The very rich oligarchies buy countries, states and local governments and then pass their anti-tax policies, which over time leaves the government with not enough tax revenue to pay bills or maintain infrastructure and they then often opt for pension holidays to make ends meet, skipping payments to the pension funds.
Over time this has created large unfunded pension liabilities in effected countries, like Greece and cities like Detroit, and maybe Chicago is next to borrow money from pensioners to make up for revenue shortfalls after giving corporations and the wealthy tax breaks.
Now austerity hawks are using these unfunded liabilities to argue slashing pensions even though it was their own anti-tax policies that caused the problem. While it is sound public policy to use debt to fund long-term capital projects, it is deeply problematic when governments are forced to borrow money to deal with revenue shortfalls. It is even more problematic when they are doing so as a result of a concerted effort to suppress taxes.
New Jersey Republican Governor Chris Christie attacked his state’s pension and retirement system to the tune of $170 billion. This deficit occurred in two ways, the state slashed its contributions to pension funds and his cronies engaged in double dipping, gorging themselves at the public trough by “retiring” from one public job to take another while collecting retirement from the first and a salary from the second.
When cities and counties borrow money, they borrow from the banks and the very rich, who then get richer off the backs of the wage slaves who would pay taxes if they could earn a living wage, such as $15 to $18 an hour.
Austerity is a lack of revenue caused by the refusal of Wall Street, big corporations and millionaires to pay their fair share in taxes. The proletarians need to elect people to pass a millionaires’ tax and a financial transaction tax, close corporate tax loopholes and end subsidies for profitable corporations. We must elect people who will stand with the 99 percent, and here in the U.S. consider senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.
There are three phases of a general strike and unions must plan for one. Those three phases are: 1. general strike in an industry 2. general strike in a community 3. general national strike We need to move away from being on the defensive and move toward a good offensive. The American Federal of Labor (AFL) could not have held a general strike if it wanted to because they had thousands of different contracts that expired at different times of the year. This was done deliberately so that there is no consolidation of power for a general strike. Also, nowadays, there is no law agency that will support labor, except the National Labor Relations Board (NLBR), which has been under attack and in decline for years. This leaves the burden of change up to unions, and unless unions work together, little will change. We essentially have a combination of job trusts, which are not as strong as contracts, and the courts can break easily because the NLBR will be further weakened and essentially elim...
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