Baobab
Baobab's JournalThe Clinton Administration OPPOSED SCHIP. People here are trying to re-spin the history of SCHIP.
This was back in the 1990s. I remember their opposition because I grew up poor and health insurance for children is an issue I feel is extremely important, and I was writing letters to legislators supporting SCHIP. I may even have some of them somewhere, in any case they opposed it. Kennedy was advocating for it
The Clinton Administration was not vocal in opposing it but they were opposing it. And a decade later the reason why hey did so became clear to me.
If anybody wants to know that why, look at the signature file after my posts and read the paper that's linked to there.
That paper will show you why he Clinton Administration opposed it and show that how and why they were so inflexible. Why they would not have taken any other position. That reason still applies today and its why, for example, Clinton i adamant that - as she puts it, Medicare for All "will NEVER come to pass".
The same issue explains why Clinton is opposes free public higher education and why she is such an ardent advocate of ill-advised water privatization, etc.
Its very bad policy.
Donald Trump’s plan for the economy: Let’s copy Greece.
The GOP frontrunner actually thinks the U.S. could give creditors a ‘haircut’ on its debt!
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/donald-trumps-plan-for-the-economy-lets-copy-greece-2016-05-07
64 Bernie Delegates VotesApparently Were Not Counted In Nevada (So Hillary Could Win?)
one [link:https://twitter.com/meganmesserly|recent reports seem to indicate that as it stands, those in charge have omitted 64 Bernie delegates and that many of those present are not satisfied that the proceedings are being conducted honestly.
In 2010=388 2011=177 2012=159 2013=92 2014=80 2015=62 people owned the same as half the people in th
as half the people in the world..
2010: 388
2011: 177
2012: 159
2013: 92
2014: 80
2015: 62
In other words, wealth is concentrating at an exponentially increasing rate.
https://www.oxfam.org/en/pressroom/pressreleases/2016-01-18/62-people-own-same-half-world-reveals-oxfam-davos-report
Hannah Arendt: The Origins of Totalitarianism (1962) "one of the best political books of the century
https://monoskop.org/images/4/4e/Arendt_Hannah_The_Origins_of_Totalitarianism_1962.pdfIs it "their turn" on service jobs - too?
One of the other posts right now describes the outrageousness of the argument that Hillary Clinton needs to be given the nomination because "its her turn" - that is being made by some Beltway insiders. Well, we should also be looking at another example of that kind of thinking but we cant because the media isn't telling us about it. We should know more but we dont.
Is it "their turn" on service jobs - too?
We all know about the digital divide, and many people know about the global ecnomic divide between developed and developing nations. Well, in 1994, the WTO was formed and its stated goal was economic development of the Global South Nations. In exchange for promises of economic integration with the developed nations economies, especially the United tates, they have been kept in a state of heightened anticipation, forever waiting for other countries deeds to solve their own economic problems, instead of pushing harder for ends to corruption and slash and burn corporate tactics enabling resource extraction without accountability, extraction of minerals and other raw materials at bargain basement rates. In exchange they received promises of "economic integration" with developed countries service economies if they could only be the successful low bidders. These deals would benefit developed countries government entities and corporate interests by lowering their labor costs by privatization and then globalized competition.
So, basically, now a huge change is being readied, and its being "justified" by the same logic as being applied to the nomination, except here its being applied to high paid service job, medicine, nursing, teaching, IT.
The logic goes that the world would benefit greatly if wages in developed countries fell a lot and those in developing countries were increased a little by letting their companies broker the services of their skilled workers, (creating a huge brain drain) Their doctors, nurses, teachers, IT workers, etc, will then be used to staff jobs in developed countries at much lower wages than those they replaced, and send home remittances from their wages, instead of getting good jobs at home, perhaps this arrangement might raise wages a tiny bit at home but what it really does is create an artificial state of dependency on an artificial, predatory hyper-hierarchical working arrangements, and weaken the position of highly skilled workers in both places, creating a hollowed out economy where middle class jobs become low paying jobs despite their having high skill requirements. Meanwhile the companies and former public sector workplaces that employed them perhaps pay the same or a bit less but get out of both any pension and health care insurance obligations, also they get a captive workforce that has no say whatsoever in policy. .
What I am trying to explain is that a very long time ago, the US signed on to this - In a bill called the URAA it was passed in 1994. Bill Clinton and the URAA signed us on to such a scheme in 1994, and the negotiations to figure out the specifics have been going on- off and on for 20 years. They are almost finished.
Is it Their Turn?
Basically both they (the working people in the Global South) and us have been lied to by the neoliberal pushers of these deals. (both our leaders and their own)
They are not about trade so much as they are about creating a global "race to the bottom" on wages while preserving corrupt regimes and huge growing profits despite demographic changes relating to automation which should be making us rethink areas such as services - Since jobs are vanishing to rapidly improving productivity, certainly, many prices should be falling, but not wages without prices- Nations urgently need public health care, now more than ever, however the secret deals frame public services as "state owned monopolies" - even public education, etc,
We need public higher education- and health care - non profit- as a public good, but instead they incrementally, irreversibly make establishing that a prohibited activity, and create new corporate rights to free money, compensation to corporations if a government does it.
All this time the facts have been hidden from the American people. Those deals were initiated during the Clinton years and Hillary Clinton and Obama have hidden them assiduously from the public. Making up an entire body of phony reasons for things when the real reasons were these deals.
We need a national dialogue based in truth, but it will NEVER come from the mouth of Hillary Clinton. She is more honest and straightforward when she is in other countries than she is here. And since at least on paper the country is still "We the people" she's working against the country's people's interests.
She should not become president. Its not her turn and these liars do not have the right to sign away the future livelihoods of our country forever (in part in exchange to open branches and factories in other countries) which is what they have repeatedly attempted to do. And continue to try to do with three pending deals.
That said I feel very strongly that the working people here in the US have a great many shared interests with working people in the developing world and I feel as if we could accomplish a lot together helping one another - prosperity is not a zero sum game, we have all earned the benefits given us by technology and they should be shared, not hoarded by a very few, which is what the 3 secretive T deals try to lock in. Locking in bad policy.
Poll: If you had to, could you successfully re-rent or re-buy your current home at market rate?
Thank you, basically that is the question.
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Some context- my theory is that Americans are actually much poorer than we think we are and that this poverty is concealed because many people are paying below market rate for their current housing, but if they had to move they could not afford to.
That is a time bomb waiting to happen, if for example, energy prices went up a lot due to natural gas export (projected as part of a pending trade deal) and cities lost their "rent stabilization" regulations. (It is hard to see how affordable housing could be preserved in cities if the cost of energy jumps up a lot, suddenly)
Housing is a scarce resource and many right wingers feel that the existing populations of cities are preventing their economic development and basically want them to move elsewhere so that new tenants can live there at market rate. For a ong time rent stabilization regulations have been a target of their anger, because they tie rent of a specific apartment to the CPI plus some small amount, for a specific tenant. However, that affordable apartment is limited to that specific apartment. This arrangement is a vastly inadequate substitute for public housing which was basically outlawed in 1994 in countries that signed on to GATS.
A series of bad Supreme Court decisions (for example, Kelo v. City of New London - 2006,) now allows condemnations under eminent domain to allow real estate development for profit. However, neighborhoods have to be designated as blighted first. A sudden spike in the cost of natural gas might be argued to cause older buildings (which one never sees in the rest of the world where energy prices are much higher) to be designated as blighted (and presumably replaced by market rate condo housing with some small portion set aside for 'low income' displaced property owners, (other provisions might be set up for property owners who are disabled).
The outcome of the election will probably decide if that is done.
The World's Top 1 Percent Controls Half of Household Wealth - Fortune
The World's Top 1 Percent Controls Half of Household Wealth - Fortunehttp://fortune.com/2015/10/14/1-percent-global-wealth-credit-suisse/
62 people own the same as half the world, reveals Oxfam Davos report
https://www.oxfam.org/en/pressroom/pressreleases/2016-01-18/62-people-own-same-half-world-reveals-oxfam-davos-reportPublished:
18 January 2016
The Oxfam report An Economy for the 1%, shows that the wealth of the poorest half of the world’s population has fallen by a trillion dollars since 2010, a drop of 38 percent. This has occurred despite the global population increasing by around 400 million people during that period. Meanwhile, the wealth of the richest 62 has increased by more than half a trillion dollars to $1.76tr. The report also shows how women are disproportionately affected by inequality – of the current ‘62’, 53 are men and just nine are women.
Although world leaders have increasingly talked about the need to tackle inequality, and in September agreed a global goal to reduce it, the gap between the richest and the rest has widened dramatically in the past 12 months. Oxfam’s prediction, made ahead of last year’s Davos, that the 1% would soon own more than the rest of us, actually came true in 2015 - a year earlier than expected.
Oxfam is calling for urgent action to tackle the extreme inequality crisis which threatens to undermine the progress made in tackling poverty during the last quarter of a century. As a priority, it is calling for an end to the era of tax havens which has seen the increasing use of offshore centers by rich individuals and companies to avoid paying their fair share to society. This has denied governments valuable resources needed to tackle poverty and inequality.
Winnie Byanyima, Oxfam International Executive Director, who will again attend Davos having co-chaired last year’s event, said: “It is simply unacceptable that the poorest half of the world’s population owns no more than a few dozen super-rich people who could fit onto one bus.
“World leaders’ concern about the escalating inequality crisis has so far not translated into concrete action – the world has become a much more unequal place and the trend is accelerating. We cannot continue to allow hundreds of millions of people to go hungry while resources that could be used to help them are sucked up by those at the top.
"I challenge the governments, companies and elites at Davos to play their part in ending the era of tax havens, which is fuelling economic inequality and preventing hundreds of millions of people lifting themselves out of poverty. Multinational companies and wealthy elites are playing by different rules to everyone else, refusing to pay the taxes that society needs to function. The fact that 188 of 201 leading companies have a presence in at least one tax haven shows it is time to act."
In 2015 G20 governments agreed steps to curb tax dodging by multinationals through the BEPS agreement, however these measures will do little for the poorest countries and largely ignore the problems posed by tax havens.
Globally, it is estimated that a total of $7.6tr of individuals’ wealth sits offshore. If tax were paid on the income that this wealth generates, an extra $190 billion would be available to governments every year.
As much as 30 percent of all African financial wealth is estimated to be held offshore, costing an estimated $14 billion in lost tax revenues every year. This is enough money to pay for healthcare for mothers and children in Africa that could save 4 million children’s lives a year, and employ enough teachers to get every African child into school.
Nine out of ten WEF corporate partners have a presence in at least one tax haven and it is estimated that tax dodging by multinational corporations costs developing countries at least $100 billion every year. Corporate investment in tax havens almost quadrupled between 2000 and 2014.
Allowing governments to collect the taxes they are owed from companies and rich individuals will be vital if world leaders are to meet their new goal, set last September, to eliminate extreme poverty by 2030.
Although the number of people living in extreme poverty halved between 1990 and 2010, the average annual income of the poorest 10 percent has risen by less than $3-a-year in the past quarter of a century. That equates to an increase in individuals’ daily income of less than a single cent a year.
Had inequality within countries not grown between 1990 and 2010, an extra 200 million people would have escaped poverty.
One of the other key trends behind rising inequality set out in Oxfam’s report is the falling share of national income going to workers in almost all developed and most developing countries and a widening gap between pay at the top and the bottom of the income scale. The majority of low paid workers around the world are women.
By contrast, the already wealthy have benefited from a rate of return on capital via interest payments, dividends, etc, that has been consistently higher than the rate of economic growth. This advantage has been compounded by the use of tax havens which are perhaps the most glaring example set out in the Oxfam report of how the rules of the economic game have been rewritten in a manner that has supercharged the ability of the rich and powerful to entrench their wealth.
Oxfam is calling for action against tax havens to be part of a three-pronged attack on inequality. Action to recover the missing billions lost to tax havens needs to be accompanied by a commitment on the part of governments to invest in healthcare, schools and other vital public services that make such a big difference to the lives of the poorest people.
Governments should also take action to ensure that work pays for those at the bottom as well as for those at the top – including moving minimum wage rates towards a living wage and tackling the pay gap between men and women.
Byanyima added: “The richest can no longer pretend their wealth benefits everyone – their extreme wealth in fact shows an ailing global economy. The recent explosion in the wealth of the super-rich has come at the expense of the majority and particularly the poorest people."
In addition to its inequality campaign, Oxfam will be attending Davos to press world and business leaders to tackle climate change and act to resolve humanitarian crises including that in Syria.
Notes to editors
The number of people whose wealth is equal to that of the poorest half of the world’s population since 2010:
2010: 388
2011: 177
2012: 159
2013: 92
2014: 80
2015: 62
Wealth of 1%, 50%, and 99% taken from Credit Suisse Global Wealth Datebook (2013 and 2014) https://www.credit-suisse.com/uk/en/news-and-expertise/research/credit-suisse-research-institute/publications.html
The wealth of the richest 62 was calculated using Forbes’ billionaires list http://www.forbes.com/ Annual data taken from list published in March.
Calculations include negative wealth (i.e. debt). As a robustness check, Oxfam recalculated the wealth share of wealth held by the richest 1 percent once negative wealth is excluded. It did not change significantly (falling from 50.1 percent to 49.8 percent). Negative wealth as a share of total wealth has remained constant over time, such that wealth distribution trends over time are not affected.
Download the report: An Economy for the 1% - DOWNLOAD LINK
Contact information
Jon Slater +44 (0)7876 476403 / jslater@oxfam.org.uk
For interviews with Winnie Byanyima, please contact: Anna Ratcliff +44 (0)7796993288 / anna.ratcliff@oxfaminternational.org
For updates, please follow @Oxfam.
Add your name, and let’s end the era of tax havens.
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inequality corporate tax dodging tax reform davos EvenItUp poverty education women
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