The Comment Factory

Growing up in Pakistan, I was made acutely aware of income inequality at multiple levels. My earliest childhood memory of poverty comes from observing the desperation of hawkers in street crossings who tapped on the windows of every car at a stop-light, trying to sell all kinds of “stuff” from hairpins to roses. Should these street vendors have stuck to subsistence lifestyles in the fields and just have been contented with having enough to eat and leading a simple life? Who was I to ordain such simplicity on them?

Near where we live there is a brand new complex of smartish looking business premises. At the time, they had just one occupant: Shaw Trust. And Chubby was possibly the first person to walk through their doors. They gave him a piece of paper outlining the change in our finances if he were to work twenty hours a week. He would gain just over £110.40 a week in pay, from which £1.14 national insurance and £1.04 income tax would be deducted. He would lose £98.45 in long term incapacity benefit

Few are aware that this Christmas past, when most of us were enjoying our extensive festive indulgences, a chronic shortage of affordable housing left 83,000 homeless British children in temporary accommodation. Over 33% of these children cannot go to school due to appalling disruption in their lives and are twice as likely to suffer poor health. In describing the appalling disruption and emotional distress that children suffered, Adam Simpson, the director of the charity Shelter, described the euphemistic term “temporary accommodation” as a “terrible parody”

Capitalism: A Love Story does not involve the emotional crescendos of Moore’s previous output. Think of the jarring juxtaposition, in Sicko, between the entranced exploration of European health systems and the bitterly cold treatment of America’s poor by the healthcare giants. There are shocking, appalling moments in Capitalism, but these are interspersed with stories of resistance as Moore’s cameras film people preventing the eviction of local families, and capture workers at Republic Windows and Doors as they force the Bank of America to back down and fund their severance packages

A new building in Ramallah, or 100 for that matter, make for good ribbon-cutting ceremonies, but are as far from economic state-building as is wrong is from right

I’ve been following this developing campaign, uniting charities, NGOs and trade unions, with interest. Politically, it taps into a very good instinct. The bankers got rich pursuing speculative profits through various intricate schemes that placed national economies in tremendous danger (example of which), and have been rewarded with bail-outs. If there is going to be a shortfall in funding for public services, they should pay for it. This isn’t the only justification for imposing such a tax

The current speculative attack on the Euro is a very powerful vote against EU states that investors (capitalists) do no believe have moved swiftly enough to cut their budget deficits. The rules of the Stability and Growth Pact agreed among EU member states say that budget deficits must not exceed 3% of GDP. Those rules [...]

Yes, people exist who are ripping off the system. Yes, they system may need changing. But the constant use of pejorative language demeans everyone who receives benefits, deserving and undeserving

An interview with Joseph Stiglitz in yesterday’s Independent gave me cause to think of the 2003 documentary, The Corporation.  Stiglitz, when asked whether it was a good idea to cut the public deficit even by a token amount to “appease” the markets, said:
“I’ve always been sceptical about the notion that the market is a person [...]

For years, UN ‘peacekeepers’ have slaughtered thousands of Haitians, and the residents have been put through rigged election procedures. Lavalas members, priests, and activists have been subject to political imprisonment and murder, some of them characterised as ‘gang’ members. This is all for the aid of sweatshop bosses such as Andy Apaid, and the multinationals principally based in the US and Canada that benefit enormously from the exploitation of Haitian labour. This process of capital accumulation is what has driven Haitians out of a devastated rural economy and into impoverished slums with a tinpot infrastructure, and left them vulnerable to this extraordinary catastrophe

Japan might be overtaken by China in 2010 as the second biggest economy based on GDP, but in all the areas that matter, China continues to be a third world country, producing the world’s dollar store bargains

A novel political narrative is emerging at the COP15 in Copenhagen. It’s the idea that the rich, industrialized countries owe the developing world a “climate debt.” Right now, according Actionaid and Oxfam, the Global North sits about $200 billion in the red, a sum it must pay out per annum. That’s right, after years of dodging the Global North’s loan sharks, debt-ridden developing world has a reason to demand money from rich countries