Enver Motala is an associate of the Centre for Education Rights and Transformation (CERT) at the University of Johannesburg and of the Centre for Integrated Post-School Education and Training at the Nelson Mandela University.
Over the past year, the sources of inflation have shifted dramatically: rather than rapid income growth, the main driver now is a lull in productivity growth — a problem the Fed’s interest rate hikes can’t do anything to solve and that is probably temporary anyway.
Tax leniency for the rich and austerity for workers and young people are standard Republican fare. What’s notable this time is using government default as leverage for those tax breaks and austerity. If the GOP pulls it off, it will set a frightening precedent.
When politicians threaten police power, police often take matters into their own hands, frequently causing social chaos by refusing to perform basic duties. That’s likely to occur in Chicago. In fact, it might be happening already.
Austria’s Social Democrats are welcoming a wave of new members, after left-winger Andreas Babler announced his candidacy to become party leader. His declared goal: to make the Social Democrats a workers’ party again.
Plant closures are one of automakers’ most brutal tools to discipline the workforce. The UAW’s new reform leadership will have to lead a fight against such closures to reverse the decades of concessions forced upon workers.
I bet you thought you were done hearing about non-fungible tokens. Well, Trump is bringing them back. The former president has never met a scam he didn’t love, and what’s a better scam than NFTs?
William Morris wasn’t just a brilliant artist and designer; he was also a committed socialist who raged against the injustices of capitalism and imperialism. From his political essays to his utopian novel News from Nowhere, Morris left us with a vital legacy.
Lockheed Martin is the largest military contractor with the Department of Defense, the world’s largest institutional consumer of fossil fuels. Lockheed was recently asked point-blank if it will address its role in worsening climate change. Its answer: no.
After its hosts repeatedly lied about voting machine company Dominion rigging the 2020 elections, Fox News agreed to pay $787 million to Dominion to settle a defamation lawsuit. Fox can deduct over $200 million in taxes because of the settlement payment.
In 1381, English peasants and the urban poor rose up against feudal domination and briefly took control of London. Their revolt against the established order was crushed by brutal force, but it left behind the idea of a world without masters.
From the Caribbean to West Africa, black anti-colonial thinkers of the interwar period advanced a compelling vision of how imperialism and capitalism worked on a global scale. They sought to develop a struggle against racial domination that was equally broad.
Canada’s price-fixing grocery giant Loblaws, drunk on excess profits, gave its CEO, Galen Weston, a huge bump in his 2022 compensation. The raise ensures that Weston, a scion of Canada’s third-richest family, continues to live large at workers’ expense.
After an April 11 plastics recycling plant fire that spewed toxins and caused mass evacuations in Richmond, Indiana, the Biden administration has failed to take action on regulations that could prevent similar chemical infernos from occurring in the future.
Beef tells the story of a chance road-rage encounter that blossoms into a modern feud. Director Lee Sung Jin says it’s about “how hard it is to be alive,” but the show’s cross-class fantasy logic points at the powder keg of growing alienation in our society.
This year, the average American paid $1,087 in taxes just for Pentagon contractors alone. Imagine the kind of society we could construct with just a fraction of the resources we devote to war.
Emmanuel Macron has pushed through a rise in the pension age despite vast protests. In a televised address on Monday night, he said he’d “heard the anger” in the streets — yet his government’s new budget plans promise further attacks on France’s social model.
At Middlesex College in New Jersey, faculty have been working without a contract for nearly three years. Their contract battle is a window into the fight over higher ed’s future erupting across the US — including at less-discussed community colleges.
During the Great Depression, St Louis’s Funsten Nut Factory was racially divided. Black workers, mostly women, worked harder and made less than their white counterparts. So they went on strike — and got their white coworkers to join them on the picket line.
Australian foreign minister Penny Wong claims she wants peace in the Asia-Pacific. At the same time, she is doubling down on Australia’s role in maintaining the global dominance of US capitalism — and threatening war in the region.
Economic data doesn’t suggest that the US economy is in a recession, but Americans’ on-the-ground experiences tell a different story. Extreme income inequality can explain the discrepancy between the economic data and the real-world belt tightening.