economics
United States: The rise of bagel capitalism
By Harry Targ
Beyond the World Social Forum ... the Fifth International
Eric Toussaint interviewed by Igor Ojeda for the Brazilian weekly paper Brasil de Fato. Translated from French by Judith Harris and Chris
New Zealand: What has happened to real wages since1982?
By Mike Treen
Official data on wage movements in New Zealand point to a real wage decline of around 25% between 1982 and the mid-1990s that has never been recovered.
There have been two series measuring wages in the period – the Prevailing Weekly Wage Index (discontinued in June 1993) and its replacement the Labour Cost Index. I have created a continuous series based on the LCI series back to 1982 (by adjusting the PWWI numbers before December 1992 when PWWI at 1000 was equivalent to the LCI at 868). These numbers are in turn deflated by the CPI index covering the whole period.
What is revealed is that by the mid-1990s real wages had declined at least 25%. There has been no recovery since then and real wages remain 25% below their 1982 peak. This result can be directly attributed to the combination of the massive deunionisation as a result of the anti-union employment laws and the recession that accompanied it in the early 1990s.
System's defenders warn of 'collapse' of global capitalism
By Grant Morgan
October 22, 2009 -- Something molecular is changing in the DNA of capitalism. Look at these three recent quotes:
- "The future will be a total disaster, with a collapse of our capitalistic system as we know it today."
- "Capitalism is near the tipping point, unprepared for a catastrophe, set up for collapse and rapid decline."
- "There is a high probability of a crisis and collapse by 2012. The 'Great Depression 2' is dead ahead. Unfortunately, there's absolutely nothing you can do to hide from this unfolding reality or prevent the rush of the historical imperative."
What's particularly important about these quotes is who made them. Not socialists. No, they were made by ardent, intelligent and reputable defenders of capitalism. For more information, read the MarketWatch essay "America's soul is lost and collapse is inevitable".
Claudio Katz.
Claudio Katz interviewed by Fernando Arellano Ortiz. Translated by John Mage for IIRE.
July 10, 2009 -- The exit from the systemic crisis of capitalism needs to be political and "a socialist project can mature in this turbulence". So says the Argentine economist, philosopher and sociologist Claudio Katz, who also warns that the "global economic situation is very serious and is going to have to hit bottom, and now we are but in the first moment of crisis".
On September 17, 2009, John Bellamy Foster appeared on Democracy Now! to discuss the financial
The free-market fallacies of Ayn Rand
By Phil Hearse
G8 and Africa: Some give, plenty of take
By Yash Tandon
South Africa: At the end of the wage
By Dale T. McKinley and Ahmed Veriava, Johannesburg
“I'm collecting a register for the indigent people and I had 37,000 applications from Emfuleni only. Each and every day I come across children who are left in their homes -- the parents are deceased -- they are hungry. When I knock at the door, I say how you are surviving and they say we have been hungry for three days, we haven't got food. You wouldn't think it's a reality in an urban area like this but it is a reality. People are unemployed, a lot of people are unemployed.”
-- Priscilla Ramagale-Ramakau, government social worker in Sebokeng
July 5, 2009 -- It wasn't always this way for Sebokeng, one of the older urban ``townships'' in South Africa, a place synonymous with the early settlement and subsequent massive growth of the black industrial working class.
Trade unions and New Zealand’s economic crisis
By Grant Brookes