A New Look at the Left Wing

NPR spent the past several months analyzing hundreds of pages of campaign finance reports, lobbying documents and corporate records. What they show is a quiet, behind-the-scenes effort to help draft and pass Arizona Senate Bill 1070 by an industry that stands to benefit from it: the private prison industry.

The law could send hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants to prison in a way never done before. And it could mean hundreds of millions of dollars in profits to private prison companies responsible for housing them.

Texas started using a private company in 2005 to screen medical and food assistance applications. By 2010, there were 56,000 unresolved food stamp applications, according to a report by the Dallas Morning News.

In addition, 37 percent of all applicants — and more than 50 percent of applicants in the greater Dallas and Houston areas — were not told whether they qualified for benefits within 30 days of filing, as federal law requires, according to the newspaper. And applications from 13 percent of the truly destitute — people defined by the newspaper as virtually out of cash and unable to afford groceries — weren’t processed in the seven days required by federal law, it reported.

I think it’s time we started calling privatization by another, more accurate name: corruption. Sending vital services out to a for-profit company is nothing but a chance for it to skim money off the top.

(Source: ziatroyano)

Why May Day should be a date to stand up and change the system

May Day is the occasion we celebrate the grand achievements of the workers of the world in making our world a far, far better place to live in. There is, unfortunately, not too much to celebrate these days. The past 30 years are littered with battles and skirmishes that have resulted in defeat after defeat for organised labour.

A capitalist class gone rampant has now consolidated its power to command or corrupt almost all the major institutions that regulate the body politic – the political parties (of both left and right), the media, the universities, the law, to say nothing of the repressive state apparatus and international institutions. The democracy of money power now rules. A global plutocracy exerts its will almost everywhere unchallenged.

So what is there to celebrate? We would not, of course, have what we still have now (from pensions to the remnants of reasonable health care and public education) had it not been for the labour movement. But waxing nostalgic over the undoubted achievements and heroism of the past will get us nowhere.

May Day should therefore be about relaunching a revolutionary movement to change the world. The very thought of doing that – even just saying it and writing it down – is as exhilarating as it is astonishing.

I think the vertical cuts demanded at UNLV that produced this move are characteristically neoliberal. Instead of across-the-board cutbacks for the sake of ostensibly temporary ‘belt-tightening,’ the assumption is probably that these permanent cuts will make the university a leaner, more efficient machine. Additionally, the immediate removal of tenured and untenured faculty alike is a way to reduce the collective bargaining power of the professors, and it sends a powerful message to faculty in other departments. The swift elimination of two subjects with (arguably) the greatest ability to think critically about life and society does not bode well for universities elsewhere in the United States.

I told him that, although I agreed with him that young people should save more, there is also a strong case that it is much more difficult today for a young person to establish themselves financially as he did when he was a young adult.

He looked at me strangely. “What do you mean?” he asked.

So, I laid it out for him, piece by piece. Afterward, it occurred to me that the entire discussion might make for a good post here, particularly with some specific research to back it up.

Real wages Let’s start with income. In 1970, the average wage earner took home $312 per week (in 1982 dollars). In 2004, the average wage earner brought home $277 per week (in 1982 dollars) – and it’s still falling. That means that, once you factor out inflation, the average wage earner in 1970 brought home about 18% more than the average wage earner today.

Home prices Even if you adjust for inflation – and even if you take into account the crash of the housing bubble from 2007 to today – the median price for a home in the United States has gone up more than 50% since 1970. Remember, that number accounts for inflation, so what that number actually means is that the cost of a home requires 50% more of a person’s paycheck than it did in 1970.

Education prices The cost index of an average undergraduate education since 1970 drastically outpaces the growth of the Consumer Price Index. In short, disregarding inflation, the cost of an undergraduate degree today is roughly 30% higher than it was in 1970.

Other essentials In order to compete in today’s workforce, a young person often must have items – paid for out of their own pocket – that weren’t needed in 1970, including a cell phone, a computer, and home internet access. Often, when searching for work, it becomes very difficult for a young person to compete without these extra expenses.

So, to summarize, in order to have housing and an education comparable to what a young person had in 1970, they must spend 50% more on housing, spend 30% more on education, and do it all while earning about 18% less money. That doesn’t even include the extra expenses needed to compete.

I look at my own parents for an example. My parents purchased the house I grew up in for $20,000 – and that included seven acres of land. At the time, that was approximately what my father earned in a year. Today, if I were to purchase a similarly-sized house with seven acres of land, I would be spending well over $100,000 – significantly more than an annual salary.

My parents were also able to find good work without the cost of a college education. Today, the jobs they both had would be completely unavailable to someone if they did not have a college education, putting significantly more expense on the back of a young person today.

This is for the US and I am thinking about Canada, but in light of all the discussions we’re having about the rising cost of university tuition and the theory that students today are just lazing about… well, I found this interesting.

The old “when I was your age, we had it hard, you kids today are spoiled” trope no longer applies thanks to 30 years of growing income inequality.

(Source: )

jhnbrssndn:

A shocking day, alright.

A day on which an unelected government, acting as a proxy for international finance capital, began its dismembering of Higher Education; on which the State set hundreds of riot cops and mounted police on students, trade unionists and schoolchildren; and on which I returned home, having pondered the media narrative that would emerge from the day’s events, to see the BBC, on television, radio, and online, in full, shrill battle cry against the “violence” of the protesters.

I have arrived home, having secured my release from the Parliament Square kettle only by agreeing to being filmed by the police.  I knew that today would pit our best, brightest and most passionate against the Full Force™ of the neoliberal state.  I could feel an ugliness in the air, the implacability of the markets haunting us like a wife beater’s menace.  The vote would pass. Today would not end well for our wonderful, brave, young people.

(Source: jhnbrssndn)