The Precipitous Barbarisation of Our Times

Source

consortiumnews.com

By Roberto Savio
in Rome
Inter Press Service

July 25, 2019 

Roberto Savio confronts an era of greed, fear and “populocracy.”

 

When all is said and done, it appears that Thomas Hobbes, the 17th century English philosopher who had a dire vision of man, was not totally wrong.

From the frivolous to the serious, in just a week we have had four items of news which would not happen in a normal world. An English porn beauty with 86,000 followers on social media has put bottles of the water she bathes in on sale at 30 pounds a bottle and has sold several thousand bottles.

A survey in Brazil found out that 7 percent of citizens believe that the Earth is flat (40 percent of American schools teach that the world was created in a week, according to the Bible, so there cannot be ancient civilizations). Another survey, this time of members of the British Tory party, who just elected Boris Johnson as prime minister (not exactly a triumph of reason) are so in favor of a “hard” Brexit that they do not care if this means the exit of Scotland and the end of the United Kingdom. Finally, in order to win the election, U.S. President Donald Trump has made racism one of his banner issues and, in a country of immigrants, this has given him an increase of 5 points in opinion polls.

There are so many signs of barbarisation that they would fill a book… and, as Euripides famously wrote: “Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad.”

White supremacists clash with police in Charlottesville, Virginia, Aug. 12, 2017. (Evan Nesterak, CC BY 2.0, Wikimedia Commons)

It is not a popular task, but we have to look at the reality and observe that, in the most scientifically and technologically developed period of history, we are living in times of precipitous barbarisation.

Social inequality has become the basis for the new economy. People have now lowered their expectations and are prepared to work part-time in a precarious job, where young people (according to the International Labour Organisation) can hope for a retirement pension of 600 euros a month. This has been accepted by the political system. We even have a study from Spain according to which, in the present housing market, nearly 87 percent of people need 90 percent of their salary just to rent a house.

A Salary Means Survival

Today, for many, a salary means survival, not a dignified life. The new economy has developed the so-called gig economy: you work to distribute food, but you are a co-entrepreneur without any of the rights of an employee, for an amount that will never allow you to marry. Children have grown accustomed to look at phenomena such as poverty or war as natural. And now politics are not based on ideas but on how you can successfully exploit the guts of the people, waving banners against immigrants (when we are witnessing a rapid fall in the birth rate) and splintering countries between ”We” who represent the people and “You” enemy of the country. The United States is the best example, where Republicans consider Democrats enemies of the United States. And this brings us to a central question: have Trump, Italy’s Matteo Salvini, Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro and company not been elected democratically? And they are the symptom or the cause of the “populocracy” which is replacing democracy?

It is not possible to offer a sociological or historical study here. Let us just use a bite: we have gone from the Gutenberg era into a new era – the Zuckerberg era.

Those who greeted the arrival of the Internet with enthusiasm also did so because it would democratize communication and therefore bring about greater participation. The hope was to see a world where horizontal communication would replace the vertical system of information which Gutenberg made possible. Information was, in fact, a support for states and business that used it to reach citizens, who had no recourse to feedback. With the Internet, people could now speak directly throughout the world and the propaganda that accompanied its arrival was not considered relevant: it is not important to know, it is important to know where to find It. Well, we have all the statistics on how the Internet has affected the general level of culture and dialogue.

Ad for a company offering “freelance services on demand.” (Billie Grace Ward/Flickr)

Smaller Attention Span

The attention span of people has declined dramatically. The majority of Internet users do not stay on an item more than 15 seconds. In the last five years, book volumes have been shortened by 29 pages. Today, articles longer than 650 words are not accepted by columnists’ services. The last meeting of editors of international news agencies decided to aim lower, at a 17-year-old instead of a 22-year-old. In Europe, the percentage of people who buy at least one book a year now stands at 22 percent (in the United States it is now 10.5 percent). According to a recent study in Italy, only 40 percent of the population is able to read and understand a book. In the same country, 13 percent of libraries have closed in the last 10 years. A popular TV news program in Spain several years ago, “59 seconds” brought a number of people to debate around a table; at the 59th seconds their microphones would disappear. Today, the dream of a TV interviewer is that the person interviewed will give a shorter answer than the question. Newspapers are for people over 40. And there is a unanimous complaint about the level of students entering the university: not all are free from mistakes of orthography and syntax. And the list could continue practically ad infinitum.

The problem of barbarisation has major relevance for political participation. The Gutenberg generations were accustomed to dialogue and discussion. Today, 83 percent of Internet users (80 percent under the age of 21), do so only in the virtual world they carved out for themselves. People of Group A gather only with people of Group A. If they come across somebody from Group B, they insult each other. Politicians have been able to adjust rapidly to the system. The best example is Trump. All U.S. newspapers together have a circulation of 60 million copies (10 million those of quality, both conservative and progressive). Trump has 60 million followers who take his tweets as information. The do not buy newspapers, and if they watch TV it is Fox, which is Trump’s amplifier. No wonder that over 80 percent of Trump’s voters would vote for him again. And the media, which have lost the ability to offer analysis and cover processes, not just events, take the easy path. Let us follow famous people and make the famous more famous. Analytical journalism is disappearing. In the United States it exists thanks to grants … in every European country, there are few quality papers left, but the largest circulation goes to tabloids which spare their readers the effort of thinking. The Daily Mirror in Britain and Bild in Germany are the best examples.

Symbolic representation of Internet addiction. (Sam Wolff, CC BY-SA 2.0, Wikimedia Commons)

The Internet has made everybody a communicator. This is a fantastic achievement. But in this increasing barbarisation, people also use the Internet for transmitting false information, stories based on fantasy, without any of the quality controls that the media world used to have. And artificial intelligence has been taking over, creating many false accounts, which now interfere in the electoral process, as was proven in the last U.S. elections. We have to add to this that the algorithms used by the owners of the Internet aim to trap the attention of users in order to keep them as much as possible. This month, El Pais published a long study entitled “The toxic effects of YouTube,” where it shows how its algorithms push the viewer to items that are of fantasy, pseudoscientific and of great attraction.

Citizens into Consumers

This is due to the fact that the owners have become fabulously rich by transforming citizens into consumers. They find out our identity, and they sell it to companies for their marketing, and also for elections. Those owners have unprecedented wealth, never achieved in the real world: not only in that of production but even in the world of finance, which has become a casino with no control. The entire world of production of services and goods, man-made, is now close to a trillion dollars a day; that same day, financial flows reach $40 trillion. Jeff Bezos gave his ex-wife $38 billion in the divorce. That is equal to the annual average income of $20,000 of 19 million people. No wonder that 80 individuals now possess the same wealth as 2.3 billion people (in 2008, they were 1,200 individuals).

Protesting the Wall Street bailouts at Chicago Federal Reserve / Board of trade, Sept. 21, 2008.
(freemarketsmyass/Flickr)

According to historians, greed and fear are great engines of change in history. That was also true in the Gutenberg era. But now, they have triggered a combination of both in a short period of time. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, the doctrine of liberal globalisation arrived with such strength that Margaret Thatcher (who with Ronald Reagan ushered in the new vision of individual profits and elimination of social goods) famously talked of TINA: There Is No Alternative.

The entire political system, including Social Democrats, went along with a system of values based on greed and unfettered competition at the individual, state and international level. It took 20 years to understand that the poor have become poorer, and the rich richer, and that states have lost much of their sovereignty to multinational corporations and the world of finance. It is worth noting that, in 2009, in order to save a corrupt and inefficient financial system, the world spent $12 trillion (the United States alone spent $4 trillion). Since that rescue, banks have paid the impressive amount of $800 billion in penalties for illicit activities.

The financial crisis of 2009 has triggered a wave of fear. Let us not forget that until 2009, there were no sovereignist, populist, xenophobic parties anywhere, except for Jean-Marie Le Pen in France. Soon old traps such as “in name of the nation” and “the defense of religion” were resurrected by politicians able to ride fear. A new scapegoat – immigrants – was found and populocrats are now undermining democracy everywhere.

The Populocracy 

Populocracy is the new wave. Former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi ushered in a new language, and that language has now been updated by Salvini, Trump and so on. Twitter, Facebook and Instagram are the new medium and now the medium is the message. The old elite had not found a new language.

The Zuckerberg era is an era of greed and fear. Zuckerberg is now attempting to create a global currency, the Libra, to be used by his 2.3 billion users. Until now, states were the only entities able to emit money, a symbol of the nation. Zuckerberg’s currency is based entirely on the Internet and will have no control or regulations. In case of a default, we will have a world crisis without precedent. In the Gutenberg era, this was not possible.

But who enabled Jeff Bezos to give $38 billion to a former wife? Who elected Trump and Salvini and company, who speak on behalf of the nation and the people, and turn those who do not agree into enemies of the nation and the people, creating an unprecedented polarization, accompanied by an orgy of revolt against science and knowledge, which have supported the elite, and must now be put aside for the good of people.

This process of barbarisation should not obscure an old proverb: every country has the government it deserves. It is called democracy. However, the traditional elite has no code of communication with the new era. The answer will come from citizen mobilization.

A young Swedish girl, Greta Thunberg, has done more with her stubbornness to raise awareness about impending climate change than the entire political system. Even Trump (albeit for electoral reasons) has now declared that climate change is important.

Greta Thunberg

✔@GretaThunberg

“It’s almost like you don’t even know these numbers exist. As if you haven’t even read the latest IPCC report, on which much of the future of our civilisation is depending.”

A part from my speech yesterday at the French Parliament.

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Today, there many “rays of light” appearing in the world. The elections in Istanbul are a good example, as are the mobilization in Hong Kong, Sudan and Nicaragua, among many others. Let us hope we will reach a point where people will take the reins of the process and awake the world from the precipitous course of barbarisation. Even Thomas Hobbes concluded that humankind will always, soon or later, find the right path, and give itself good governance. He thought that an elite would always be able to lead the masses.

Well, elites are now the Greta Thunbergs of the world.

Publisher of OtherNews, Italian-Argentine Roberto Savio is an economist, journalist, communication expert, political commentator, activist for social and climate justice and advocate of global governance. Adviser to INPS-IDN and to the Global Cooperation Council. He is co-founder of Inter Press Service news agency and its president emeritus.

Here’s How Much The Top CEOs Of S/P 500 Companies Get Paid

Source

http://www.zerohedge.com

Submitted by Jeff Desjardins of Visual Capitalist

Sun, 07/14/2019

How much do the CEOs from some of the world’s most important companies get paid, and do these top CEOs deliver commensurate returns to shareholders?

Today’s infographic comes to us from HowMuch.net and it visualizes data on S&P 500 companies to see if there is any relationship between CEO pay and stock performance.

For Richer or Poorer

To begin, let’s look at the highest and lowest paid CEOs on the S&P 500, and their associated performance levels. Data here comes from a report by the Wall Street Journal.

Below are the five CEOs with the most pay in 2018:

Last year, David Zaslav led top CEOs by taking home $129.4 million from Discovery, Inc., the parent company of various TV properties such as the Discovery Channel, Animal Planet, HGTV, Food Network, and other non-fiction focused programming. He delivered a 10.4% shareholder return, when the S&P 500 itself finished in negative territory in 2018.

Of the mix of highest-paid CEOs, Bob Iger of Disney may be able to claim the biggest impact. He helped close a $71.3 billion acquisition of 21st Century Fox, while also leading Disney’s efforts to launch a streaming service to compete with Netflix. The market rewarded Disney with a 20.4% shareholder return, while Iger received a paycheck of $65.6 million.

Now, let’s look at the lowest paid CEOs in 2018:

On the list of lowest paid CEOs, we see two tech titans (Larry Page and Jack Dorsey) that have each opted for $1 salaries. Of course, they are both billionaires that own large amounts of shares in their respective companies, so they are not particularly worried about annual paychecks.

Also appearing here is Warren Buffett, who is technically paid $100,000 per year by Berkshire Hathaway plus an amount of “other compensation” that fluctuates annually. While this is indeed a modest salary, the Warren Buffett Empire is anything but modest in size – and the legendary value investor currently holds a net worth of $84.3 billion.

Finally, it’s worth noting that while J. Jayson Adair of Copart was one of the lowest paid CEOs at $203,000 in 2018, the company had the best return on the S&P 500 at 82.2%. Today, the company’s stock price still sits near all-time highs.

Maxing Returns

Finally, let’s take a peek at the CEOs that received the highest shareholder returns, and if they seem to correlate with compensation at all.

Interestingly, three of highest performing CEOs – in terms of shareholder returns – actually took home smaller amounts than the median S&P 500 annual paycheck of $12.4 million. This includes the aforementioned A. Jayson Adair, who raked in only $203,000 in 2018.

That said, there is a good counterpoint to this as well.

Of the five CEOs who had the worst returns, four of them made less than the median value of $12.4 million, while one remaining CEO took home slightly more. In other words, both the best and worst performing CEOs skew towards lower-than-average pay to some degree.

‘Eye-Popping’: Analysis Shows Top 1% Gained $21 Trillion in Wealth Since 1989 While Bottom Half Lost $900 Billion

Source

Common Dreams

by Jake Johnson, staff writer

June 14, 2019

“The top one percent owns nearly $30 trillion of assets while the bottom half owns less than nothing.”

CEO and founder of Amazon Jeff Bezos participates in a discussion during a Milestone Celebration dinner September 13, 2018 in Washington, D.C. (Photo: Alex Wong/Getty Images)

Adding to the mountain of statistical evidence showing the severity of U.S. inequality, an analysis published Friday found that the top one percent of Americans gained $21 trillion in wealth since 1989 while the bottom 50 percent lost $900 billion.

“We have the worst inequality in this country since the 1920s.”
—Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.)

Matt Bruenig, founder of the left-wing think tank People’s Policy Project, broke down the Federal Reserve’s newly released “Distributive Financial Accounts” data series and found that, overall, “the top one percent owns nearly $30 trillion of assets while the bottom half owns less than nothing, meaning they have more debts than they have assets.”

The growth of wealth inequality over the past 30 years, Bruenig found, is “eye-popping.”

“Between 1989 and 2018, the top one percent increased its total net worth by $21 trillion,” Bruenig wrote. “The bottom 50 percent actually saw its net worth decrease by $900 billion over the same period.”

“Enormous crisis,” Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) tweeted in response to Bruenig’s analysis.

“We have the worst inequality in this country since the 1920s,” wrote Jayapal, co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. “Three wealthiest people in America have as much wealth as the bottom 50 percent.”

The Most Medicated Country In The World: 46% Of Americans Have Taken A Pharmaceutical Drug Within The Last 30 Days

Source

endoftheamericandream.com

by Michael Snyder

May 8, 2019

If it seems like about half the country is on drugs, that is because it is actually true.  According to a new survey from the National Center for Health Statistics, almost half of all Americans have taken a pharmaceutical drug within the past 30 days, and that officially makes us “the most medicated country in the world”.  And needless to say, those dealing these drugs are becoming exceedingly wealthy at our expense.  The average American spends $1,200 a year on prescription drugs, but of course many Americans spend far more than that and others spend nothing at all.  In recent years there has been a tremendous backlash against the big pharmaceutical corporations, because many of them have become exceedingly greedy.  As you will see below, prices have been raised on 650 different drugs this year alone.  Once they get their claws into you, the pharmaceutical giants want to get every last penny out of you that they possibly can.

Without a doubt, there are some pharmaceutical drugs that greatly help people.  In fact, many people wouldn’t be alive today without them.

On the other hand, it has been estimated that Americans spend somewhere around $200 billion a year on drugs that they do not need, and this new survey from the National Center for Health Statistics discovered that 46 percent of all Americans have taken a prescription drug within the last 30 days…

Nearly half of people in the US are taking prescription drugs, a new report reveals.

The National Center for Health Statistics surveyed people across the US, and found that about 46 percent of respondents had taken at least one prescription drug in the past month.

I am sorry, but there is no way that half the country needs to be hooked on drugs.

And for senior citizens that number is much higher.  In fact, the survey found that a whopping 85 percent of Americans over the age of 60 are currently on at least one pharmaceutical drug.

For adults under the ago of 60, antidepressants are being taken more than anything else…

For young adults antidepressants are king. According to the most recent numbers, 11.4 percent of 20- to 59-year-olds had taken a drug to help with their mood in the last month when they took the survey.

Could this help to explain why so many people are walking around like zombies these days?

And since nearly all mass shooters have been found to be on some kind of mind-altering drug, perhaps Congress should finally take some action in this area.  It can be exceedingly difficult to get off these insidious drugs, and many that get hooked on them end up staying on them for the rest of their lives.

Of course, antidepressants are just one part of the problem.  For example, opioids are some of the most addictive drugs on the entire planet, and their overuse has destroyed countless lives all across America.

Like those that deal illegal drugs, once the big pharmaceutical companies have their hooks in you they are not afraid to take full advantage of it.  And even though many Americans rely on life-saving drugs to literally stay alive, big pharma just keeps jacking up prices year after year after year.  As I mentioned above, prices have been raised on 650 different medications this year alone…

More than 650 products had price increases this year, through early February, according to Rx Savings Solutions, which sells software to employers and insurers to reduce drug costs. The industry justifies the moves as essential for investing in research and development. Drugmakers often point out that they see very little of the increases because of the big rebates they distribute to others in the supply chain, including insurers and pharmacy benefit managers, who in turn blame Pharma for setting high list prices.

In most cases, we are not just talking about a price increase of a dollar or two either.

For example, one study found that out-of-pocket costs for multiple sclerosis medications had gotten 20 times greater between 2004 and 2016…

The study, published Wednesday in the journal Neurology, found that the average out-of-pocket costs for people taking medications for multiple sclerosis had risen the greatest over the past 12 years, costing 20 times more in 2016 than in 2004.

“Out-of-pocket costs have risen to the point where neurologists should be able to consider the potential financial burden for the patient when prescribing medication, but they do not have this information available to them,” said Dr. Brian C. Callaghan, the study’s lead author and assistant professor of neurology at the University of Michigan.

When you have to pay 20 times as much for the same medicine 12 years later, that is some serious price gouging.

But even worse if what Catalyst Pharmaceuticals just did.

They took a drug that literally makes it possible for people with Lambert-Eaton myasthenic syndrome to be able to walk and jacked the price all the way up to $375,000 a year…

Bhanu Patel couldn’t believe the news. The cost of the medication that allows her to move — the one that enabled her to walk stairs again — shot up to $375,000.

Fear gripped her: What would this mean for her independence? Would she become a financial burden on her family? How is this possible in the country that’s given her so much?

Thankfully, there was so much outrage that the FDA decided to undercut them…

The FDA announced Monday that it was approving a separate drug for pediatric patients with a rare, painful neuromuscular disease called Lambert-Eaton myasthenic syndrome, also known as LEMS. The disease weakens and fatigues muscles, causing agonizing pain to the point at which patients struggle to walk.

The move sparked celebration in the LEMS community and tanked the stock of Catalyst Pharmaceuticals, maker of the $375,000 drug, called Firdapse. The company’s stock price has dropped about 50% since Monday.

Look, nobody is suggesting that pharmaceutical companies should not be allowed to make a profit.

But when you act like a pig, you are going to get slaughtered, and Catalyst Pharmaceuticals deserves everything that is happening to it.

Once upon a time, the medical industry was all about helping people, but now it is all about making as much money as possible.  We desperately need to fundamentally reform our healthcare system, but Congress is not going to do that any time soon.

So, for now, the big pharmaceutical companies will continue to try to get as many of us as possible hooked on their drugs, and they will continue to try to squeeze every single penny out of us that they possibly can.

About the author: Michael Snyder is a nationally-syndicated writer, media personality and political activist. He is the author of four books including Get Prepared Now, The Beginning Of The Endand Living A Life That Really Matters. His articles are originally published on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News. From there, his articles are republished on dozens of other prominent websites. If you would like to republish his articles, please feel free to do so. The more people that see this information the better, and we need to wake more people up while there is still time.

How the Age of Billionaires Ends

 

Source: How the Age of Billionaires Ends

With permission from

http://www.counterpunch.org

by Josh Hoxie

February 8, 2019

Every month or so there’s a stunning new headline statistic about just how stark our economic divide has become.

Understanding that this divide exists is a good start. Appreciating that a deeply unfair and unequal economy is problematic is even better. Actually doing something about it — that’s the best.

As 2020 presidential hopefuls start trying to prove their progressive bona fides, serious policies to take on economic inequality are at the forefront. These ideas don’t stand much of a shot of becoming law in the Trump era, of course. But if the balance of power shifts, so too does the potential for these paradigm-shifting new programs.

Let’s take a closer look at the problems they’ll have to address.

A new billionaire is minted every two days, according to a recent Oxfam study. As a result, the top 0.1 percent owns a greater share of the nation’s wealth than the bottom 90 percent combined.

The richest dynastic families in the United States have seen their wealth expand at a dizzying pace. The three wealthiest families — the Waltons, the Kochs, and the Mars — increased their wealth by nearly 6,000 percent since 1983.

In other words, the rich in the United States have accumulated a metric crap ton of money. And what are they doing with this immense wealth and power?

Dan Gilbert (#71 on the Forbes 400) just bought the world’s first mega-yacht, with an IMAX theater on it, for $100 million. Hedge fund billionaire Kenneth Griffin (#45) just broke the record for the highest price ever paid for a house — $238 million — for an apartment in Manhattan’s “Billionaires’ Row.”

Add in a few private jets, a couple of absurd presidential runs, and those Trump tax cuts, and you get a pretty accurate depiction of the priorities of billionaire spending.

Meanwhile, the rest of the country isn’t shopping for yachts and jets. Most families are forced to work longer hours for lower wages.

Despite massive increases in growth and productivity, the median family saw their wealth go down over the past three decades, not up. The proportion of families with zero or negative wealth (meaning they owe more than they own) jumped from 1 in 6 to 1 in 5.

Relatedly, our roads and bridges our crumbling and our public schools are desperately underfunded.

It doesn’t take an economist to tell you this isn’t sustainable. So what about those policies to do something about it?

Senator Bernie Sanders has proposed a robust addition to the federal estate tax. Billionaires under his plan would pay a top rate of 77 percent on whatever they bequeath to their heirs over $1 billion. (Far from a new idea, Sanders is merely proposing reinstating the top rate in place from 1941 to 1976.)

Senator Elizabeth Warren, not to be outdone, has proposed a direct tax on concentrated wealth targeting modern day wealth hoarders. Her plan would impose a progressive annual tax starting at 2 percent on assets over $50 million and rising to 3 percent on assets over $1 billion.

And at least one member of Congress who isn’t running for president, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, has gotten in on the action. She’s proposed raising the top marginal tax rate to 70 percent (only on income over $10 million, contrary to what you might hear on Fox News).

Three bold ideas to stem our skyrocketing economic inequality, three ways to tax the ultra-rich, three policies unlikely to become law given the current administration.

Yet these ideas are more than mere platitudes. Poll after poll shows big majorities of Americans ready to see the rich pay their fair share — and worried about the economic power consolidating in the upper echelons.

When the political moment arrives, we won’t have to wonder what’s coming.

More articles by:Josh Hoxie

Josh Hoxie directs the Project on Opportunity and Taxation at the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS-dc.org).

The reality of capitalism: GM makes $11.8 billion in profits while closing plants, eliminating 14,000 jobs

“Workers in the US, Canada, Korea and Brazil are thrown onto the streets, their communities are destroyed, and the profits they have produced are handed over to the financial aristocracy that lords over society.”

The huge profits, side-by-side with the destruction of entire communities, expose the real character of the capitalist system and why the working class must abolish it.

Source: The reality of capitalism: GM makes $11.8 billion in profits while closing plants, eliminating 14,000 jobs – World Socialist Web Site

http://www.wsws.org

Jerry White

7 February 2019

 

General Motors made $11.8 billion in profits in 2018, according to a company statement released yesterday. This included $10.8 billion in North American earnings last year and a 9.5 percent profit margin in the final quarter. These giant profits were announced as GM accelerates it plans to shut five factories in the US and Canada and destroy more than 14,000 jobs.

GM’s corporate board initiated the jobs massacre two days before the release of the profit report, which showed an eight percent decline over last year’s profits. The aim is to reassure Wall Street that GM will not bow to popular outrage over the plant closings and mass layoffs.

On Monday, the first of 4,000 engineers, technicians, managers and other white-collar workers, including 1,300 workers at the GM Tech Center in the Detroit suburb of Warren, were laid off and escorted out of their work locations. The half-century old Lordstown, Ohio assembly plant is scheduled to be closed next month. The Detroit-Hamtramck Assembly Plant is to be closed on June 1, and the Oshawa, Ontario plant shut down by the fourth quarter of 2019. The company also plans to close transmission plants in Baltimore and Warren by April 1 and August 1, respectively.

In 1979, during the first Chrysler bankruptcy, the corporations and the United Auto Workers (UAW) claimed that huge wage and benefit concessions were needed to “save” the auto industry. After three decades of endless givebacks, the UAW made the same claims as it collaborated with the Obama administration to slash wages during the 2009 restructuring of GM and Chrysler.

Now, even as the auto companies are flush with cash, the corporations are demanding even more sacrifices from workers and handing over billions to Wall Street.

Since 2015, GM squandered $10.6 billion on stock buybacks to boost the value of the company’s shares, more than double the $4.5 billion GM is expected to save next year from the job cuts.

Billions more have been spent on dividend payments to wealthy shareholders. This means even greater personal fortunes for top GM investors like Warren Buffett, the world’s third richest man (net worth $84.4 billion) whose Berkshire Hathaway owns 52.4 million GM shares, and Paul Schwarzman (net worth $12.4 billion) whose BlackRock investment firm controls 79 million GM shares.

In a conference call Wednesday, GM CEO Mary Barra told representatives from Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Citibank, Barclays, Deutsche Bank and other investment firms that company executives would “continue to deliver on our commitments that we made to you, our owners” to “create value in the short-term and long-term for our shareholders.”

Workers in the US, Canada, Korea and Brazil are thrown onto the streets, their communities are destroyed, and the profits they have produced are handed over to the financial aristocracy that lords over society.

Workers are being given an object lesson in the nature of capitalism. While the working class produces all of society’s wealth, the product of its labor is owned by the ruling class, which funnels vast sums into the hands of super-rich minority, while workers are condemned to poverty, servitude and social misery.

Predictably, no one on the investors’ call raised any objections to the devastation that would be wrought by the plant closings and mass layoffs. One analyst from Swiss-based UBS, however, did express concern about the “enormous push back” against the plant closings. He asked Barra, “How much of the $4.5 billion in savings is at risk if the unions don’t allow the closings or concessions?”

The GM CEO quickly assured him, saying, “I don’t see any risks,” making it clear the UAW had already signed off on closing what she said were underutilized plants. While the status of the plants would be finalized in negotiations with the UAW for a new labor agreement this summer, she said, “it’s a transition we have to go through” and “problem solve with the UAW.”

Far from fighting the plant closings, the UAW and the Unifor union in Canada have actively supported the decimation of autoworkers’ jobs and living standards. A substantial portion of the wages and benefits stolen from workers has found its way into the bank accounts and investment portfolios of the union executives themselves. When GM announced the plant closings in November, the value of GM shares controlled by the UAW increased by more than $200 million.

Facing the growing militancy of workers, the unions, discredited by decades of betrayals and bribery, are blaming the plant closings on Mexican workers for supposedly stealing the jobs of US and Canadian workers, echoing the nationalist rantings of the Trump administration.

This lie has been exploded by the courageous and ongoing struggle of Mexican workers in the “maquiladora” sweatshops in Matamoros. The workers have waged a three-week battle after rebelling against the unions, forming independent strike committees and calling popular assemblies to fight for improved wages and conditions.

Free from the stranglehold of the unions, these workers marched to the US border at Brownsville, Texas and appealed to their American brothers and sisters to join the fight against the global corporations. The struggle has now spread to grocery store workers, public employees and other sections of workers in Matamoros, with business publications warning about the spreading “contagion” of the class struggle.

The reemergence of the class struggle and political radicalization of the working class has struck fear in the hearts of the ruling class. Terrified that the growth of working-class struggle will acquire a conscious, anti-capitalist perspective, President Trump declared in his State of the Union Tuesday night: “We are alarmed by new calls to adopt socialism in our country.” His warning received the approval of the assembled representatives of the ruling class, Democrat and Republican, who hoped their clapping hands might stop the wave of working-class anger spreading throughout the country and internationally.

The answer to GM’s job massacre is the demonstration on Saturday, February 9, called by the Steering Committee of the Coalition of Rank-and-File Committees and the WSWS Autoworker Newsletter, to mobilize working class opposition to GM’s plant closings and mass layoffs. The march will oppose the supposed “right” of GM to shut down these plants.

The demonstration is not an appeal to GM and its corporate executives, beholden to Wall Street, but a call for workers to express their independent strength and determination to fight. It is also not an appeal to the UAW, the cheap-labor contractor and industrial police force, but is based on the call for auto workers and other workers to form independent rank-and-file committees to organize and unify their struggles.

The demonstration will demand a halt to all plant closures, the abolition of the two-tier wage and benefit system, the transformation of all temporary workers into full-timers, and the rehiring of all laid-off and victimized workers. In opposition to the shop floor dictatorship of corporate management, it will fight for industrial democracy, workers’ control of production and the transformation of GM, Ford and the other auto giants into public enterprises, democratically controlled and collectively owned by the working class.

This program is a critical part of the socialist transformation of world economy, to make social need and equality, not the accumulation of grotesque levels of personal wealth, the guiding principle of economic, political and social life.

 

Cash crop: The real reason cannabis approval is so slow is because Big Pharma wants to patent it

“The fact that Big Pharma has been a driving force behind marijuana prohibition is hard to ignore — especially when it comes to the number of opioid manufacturers that have spent thousands of dollars fighting against medical marijuana.”

Source: Cash crop: The real reason cannabis approval is so slow is because Big Pharma wants to patent it

http://www.newstarget.com

By Vicki Batts

11/08/2017

The fact that Big Pharma has been a driving force behind marijuana prohibition is hard to ignore — especially when it comes to the number of opioid manufacturers that have spent thousands of dollars fighting against medical marijuana. The plague of opioid addiction has struck the United States hard, leaving countless numbers of overdoses, deaths and destroyed families in its wake. And yet, the people who pushed these highly addictive drugs onto the unsuspecting public are suddenly playing martyr, spending nearly a billion dollars to keep opioids on the market and fight cannabis legalization, under the alleged pretense of public safety. It just doesn’t add up, does it?

Studies have shown that medical cannabis can help reduce opioid abuse and save lives, but to Big Pharma, profits are always more important than people. Indeed, if the pharmaceutical industry was actually concerned about human health, as they proclaim to be, lobbying and bribing politicians wouldn’t be at the top of their agenda. As Allen Frances, Professor Emeritus at Duke University, contends, “Recent history makes clear that Pharma owns Washington and also many state capitals. It invests twice as much on marketing and lobbying as it does on research and is much better at buying politicians than producing better products.”

In addition to helping people overcome their addiction to opioids, research has shown that medical cannabis can help prevent more addiction by providing pain patients with a safer alternative to begin with.

It’s obvious that Big Pharma has more than just keeping marijuana illegal in mind, however. Awareness about the addictive and dangerous nature of opioids is growing — and as more people wake up to the fact that Big Pharma’s opioid painkillers are deadly, the industry is undoubtedly looking to find a new cash cow.

There are many indications that Big Pharma is looking to take over the cannabis market. For example, Insys Therapeutics — an opioid manufacturer that’s come under fire for their unscrupulous marketing and sales tactics — secured DEA approval for synthetic marijuana in March.

Further, Insys Therapeutics spent $500,000 last summer to fight cannabis legalization in Arizona. Over a nine-year period, the pharma industry as a whole spent $880 million to fight cannabis reform and keep opioids flowing freely. If they actually opposed legalizing marijuana, why are they trying to patent a synthetic? The company doesn’t care about cannabis; it cares about protecting their profits.

And it’s not just Insys Therapeutics; countless companies are looking to secure their place in the marijuana market. Corporate behemoths like Monsanto and Bayer are also reportedly looking to patent cannabis.

It’s no secret that legal weed is immensely profitable; as Waking Times reports, the state of Colorado reported that their yearly sales had already topped $1 billion in October — and those sales are expected to rise dramatically as the holiday season draws near.

The race to take over the cannabis market is on and Big Pharma is doing their best to lead the charge — especially when it comes to synthetics. But, there is no synthetic that can even come close to the real plant; in fact, Big Pharma’s bogus synthetic versions of the plant may even be dangerous.

Big Pharma has had their hand in preventing cannabis legalization for years — and now, they’re trying to take over the marketplace. [Related: Read more stories about medical marijuana at CBDs.news.]

Sources for this article include:

WakingTimes.com

HuffingtonPost.com