At this time of year, often given to reflection, can we look past politicians and celebrity and the lifestyle commentary from the monopoly media.
A massive contradiction exists between “the economy” and welfare of the Australian people. Australia possesses great riches. Billions of dollars wrenched out of the people, flood out of the country , remitted to Wall St, London, Tokyo, Geneva and Brussels from foreign corporations or else local billionaires squirrel away their money tax havens like the Cayman Islands.
The corollary of massive profits is across the board wage stagnation and a lower standard of living for the people. Karl Marx studied and revealed the correct relationship between wages and profits while in these times, mainstream economics commentators like Alan Kohler regularly graph the ever-rising rate of profit growth against the descent of wages.
One of the impacts is that hundreds of thousands of Australians, women, men and children, working or jobless are living rough in tents , cars, sheds and parks. Unable to buy or rent homes; they live precarious lives.
In the global economy, everything we buy has a price dictated by global monopolies. The price of manufactured goods or information services is determined by the sweatshop providers all competing in a downward spiral. Their price and scale are impossible to be matched in Australia, hence the decimated manufacturing base here.
Despite our massive reserves, the foreign gas and petroleum companies sell their products to Korea, China and Japan leaving a short fall here with Australians paying massive prices on the spot market. These same companies pay little or no tax here due to very generous tax laws.
A Guardian (23 December 2022) article by Nick Evershed revealed that
“all major gas, oil and coal companies in Australia have reported record profits in 2022 so far. “
There is no area or niche of the Australian economy that is not dominated by powerful foreign corporations as the buyouts and privatisations were waved through by successive Federal and state treasurers. We are hostage to the motivations of Wall St, London, Tokyo, Geneva and Brussels and our “leaders” shrug their shoulders warning of sovereign risk (not national sovereignty) and responsibly locking in obligations to foreign corporations regardless of how stupid or unfair the deal was).
In his text Imperialism the Highest Stage of Capitalism, V.I. Lenin, in1917, described the five basic features of nascent era of imperialism :
- the concentration of production and capital has developed to such a high stage that it has created monopolies which play a decisive role in economic life.
- the merging of bank capital with industrial capital and the creation on the basis of this “finance capital” of a financial oligopoly.
- the export of capital as distinguished from the export of commodities….
- the formation of international monopolist capitalist combines which share the world among themselves and
- the territorial division of the whole world among the biggest capitalist powers is completed.
Over 100 years, after Lenin’s first analysis, the concentrations have become much more acute , the mass and velocity of financial capital roving the global markets is far greater than that from the production of goods and services. Governments chase this money to provide for their people before it leaks through thousands of channels designed by finance capital their collaborators, the consulting firms McKinsey, or PwC that advise governments to squeeze the most out the people for the benefit of the economy !!The health system is broken and teetering. Covid 19 exposed the cracks, health workers are overworked, underpaid but defiantly ?? serving the people. The people of the outer suburbs, regional and remote areas access a dismal spectrum of healthcare ranging from poor to non-existent. The general health and lifespans are poorer. And despite years decades of talk and the so-called “Closing the Gap,” First Nations people suffer the most extreme conditions of ill health and homelessness.
As if the massive pressure on peoples living standards wasn’t enough, there are natural disasters that have crisscrossed the country and left tens of thousands homeless and displaced. The scale and ferocity of which are unknown in written history. They are the early symptoms of a rapidly race of climate change and they are matched globally by other extreme weather phenomena in Siberia, California, Somalia and Pakistan to name a few. Some of the profiteers from the cause of climate change have been spotlighted in a report published in the journal Science
“A slew of internal Exxon documents unearthed by researchers and journalists over the past few years have shown that the company was aware of the link between fossil fuels and climate change at least as far back as the 1970s.” CNN 12 Jan 2023
The parliamentary feathers of policy and reform will change little of the problems outlined here. The glossy talking points and news-feeds from trained parliamentary parrots will never amount to real permanent solutions. Action on peoples’ poverty, homelessness and climate change will never occur in the era of the billionaires and trillionaires.
It’s up to the people across all areas to get cracking and to organize.
The fossil fuel monopolies must be held to account for their decades of profits, tax avoidance, and climate change emissions. They and their local agents need to pay, a First Nations Tax. a sovereignty tax and an environment tax. They need close supervision and nationalization.
