by Richard Mellor
Afscme Local 444 retired
Iran has been downgraded for a minute or two as North Korea offers US capitalism’s spin doctors a better option for keeping its population focused on imaginary external enemies. The intention in the Korean Peninsula is regime change which would open up new territory and a new source of cheap Labor power. US capitalism presents North Korea as a serious threat (see previous post) as it wages a domestic war on all aspects of our lives and the misery and death that is a result of this war far outweighs anything foreign. The details of this war on its own people, this class war, are available if you look for them, if you ignore the propaganda and the absurd War on Terror.
Afscme Local 444 retired
Iran has been downgraded for a minute or two as North Korea offers US capitalism’s spin doctors a better option for keeping its population focused on imaginary external enemies. The intention in the Korean Peninsula is regime change which would open up new territory and a new source of cheap Labor power. US capitalism presents North Korea as a serious threat (see previous post) as it wages a domestic war on all aspects of our lives and the misery and death that is a result of this war far outweighs anything foreign. The details of this war on its own people, this class war, are available if you look for them, if you ignore the propaganda and the absurd War on Terror.
Leaving aside the more brutal forms of oppression here in
the US, the prison industrial complex that houses more than 2 million souls,
more than any other country, the homelessness or the miserable health care
system that leads to thousands of deaths and is the leading cause of
bankruptcy, we should consider debt.
Millions of people are enslaved by debt.
People use credit cards to buy food, purchase health care and other
necessities.
As we saw with the onset of the Great Recession when poor
and low income people, desperate for shelter and keen to avoid the clutches of
the landlords and rent payments where your rent pays the mortgage on someone
else’s home, were conned in to loans that they would inevitably default on. The
consequences of not paying the moneylenders are dire:
"I just wanted to be able to eat and sleep in my house and
have a roof over my head…” one 89 year old woman
still working told the Wall Street Journal*, "Every day at
midnight when I go to sleep, I think maybe when I wake in the morning they'll
tell me to get out."
This is how capitalism treats older
workers; this wasn’t a foreign plot. Then we should consider the human and
financial cost to society of all the illnesses caused by the stress brought on
through living in a perpetual state of fear and insecurity in modern day debt
bondage. A bad credit rating in the US
can keep you from getting a roof over your head, a car, and other important needs.
The new potential debt bubble is the
student loan market. I have written about this in
the past and that there shouldn’t even be such a thing as a student
loan market. Education, like health care, a job, housing, would be a right in
any society that claims the mantle civilization. The cost of a university education has risen more than
40% in the last ten years and student loans with some $1 trillion in outstanding
debt have surpassed credit cards and auto and are now second only to home
mortgages as a source of consumer debt according to the US Federal Reserve. As
recently as nine years ago, outstanding student debt was around $250 billion.
Some economists are alarmed at what
they see as a debt bubble that will equal the housing bubble that led to the
2007 meltdown. Their concern as always,
is the damage to the system, an economic disruption that halts profit taking
and creates the potential for social unrest.
Others say the figures are not so bad, “….average debt
for graduates with debt is around $27,000, which is small compared to mortgage
debt,” says
Neal P. McCluskey of the Cato Institute, "For
students going to good schools and pursuing in-demand degrees, it should not be
hard to pay off.” Oh, I have lots of friends at Harvard and Brown and that’s
just what we need, more MBA’s.
In
the wake of the austerity war on wages and working conditions, in particular
public sector jobs, leaving college owing $27,000 (this is the average) is a
considerable burden even if you find employment. There are hundreds of thousands of young
people with college degrees that cannot find work in their field. “If a college student takes a $25,000-a-year job, as many
are, the debt to income ratio is very high,”, says Richard Vedder, an economics
professor at Ohio University. He adds that there are thousands of
students that owe way above the average.
And
total student debt is not just in the form of official public or private
loans. Parents are loaning their
children money either through their savings or through taking out lines of
credit or second mortgages. Meanwhile, not only is the delinquency rate on
student debt climbing, the amount of debt is increasing even faster. In 2005
average student loan debt was $17,233 rising to $27, 000 by 2012, an increase
of 58% in seven years according to MAINST. COM. Credit card and auto loan balances decreased
during that period.
Professor
Vedder says he is opposed to forgiving the debt because the taxpayer will not
be able to absorb it. The bankers, auto
bosses and other coupon clippers got to our pocket books first but there is
still plenty of money in society, I have shared those sources on these pages
many times. There is the more than $26
trillion the super rich stash away in offshore accounts, an amount equal to the
combined GDP of the US and Japan. "Studies have estimated that
cross-border flows of global proceeds of financial crimes total between $1
trillion and $1.6 trillion a year," says the International Consortium
of Investigative Journalists after receiving leaked information
about tax havens and offshore accounts where the 1% hide the money
they have stolen from us.
And
what does it cost to fly stealth bombers and B52’ around the Korean
Penninsula? The cost to the US taxpayer
of these predatory incursions and occupations and the bases that go with them
is extensive. And these ventures are not defensive measures, they are to
protect and expand the influence of US capitalism. These are not our wars. The policies coming out of Washington and the
Pentagon do us far more harm than some 7th century Mullah in
Pakistan.
The
psychological, physical and inevitably financial costs to us brought about by
market forces are huge. This is a domestic war being waged on us day in day
out. As their policies deprive so many
Americans of health care, education, a roof over our head a job, and certainly
a vacation abroad, we night consider a nice camping trips to one of the beautiful
state and national parks we have in this country but they’ve blocked what was
once a cheap alternative to Paris as they close our natural wonders in order to
place the burden of their crisis on to our backs. This will not continue unchallenged forever.
As
you mull over whether or not this poverty stricken little country called North
Korea that suffered almost total annihilation in an imperialist war will take
away your rights or the crazed Mullahs of Tehran will destroy your freedoms,
remember the WMD’s in Iraq---remember Powell telling the world how dangerous
they were and how they could destroy us all.
Remember the Gulf of Tonkin.
Most
of all consider that more and more parents are taking out life insurance
policies on their children because they have taken out loans to pay for their
education. They don’t want to lose their own homes if they are saddled with a
student debt if their child dies. This is what happened to one woman who told her
story to the Financial Times:
“The loans company calls two
or three times a day. They’re just coming after me like sharks to repay loans
that funded an education my son will never get to use…..I’m worried that
my home will be taken away if I don’t pay. They will not forgive the loans. Had
I known the severity, I would not have let my child go to college. It’s a
nightmare,”
It’s not some foreign terrorist creating this nightmare; it’s
a domestic one.
“Clearly we are in a tipping
point and there will be repercussions,” says the above quoted Professor Vedder. He is right about that. But it’s quite clear
if we take the time to think about it that it is not the little man in Iran, or
the rather youthful leader of the Stalinist regime in North Korea we need
fear. The most devastating war we are
facing is the domestic one, the class war and it’s time we took the offensive
in it.
From
our previous blog on this issue:
No
to austerity, money is everywhere:
* Cancel all student debt, make the rich pay
* Federally funded education at all levels
*Corporations out of education
* Reduce class sizes K thru 12 to 15
*student, parent teacher control of curriculum
* Take the banks and finance houses under public ownership and control
* Allocation of capital on the basis of social
*Build an independent working people's political party based on our organizations and communities
*For a democratic socialist society--production for social need not profit
* Cancel all student debt, make the rich pay
* Federally funded education at all levels
*Corporations out of education
* Reduce class sizes K thru 12 to 15
*student, parent teacher control of curriculum
* Take the banks and finance houses under public ownership and control
* Allocation of capital on the basis of social
*Build an independent working people's political party based on our organizations and communities
*For a democratic socialist society--production for social need not profit
* WSJ 3-12-07
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