How to defeat poverty worldwide

All of us who watch television are used to charity appeals urging us to give our £3 per month to help mitigate in part against the impact of poverty, hunger, and disease on those members of the human race who are most helpless. We are shown some truly shocking images of the most vulnerable people on our planet, and their unequal struggle just trying to cling to life.

I'm sure that many of us contribute what we can, and every life saved or enhanced is a small victory for humanity. At £3 per month though, plus the annual "give-athons", it will only ever be a series of small victories however many of us make the effort.

Surely so much better for those at the very top of the global economy to take a moment for reflection at how lucky they are to have been dealt such a good hand for their "one chance". To consider that the accumulation of more capital than they will ever have any purpose for is merely a vain and pompous exercise of power over everyone else, and is probably a pathological illness.

If the richest 100 individuals in the world (total aggregate worth $2.029 trillion), each gave 3% of their wealth (thereby raising in excess of $60 billion), Oxfam calculate that extreme poverty worldwide could be brought to an end "at a stroke", and those 100 richest individuals would each still have 97% of their wealth intact.

What a game changer!

Could that ever happen?

A Challenge to Inequality?

Over the last few years evidence has been gradually mounting that wealth/income inequality is harmful for all of us.

The 2009 publication of The Spirit Level by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett highlighted the many ways in which inequality can exacerbate a whole host of social ills across the spectrum.

This was followed in 2013 by Capital in the 21st Century by Thomas Piketty suggesting how inequality is also bad for all of us in economic terms.

There are many supporters of these ideas among whom are economist Joseph Sitglitz, academic Prof. David Harvey, New York Mayor Bill di Blasio, the Occupy movement, and even it seems the IMF.

The power of these theories is in the strong evidence based logic which informs both The Spirit Level and Capital in the 21st Century.

One thing is for sure, the current neoliberal agenda has been shown to increase wealth/income inequality as part of its structural outcomes. There has been much talk of the 1% and the 99%, and it seems that this is the reality with which we now live. By inference then, neoliberalism actually harms us all both socially and economically.

Prof David Harvey has raised the question as to where a challenge will arise to this overarching ideology which seems to serve us badly in the long run. It seems that the challenge, if and when it comes, can only come from the left in the form of a definite "opposition" to the neoliberal core values of global deregulation and free market economics.

In the UK The Conservatives, The Liberal Democrats & UKIP seem firmly to support the neoliberal agenda, but quite worryingly, The Labour Party also seem content to propose how their policies will operate within that same framework, rather than providing a clear and distinct "opposition" to neoliberal values.

Len McCluskey, General Secretary of the trades union "Unite" has intimated that if the Labour Party are not prepared to take up this banner of "opposition", then the unions would consider forming a workers party for that purpose.

I am sure that 35 years of the failed experiment of neoliberalism has been quite enough for most people, and there must be a political challenge to it very soon. It remains to be seen whether the UK Labour Party will be able to see the bigger picture and will have the courage to seize the moment.

There are many who feel a sense that we are on the edge of a paradigm shift concerning the relationship between state and people, and it would be my personal hope that we can be guided forward by some committed politicians to achieve a positive outcome to serve us all.

How to Divide and Rule

There has it seems been much discussion about the intensity of the nasty comments and downright hatred directed towards benefit claimants on social media following TV programmes such as "Benefits Street" and "Don't Cap My Benefits". Lots of people are sickened by the lack of compassion and empathy, and indeed by the sheer scale of the brutal comments aimed at benefit claimants.

There is an explanation to all of this. Just suppose that the government had decided their ideology was against the provision of a social security safety net for the most vulnerable members of our society. They want to dismantle it but need to make sure that the majority of the electorate do not turn against them.

Now let us suppose that the government were able to influence the news media to instigate a persistent campaign to stereotype benefit claimants in some negative way, perhaps "undeserving" or "skivers" or "getting money for nothing". If this were successful in changing public perceptions, the government might be able to effect its desired cuts against these people without fear of a backlash of public opinion, or of losing too many votes.

This is how prejudices are managed for political ends. This is how politicians set us against each other to distract from what they are really doing:

"...it is perhaps surprising how easily stereotypes and stereotype threats are established, even in artificial conditions. Jane Elliott, an American schoolteacher, conducted an experiment with her students in 1968, in an effort to teach them about racial inequality and injustice. She told them that scientists had shown that people with blue eyes were more intelligent and more likely to succeed than people with brown eyes, who were lazy and stupid. She divided her class into blue‐eyed and brown‐eyed groups, and gave the blue‐eyed group extra privileges, praise and attention. The blue‐eyed group quickly asserted its superiority over the brown ‐eyed children, treating them contemptuously, and their school performance improved. The brown‐eyed group just as quickly adopted a submissive timidity, and their marks declined. After a few days, Elliott told the children she had got the information mixed up and that actually it was brown eyes that indicated superiority. The classroom situation rapidly reversed."

[Wilkinson, Richard; Pickett, Kate. The Spirit Level: Why Equality is Better for Everyone]

After this a turning point?

A few weeks before the 2010 General Election, Governor of the Bank of England, Sir Mervyn King told the American economist David Hale that whoever won the election would make themselves so unpopular because of austerity cuts that they would be out of power for a generation.

Interestingly, austerity was not the only option, and arguably should not have been an option at all. Financial crises in other places and at other times have clearly demonstrated that Keynsian demand-side expansionist policies kick-start economies, whereas austerity and cuts strangle the genesis of economic growth.

Given the lessons of history and a prescient warning from Mervyn King we might wonder why Cameron, Clegg, Osborne & co. have taken their chosen path. The question is easily answered of course, when we see that over the past 4 years the winners have been the 1% over the 99%. This sounds like a cliche and I only wish that it were.

This coalition government decided very early on that this might be their last chance of power for some time and have abandoned any sense of decorum in their indecent haste to fill the pockets of their paymasters.

The ideological fervour of sticking to the principles of neoliberalism, together with a last chance smash & grab asset stripping agenda have damaged the UK economically, socially & politically, and it will take a long time to set it right again.

The Cameron-Clegg administration will be remembered as possibly the worst UK government ever. The irony is that they think they have weakened democracy in the UK, but history will show that the reaction to this Orwellian nightmare will be demands for a new political settlement, based in challenges to the inequalities we now recognise as being the drivers for many of our economic and social ills.

Social Security budget as other than cost

Somebody needs to defend the idea of government spending on social security. Long under attack from the Tories and now being bashed by Labour as well, the idea of a Welfare Net is being demonised. Whilst this is to be expected from the Tories I see a massive betrayal of Labour principles when the issue of welfare spending is conflated with ideas surrounding the deficit. Tax avoidance is a much bigger culprit.

The Social Security safety net was originally brought into being to protect those least able to defend themselves against the harsher ravages of the Capitalist Venture. Thinking about it in these terms reveals that it is not actually a cost against Capitalism, but is undoubtedly an investment which enables Capitalism to flourish. As such it should be clearly trumpeted by Labour as a totally justified element of a socially just settlement between state and people. It should be seen as an integral part of a good mixed economy. Just ask Germany or the Scandinavian countries.

It is high time for Labour to shake off the paralysis caused by fear of losing the next election. Instead of arguing about policy within the terms set by the Tories, Labour must challenge the assumptions upon which those policies are founded. The people of UK need a new political settlement and only Labour can deliver it, but they must be bold enough to be different. Go big or go home!

Democracy belongs to voters, not to politicians

So, more and more instances recently of the government withholding information from the people of UK. Reports on food banks and immigration deliberately held back because they reveal truths which undermine the government's ideological justifications. There have been numerous instances where ministers have been called to account by The UK Statistics Authority for serious misrepresentation of statistical data in support of policy. Now we have an apparent cover-up over the resignation and arrest of David Cameron's aide Peter Rock.

All this on top of a clutch of pre-election promises which have been cynically ignored and broken: NHS, Banks, VAT, tuition fees etc...........

If that has not been bad enough this coalition government have visited a horribly draconian austerity on the most vulnerable people in our society causing misery, poverty, despair and worse. This has been justified in terms of economic necessity. It would have been completely unnecessary if our government had changed its priorities just a bit. In tandem with this crusade against the poor, tax-avoidance schemes by companies and corporations have been depriving UK of tax revenue of at least £40bn and possibly as much as £150bn per annum. The apparent lack of any political will to tackle this has caused government borrowing to add £100bn annually to the National Debt. The City Banks seem a law unto themselves with few apparent checks and balances from government. It is difficult to get any concerns about these issues ever discussed in a proper debate, but there is a steady drip-feed of disinformation from the politically "captured" media insisting that the demonized victims of these policies are to blame for the whole nation's ills.

Half the 13 millon people living in poverty in this the 7th largest economy in the world are in a household where somebody is working. Deregulation of the labour market and subtle demonization of Trade Unions have eroded the rights of workers to the point where this disgusting fact has become possible. We now hear that the Conservatives regard themselves as the "Worker's Party".

What we are witnessing is the elected representatives of the people deliberately deceiving those people who have voted them into office. The government work for us. We elect them to run the country on our behalf. Our taxes pay their substantial salaries and expenses. When they lie to us they are renouncing the very democracy which has placed them in positions of trust.

This government has thereby relinquished their claim to be representing our interests, and must therefore be operating in support of a different agenda which is against our interests. This means they are no longer operating legitimately.

They must therefore resign their positions and call an immediate general election.

The Pin-Stripe Mafia - How Accountancy Firms Destroy Societies.

Excerpts from: visar.csustan.edu/aaba/PINSTRIPEMAFIA.pdf


Tax revenues are the life-blood of all democracies. Without these no state
can alleviate poverty or provide social infrastructure, healthcare, education,
security, transport, pensions and public goods that are necessary for all
civilised societies. All over the world tax revenues are under relentless
attack from a highly organised tax avoidance industry dominated by four
accountancy firms: Deloitte & Touche, PricewaterhouseCoopers, KPMG
and Ernst & Young. They employ thousands of individuals for the sole
purpose of undermining tax laws which does not create any social value,
but enables corporations and wealthy elites to dodge corporate tax, income
tax, National Insurance Contributions (NIC), Value Added Tax (VAT) and
anything else that might enable governments to improve the quality of life.

The loss of tax revenues is a major cause of the current economic crisis that
is inflicting misery on millions of people. Tax avoidance is part of the
guerrilla warfare conducted by accountancy firms against the people. Each
year, about 30%-40% of the financial legislation outlaws tax dodges dreamt
up by accountancy firms. The UK tax tribunals and courts hear around
11,000 cases and many of these relate to dodges that have no economic
substance. The UK is estimated to be losing around £100 billion of tax
revenues each year and a large part of this is due to the activities of the Big
Four accountancy firms. Despite record number of millionaires, billionaires
and levels of corporate profitability, the UK tax take in 2010-11 added up
to 37.2% of the GDP, compared to 43% in 1976. Rather than challenging
the tax avoidance industry successive governments have shifted the tax
burden to less mobile capital, labour, consumption and savings, as
evidenced by higher NIC and VAT and the lowering of thresholds for
higher rates of income tax.

There is little retribution in the UK. Despite judges outlawing their tax dodges, successive governments have failed to investigate the firms, or prosecute their partners. Instead, the partners of major accountancy firms are given peerages, knighthoods, public accolades and government consultancies, all funded by taxpayers. The same firms have colonised regulatory bodies,
fund political parties and provide jobs for former and potential ministers.
This penetration of the state has bought them political insurance and their
anti-social practices continue to inflict enormous social damage.

The power of the big accountancy firms has increased, is increasing, and
must be diminished because they are using it to undermine democracy, law
and welfare of the people. Its result is that over the world millions of
people are facing erosion of living standards and hard won social rights.
People are either paying more in taxes for diminishing social rights,
pensions, education and healthcare, or foregoing them altogether. A key
reason is that major corporations and wealthy elites are avoiding and even
evading taxes.

The public face is that accountancy firms advise clients on tax planning,
but too many manufacture tax dodging schemes on an industrial scale.
These schemes create nothing of value to society and force elected
governments to shift taxes away from giant corporations and wealthy elites
to labour, consumption and savings, depressing ordinary people’s
purchasing power and causing economic crises. There is no organised
industry openly devoted to enabling clients to dodge health and safety, food
hygiene, building, immigration, transport or other laws, but big
accountancy firms employ and train thousands of people for the sole
purpose of undermining elected governments and depriving millions of
people of much needed healthcare, education, pensions, security and other
essentials. Occasionally, courts brand some dodges marketed by
accountancy firms as ‘unacceptable’ but UK governments have not
followed it up by prosecuting the firms or closing them down for shady
practices. Instead, partners of the same firms are given public contracts,
knighthoods, peerages and public accolades. Their influence runs deep into
the UK state and shields them from retribution.

The UK Treasury estimates that it may be losing £40 billion of tax
revenues each year, but leaked government papers suggest that the
amounts may be between £97 billion and £150 billion. Some economic
models suggest that around £100 billion, and possibly £120 billion of
tax revenues are lost each year.

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Just to allow some comparisons: These are typical amounts of annual UK government spending in various areas:

National Health Service £100 billion
State pension £75 billion
Education £ 52 billion
Interest on National Debt £48 billion

Defence £36 billion
Housing Benefit £17 billion

Foreign Aid £8 billion

Job Seekers Allowance £5 billion

Employment & Support Allowance £4 billion