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.
Have FBI agitators infiltrated our labor unions like the FBI did during black rights movement, feminist movement, and anti-Vietnam protests to sow the seeds of division between the factions and Malcolm X and Elijah Muhammed—to control and disrupt our labor movements from the inside? We don’t know at this time, and is anyone in the media or government looking into this? The war on labor and the effort to drag us back to serf wages is coming from within the White House with some labor union and MAGA members. Corporations are padding their accounts and of one greedy man instead of its workers. The war on labor is and will be fought between corporation titans and labor, and at this time the corporations will use the White House, courts and the FBI and even those at Homeland Security and I.C.E. against us. Labor must educate our members on how counter and what tactics are being used by the corporations and government against labor and the average person in general. How many people have lost...
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