Workers in Australia took a 4.6% real term pay cut in 2022, losing on average AUD $4,163 and working almost 10 days effectively unpaid because wages did not keep up with inflation, reveals new analysis from Oxfam ahead of International Workers Day.
The total losses for workers in Australia was AUD $58 billion, while the increase to the minimum wage was 1.3% below inflation.
On every available indicator and every batch of statistics the gap between the powerless and the powerful has grown in Australia. Despite the wealth being generated by a once in a lifetime mining boom, 22 million people living on a continent still have trouble tackling issues that should have been sorted out decades ago. The lid has been kept on dissent through the availability of relatively easy credit for people with investments and jobs.
In the West unaccountable national and transnational corporations have usurped the role of parliament. In the rest of the world the fortunes and power of authoritarian regimes have been bolstered by these same corporations. The changing of the guard in China could not have occurred without Western corporate assistance. The problem isn’t whether the cat that catches mice is white or black, the problem is what happens when the cat becomes too bloated to catch mice as a consequence of its privileged position. The bloated fat cats in the West and countless authoritarian regimes around the world need to be put on a starvation diet and their monopoly on catching mice needs to be rescinded if the significant issues faced by seven billion people trying to survive on a planet with finite resources are to be tackled.
On every available indicator and every batch of statistics the gap between the powerless and the powerful has grown in Australia. Despite the wealth being generated by a once in a lifetime mining boom, 22 million people living on a continent still have trouble tackling issues that should have been sorted out decades ago. The lid has been kept on dissent through the availability of relatively easy credit for people with investments and jobs.
Selling money has become the major industry in Australia. More people are employed in the financial sector than in manufacturing or the mining sector. While financial institutions can sell money and those Australians who buy money can pay it off, the middle classes will never accept their interests are interrelated with the interests of those 40% of Australians who rely on social security benefits to survive. Nothing highlights this more than the negative attitudes among many of those who need to service private debt to survive, to those who rely on government “handouts” to survive.
It’s no accident as increasing pressure is placed on middle Australians to service their debt the “entitlement” debate is being pushed to the fore. As long as the 10% of Australians who control over 70% of the wealth in this country are able to divide and rule the rest of the country the gap between the haves, “aspirational” Australians and the have nots will grow. When parliament becomes the plaything of the rich and powerful and dictates parliamentary policy the only way to close the gap is for people to use extra parliamentary options to push the demands that each and every one of us, irrespective of who we are is born with an inalienable right to share the common wealth.
Joe Toscano
Excerpt from The Anarchist Age Weekly Review No.998
An Anarchist Society is a voluntary non-hierarchical society based on the creation of social and political structures which allow all people
equal decision making power and equal access to society's wealth.
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