Foros de Aporrea.org

[Jose009]

Cita:

Mop-Up Operations Resume As Voters Reject Public Pensions, Worker Rights, Liberalism By Matt Stoller, a fellow at the Roosevelt Institute. The big story on Tuesday was Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s win over unions and liberals, as voters ratified his attacks on public workers, the young, and women’s rights. But that vote was relatively close. Two other voter initiatives, in deep blue California, were not. San Diego and San Jose residents voted overwhelmingly to cut the pensions of city workers. In San Diego, the measure passed with two thirds of the vote, and in San Jose, the measure passed with seventy percent of the vote. The measure gives city workers an option: They can keep their current pension, as long as they agree to contribute more of their salaries — up to 16 percent — to the pension fund, or they can enter a less generous pension plan with a higher retirement age, benefits that accrue more slowly and smaller cost-of-living adjustments. Future hires would be put into a plan that costs even less, and would be required to contribute up to half of its cost. This is not a Republican initiative – the San Diego Mayor is a Democrat. And pension cuts like this are happening nationally, mostly with full support from voters in the Republican Party and a good chunk of the Democratic Party as well. The union representing city workers, of course, went to the courts rather than pursuing a strategy of engagement with the public. These unions will probably end up losing the fight, because they have no ability to persuade voters that they represent anything but a self-interested group of insiders. The states and localities suffering from budget crises are having problems because Wall Street blew up the economy, and in many cases, ensnared these municipalities in extremely bad deals. The wealth of taxpayers was and is being transferred to banks. In 2008, the choice before Bush, and then Obama, was clear. They could hand taxpayer resources to Wall Street and oversee a series of budget crises in states and localities, with the opportunity for later privatization of public assets and the breaking of public sector unions. Or Bush, and then Obama, could crack down on Wall Street, and make sure that bailout monies went to states and localities, and, with record low interest rates, spur tremendous investment in new energy, infrastructure, and education initiatives. It was a choice. Bush picked Wall Street. Obama also picked Wall Street, with public sector unions supporting Obama like turkeys cheering on Thanksgiving. Now voters are making their own choice. Once again, this is a direct consequence of how Barack Obama has led the Democratic Party and redefined liberalism, into a party and an ideology that is defined by wage cuts, foreclosures, debt, and acceptance of dramatic political and economic inequality. Voters don’t want to pay for a government and for government workers who they perceive as out of step with their interests. These pension cuts and the victory of Scott Walker-like candidates are consistent with the overall trend of liberals losing or throwing in the towel nationally. For example, prominent progressive incumbent Congresswoman Lynn Woolsey, who chaired the progressive caucus in the House, just endorsed the establishment candidate in Northern California over the more outspoken anti-corporate candidate, Norman Solomon. Solomon is behind by a little over a thousand votes, with tens of thousands remaining to be counted. Meanwhile, New Mexico liberal Democrat Eric Griego, who ran ads demanding Wall Street bankers be sent to jail, lost his primary to a more moderate candidate. Sending bankers to jail is a popular position, so why didn’t Griego’s message work? It’s simple. Voters don’t trust any Democrat to credibly deliver on that or really any promise on economic justice. Obama has designed the party’s policy framework specifically in opposition to economic justice. In that case, why not vote for the Republicans? It’s a more consistent brand.

[Jose009]

The Left is weak in general, and extremely so in the United States. In the US, the "labor aristocracy" has created a working class satisfied with their standard of living that has widely accepted bourgeois ideology. For many decades, an overwhelming majority of Americans have very consciously embraced capitalism, very consciously rejected even the idea of modifying capitalism, except in a more free-market direction. The majority of Americans believe that the cause of the current economic Depression isn´t capitalism, but rather the lack of it: i.e. state interference with the market mechanism. Among those who have endorsed the current system are many workers and many poor people. Sure, there was manipulation and propaganda; big business also exists and owns mass media everywhere in the world, but nobody has loved capitalism as much as America.

This is a situation that calls for revolutionary political defeatism, not the "lesser-evilism" that reformists advocate. Americans should get what they wish for and be taught their lesson. Laissez-faire Capitalism is the law of the jungle, and the jungle eventually overcomes everything before it, including gated communities.

[Bilbo Baggins]

U.S.=Land of the Greedy
http://www.stateofnature.org/darkLords.html

Stop the greedy U.S. beast!
http://www.boycottamerica.org/

[Tejano25]

Jose009 escribió:

The Left is weak in general, and extremely so in the United States. In the US, the "labor aristocracy" has created a working class satisfied with their standard of living that has widely accepted bourgeois ideology. For many decades, an overwhelming majority of Americans have very consciously embraced capitalism, very consciously rejected even the idea of modifying capitalism, except in a more free-market direction. The majority of Americans believe that the cause of the current economic Depression isn´t capitalism, but rather the lack of it: i.e. state interference with the market mechanism. Among those who have endorsed the current system are many workers and many poor people. Sure, there was manipulation and propaganda; big business also exists and owns mass media everywhere in the world, but nobody has loved capitalism as much as America. This is a situation that calls for revolutionary political defeatism, not the "lesser-evilism" that reformists advocate. Americans should get what they wish for and be taught their lesson. Laissez-faire Capitalism is the law of the jungle, and the jungle eventually overcomes everything before it, including gated communities.

I also don't think that the problem is capitalism, the problem is that the big fat cats of the corporations and the political elite has rigged the system to their favor. For example the big banks got bailed out with public funds and what are they doing? making the middle and working class pay high fees from their bank accounts and not extending credit to the economy but using the federal reserve money to bet against the American economy. If capitalism were working those bank would have gone bankrupt and the American economy would have a chance to start fresh, so the conclusion is that is not the capitalism system but the political class and the corporation intervention in the system.

At the end of the day the US is not 100% capitalism because they even have better social programs that the ones we have in Venezuela under socialism. for example a friend of mine loss his job and he was getting paid around $1,500 a month in unemployment. He spend like a year looking for job and finally got it but in the meantime that money certainly put food on the table and allowed him to keep his home and the government never missed a single payment or requested him ton of papers to get paid. In Venezuela if you lose you job the unemployment insurance is a joke and when you get paid years later the inflation has done its job reducing the purchasing power of that money.

[Jose009]

Tejano, suppose you were alive back in 1945 and were told about all the new technology that would be invented between then and now: the computers and internet, mobile phones and other consumer electronics, faster and cheaper air travel, super trains and even outer space exploration, higher gas mileage on the ground, plastics, medical breakthroughs and science in general. You would have imagined what nearly all futurists expected: that we would be living in a life of leisure society by this time. Rising productivity would raise wages and living standards, enabling people to work shorter hours under more relaxed and less pressured workplace conditions.

Why hasn’t this occurred in recent years? In light of the enormous productivity gains since the end of World War II – and especially since 1980 – why isn’t everyone rich and enjoying the leisure economy that was promised? If the 99% is not getting the fruits of higher productivity, who is? Where has it gone?

Finance is what makes today’s US economy different from that of 1945. The financial sector extracts interest from the economy, the property sector extracts economic rent, as do monopolies. The US is at the end of a long cycle. Back in 1945 the private sector in every country was relatively free of debt. There was little civilian output for consumers to buy during the wartime years. Companies had little reason to invest, except for the government’s military demand. So most families had little debt – and a lot of savings, and good job opportunities after the return to peace. But today the economy is in reverse. Savings have been run down and consumers, real estate and industry is left in debt.

A common denominator runs throughout recorded history: a rising proportion of debts cannot be paid. One way or another, there will be defaults – unless debts are paid in an illusory fashion, simply by adding the interest charges onto the debt balance until the sums finally grow to so fictitious a magnitude that the illusion of viability has to be dropped. This has happened again and again in history for the past five thousand years. In Biblical Times, the "Jubilee" year, every 50 years, wiped away all debts, set all slaves free, and redistributed land. But since modern Democracies are much more responsive to concentrated economic power than Monarchies were, creditors have gained political power – and also the power to block the only mechanism that can save Capitalism from itself: the debt jubilee.

[Jose009]

In the 60s and 70s, it was hard to find a more reactionary bunch in the US other than the hard-hat unions and the Teamsters: ‘American Stahlhelm’ (for example, the unions wanted an all-out nuclear assault on North Vietnam).

In the 80s and 90s, the unions evaporated; only the municipal unions survived. These promptly became self-interest groups offering blocs of votes ‘for sale’ on the installment plan.

Now voters are taking down the last vestige of organized labor in the US: the municipal unions. In other words, ultra-reactionary and opportunist labor continues receiving what it deserves: extinction.