A taxing time for the rich

A relatively minor bit of party political manoeuvring in the UK over the weekend shows us quite a bit about the political battles going on over economies worldwide at the moment. The story is simple – the shadow chancellor (i.e. the man who will be in charge of the economy if the centrist Labour party wins the next election) has promised to bring in a 50% tax rate on people earning over £150,000 a year (that's around $250,000 for comparison). Essentially that's the story – politician makes promise he might or might not keep in the future, if he even wins an election in the first place. But the response has been telling.

Business leaders have reacted in outrage to the proposal, saying it shows that Labour are 'anti-business' and don't understand economics. They say it will stop rich people from creating new businesses and providing jobs. They say the rich will simply leave the country and go to places with more 'friendly' tax regimes, like Switzerland (which does sound appealing, though more due to the scenery than the fiscal policy). In fact, it seems like business leaders across the country have two things in common with each other: they're all against this policy, and, coincidentally, they all happen to make more than £150,000 a year.

But what interests me the most is the way in which the issue is purposefully obscured and misunderstood by the press and the public, with the help of those quotes of outrage from business leaders. It seems to be generally assumed in the UK that a 50% tax rate means you give exactly 50% of your income to the government – so £75,000 of your hard-earned money is wrenched away from you each year and used by the government for whatever it feel like. This, of course, is not actually how tax works.

Marginal tax rates mean that only the money you earn above £150,000 will be taxed at 50%, with the rest of your money being taxed at the same, lower rates as everyone else. It is ridiculously fair, and seems to be perhaps the only way to ensure that everyone pays a reasonable amount according to their ability to do so. But it's disguised by commentators in the press and on the online forums to make it seem unfair on the rich. This is a dirty trick that appeals to the British sense of 'fair play' – the average British person wants the rich to pay their share of taxes, but they don't want to feel like anyone is being forced to pay too much. So, of course, it's in the interests of the rich – and their helpers in politics and the press – to try and convince the public that they are indeed going to be made to pay too much, even when they're being taxed in exactly the same way as everyone else in the country.

The end point of this circus-like debate is always the same – the amount of tax paid by the rich continues to go down as an overall percentage, while the amount paid by the poor goes up. We very rarely hear about tax rates for the poor dropping, but we do hear about sales taxes like the British VAT going up – which affects the poor more, by taking away a greater percentage of their overall income. Meanwhile, how often do we read about rich people calling for (and usually getting) tax cuts, contracting lawyers to help them avoid paying tax, or simply funnelling their money offshore to tax havens like Jersey and Luxembourg? In truth, the rich are not being taxed too much, as they would have us believe – they're not being made to pay enough, and they have far too many loopholes to get out of paying anything. And that's the story that should be all over the British newspapers this week.

[ business leaders, tax regime, marginal tax rates, shadow chancellow, fair play, money offshore ]

Blair’s back – and he’s still lying about war

Just when we thought (or at least hoped) it was safe to consign him to the dustbin of history, Tony Blair has come back to remind us that he’s still alive, still involved in politics, and still being completely ignorant of the role he played in one of the greatest crimes of this century so far. The former British Prime Minister and one of the chief architects of the disastrous Iraq war wrote an editorial piece for The Observernewspaper over the weekend, in which he insisted that religious extremism will be the main cause of war in the twenty-first century, stating that “the battles of this century are less likely to be the product of extreme political ideology, like those of the 20th century – but they could easily be fought around the questions of cultural or religious difference”.

This is a very useful thing for Blair to say, as it fits neatly into the old, and now completely disproved, theory that Saddam Hussein’s Iraq was somehow implicated in a global Islamic terrorist network. This was not true in the slightest, but it helps Blair to lump the conflicts of the past fifteen years into a ‘religious terrorist’ framework, rather than examining their real causes. It also chimes with a general ‘clash of civilization’ narrative which has been around since Samuel Huntington espoused it in the early 1990s. In this view, the wars of the future will be between groups of ‘civilizations’ that Huntington largely defines in religious or ethnic terms.

Ultimately, both Blair and Huntington’s models are trite, and simplistically split the world up into brightly coloured blocks, a little like the old computer game Civilization. The real world is much more complicated, and the roots of war go far beyond religion alone. The Iraq war was clearly not fought over religion (although Iraq is now full of religious extremists, it was actually a heavily secular place during Hussein’s rule) or even over ethnicity. It was fought because of geopolitical concerns on the part of the rich countries of the west, who believe they have the right to secure oil resources for themselves from anywhere else on the planet – and if a country like Iraq isn’t going to play along, and remains belligerent for long enough, then it becomes a target. The sheen of religious terrorism that western leaders tried to emphasize was nothing more than an attempt to justify their actions.

Most other recent wars have been for similarly calculating political aims. The intervention in Libya and the proposed interventions in Syria have nothing to do with any concern we might have for the civilian populations of those countries. The average person on the street in the US or UK may think it’s terrible if Gaddafi or Assad are attacking civilians, but that isn’t why the west intervenes. It intervenes because it thinks the Libyan or Syrian opposition will do a better job of funnelling money and cheap resources to the west. We can see as much from all the years that Hussein was allowed to gas his own countrymen without being invaded, because he was otherwise being cooperative. As soon as he turned the oil off, his relationship with the west changed and he suddenly became a ‘bad guy’.

War is not caused by religion. Some amount of conflict is caused by religion, but full-blown wars between two or more nation states are caused by the desire of elites to get more – more money, more resources, more land, and more power. War is the means by which the rich take more and more for themselves and leave the poor with less and less – and despite what Blair thinks about his misadventure in the Middle East, the Iraq war was no better. It was simple a way for rich, western elites to take things which didn’t belong to them – less to do with religion, and more to do with pure greed.

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Ariel Sharon – A Great Hero, or A Great Butcher?

The death of Ariel Sharon a few days ago (although many, myself included, might have had a little jolt of surprise to discover he was still even alive, having been in a coma for eight years) has led to many predictable eulogies for a man described as “one of Israel's greatest heroes and defenders” or as one who “sought to bend the course of history toward peace” (those quotes being from failed US Presidential candidates John McCain and John Kerry respectively). However, for those of us with more critical faculties, it also provides an opportunity to look at the rather less peaceful actions Sharon took during his career as a soldier and politician, and what they say about Israeli-Palestinian relations today.

As an Israel Defence Force commander during the nation's formative years, Sharon was in charge of the troops who committed the Qibya massacre, attacking a small village in the West Bank and killing 69 Palestinian civilians, two-thirds of whom were women and children. During other wars, Sharon is alleged to have ordered Egyptian prisoners of war to be killed, and he consistently rushed into battle rather than waiting for orders or holding his troops back to prevent deaths.

But perhaps his worst crimes, or at least the ones which have caused the worst effects for the most people, came after he moved into politics in the 1970s. As Minister for Agriculture, he was responsible for starting the Israeli settler system in the West Bank which led to the de facto annexing of such a large amount of Palestinian land. These actions can be traced directly to the current situation, where Palestinians are separated from their land by an enormous concrete wall, and must pass through degrading and inhumane military checkpoints simply to tend to their fields. In contrast to this, the later withdrawal of a small number of settlers from the Gaza strip means little.

In the 1980s, while in charge of the military, he ordered Israeli intervention into the Lebanese civil war in an attempt to ensure a favourable outcome to the war. More massacres inevitably followed, this time in the Palestinian refugee camps in Beirut. Shortly before becoming Prime Minister, Sharon also managed to provide the spark for the second intifada, or uprising, by visiting the contested Al-Aqsa Mosque site with a guard of riot police – endangering his own people as well as further enraging the Palestinians.

Yet despite this catalogue of mistakes, provocations, and outright murders, Sharon's career only ever moved upwards until the stroke that incapacitated him. Shortly after the Al-Aqsa incident, he became Prime Minister of Israel, and despite almost universal acceptance of his role in the massacres at Qibya and Beirut, he never came close to facing any real justice. This is not just extraordinary luck – rather, I think we can say that the life of Ariel Sharon represents one of the key threads in Israel's history for the past sixty years or so, and that is a complete disregard for the humanity of the Palestinian people. The fact that Sharon could get away with all of these terrible actions and only become more popular with time shows that this attitude is not limited to a minority of Israeli society.

The continued Israeli persecution of the Palestinians, through the blockade of Gaza and the expansion of settlements in the West Bank, represents one of the darkest sides of modern politics – an attempt by the powerful to treat the powerless as less than human, as an 'Other' that requires less concern and far fewer human rights. The life of Ariel Sharon was just one of the most obvious examples of this – of the powerful crushing the poor.

Ariel Sharon, John McCain, Israel defence force, minister for agriculture, al-aqsa incident, West bank, Israel prime minister

Oh what an ugly war!

This year marks the 100th anniversary of the First World War, which began in 1914 and raged for four long years across the muddy trenches of Belgium, northern France, and elsewhere. In the west, there has been a steady stream of films, documentaries, and books exploring every aspect of this tragic war for many years now – we’re all acquainted with the names of the places where such terrible events took place, like Ypres, Passchendaele, and Gallipoli. Generally, the war is now seen as an avoidable mess that was caused by arguing among European aristocracies and politicians over land and power.

The UK Education Secretary recently took aim at this view, however. Michael Gove claimed that such ‘left-wing’ interpretations of the war were unpatriotic for suggesting that it was “a series of catastrophic mistakes perpetrated by an out-of-touch elite”. This list of unpatriotic views included the much-loved films and television shows Oh What A Lovely War and Blackadder Goes Forth, and presumably included the famous saying in Britain that the soldiers of the First World War were “lions led by donkeys” – that is, brave men who were let down by their foolish leaders.

Instead, Gove thinks the war should be remembered as a good, honest fight against German expansionism – a completely just and necessary war in which millions were sent to their deaths, but for a good reason. The fact that the war did nothing to stop German expansionism, merely delaying it and ensuring it rebooted with even more ferocity a generation later because of the stupidity of the politicians who punished the Germans so heavily at the Treaty of Versailles, seems to have slipped his mind.

Regardless of this, Gove’s vision ignores something even more important to us today. The First World War was a shambles, and an example of patriotic common people being led to their deaths for the ridiculous causes of their leaders. But that describes almost all wars before or since. The poor always die in the greatest numbers, and the rich always come out on top – even if one group of rich elites have to lose, they simply get replaced by another, almost identical group. The actual structure of power very rarely changes after a war, only the names at the top get rotated.

Look at the futility of so many of the wars fought in the past century. The Vietnam War saw thousands of Americans, and countless numbers of Vietnamese, die, all because American politicians believed that having some Communists in charge of a country on the other side of the world would be an existential threat. The Iraq war has been similarly wasteful, and all so that Republican neoconservatives could gain control of some additional oil reserves in the Middle East. The various attacks on Afghanistan by the US, Soviet Russia, and even the British in the 19th century? All just part of the ‘great game’ of geopolitics, to make statesmen and politicians feel like they’re important. And in all cases, the poor lose their lives, and the rich become more prosperous.

So during this year of commemoration, remember the people who died in the trenches, but don’t let politicians like Michael Gove make us forget about who sent them there in the first place. It was the elites of this world, who were looking to enrich themselves at the expense of the common man, that caused this war – and that will cause many more, unless we stand up to them.

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A Not-So-Happy Birthday for NAFTA

In my last blog I talked about the issue of immigration across the EU trade zone, from Romania and Bulgaria to the UK, and how it has become a divisive issue – with much of the native British population wrongly blaming immigrants for their poor economic situation. Today I want to stick to the same theme, but shift to a different continent – specifically, North America, where this month marks the twentieth anniversary of the signing of NAFTA.

NAFTA – or the North American Free Trade Agreement – was signed by the Clinton administration despite a lot of opposition from common people and some politicians in all three of the countries it affects, Canada, Mexico, and the US. The aim was to a create a free trade zone across North America, similar to the European Union itself. This, it was argued, would make the continent more competitive on the world market, while also providing cheaper goods to consumers in Canada and the US and helping Mexico catch up with its neighbours in terms of development and gross domestic product. Everyone would be a winner.

In reality, rather than bringing prosperity to all, NAFTA has worked to take money away from the poor and put it into the pockets of the rich, all while exacerbating a number of social and economic problems in America.

To begin with, many well-paid manufacturing jobs in the US have migrated to Mexico, where labour is considerably cheaper. The US-Mexico border regions have seen massive growth of 'maquiladoras' – factories where goods are produced for tariff-free export to the US. These factories often have sweatshop conditions, and workers are paid a pittance. Meanwhile, American cities that formerly relied on manufacturing have become hollowed-out shells – their inner city and downtown districts blighted by unemployment and urban decay, with buildings crumbling and no remaining tax base to fix the deeply entrenched problems.

At the same time as previously American jobs have travelled south, many Mexicans have begun to move north in search of a better life. Many of them are looking only to escape the poverty of Mexico (including those low-paid sweatshop jobs in the maquiladoras) and make a better life for themselves and their families. However, some of them have less positive motives, and drug smuggling has become a major problem. Of course, those drugs are being supplied to meet an increasing demand from...the same desperate, unemployed, hopeless people who live in the depressed American inner cities that were destroyed by NAFTA.

Despite the fact that many of the problems of urban decay, drugs, and immigration in the US can be traced to the desire of the corporations and their political allies to implement NAFTA and gain access to cheap Mexican labour, the average American is encouraged by the media and politicians to blame the poor Mexicans who cross the border to find work. No matter what their intentions – and the vast majority of them are honest, decent people – they are accused of drug smuggling, stealing jobs, and bleeding social security dry. In actual fact, as the story of NAFTA shows us, it is the rich who are bleeding the poor dry, through their thirst for profits and their disregard for the jobs and livelihoods of their fellow citizens.

NAFTA, Clinton administration, European Union, manufacturing jobs, poor economic situation, NRGLab 

Floods of immigration? Or just a wave of lies?

The weeks leading up to 2014 saw British newspapers full of stories about Romania and Bulgaria, places that the same newspapers would usually dismiss as ‘little’ countries that aren’t worth bothering about. So why the sudden interest? Because on January 1st 2014, Romanians and Bulgarians became eligible to work in the UK (and the rest of the European Union) without needing to apply for a work permit. Newspapers like The Daily Mail were suddenly filled with horror stories warning that 1 million Romanians would be arriving at Luton airport, all ready to take jobs from British people and claim unemployment benefits (possibly at the same time).

And when the day arrived…nothing happened. One website reported that only one Romanian had arrived at Luton airport for the entire day. The streets of London were not ‘flooded’ or ‘overwhelmed’ with Bulgarians looking for work, or snatching babies, or anything that the press suggested would happen. In fact, things were exactly the same as the last time this happened – when Poles, Czechs, and Slovakians became eligible to work in the UK. The same thing happens every time a new nationality from Eastern Europe joins the EU, and it seems that none of the newspapers ever learn their lesson.

In actual fact, this scapegoating of Eastern Europeans is a purposeful tactic by the media and the big corporations whose interests they serve. Blaming foreigners – especially those from countries that few Britons have ever visited – is an easy way to turn people’s attentions from the real issues at work in the UK economy today. Ever since the Conservative-Liberal Democrat government came to power, Britain has seen massive unemployment, steep reductions in social security and other government benefits that allow the poorest people to stay afloat, rumours of an eventual privatization of the health service, and the general movement of wealth from the poorest people to those at the very top.

The worst aspect of these stories about Romanians and Bulgarians is the sheer hypocrisy of them. The newspapers blame immigration on ‘left-wing’ politicians, diversity, and multiculturalism. In truth, mass immigration is encouraged by large businesses and corporations, of the kind that own the very newspapers that complain about it! Rupert Murdoch’s London offices are probably not being cleaned by a British worker, but one from Poland or Lithuania – who do the job for less. With a long, although now faltering, history of unionization, British workers would demand higher pay and better conditions, which would eat into profits – while a new immigrant from Latvia or Hungary does not have the confidence or the bargaining position to ask for the same.

Ultimately, mass immigration from poorer EU countries is good for the elites of British society, allowing them to keep unemployment high and wages low – the perfect opportunity to increase profits while taking money and opportunities away from the poor. Of course, they can’t say that openly, it wouldn’t be very good PR. So instead, we see smear campaigns against new immigrants who are simply trying to earn the best living they can. The corporations and the newspapers need to convince the average British person to blame immigrants for the poor state of the UK economy, rather than the politicians and CEOs – and unfortunately, as we’ve seen so many times before, it appears that many British people believe them.

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Affluenza, and how the rich always win

A story from the tail end of last year, which ordinarily would have remained merely a local tragedy, has actually turned out to show us something broader and more disturbing about the society we live in. It begins with a 16 year old boy in the Dallas-Fort Worth area of Texas taking his parents' car for a joyride with his friends, stealing a case of beer from a local WalMart, and eventually crashing into four people on the side of the road, killing them all.

A terrible tragedy for the victims and their families, for sure. But for the rest of us, the real story began later – when the judge sentenced the boy. The judge accepted the defence's argument that the boy was a victim of 'affluenza', and gave him a ten year suspended sentence – meaning he has essentially been set free, as long as he attends a rehab clinic for his alcohol and drug problems and doesn't commit any further crimes.

But what is affluenza? The judge argued that the teen had been sheltered from the effects of his action by his parents' money – basically, he had everything he could ever want, and was allowed to do anything without fear of the repercussions, all because his parents were so rich. Because of this, he couldn't be considered responsible for his actions on that fateful night.

Now ordinarily, I'm in favour of lenient sentences, and ones which focus on rehabilitation and forgiveness rather than mere punishment. But there's two particularly interesting aspects to this case. First, it's worth noting that the very same judge previously sentenced another teenager to ten years in jail for accidentally killing people while driving. The difference between those two boys? One was rich and white, the other was poor and black.

And second, this case makes it abundantly clear that in western society, and particularly in the US, your position at birth places you on a certain path in life. This is despite the claims of numerous (usually right-wing) commentators who will say that anyone can become rich and successful in America, no matter how they were born. In actual fact, if you're rich, you stay rich and you stay safe – you get paid more, you'll own a business, you'll get tax breaks from the government, and, as this case shows, the response to even your most violent and destructive behaviour will be leniency. But if you start poor, you stay poor – you go to a school with no funding, you get paid minimum wage, and you go to jail for the same crimes that rich people get away with.

This split between the winners and the losers in our society is obvious to almost everyone at this point. But this story also illustrates how it applies to the third path, those in the middle. This is the 'middle class', the not-quite-rich-but-not-quite-poor, the people who are just staying afloat like the four people who were killed. These people tend to consider themselves secure and hard-working. They think that if they just keep working for the rich people a little longer, one day they too will be rich. But as this story shows, they're ultimately as expendable as the poor. Their status in the middle of the pyramid won't help them when the rich decide to run them down.

In the end, all of these people were victims of 'affluenza' – the disease in our society which means the rich are considered untouchable, unimpeachable, and, as this story shows, unimprisonable.

affluenza, middle class, Dallas-Fort Worth area, Walmart, further crimes, nrglab, suspended sentence, repercussions

Shop 'Til You Drop – the Perils of Consumerism

While the Christmas and New Year season is supposed to be a time for community, family, love, friendship, and just generally taking it a bit easy for once, in recent years the week after Christmas has become known for one thing in particular – shopping. Stores start their sales on the morning of the 26th, and put on all sorts of offers to entice customers and their money through the doors. The scenes are similar to the so-called 'Black Friday' in the US – the day after Thanksgiving, when shoppers have been known to end up in stampedes and dangerous crushes while trying to grab a bargain.

I'm sure most of the people reading this blog won't be fighting with their fellow citizens over a discounted sweater in H&M, but even if we stay aloof from the mad scramble of the sales, they still provide an excellent opportunity for us to slow down, pull back, and think about how consumerism affects us throughout the whole year.

Particularly in highly developed countries like the US, Canada, and western Europe (but also increasingly in places like China, Singapore, and eastern Europe) we are continually bombarded with images and messages encouraging us to buy throwaway consumer goods. These last for a little while, then they break or go out of fashion, and we buy more. The world economy is now essentially dependent on this cycle of commodities.

The material effects of this system are well known. Around the world, many people are exploited in the process of manufacturing and selling commodities. We hear of Chinese workers committing suicide in the Foxconn factories that make Apple products; trade unionists being killed by paramilitaries in Colombian Coca-Cola bottling plants; Bangladeshi garment workers being paid a dollar an hour to stitch sports shoes; even migrants in Europe and North America who are paid less than minimum wage to work in warehouses or in transporting items around the continent. It's easy to see the exploitation, and the way in which poor people are kept down by this.

But there are also philosophical effects of rampant consumerism, and they affect even those of us who otherwise benefit from this system. Consumerism encourages us to value people in terms of the commodities they own, and leads to a 'keeping up with Joneses' mentality – the idea that we need to have more and more things in order to show our neighbours that we're just as good as they are. Our neighbours, in turn, buy more and more things to try and demonstrate their own wealth. And both of us look down on the poorer people in our community, those who don't have the money to buy as many commodities as we do – because we believe that buying things shows our superiority, we believe that those with nothing must be worse people. You don't have a car, a flatscreen tv, a new washing machine? Then stay over there, with the other poor people – you're not good enough for us.

This is terribly damaging for our society, encouraging the increasing division between rich and poor, worthy and unworthy, winners and losers, at a time when we should all be working together to make the world a better and fairer place. And it's also damaging to our own sense of self-esteem – if we judge our worth by the things we own, we'll always be looking for more and more, and never be able to rest, take stock of our lives, and be happy. So try to slow down this week and focus less on the instant pleasures of shopping and more on gentle and relaxed time spent with friends, family, and community – I promise you, it will be better than consumerism for your mind, body, and soul.

shop til you drop, black friday, Thanksgiving, h&m, Apple products, new year season, christmas, NRGLab

The healthcare crisis and the false American dream

As the year 2013 drew to a close, it’s a time for reflection and looking back at the major issues and debates of the past twelve months. And undoubtedly, one of the biggest controversies of the year in US politics (and, to an extent, world politics, due to the still massive influence of that country) was the Affordable Care Act – often known by its slightly silly nickname ‘Obamacare’.

The idea of the Affordable Care Act, in a nutshell, was to provide a kind of universal healthcare for Americans by insisting that every citizen purchase health insurance, and forcing insurance companies to provide reasonably-priced packages to make this possible (as well as providing subsidies for the poorest people). In theory, this seems like a good idea – ensuring that the US will no longer see the situation of people being unable to pay for their basic health needs.

According to its detractors, however, the program was plagued with problems. Most notably, the website for choosing new insurance policies had a number of bugs and often simply refused to work. Some people who previously had generous work-provided packages suddenly found themselves having to pay more than they expected. But in general, both of these complaints seem relatively small – minor problems that can be ironed out over time. Why then, was ‘Obamacare’ such a massive point of contention within the US? For the majority of opponents, the problems are not practical but ideological – they simply oppose the very concept of providing healthcare for everyone in the country.

There is an ideological belief in the US (and in many other places) that people’s lives are only the result of their own decisions and actions. This is the basis of the ‘American Dream’, the idea that anyone, no matter where they start in life, can make a success of themselves in America through hard work. This completely ignores the many structured power systems that are at work in any society – obvious problems like racism and sexism, but also the advantages that people from wealthier families have in terms of education, connections, and safety nets. However, despite being wholly unrealistic, this idea of the ‘American Dream’ is what makes many people think that they have no responsibility to help their fellow citizens through contributing to a healthcare system – they think that those without healthcare have caused their own problems through not working hard enough, and never stop to think that the problems may in fact be structural.

This is a mindset that we see on many issues across the US these days, and across the world. There are people who have been fortunate enough to be born into a system that gives them advantages, power, and wealth, and there are people who are unfortunate enough to have found themselves on the opposite side of the equation, without the opportunities and material advantages that many of us have. Ultimately, however, those who have everything and those who have nothing still have the same basic needs – healthcare, for example. A fairer and more just society, in which we help our fellow humans rather than trying to keep them down, will thus benefit us all – and spending a little extra on health insurance won’t really hurt us, but will immediately help other people live more fulfilling lives.

In the year 2014, we need to fight more than ever to make society more just, to make people more understanding, and to make life fairer and easier for all. At NRGLab and the Ana Shell Fund this is what we try to do every day, through developing cheaper alternative forms of energy and other projects, but there’s still much work to be done – and we hope you’ll be around to help us with is in 2014.

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