Oxfam has just released a report that shows global inequality has escalated rapidly over the last 6 years.  The particular measure they used is a very important one.  First they calculated the wealth held by the poorest 50% of the planets population, which is about 3.6 billion people. And then they asked how many of the richest people held the same amount of wealth.

It's no secret that Stormont has gone into one of its regular crises.

A few months ago they were arguing over Welfare Reform, then Kevin McGuigan was shot dead and they were then arguing about whether or not the IRA still existed (great timing for Robinson as the NAMA scandal was just being brought to light).

Recent studies in the North have shown that the rich really are getting richer while the poor are getting poorer.

It is no secret that household charges are set to rise due to ongoing “austerity” measures by Capitalist governments.

Today, research from PwC (PricewaterhouseCoopers accountancy firm) indicated that households in the North will be hit hardest in the UK by this rise in charges.
 

Speaking at the launch of the government’s Low Pay Commission, Kenny said that “It is morally unacceptable for families with people in work to be experiencing poverty”. He did not however announce the abolition of the water charge, the property tax or that the bondholders would not be paid back in order to address this problem. Neither did he, nor Joan Burton, who accompanied him at the launch announce the end of the Jobbridge indentured servitude scheme, where unemployed people get fifty euro for a full week’s work.

There is something fundamentally wrong with this system when 80 people can have the same amount of wealth as what 3.6 billion people have between them. The figures from Oxfam’s latest report show that the rich really are getting richer and that the poor are getting poorer.

There are many factors we can attribute to this trend; globalization, out-sourcing, the breaking of labour power through the breaking of the unions in the Reagan-Thatcher era that labour never recovered from. Ultimately it falls down to the growing strength of capitalism and therefore the growing strength of the other harmful power structures that it has to support it. Included in these is racism, cheap labour from immigrants or as in many cases slave labour, as well as sexism, with gender being the division of labour. Both of these things, racism and sexism (to name only a few) come from policies implemented at the top of society that are targeted at the rest of us.
 

Minister Frances Fitzgerald claimed to be shocked at reports that some women in direct provision centres felt compelled into sex work by the poverty they are kept in. How can that be, it's Minister Frances Fitzgerald who actually operates this direct provision system that creates such circumstances.

As the Minister she does not allow asylum seekers to work, leaving them to exist on €19.10 per week, often for periods measured in years. Who can imagine living month after month with such a minuscule amount of spending money? And while she now wants to suggest she has concern for such women the reality is that she is the one who signs deportation orders, orders which will very often send the same women to very much more difficult circumstances.

The Irish Independent and Irish Times on Thursday, reported on a new study showing that more than one in fifty people living in Dublin are millionaires (in US dollars, and not counting the value of primary residence). Both articles quote an analyst for WealthInsight as saying, "For Dublin itself, an abundance of millionaires could help the city claw back its financial prowess from 2008's collapse."

Presumably the much lauded trickle-down effect is supposed to come into play and make life better for all of us. But with the "Consistent poverty rate" in Ireland standing at 7.7% in the CSO's most recent Survey on Income and Living Conditions (SILC), or one in every thirteen people, we can see how many people are trying to live off the same trickle. The "At risk of poverty rate" is much higher, roughly one in six, which means potentially many more could be trying to sip from that trickle. With "favourable tax" given as a criterion for attracting millionaires, Dublin's high density of millionaires (13th highest in the world, 9th highest in Europe) is clearly no accident.

We’ve recently been informed about the fact that Dublin has 30,000 millionaires living in it, but what do the figures tell us about how the rest of us have coped with this crisis? The National Economic and Social Council actually produced a report on this very subject entitled ‘The Social Dimensions of the Crisis: The Evidence and Its implications.’

The government is continuously telling us that we’ve turned a corner. Recently we were subjected to the new leader of the Labour party desperately trying to spin the line that her party is one that cares; essentially launching the re-election campaign alongside Enda when they did a re-boot of this coalition.