Working Class Man
If you want to see Bruce Springsteen play in the US, it may cost you. Some of the tickets for the Boss’s forthcoming tour are going for over $4,000 (£3,300) on Ticketmaster AUD $6000
Category: Capitalism
A Victorian burger chain will offer staff a portion of profits in an effort to retain them during the cost of living crisis and tight labour market.
Vic burger chain shares profits with staff – Michael West
Green-Colored Glasses
Private Prisons Are a Socially Responsible Investment, According to Bizarre Wall Street Measures
“We didn’t change any business practices. It’s a charade, yet no one questions this stuff,” he added. “It sounds good, but it doesn’t do anything.
How Corporate America Uses ESG to Polish Its Image
Woke Capitalism isn’t new. Capitalists will turn to anything that supports or even distracts from their economic activities. Anything doesn’t attempt to aggressively change them. In fact any cultural change that promotes and doesn’t directly harm is seen by definition as progressive even by capitalists. It’s why they even see social welfare as a business opportunity. They in fact need to allow for cultural change and use it to maintain or increase their bottom lines. As long as they can prevent unionization they are int the box seat.
The good news is that progressive political causes are so popular that they are worth cashing in on — times are changing for the better. But there is a critical caveat. When corporations get political, it is almost exclusively on social and environmental issues rather than economic ones.
Increasing the minimum wage, combatting aggressive corporate tax minimization, promoting income and wealth redistribution, reversing excessive executive remuneration, sharing the spoils of economic growth and curbing economic inequality are entirely off-limits to the woke corporation’s activist agenda.
Right-wing commentary over woke capitalism is distracting attention from addressing economic inequality.
Finance’s conquest of the supports necessary to deal with the universal human fate of growing old spells certain disaster for our golden years. The retirement-financial complex should be fought tooth and claw.
Capitalist society can only ever legalize cannabis in a way that benefits the already wealthy. Why not put the newly legal weed industry in the hands of the public and away from the profit motive?
This Memorial Day, we should rededicate ourselves to fighting the horrors of war. So here’s a 1916 Eugene Debs piece, never before republished, about why internationalism is at the heart of socialist politics.
Source: Eugene V. Debs: Socialist Internationalism Versus Capitalist Nationalism
The MAGA promise
21 are dead in another mass shooting, including 19 schoolchildren. The white slavers of the Old South used to call US slavery our “peculiar institution.” Nowadays we have another peculiar institution, the gun culture.
Source: When it comes to Guns, the US is a Third World Country run by Corporate Lobbyists for a Profit
‘Control of most public companies – that is, the wealthiest organisations in the world, with more revenue than most states – will soon be concentrated in the hands of a dozen or fewer people.’
As journalist David Dayen has argued, this increasing market concentration reduces consumer choice, raises prices and most likely harms workers.
Source: Three companies control a piece of nearly everything. Should you worry?
Millions of Filipino workers travel abroad each year to labor in dangerous, exhausting, and unregulated conditions. Scattered throughout the world, these hyperexploited workers have been delivered by the Philippine state to serve the needs of foreign powers.
Source: How Migrant Workers From the Philippines Power Modern Capitalism
The living experience of ordinary Australians isn’t working but then it was never intended to be taken into account by the LNP and its very, very, kind-hearted, religious leader who we know so well!!
The only people in Australia who can boost wage growth are employers and the only way they can do that is by giving people pay rises.
The whole point of abandoning what was once called “centralised wage fixing” and deregulating the labour market over the past 30 years was to put employers in charge of deciding how much they pay their employees. And, guess what, on the whole Australian employers have decided to boost their profits rather than boost their workers’ wages. Just as Scott Morrison wants to see more women get into parliament (but not at the expense of men) and wants to see housing affordability improve (without house prices actually falling) the prime minister is all in favour of stronger wage growth – but not at the expense of higher profits. Unfortunately for Australians struggling with the rising cost of living, they can’t feed magic pudding to their kids.
The second most read book on the planet with the greatest influence in the most shortest of possible time.
Published this day in 1848, The Communist Manifesto didn’t offer blueprints for a communist future. But in showing that capitalism is not eternal or natural, Marx and Engels explained how the crises of the present prepare the way for our future liberation.
Source: The Communist Manifesto Shows Why Capitalism Won’t Last Forever
Are retirement villages a rip-off? Retirees could be up to a million dollars worse off if they moved into a retirement village than if they remained at home, according to new analysis. Callum Foote reports.
Source: Retirement villages: the destruction of retiree capital – Michael West Media
Indeed, treasurer Josh Frydenberg remarked back in June that the rise is good for the economy. The federal government extended lukewarm sympathies for those who are struggling to get a foot in the property door for the first time, while merrily pointing out that many households are gaining from continued property price inflation. Therefore, price hikes are here to stay because simple solutions – such as building more houses and properly taxing property investments – are not as politically sound. That’s the reality of things: those with power and money impact the market more than those without. That’s why the winners become fatter winners and the losers continue to lose. What we are facing today is not an unsolvable crisis, but there is a lack of willingness to solve it among those in a position to do so.
With distrust in government near an all-time high, even the appearance of a conflict of interest hurts our democracy. Members of Congress are elected to represent the interests of the people, not the money in their brokerage accounts. Banning members of Congress from trading individual stocks should be a no-brainer. Congress should pass the Ban Conflicted Trading Act. Now. You might suggest this to your own members of Congress. What do you think?
Source: Why Should Members of Congress Be Able to Make Money on Inside Information? | The Smirking Chimp
State and federal governments may be scrambling to secure rapid antigen tests to ease the burden on PCR testing, but several Melbourne businesses recognised the potential of the fast-acting and relatively inexpensive technology months ago. Nightclub owner Martha Tsamis has sold more than 800,000 of the 15-minute tests since October, when she negotiated distribution deals with manufacturers in Australia, China and South Korea. Ms Tsamis had originally bought a few thousand rapid antigen tests for staff and patrons of her late-night venues Chasers in South Yarra and Inflation in the CBD. Now, her new business Oz Medical employs seven full-time staff and supplies thousands of the tests to every Australian state – other than Western Australia, where they remain prohibited.
Source: Year of the RAT: Positive results for rapid test entrepreneurs
Covering thousands of years in just under seven minutes, “Your Debt Is Someone Else’s Asset” ends with a rousing vision of the future: a world after a jubilee, an ancient term for the abolition of debts and rebalancing of power between the rich and the poor.
Like the Sacklers and Purdue the oil industry normalized death to ensure profits weren’t lost
By the early 1920s, the hazards of lead were well known – even Charles Dickens and Benjamin Franklin had written about the dangers of lead poisoning. When GM began selling leaded gasoline, public health experts questioned its decision. One called lead a serious menace to public health, and another called concentrated tetraethyl lead a “malicious and creeping” poison.
At one time, lunch meant a real break from work and a hot meal. But for many of us in today’s workplace, it means a precious few minutes at your own desk wolfing down food before you go back to work. It’s time to take your lunch break back.
A wave of shoplifting crimes are attracting front-page news, while the $15bn stolen by corporations from workers receives no coverage at all
The new analysis shows that 2020—a year of pandemic-induced economic dislocation that pushed tens of millions of people worldwide into extreme poverty—marked “the largest increase in the share of global billionaires wealth available on record.” “In the U.S., the return of top wealth inequality has been particularly dramatic, with the top 1% share nearing 35% in 2020, approaching its Gilded Age level,” states the report, whose contributors include prominent economists Thomas Piketty and Gabriel Zucman. “In Europe, top wealth inequality has also been on the rise since 1980, though significantly less so than in the U.S.” At present, the richest 10% of the world’s population grabs more than half of all global income, the researchers found. The billions of people in the poorest half of the global population, meanwhile, get just 8% of the world’s income.
Source: Richest 1% Took 38% of New Global Wealth Since 1995. The Bottom Half Got Just 2%
Thanks to neoliberalism, Australia’s universities have become profit-seeking businesses. But they don’t just sell education: University executives are increasingly transforming their institutions into financial speculators and real estate investors.
Source: Australian Universities Are Finance Investors With a Side Hustle in Education
This may tip the scale too far to the left but why is it that Germany and other countries are far so much more progressive than Australia is in the structure of representation on it’s corporate boards? So much so it never really discussed publicly?
Capitalist “liberty” is just another word for private tyranny. Workers, not capitalists, should control economic enterprises.
Source: There’s No Moral Justification for Capitalist-Owned Enterprises
Capitalism has created a world full of bad and brutal jobs, from meatpackers to drone operators. Capitalists created these jobs — only organized workers can get rid of them.
Source: Dirty Work Shows the Toll Bad Jobs Take on the People Who Do Them
Ahead of the coming election, Canada’s main political parties are arguing that “foreign investors” are causing a housing crisis. But the problem isn’t foreigners — it’s the commodification of housing.
Source: “Foreign Investors” Aren’t Causing Canada’s Housing Crisis. Capitalism Is.
“The greed of some Sacklers fueled an opioid epidemic that has killed more than 500,000 Americans,” said Rick Claypool of Public Citizen.
Neither corporations nor liberals will stop climate disaster. The Left can.
From Otto von Bismarck to Joe Biden, capitalist politicians have tried to cure the system’s ills without transforming society. But it takes socialists to really change the world for the better.
Mr. Prince, whose Blackwater guards were convicted of killing civilians in 2014 while providing security for Americans during the Iraq war, said he was charging each passenger $6,500 to get them safely into the airport and on a plane, and it would cost extra to get people who have been trapped in their homes to the airport. It remained unclear whether Mr. Prince had the wherewithal to carry out his plans.
Not all humans are equally culpable in the climate chaos outlined in Monday’s IPCC report. Identifying the rich and powerful as the principal culprits is key to stopping further destruction.
Source: Capitalism Is What’s Burning the Planet, Not Average People
There isn’t a single place in the United States where minimum-wage workers can afford to live near their jobs. Addressing the affordability crisis will require a major rollback of market influence over the housing sector.
Source: The Market Is Incapable of Creating Affordable Housing
The building blocks of new-variant capitalism are already there. Governments are going to tax and spend more, and they will use regulatory powers to weaken monopolies. There will be selective use of nationalisation – as happened with UK defence manufacturer Sheffield Forgemasters this week. Another roaring 20s? We need to do better than that Dan Davies Read more Governments will borrow money to invest in infrastructure projects and to increase the budget for science. Industrial and regional policies will be back in vogue. The idea is to harness the power of the state with the dynamism of the private sector and, as was the case with Keynes, to save capitalism from itself.
Source: During the pandemic, a new variant of capitalism has emerged | Larry Elliott | The Guardian
A new report on the state of dynastic wealth in America explodes the myth of the hardworking, meritorious rich. If America ever was a meritocracy, it certainly isn’t now.
Source: America’s Dynastic Superrich Are Rigging the Rules to Protect Their Power
Source: 
A pro-Trump organizer who helped plan the January 6 “March to Save America” rally that led to a violent insurrection at the U.S. Capitol is now planning a “MAGA sellout” bus tour targeting Republicans who did not side with former President Donald Trump’s efforts to steal the election.
The same pro-Trump organizers behind the insurrection are planning a “MAGA sellout” bus tour | Media Matters for America
Drug companies have received over $10 billion from the US government for COVID-19 vaccine production. Yet those companies weren’t required to offer their vaccines at fair prices or share intellectual property rights — and they want to keep it that way.
COVID-19 Vaccine Developers Want to Keep Getting Billions in Public Money With No Strings Attached
The Reddit-led GameStop short squeeze wasn’t a threat to capitalism, but it did reveal to a huge number of people that the system is rigged. That’s popular education socialists should be grateful for.
The GameStop Revolt Exposed Capitalism
Convenience store chain 7-Eleven has paid back $173 million to more than 4000 victims of endemic wage theft at its franchise network, but former Australian Competition and Consumer Commission boss Allan Fels said that amount represented only a fraction of the chain’s unpaid wages.
Allan Fels says 7-Eleven’s $173m wage theft bill should have been higher
The failure to provide meaningful work to the vast majority of the population is a powerful indictment of our economic system — one more promise capitalism makes but can’t keep.
Capitalism Can’t Give Us Meaningful Work
The exact same if not more happened in Australia it had no Civil War
Over the course of the 20th Century, millions of American families, through home ownership, accumulated wealth as never before. African Americans were, overwhelming, excluded from this bonanza. Melvin L. Oliver and Thomas M. Shapiro get it just right in their book, Black Wealth/White Wealth: African Americans were “locked out of the greatest mass-based opportunity for wealth accumulation in American history.”
Terrorists killed fewer Americans over twenty years than coronavirus has in two months. Yet the Right, which insisted after 9/11 on the need to give up core civil liberties to “save lives,” is now demanding that we accept mass death for the sake of profit.
. “Debt servitude”This is far from ancient history. Ask the college graduate or potential college student today about the toxic cloud of debt hovering above them, and wonder at a political and economic system that makes bankruptcy or “forgiveness” of college debt all but illegal.
I hope so, because that is what is happening right now. The system (i.e., global capitalism, not a bunch of guys in a room hatching a scheme to sell vaccines) is reacting to the last four years of populist revolt in a predictable manner. GloboCap is attacking the virus that has been attacking its hegemonic body. No, not the coronavirus. A much more destructive and multiplicitous virus … resistance to the hegemony of global capitalism and its post-ideological ideology.
Capitalism and the Pandemic, (ODT)
In recent weeks, investment bankers have pressed health care companies on the front lines of fighting the novel coronavirus, including drug firms developing experimental treatments and medical supply firms, to consider ways that they can profit from the crisis.
The media has mostly focused on individuals who have taken advantage of the market for now-scarce medical and hygiene supplies to hoard masks and hand sanitizer and resell them at higher prices. But the largest voices in the health care industry stand to gain from billions of dollars in emergency spending on the pandemic, as do the bankers and investors who invest in health care companies.
via Banks Pressure Health Care Firms to Raise Prices Amid Coronavirus Crisis
If we are to deliver the most reasoned system of healthcare we need to be far more socialist than we are now and we already have Universal healthcare. Covid-19 is an illness we know a lot about already. Closing down our social system is closing down labour the life force of the nation and socially irresponsible. The Dutch seem to be the only nation to see that. It accepts the reality of the illness and is prepared to deliver healthcare to all the vulnerable rather than draw a cut off point like Italy has. The biggest decision, however, is to least disrupt life as it was and allow Covid-19 to take it’s course encouraging the EU to do the same and not make labour, small business and families pay as they can least afford it. Not so however in Australia. (ODT)
via Coronavirus: Melbourne CBD foot traffic falls as workers stay home
Socialism is working in the Scandanavian Countries (ODT)
olddogthoughts 
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