Housing is a human right (tags)
To guarantee the human right to housing, a fundamental change in policy would be required at all levels. At all levels - federal, state and local - the social housing provision should be enforced against private profit interests. The non-profit status of housing must be revived. Housing must not be a commodity, it must not be the object of speculation and profit interests.
The coup from above and The Decline of Civilization (tags)
Ignazio Silone (14), an important theorist of Italian fascism is reported to have said: When fascism returns, it will not say: 'I am fascism' No, it will say: 'I am anti-fascism'." And I say: we are on the threshold of an internationalized super-fascism.
Cacophony of Corporatism, Subsidies & Inheritance Tax (tags)
History is written by the winners. The Orwellian "memory hole" has long been a reality and could soon lead to subsequent generations no longer being able to develop any awareness at all of what it means to lead a free and dignified life.
Chaos.Thbe New Age of Revolutions (tags)
The End of the Megamachine brings to light the roots of the destructive forces threatening the future of humankind today. Dismantling Western progress mythologies, Scheidler shows how the logics of endless capital accumulation have devastated both human societies & ecosystems
Good Housing for All and Rent Madness (tags)
Apartment rents have increased faster thant he incomes of wage earners. Real estate decays to an object of speculation. Capital seeks lucrative investments. Hectic activity and bustle replaces inactivity and idleness since the protests of renters cannot be ignored any more.
Economists criticize the austerity religion and demand investments. Germans ardently believe in economic fairy-tales that the 2007/2008 world financial crisis was a crisis of state indebtedness and that state debts burden future generations,
Affordable Rents? A State of Emergency Intensifies (tags)
Rents explode in cities after massive sales of public housing to brutal investors. In 1987, there were 5.5 million social apartments in Germany. Today, there are 1.5 million. Land speculation was prevented in Vienna. The Vienna Housing Fund buys up possible development land.
Against Market Radicalism (tags)
Capitalism is not "the end of history" as the American Francis Fukuyama postulated in 1992. The system question is open! The economy should be re-embedded in society. What seems rational in microeconomics collides with the irrationality of maximum profits as en end-in-itself
Why has the US gone mad? (tags)
Donald Trump blames scapegoats. Why does the US permanently seek new conflicts, send terrorists to Syria, organize the Ukraine coup, escalate with North Korea and threaten to bomb wherever it siuts them? The real reason could be that the US is bankrupt.
The Welfare State in Crisis (tags)
Since 2008, crisis was the defining political theme. "No one should be fooled about the majority will of the population regarding taming wiled finance capitalism. The system could only be bailed out from collapse with taxpayer guarantees." (Habermas 2010).
Europe's Conquest by the US (tags)
The US and NATO have troops at the Russian border. Russia has no troops at the US borders with Canada and Mexico. Who staged the 2014 coup in the Ukraine? Who promised Gorbatchev there would be no NATO expansion to the East? Who is the stabilizer and who is the destabilizer?
Competition Ideology and Power Reality (tags)
Competition cannot be an end-in-itself. Uncontrolled private power leads to misuse. Uncontrolled competition increasingly destroys itself through concentration and centralization processes. Bastard Keynesianism helps the banks. People diverted from real cause of crises
Poverty Returns with Misguided Policy (tags)
The state should represent the public interest and yet private or special interests are in the driver's seat. Trump's proposed 2018 budget is a sledgehammer with cuts to Meals-on-Wheels, school lunches, WIC food assistance, National Institute for Health, EPA, PBS and Legal Services
The Civilization Crisis: Post-Factual Criticism of Politics (tags)
In Trumponomics, falling tax rates for businesses should increase tax revenues. When businesses do not invest in an under-financed infrastructure, the tax gifts lead to lower stater spending and higher stater debts at the end.
Democracy and the Uncanny Power of Money (tags)
Growing inequality is the greatest political problem of our time. Governments are often only actors or puppets of an anonymous regime for the benefit of the privileged where the interests of simple people do not count.
The Unending Story of the Achievers (tags)
All personal and corporate success depended on state investments in roads, schools, hospitals, community centers, airwaves, food safety and water quality. The achievers' myth ignores this, Austrian researcher Bruno Rossmann explains.
Non-Profits versus Profit Maximization (tags)
Cooperation and competition strengthen each other. Creating a non-profit or cooperative housing sector is the only remedy to gentrification and commodification as rental prices go through the roof. Housing often mutates from a human and social necessity to a speculative asset.
38 Arguments Against TTIP (tags)
TTIP (Transatlantic Trade & Investment Partnership) agreement continues an old thinking instead of everyone sharing int he profits of a few. The private arbitration courts enable corporations to sue states and could have a chilling effect on labor and environmental protection.
How Much State Does the Social Market Economy Need? (tags)
The use of property is only legitimate within the limits of the public interest. Whoever takes a risk must bear it and be liable for the losses. The state has the political task of laying down effective rules for risk assessment, liability and providing transparency. Distributive battles intensify.
Bombing Strengthens the Islamic State (tags)
The attempts to stop Islamic terror through military actions in Afghanistan and Iraq have brought about the opposite. These attempts destabilized societies in those countries, promoted terror and triggered great streams of refugees. So the policy of the West bears a joint responsibility.
The so-called War on Terror after the attacks of September 2001 was a mistake. There are more terrorists than before. Europeans are now taking the same measures after November 13. Instead of determining and tackling the causes of terror, they use the terrorists as a pretext for open war.
Casino Capitalism and Profit Maximization (tags)
In the 1960s the average holding time for stocks was 10 years. Now the holding time is not 9 months but 22 seconds. Like shareholder value, profit maximization leads to exploding inequality and the waste of resources. States are weakened by tax cuts.
"Crisis children" can't find a job despite study, four foreign languages and four hundred applications. They earn one-thousandth what a top manager rakes in. Youth unemployment has reached unbearable levels in Greece and Spain.
On the End of Capitalism (tags)
The bridge from capitalism to the new "post-growth economy" is lacking. Hardly anyone reflects about the process of transformation...If the climate should be spared, flying cannot be a human right. The R-word will be unavoidable again: renunciation.
Politics Faded Out the Constitutional Offensiveness of Trade Agreements (tags)
The arbitration jurisdiction with the ISDS mechanism is the most controversial point of the two trade agreements. US corporations could file lawsuits against the German prohibition of gas production through fracking. Public interest laws could be stylized as "indirect expropriation."
George Orwell in the Government (tags)
Writing in 1948 off the coast of Scotland, George Orwell foresaw the time when war would become a domestic necessity to divert the people from economic contradictions. Newspeak is used so lies are called truth and slavery freedom.
Victory of the Economy over Democracy and the Constitutional State (tags)
The person exists as an end-in-him/herself and not merely as a means... On the other hand, the principle of the worldwide market economy is based on treating persons and their needs as means to the end of profit realization.
Free Trade Agreement TTIP Endangers Democracy (tags)
Investor courts of arbitration create an exclusive special right for foreign corporations. They could demand compensation when their profits are narrowed by democratic decisions.
Both Germany and the US follow an economic policy without enlightenment. Slight economic stimulation will not solve problems of mass unemployment and corporate welfare. Tax evasion of corporations and tax cuts for the super-rich lead to suffering and a revenue crisis.
Casino Capitalism and Profit Maximization (tags)
“The state is consciously weakened to speed up the redistribution from bottom to top because that corresponds to the dogmas of the neoliberal ideology.” Our state was systematically weakened in the last 15 years by extensive tax cuts. I remember the lowering of the top income tax rate.
The Aesthetic of Neoliberalism (tags)
The aesthetic of neoliberalism bids farewell to the bad in its environment. Originality and color disappear. Crap tends to make itself into an inquisition and banishes everything that cannot be adjusted in the trash of the system.
George Orwell in the Government: The Rich Come from the Poor (tags)
In Germany as in the US, the rightwing insists poverty is not a question of money but of attitude and thus of one's own making. Falling wages are said to be a sign of structural improvements on the labor market!
On the Way to the Digital Society (tags)
The net must be understood for what it is: a marvelous creative space that forces us to question traditional norms and values, organizational forms and superficially accepted conditions to find new ways into the future.
Citizen X is no longer represented by politician U... In the best case, Liquid Democracy can reinvent the vision of deliberative and interactive democracy, giving demonstrators a platform for the public discussion of public problems.
Uncovering the Fracture of the System (tags)
Uncovering the fracture and the dislocations of this system, proposing changes and actively interfering is the optimistic side. The collective repression of problems is carried out to a spectacular extent. The welfare state and democracy cannot be separated.
Can a Person Own HIs/Her Mother? (tags)
No one can own what exists in nature except nature. A human cannot own its own mother. However western ownership systems have been forced on us again and again that contradict our worldview and our values. Ubunto is another example: "I only live when you live."
The Bank Tribunal in Berlin (tags)
Even today most radical market liberals do not see beyond their ideological blinders and explain the financial market crisis as a state breakdown. The financial catastrophe is a fiasco of their religious doctrine. The catastrophe plunged the dominant economy into a crisis of meaning.