'The Old “Story” Of Poverty' by Farooque Chowdury reveals the levels of poverty in a range of 'developed' countries, from US to Japan, from Germany to Sweden and shows how conditions are continuing to worsen for increasing numbers of workers - no matter what economists might be saying.
Poverty in the poor part
of the world is not an exclusive case. It’s globe-encompassing.
Societies touting as rich and prosperous are failing to escape the
devastating “aroha”-touch of poverty.An exclusive Associated Press report by Hope Yen once
again presents the fact. It’s an old fact with new data that reaffirms
capitalism’s incapacity to eradicate poverty. The July 28, 2013, Washington datelined report said:
“Four out of 5 US adults struggle with joblessness,
near-poverty or reliance on welfare for at least parts of their lives …”
And, “[m]easured in terms of a person’s lifetime risk … 4 in 10 adults
falls into poverty for at least a year of their lives.”
After presenting the grim fact the report observed: This joblessness, near-poverty, etc. are “a sign of deteriorating economic security and an elusive American dream.”
In the US, the report said, “the count of America’s
poor remains stuck at a record number: 46.2 million, or 15 percent of
the population …”
According to the report, the share of children living
in high-poverty neighborhoods — those with poverty rates of 30 percent
or more — has increased to 1 in 10, putting them at higher risk of
teenage pregnancy or dropping out of school in the US.
The capitalist economy is failing to cease school drop
out. A comparison of the fact with post-revolutionary societies in
central and eastern Europe, before their demise, help evaluate the two
systems.Marriage rates, the AP report said, are in decline
across all races, and the number of white mother-headed households
living in poverty has risen to the level of black ones in the US.
Poverty, an incapacity of capitalism to eradicate, or,
it can be said, a product of the economy, is influencing family, an
institution capitalism proudly claims that it upholds and defends. But,
fact tells, capitalism is devouring one of its sanctum sanctorum
although it accuses socialism of plotting the sinful job.
Citing census data the report mentions “race
disparities in the poverty rate have narrowed substantially since the
1970s… Economic insecurity among whites also is more pervasive than is
shown in the government’s poverty data, engulfing more than 76 percent
of white adults by the time they turn 60…” Since 2000, the poverty rate
among the working-class whites has grown faster than among the
working-class nonwhites, rising 3 percentage points to 11 percent.
Still, poverty among working-class nonwhites remains higher, at 23
percent. While poverty rates for blacks and Hispanics are nearly three
times higher, the report added, by absolute numbers the predominant face
of the poor is white: more than 19 million whites fall below the
poverty line of $23,021 for a family of four, accounting for more than
41 percent of the US’ destitute, nearly double the number of poor
blacks. “The invisible poor”, lower-income whites, are dispersed in
suburbs and small rural towns, where more than 60 percent of the poor
are white, said the report.
Capitalism doesn’t make any division among Blacks and
Whites although there are persons claiming to be progressives and
anti-capitalists still draw a White-Black line among the working people. For the first time since 1975, according to the
report, the number of white single-mother households living in poverty
with children surpassed or equaled black ones in the past decade in the
US. White single-mother families in poverty stood at nearly 1.5 million
in 2011, comparable to the number for blacks. Race disparities, the
report said, in health and education have narrowed generally since the
1960s.
Capitalism doesn’t spare mothers. Based on survey data the AP report said: The data
“points to an increasingly globalized US economy, the widening gap
between rich and poor, and the loss of good-paying manufacturing jobs as
reasons for the trend” cited above. The report refers to US president Barack Obama’s highest priority: Reverse income inequality.
Two fundamental issues emerge from the above mentioned
information: (1) loss of good-paying manufacturing jobs, and (2)
reverse income inequality. What’s the cause of loss of manufacturing
jobs and income inequality? Why capitalism is failing to provide
good-paying manufacturing jobs? Is reversing income inequality possible,
even if micro-enterprises are floated, micro-finance net is spread,
while the causes that create the inequality are kept intact? The
marketers of micro-finance and micro enterprise never answer the
question.
As normal consequence, the economy presents hardship,
pessimism, etc. “Hardship”, as the report said, “is particularly growing
among whites …Pessimism among that racial group about their families’
economic futures has climbed to the highest point since at least 1987”
in the country.
The economy bears no ingredient of optimism. Along with alienation it saps human qualities and spreads pessimism.
Renee Adams, 28, a jobless single mother with two
children, the AP report cites, relies on her boyfriend’s disability
checks to get by. Adams expresses a wish that employers will look past
her conviction a few years ago for distributing prescription
painkillers, so she can get a job and have money to “buy the kids
everything they need.” “It’s pretty hard”, she said. “Once the bills are
paid, we might have $10 to our name.”
Does it echo early-English industrial labor? Is it far away and a lot
different from the poor in today’s poor societies? It’s the universal
face of the poor under capitalism.
“The risks of poverty also have been increasing in
recent decades, particularly among people ages 35-55, coinciding with
widening income inequality” in the US, said the AP report. In the age
group 35-45, it was a 17 percent risk of encountering poverty during the
1969-1989 time period; it has increased to 23 percent during the
1989-2009 period. In the age group 45-55, the risk has jumped to 17.7
percent from 11.8 percent.
The numbers for the AP report come from Rank’s analysis. This is
supplemented with interviews and figures provided by Tom Hirschl,
professor at Cornell University, John Iceland, sociology professor at
Penn State University, the University of New Hampshire's Carsey
Institute, the Census Bureau and the Population Reference Bureau. So,
the data cited are difficult to deny.
The report quotes William Julius Wilson, a Harvard
professor specializing in race and poverty: “It’s time that America
comes to understand that many of the nation’s biggest disparities, from
education and life expectancy to poverty, are increasingly due to
economic class position.”
Denying the class division, whether one likes it or
not, is not possible. The reality reaffirms it. None, other than stupids
and persons in the pay roll of capitalism, deny class position although
poverty-fighting mechanisms are “innovated” without taking into account
the class question.
What does the advanced capitalist economy convey to posterity? An answer is there in the AP report. It cites a citizen
of the US: Children have “nothing better to do than to get on drugs.”
Dispossession-reality in the Orient is not different from that of the Occident.
A report in The Asahi Shimbun on June 23, 2013
presents a poverty-picture in Japan, an economic model to a section of
mainstream economists in poor countries. The report “Young people
struggle to emerge from poverty” by Masaki Hashida mentioned a
middle-aged person. To save money, the person’s only meal is breakfast,
and the breakfast is with rice, miso soup, fermented beans and broiled
fish. The person has lost 30 kilograms in two years.
Caption of a photo along with the report said: A man saves money by not turning on the lights. Is it, not turning on lights, symbolic, a symbol of the economy?
The man, according to the report, is a victim of a
“black company”, an employer that harasses employees, forces them to
work long hours often without pay, and presses them to resign. The
monthly pay from these companies appears limited to 200,000 yen
($2,104).
Hence, it comes out: Big entrepreneurs irrespective of
poor and rich societies are the same while they compete in market. They
harass, they force to work long hours, and often they don’t pay, and
these give them competitive edge. How much value, after the above fact,
sermons from rich societies carry?
According to the country’s National Tax Agency, 10.69
million people working in the private sector in Japan earned 2 million
yen or less a year in 2011.
The person mentioned in the AS report is not alone or he is not a stray case.
The AS report cited Haruki Kono, head of nonprofit
organization POSSE: The black companies “exploit employees by forcing
them to work for the same job as stated in manuals to such an extent
that they get sick and eventually quit.”
Does it sound Marx, as he detailed back-breaking work of industrial labor in capitalist economy in Europe?
Statements of two political leaders were mentioned in
the AS report. One of the leaders decried the income gap. The leader
said: “Young people cannot become regular employees even after
graduating from university. Non-regular workers are paid much less.”
Doesn’t it reflect labor’s bargaining (in)capacity and
its precarious position? And, what does labor’s bargaining incapacity
signify? Mainstream economists know the answer well.
Narration of the AS report includes:
The middle-aged man showed a letter from his employer
that was handed to employees: “If someone wants to sacrifice him- or
herself to work, recommend that the person work 15 hours and 40 minutes a
day, or 4,200 hours a year.”
The person worked at least 250 hours each month for a
monthly wage of 200,000 yen. But his pay slip only showed 70 percent of
the hours he actually worked, and he was paid only half the promised
amount.
Capitalism in this millennium, joyfully invented as so
and so by a section of proud mainstream economists determined to prove
Marx’s depiction of capitalism now wrong, has not forgotten the
thieving. “Dignified” capitalism is not dervish, it’s thievish. Should
anyone dream of fighting out poverty by keeping intact the thievish
system? Still there are enlightened persons with the “mission”, today
with this name and yesterday with that name, banking on and business-ing
with the system.
The middle-aged man, the press report from Japan said,
graduated from an elite high school and entered a national university
in the Tohoku region. The man in his 30s living in a one-room apartment
in Tokyo’s Itabashi Ward has taken on a variety of jobs, including work
at a construction company, an adult-entertainment business and a
waste-disposal facility. All of those were black companies. The person
took out consumers loans, and poverty forced him to sleep in buses and
trains for a couple of years. Neither adult-entertainment nor waste nor turning a
debtor brought his emancipation from poverty. But despite the fact
poor-“friend” “monks” in the service of banks shall not stop delivering
their commandments to “fight” out poverty.
Although, the report said, the person was supposed to
work “inside Tokyo’s 23 wards,” he was frequently dispatched to remote
areas. On a typical day, he woke up at 7 a.m. and worked until 1 a.m.
His monthly salary, 200,000 yen, did not include overtime. He eventually
became ill and quit the company. He now lives on welfare. “Many jobs
become difficult if one gets older,” the man said. “It’s not that I am
lazy, but there are no decent jobs. Only ‘black’ jobs are available.” A
company he was employed with asked him to cut his hair and warned, “You
can be fired at any time.” “I cannot tell if or when the company will
fire me,” he said. “In order to stay mobile, I do not buy extra home
appliances, including a refrigerator.”
Isn’t commanding hair cutting, how much petty that may
appear, a form of regimentation? And, doesn’t uncertainty with job take
away freedom and sense of security, much cherished goals of capitalism?
An all encompassing regimentation is imposed with such petty
regimentation implemented with the demonic tool of ever-uncertainty at
all levels of life in capitalist society.
The man, at the time of the press report, was on medical leave due to physical and mental illness.
The AS report quotes Makoto Kawazoe, an official at
the General Union of Young Workers in Tokyo: “The largest segment of the
poor is actually working. In addition to low wages and short-term
employment, they lack sufficient unemployment benefits, which make it
difficult for them to move out from the impoverished class.” Isn’t it a chain that binds down human being? Doesn’t it happen elsewhere? It happens in the entire domain of capitalism.
It’s not only an Oriental “tale”. Germany, today’s mighty economy, faces similar reality.
“Poverty afflicts Germany’s older ‘guest workers’”, a
Deutsche Welle report by Günther Birkenstock (11.07.2013) presents a few
poverty-facts: Older foreigners living in Germany, who have worked
there for many years are more commonly affected by poverty than German
citizens. It’s a divide within labor – “privileged” and non-privileged, a
requirement to have a favorable bargain by capital.
Thousands from southern and eastern Europe, the report
said, migrated to Germany in the 1960s and 70s. Most were fleeing
poverty in their countries while a booming Germany was in need of a
labor force. The need led the economy to allure the migrant labor,
“lovingly” naming them “guest workers”. With a hope for a better life,
the migrant labor worked in steel factories, mines, automobile
manufacturing plants and cafeterias.
But, alas, prosperity remained a mirage for most of the migrant labor.
Citing a recent study by the economic and social
sciences institute of the Hans Böckler Foundation the report said:
Today, more than 40 percent of migrants in retirement age are affected
by poverty, which is more than triple the poverty rate among German
citizens.
According to Eric Seils, co-author of the study
report, poor payment is one of the three main reasons for the high
poverty rates among older migrants. Other two main reasons are: Many of
the migrant labor were left out, lost jobs, in the 1980s when the
industrial sector slumped and the service industry grew, and they were
excluded from becoming government employee, a large and prosperous
sector not at all affected by poverty. In the face of problem, the
“guests” were ignored, left out as the variable capital would not then
help increase profit.
In 2006, a German Institute for Economic Research
study on elderly poverty brought the issue to light. “The number of
foreigners in old-age poverty has increased from 170,000 in 2006 to
around 270,000 today”, Seils told DW in an interview. And that number is
likely to climb further, he added.
Further north, poverty doesn’t spare capitalism. The reality in Sweden, the Nordic country that prides
itself with prosperity, is not a happy one. The suburbs of Stockholm,
one of Europe’s richest capitals, experienced riots last May, and the
riots were fired by unemployment and immigrant poverty. The riots, at least for three days, found mob attack
on a police station. Cars and an arts and crafts centre were set ablaze
and two schools were damaged.
The economy produces inequality, and the increase in
inequality in the economy is fastest among the advanced OECD economies.
The Nordic country has failed to substantially reduce long-term youth
unemployment and poverty although average living standards in the
economy are still among the highest in Europe. The poor within the
society don’t enjoy the highest living standard. According to OECD,
unemployment among the Swedes is 6 percent while it’s 16 percent among
the immigrants in the country.
The face of poverty in Greece and Nigeria and Myanmar
and Colombia and Egypt and Albania and Russia and Cambodia is the same.
Everywhere, all the worm gears of capitalism have the same technique:
long work-day, threat with uncertainty, appropriation of surplus labor,
dehumanized life. It’s like a sump: fruits of all labor are collected
for a few. These “stories” are as old as labor, as old as appropriation
of surplus value, as old as getting rich by a few. These “stories” have
been told many a times. Still these need to be told as mainstream,
advocatus diaboli, the devil’s advocate, doesn’t cease its propaganda of
this business and that business but don’t look into source of the
riches for a few.
from Countercurrents
here