By Christian Marx
The ultimate conservative manifesto has always been to make the rich wealthier.
This can only come at the expense of weakening the middle class and attacking social services. The extreme side of the conservative party (in Australia at least) is run by the hard-right crypto Fascists. This rag tag bunch of psychopaths is primarily supported by the free market, hard right “think tank” the Institute of Public Affairs.
These zealots call themselves “classical liberals”. They believe in virtually no government beyond defence and protecting private property. Classic Liberals believe that mankind is egocentric and coldly calculating. Classical Liberals were the architects of the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834. This drastically limited the provision of social assistance. They saw poverty as a weakness and inevitable. “They believed the population would outstrip food production and they regarded that consequence desirable, because starvation would limit population growth.”
One can see from the above that these people are evil. They care absolutely nothing for those who may fall on hard times, and indeed are actively engaged in the decimation of social services in order to transfer wealth to their corporate backers.
Below are the chief ways of wealth transference in the race toward Feudalism.
Erosion of Social Services
We see this in almost every Western nation. Lies are spread about the government being in horrible debt. (In Australia a government can NEVER become insolvent as it owns and controls the production of money). The media also propagates this ruse in a bid to get people to vote in extreme austerity policies. These include huge cuts to healthcare, education, and the stagnation of unemployment benefits, pensions and carers’ benefits.
Globalisation
More and more labour and services are being outsourced. This is largely at the behest of large corporations in order to source and exploit cheap and unethical labour. A first world country cannot compete with a third world country like India, so this becomes a race to the bottom in terms of wages and conditions. Interestingly CEOs of said companies are earning ever growing amounts beyond the realm of sanity. Some of these spiders could earn enough to feed a third world nations populace for a year!
Added to this insult is the fact the CEO gets paid more for attacking his own workers conditions and wages as this increases the bottom line for the company’s shareholders.
Privatization of Public Services
This is a huge wealth distribution mechanism. Politicians work in conjunction with key players in big business to weaken and make public services inefficient by starving them of government funding. This in turn makes the populace bewildered and angry, leading to them blaming the government and actively voting against their best interests in favour of privatization.
As a result of the failing services, together with the mainstream media propaganda machine, big business is able to deceive the public into believing that private ownership will save the service and make it more efficient. This is a total lie, as history proves time and again that when a public asset is sold, prices skyrocket, maintenance is nonexistent and executive salaries balloon. Added to this, profit is the sole motivation as opposed to the community good.
By running a service into the ground, the government then sell the very valuable asset to a private company in a fire sale. Not only is the business usually a major donor or staunch supporter of the political party who sells the asset, they also are involved in the THEFT of a public asset, knowing full well that the average voter will be paying far more for a service, which they and the government deliberately destroyed in order to make huge profits.
The sale of the Commonwealth Employment Service is probably one of the most brazen examples of this unethical practice. Australia now has a completely dysfunctional job search system with dozens of job agencies sucking MASSIVE profits and subsidies from the taxpayer. America has also been decimated by the privatization of government run services.
Smashing of Unions
Unions are now just a shadow of what they once were and the results are disastrous. Wages have stagnated and are now no longer even keeping pace with inflation. Working conditions are precarious, particularly with the huge increase of casualization and zero contract hours.
More industrial accidents are happening as a result of lax health and safety laws and the workload of many organizations is crippling, with many employees facing burnout from an increasingly hostile and competitive working environment.
Creating a Housing Ponzi scheme
Housing is now completely out of reach for the young. In the major capital cities in Australia, particularly in Melbourne and Sydney, a house is now up to 14 times the average wage (if working fulltime).
This has been caused by a number of factors, including the ludicrous Negative gearing scheme, whereby a property investor can buy a house and rent that house out at a loss. (The rental income does not cover the mortgage repayments). The loss is then subsidized by the government, via taxpayer’s money! This is unheard of in other countries.
Australia also has one of the laxest laws in the world when it comes to foreign ownership. Foreign citizens are able to purchase multiple properties, thus shutting out young first home buyers from the property market.
Finally, rentals are horribly unaffordable in the major cities of Australia. It is almost impossible now for a person to rent a small unit on unemployment benefits or any kind of disability allowance or pension. Melbourne is now full of homeless people. Many are elderly or disabled and are unable to afford even the most rudimentary accommodation.
These key strategies are the arsenal in the conservative manifesto. Together they are used in a brutal and systematic fashion in a bid to transfer wealth from the majority, and shift the power and wealth to the corrupt and unscrupulous minority. It is unethical, barbaric and downright ugly and ultimately if taken to its full potential will lead back to 19th century type poverty and destitution. Pure, free market capitalism is in essence a race to Feudalism. Be alert and VERY alarmed.
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