AIG has announced another round of payouts even though the company was bailed out a year ago.
It’s an indication of the locus of power to have the ability to command funds in this way. This is a group of people who don’t themselves manufacture anything but have access to money. Whose money? The very people who do, or did, useful jobs and have lost not only their livelihood but their homes and their pensions. In the USA they now have a government struggling against the odds to get health cover for many more citizens, a move viciously opposed by those who have the bonuses to pay for their well being. A classless society? In no way. The one group can command their pay and pensions and then announce that they cannot afford the other group’s (i.e. the productive workers) pensions, health care or benefits. Any government that can be voted in will not have the power to deal with the power brokers, rather they will have to jump to their tune. So it is not governments that rule in the so-called democracies of the Western world, big business controls them. This is abundantly clear in the European Union which has enshrined the right to move capital and labour around at will regardless of the consequences for local communities.
The inherent contradictions in capitalist society cannot, or will not be fixed by itself. The parties supposed to represent working people are themselves under the control of the elite group, as we see time and again under New Labour. Rumour has it that Peter Mandelson has already fixed himself up with a £500,000 job with BP if and when New Labour goes pear shaped after the next election. Whose side is he on? Whose side was he ever on?
Only in Latin America is country after country saying “enough is enough” and turning to a different way of doing things. Socialism is being introduced here by democratic means. Not that it gets a fair coverage from a western press controlled by the elite group. Those countries can do nothing right. Improving the education and wealth of ordinary folk is a crime and steps are being taken to hold back the tide. So under Obama’s regime there is a build up of US bases in Columbia. Why is this? Because Chavez is planning for war chorus the press. Castro says Hugo is not like that, I know him well. But who is listening to that? Chavez has announced the cancellation of Haiti’s debt. What a crime! Will the Capitalist world that has exploited the long-suffering Haitians do the same? Not bloody likely. The self-imporetant tele-evangelist Pat Robertson has said the Haitians ‘deserve it”. That will teach them to have a rebellion against their colonial masters 200 years ago.