Austerity or Class War?

[DanaC]

We're all in this together they tell us from on high. Workers have had to cut their cloth, so why not the 'shirkers' too? Never mind that the unemployed are struggling more than ever to keep a roof over their heads and food in their bellies. never mind, even, that workers/shirkers divide is a false one, with the majority of benefits claimants supplementing low paid work.

We're all in this together. The pain must be shared. All must bear the taste the medicine.

Unless of course one is a banker.

We are all in it together. This is the message the government wants to give about austerity. Everyone has to shoulder a part of the load. Each of us must do our bit. We are the "big society", knitted together by a common project of national togetherness in the face of adversity.

This has become the familiar rhetorical window-dressing of a massive and unprecedented assault upon the most vulnerable people in our society. The big society is a lie. From later on this year, the sum total of a family's benefit entitlement will be capped at £500 a week.

When you consider that I pay £375 a month for a tiny 1 bedroom house in the North where prices are considerably lower than in the South, a cap of £2000 a month across all the different strands of benefit (Housing benefit, council tax benefit, unemployment benefit etc) is cripplingly low for a family of four, say, in the south whose rent might head up past £1000 p/month for a two bed house with the kids sharing a bedroom.

For those who have larger families and are living in places like London, where rents are ridiculously high and rising steeply, this is not nearly enough to get by. Even without the cap on benefits, ordinary people are being forced out of central London by escalating costs. In Westminster, housing benefit claims have gone down 20% since March 2010, while in places like Barnet and Newham, they went up over 40%, demonstrating clearly how the poor are being squeezed out. Soon London will look like Paris, with rich people living in the centre and poor, often immigrant, communities hidden out of sight beyond the Périphérique.

The consequence of this mass deportation will be that outer London boroughs will not be able to cope and will cook up ways of shunting the vulnerable further afield, cutting people off from their traditional communities and forms of informal support. Inevitably, homelessness, both in the form of rough sleeping and sofa-surfing, is massively on the rise again. According to the government, this benefit cap is absolutely necessary. So too is the cap of 1% on any increases in benefit until 2017-18, which means that benefits will rise well below the rate of inflation. But when it comes to capping bankers' bonuses, the Tories and their Lib Dem sidekicks have been screaming blue murder.

This week, the EU proposed that bonuses ought to be no more than 100% of bankers' annual salaries, or 200% if sanctioned by shareholders. Someone earning £1m could thus get an extra £2m if their work is deemed of sufficient value to the firm. But apparently, this is not nearly enough. This cap is unfair, they say. Bonuses should be unlimited. And if these pin-striped übermensch don't get what they want, they will have a tantrum and stomp off to Singapore. Well, let them go.

How can the government keep on talking about us all being in it together with a straight face? The bankers were substantially responsible for creating this financial mess, yet whenever there is talk of limiting the bonus culture that incentivised all the absurd risk-taking that got us into this trouble, the government steps in to side with the wealthy. No, the opposite of the big society is now the case. London is becoming the tale of two cities – the poor are capped, the rich are protected. From my parish at the Elephant and Castle, we can see the City; but it might as well be a million miles away. These are different worlds where different rules apply. And when a society gets so out of kilter with itself, social disorder is not far round the corner. Remember the riots? I suspect we haven't seen the last of them.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisf...h-all-together

[IamSam]

It all goes to show that the upper 1% globally are continuing to entrench themselves in a system with two sets of rules - one for themselves and another for everyone else. The uber wealthy have no loyalty to any nation - including any nation that they are nominally citizens of. At most, their allegiance is to the soil upon which their off shore banks are built.

For those in the loftiest income brackets, ethics or a sense of moral values is a handicap - a character defect to be overcome, rather than a sense of integrity to be admired. It's all a game played by the laws of the jungle in a quest for ever more money and power. And there can never be enough of either if you are one of the top players.

The rest of the populance seems to have sunk into a deep apathy, rather than to make any attempt to change or even recognize the downward trajectory that the greed of a few has placed us upon. The people need to wake up before it's too late - if it's not already.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Originally Posted by DanaC

We're all in this together they tell us from on high. Workers have had to cut their cloth, so why not the 'shirkers' too?

But they are.

[DanaC]

Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce

But they are.

Ha! nice find Bruceybabes.