Austerity on steroids: Sparing no expense for banksters & screwing the rest of us

[Karmadillo]

http://socialistworker.org/2010/11/24/austerity-steroids

Austerity on steroids
The economic unraveling of Ireland highlights the severity of the financial crisis--and the increasingly severe government cutbacks that will be used to pay for it.
November 24, 2010

FIRST, THE government devotes enormous sums to bailing out the banks. That causes budget deficits to balloon. Then the government imposes austerity by cutting wages, raising regressive taxes and slashing social spending.

This is the essence of what happened in Ireland to lead to the approximately $114 billion "rescue" of the economy by the European Union (EU). The same happened to Greece before Ireland, and the dynamics have been similar in the U.S. and other countries.

It's an international drive to impose austerity--from European bureaucrats twisting arms in Dublin and Athens, to the bipartisan gang in the U.S. that wants to carve up Social Security and Medicare. The same people who spared no expense when the banks were in trouble now want working people to pay for it all.

The EU's deal for Ireland, reached November 21, could fall apart if the Irish parliament, the Dail, fails to approve a proposed austerity budget in a vote set for December 7. But if it does fail, the "troika" of the EU, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) will keep up the pressure.

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The reality is that in the U.S., as in Ireland, there's always enough money to prop up the bankers. But when the needs of working people are at stake--needs that have been dramatically increased by the impact of the recession--we're told to make do with less.

This international squeeze on workers will continue until labor and social movements are strong enough to pose a challenge. The mass strikes in Greece and France in recent months have shown the potential to resist, and protests in Ireland are now gearing up, too. The crisis continues--and so must the struggle.

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[xchrom]

1. recommend

[Newest Reality]

2. Without any struggle, resistance,

or visionary and brave attempts to find and create alternatives to this tapeworm system of misleading economic abstractions, most of us will be squeezed into a potentially ironclad form of Neo-Serfdom.

I am sure most people -- who stop to wonder what this all could lead to -- can see where the current system is taking us, can't they? There is a tipping point ahead, so there is no time like now.

Each of us, collectively and with our choices and actions, are molding the outcome for future generations either by action or inaction, by choice or force. What a burden it can be even now for those who are considerate and concerned when they realize what their kids and grandchildren, etc., will reap.

[Karmadillo]

3. Excellent post. We have benefited from the courage of others who have stood up

to the powers who would have the masses be the means to their wealth and pleasure. It's time for us to stand up and end the construction of the austerity cages being prepared for ourselves and our children.