.  It's a version of the "You're in control of your own destiny" approach.

There were a lot of youth present, mostly Latino but not exclusively.  And from the minute he spoke, it was clear, Luis Rodruigez was someone special as he made a point of announcing that he wasn't someone special and any of the young people present were capable of doing what he has and better.  Unlike the religious convert though, he laid bare the reality of the world the disenfranchised find themselves in and how these conditions are at the root of the poverty, alienation and violence that consumes so many working class communities and especially communities of color.  He talked of his life in the gang world, his addiction to heroin and alcohol.  He explained with great passion and honesty about how he had been conditioned to hate anyone that "looked like me" that he was consumed with self hatred. This is something we should all recognize as we live in a society that falsely claims that we are where we are solely through our own individual choices so when we fail we blame, and hate ourselves. There is no "society" as Thatcher said.

He described how the most amazing events in his community during that period were funerals, they were the "best thing going" he said, not just the color and sombre festivity that are these events but for a moment people were brought together through death, fathers to pay respect to dead sons and friends and relatives who gathered to pay their respects.

Brother Rodriguez told the audience that we need to "bring back our power as people, as working class" which is a refreshing change as here in the US we are all supposed to be middle class, there's no working class here it seems. He led a savage attack on the prisons telling the youth present that  these institutions are full of young people, "because they have no means of survival." He also explained how racism and the destruction of one's culture contributes to the self-hatred and alienation and that this has to be fought and overcome.  "I am not Spanish" he said and explained how he has connected to his roots, to the indigenous culture that has been so decimated since the European invasions and the coming of capital.  He spoke of the falsification of history and how the indigenous societies have historically  been portrayed as savage and bloodthirsty.  It reminded me of the absence of all working class history in the education system, the victor writes the history books as they say and the capitalist class creates a world history after its own image and that includes its views on race, sex, and other issues.

Brother Rodriguez read a few poems he has written including one written in honor of three poets, Jose Montoya, David Henderson and a third Puerto Rican poet whose name has escaped me. I wish I had video'd this reading as it was very moving.  The working class, no matter what our religion or ethnic background, express ourselves with great passion and emotion once we overcome our class oppression, compounded by racial and gender discrimination, and speak what we feel and have lived.  I had to laugh when brother Rodriguez spoke of not knowing what poetry was or never using a comma as I have a friend, also from a rural working class background, who is not fond of them; "Comma's are useful" a good friend told him after reviewing his draft of a book he wrote.

I regret I didn't take better notes as Rodriguez said so much more but I bought his first book, Always Running and just started it this morning.  He says in the introduction, "As I see it, the battle lines are between the idealized, superficial and insular minded way of looking at the world (which many schools and mainstream culture impose on our children and the rest of us), and the actual conditions of our lives with all its multiplicity, struggle shading and nuance. Most children recognize the hypocrisy of emphasizing a linear, clean and de-sexed past while they confront daily the muddy, uncertain and hybrid truths." This was in response to numerous attempt by conservatives and the establishment to ban Always Running from school libraries and bookstores. We must return to objective reality.

"Whatever involves social discomfort, emotional depth or hard thinking is cut out." he writes in the latest introduction to Always Running. "Everything is directed toward "normalcy...", he writes:
".... the folding in to the fast paced, material and status oriented capitalist value system.........our humanity is sacrificed, little by little."

Luis Rodriguez recognizes the genocidal offensive waged against the native population of these lands but this is merely recognizing history as it is; he excludes no one from his vision of a better world.   Like many of us, brother Rodriguez rejects the warehousing of human beings that capitalism has discarded; "Censorship, repression and suppression simply don't work" he writes offering a sampling of alternatives that do, "All out creativity, poetic expression; access to life giving resources; truly meaningful and respectful relationships; purposeful and life-affirming schooling and work (jobs and more jobs); decent health care; drug and psychiatric treatment as needed; and truly rehabilitative and initiatory practices are a few things that do work." 

And he correctly lays the blame where it belongs telling his young audience "The people who are supposed to be representing us are not representing us" and that we "Have to come in with something new" and "..bring the young people to the table."

I have no idea of brother Rodriguez's views about socialism, but he clearly recognizes the failure of capitalism and how it destroys culture and our humanity.  He doesn't absolve the individual from certain responsibility, but he understands that decisons we make are more often than not made under circumstances not of our own choosing. His admits his own failures to himself and his family as his son fell in to gang culture, this makes the challenge that much harder that's all. We should remember that the capitalist class has their gangs, much more ruthless: the Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers, the Business Roundtable and others.

My only clarification here would be that given the nature of US politics and that in the electoral arena there are only capitalist parties to choose from in essence; workers and all specially oppressed sections of society have no representatives.  While there might be honest individuals in the Democratic Party, this party represents capital and the changes brother Rodriguez talks of cannot be realized through this vehicle. At the meeting I went to, brother Rodriguez announced he will run for governor of California.

I am looking forward to reading his first book and urge readers to have your union or any other social organization speak to your members but particularly your youth. They will be inspired by him.

Check out his books here and his website here

Washington DC Shootings media mania but no social analysis.

Shootings drive up ratings and ad cost probably

by Richard Mellor
Afscme Local 444, retired

I have just returned to the Bay Area after a long weekend away up in Tahoe and am listening to the ongoing reports of the shooting in Washington DC where 13 people were killed at a Naval facility there. As is normally the case, there is very little known about the details. One shooter is dead but the authorities say there may be another.  The dead shooter according to the media is Aaron Alexis, a military contractor shot by the police. So far they are saying little else.

But what just amazed me was the report from a chief medical officer, a Dr. Janis Orlowski from the hospital that is treating three people in critical condition.  She spoke at length answering questions form reporters about all sorts of details even the type of weaponry used.  Then she started to say something about what this means to her.  She explained that she sees trauma every day working in a big hospital like hers.  Then she started to question why these events happen.  She said something about the evil of it and it seemed to me that she was getting a little emotional about it.  She said something about this evil and clearly saw it as different to the everyday trauma she deals with.

She was about to say something about how we as Americans need to look at or try to see why this is happening in our country and that we have to endure this sort of thing at work and it seemed clear to me that she was about to express her views and concerns about the society in which we live.  I couldn’t get any more info as suddenly, despite being in the spotlight and answering questions about all sorts of details for some time, and the news informing us about injuries and “multiple engagements with the shooter”and the heroism of the police and other specifics, CNN cut to another reporter.

I do not believe this was an accident.  The media spends hours reporting on all sorts of demoralizing scenes of mass shootings, murders, rapes, and abuse of all kinds.  Who shot whom when and how is big news.  The role of the police and the authorities in catching and killing the perpetrators is also big news, proof we are in a society where the “rule of law” is protected.  What is not acceptable is for someone with some social influence (a head of a huge medical facility) and with a huge captive audience to raise questions or comment on the, nature of society, the society we live in.

Readers may recall that the thug Margaret Thatcher stated that there was no such thing as society, she said, "I think we've been through a period where too many people have been given to understand that if they have a problem, it's the government's job to cope with it. 'I have a problem, I'll get a grant.' 'I'm homeless, the government must house me.' They're casting their problem on society. And, you know, there is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first.”

Thatcher and her class keep their snouts firmly buried in the public trough and the taxpayers paid for her funeral.  This is true of all these people, British or American.  This is how hypocritical they are but more importantly, they do not want a discussion about society and how it works.

The US has more people in prison than any other country.  We execute children, we execute the mentally impaired; we kill each other at an alarming rate but this, or the crimes they are supposed to have committed are never attributed to “society”. We must not go there. We are all individuals and that’s it as Thatcher and her friend the “B” Movie actor Ronald Reagan argued, people who had pretty much everything given to them. We have mass homelessness, poverty, hunger, racism, you name it, but it’s all the fault of the individual, just a matter of making the right choices.

This news will keep people occupied for days. The details are being repeated, the number of dead, the shooter, interviews with the survivors and the “horror” they felt. The number of deaths and other information they will repeat over and over again throughout the day.  “I heard three shots, pow!pow! pow!” says one, “He was down the hall and he pointed the gun at us” says another as I heard her say before and the time before that. And they tell me the identity of the shooter again.

Obama just came on and described this as a, “cowardly act.”,  this from a man who authorizes drone killings without batting an eye. And now they are claiming this could be a workplace shooting as opposed to terrorism as the shooter was a navy man although authorities are not sure of the motive. Now Wolf Blitzer is nailing down the time the first gunshots were fired.

What won’t be asked is what is wrong with our society that mass killings like this occur almost every day, or what it is about our society that people feel so insecure, alienated and afraid?

At the motel we’re staying since our house caught fire they have the TV news on every morning when we go to the eating area for breakfast. I call it the “murder channel”. The first half hour or so is always filled with the various killings and acts human beings commit as capitalist society around them degenerates and becomes ever more alienating. It keeps us in a perpetual state of fear and bolsters the idea that we need to isolate ourselves further from an evil world. That was George W Bush’s best shot at analyzing events, all bad things are the results of “evildoers” and we should let the government get on with ridding the world of them as we isolate ourselves as best we can from each other.

Thatcher knows society exists and it has rules and laws and a structure that is in a constant state of flux.  We have a ruling class, and the laws of society are aimed at protecting and enforcing that rule.  It is the true nature of society, of an exploitative society, that must not be discussed because if we realize that society changes all the time, and that certain human behavior is very much related to how society functions, we are more conscious of reality and once we recognize that, we come to understand that, we see that what we do matters and that we can change it for the better.

Thousands march for jobs and wages in Poland

(from Reuters)

By Marcin Goettig

WARSAW | Sat Sep 14, 2013 1:22pm EDT

(Reuters) - Tens of thousands of protesters marched through the Polish capital on Saturday in one of the largest demonstrations in years to demand more jobs and higher pay, blaming Prime Minister Donald Tusk's government for failing to tackle unemployment.

The city council said about 100,000 people turned out for the march organized by trade unions, waving flags and blowing trumpets as they walked peacefully through central Warsaw.

The Polish economy has seen two decades of uninterrupted growth but narrowly avoided recession at the start of the year. It has since shown signs of picking up but the recovery has been too weak to significantly bring down unemployment, especially among youths. The jobless rate stands at 13.1 percent, after hitting a six-year high of 14.4 percent in February.
"We have come to Warsaw to show a red card to the government," said Tomasz Danielewicz, 43, a nurse taking part in the march.

Unions are opposed to new legislation that gives employers more flexibility in determining the working hours of employees. One of the banners carried by protesters read: "Part-time job, full-time exploitation".

"The government gets its last warning today. If it draws no conclusions, we will block the whole country, all roads and highways," Jan Guz, leader of the OPZZ union told demonstrators.
The economic slowdown has brought Tusk's government approval ratings to their lowest levels since he came to power six years ago, and opinion polls from recent weeks show his party has lost ground to the opposition.

In August, a poll showed the ruling Civic Platform trailed the main opposition party by a record 11 points, but a different poll this week showed Tusk's party was still in the lead.
The government, which has won praise from investors for its pro-business policies, has also raised the retirement age to 67 from 65 for men and upped the value added tax by one percentage point to 23 percent to curb the fiscal deficit, angering many voters.

In a bid to breathe life into the largest central European economy, Tusk's cabinet loosened fiscal discipline earlier this year and widened the planned budget deficit. It also decided to shift treasury bonds held by private pension funds back to the state to give it more room to stimulate growth.
But the effects of those moves will take time to have an impact on the economy and stem the frustration of many in Poland, which has been seen as a beacon of political stability in the region after Tusk won an unprecedented second term in office in 2011.

"One has to protest because it is getting worse," said a young woman named Ola. "Compared to Western states we are a sinking ship, despite the fact that we are in the center of Europe and we have the prerequisites to become a European powerhouse."

The next scheduled parliamentary election is not until late 2015, but Tusk's Civic Platform party will compete for votes in elections to regional governments and the European Parliament next year.
(Additional reporting by William Fox and Karol Jurga; Editing by Janet Lawrence)