The economic system has failed
What is the purpose of an economic system if not to produce the goods society needs and deliver them to those that need them?
Any system that can't feed it's hungry is not a system worth saving.
After food the biggest necessity is shelter.
Any economic system that produces a surplus of empty luxury apartments while women and children sleep in the streets is morally indefensible.
Have you noticed that not a single billionaire was labelled an “essential worker”?
“What does it profit a man to be able to eat at an integrated lunch counter,” Dr. King asked, “if he doesn’t earn enough money to buy a hamburger?”
Today, we are forced to confront the dissonance between our nation’s labeling of workers as “essential” and “heroes” and their limited wages, benefits and ability to organize.
Forty-seven percent of nursing, psychiatric and home health aides aren’t offered even a single day of paid sick leave. A million front-line health care workers lack their own health coverage. The median pay for the nursing assistants and orderlies now risking their lives in hospitals full of Covid-19 patients is $14.25 an hour. Only 13 percent of female care workers in homes have any type of retirement plan. Farmworkers doing backbreaking work to feed us clock in at $12 to $14 an hour, and in recent years less than half had health insurance.
The pandemic makes it especially hard to grasp why we have for so long undervalued and under-rewarded the contributions of those who take care of our older relatives and children.
Capitalism is built on incentives.
Our system rewards those who move electronic money around and prey on poor people, while punishing those that feed us, clothes us, and care for us (i.e. those who are essential to society).
That's insane.
Comments
What economy?
There IS no economy!
"The “jumpers” reminded us that one day we will all face only one choice and that is how we will die, not how we will live." Chris Hedges on 9/11
Truth!
I've read multiple times about millions of vacant houses and I do not doubt that is truth. But where are the empty ones? Are they clustered in cities or scattered all over the country? Do you have any ideas on where I can find more information? Somebody did some counting and probably estimating.
Vacant Houses
Thank you
homeless people are a hot button thing for me.
Me too
The homeless are the only group in America where these actions are illegal:
eating
sleeping
standing still
having things
I linked to one article
Many empty houses are in places like Detroit, and many more are in vocation locations.
But there are still plenty in places like L.A., S.F., and N.Y.
Too bad we can't be more like Canada, BC announced this..
to house the homeless.
"VANCOUVER -- The province of British Columbia is planning to relocate over 1,000 people who are homeless into vacant hotel rooms.
The government said it has worked with municipalities since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic to secure 1,700 hotel and community centre spaces.
In a joint statement Saturday from the Ministry of Social Development and Poverty Reduction and the Ministry of Mental Health and Addictions, government announced spaces for 686 people in Vancouver and 324 in Victoria.
The spaces are meant for people living in large tent cities, including Oppenheimer Park in Vancouver as well as Topaz Park and Pandora Avenue in Victoria.
Shane Simpson, Minister of Social Development and Poverty Reduction, said the homeless camps in those areas will be dismantled and people will be moved to the spaces that have been identified."
" There are eight hotels in Vancouver that will be opening their doors to the homeless.
Victoria will use five hotels with the dozens of other hotel spaces scattered all across the province.
BC Housing will start moving people into the temporary accommodations starting Saturday.
The province will be using its powers under the declared state of emergency to relocate everyone out of encampments by May 9. The hotels aren’t being named but the province said the spaces will be rented with a lease agreement."
https://bc.ctvnews.ca/b-c-will-relocate-hundreds-of-homeless-people-to-v...
Thank you. I'll have a look.
@Granma When Bloomberg left
When Bloomberg left office in 2013 he admitted that there were 5,000 Empty newly built condos.
The number has surely doubled since then and wait to see what it soars to as the economy falls apart.
NYCVG
Good one
kinda like why have a government...of the people, by the people, for the people, when it ain't any one of those.
The closest thing to a bright side
Farmers trashing their foodstuffs while people elsewhere in the country were going hungry was exactly the paradox that spurred people into Keynesian economics (which, in my book, was really just the rejection of "economics") and from there, the New Deal.
Have we come full circle?
In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.
Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!
the purpose of capitalism...
is to create more capital. that's all. 'our betters' don't care if none of the filthy lucre aids the Useless Eaters.
i will say that unsurprisingly, with climate chaos at this point of no return: malthusians and eugenicists are on the loose again.
great diary, gjonsit.