Another lesson in the ways of FUC-apitalism

In America today, three mega-billionaires – Bill Gates (Microsoft), Jeff Bezos (Amazon) and Warren Buffett (an “investor”) – combined, have more than the collective wealth of the  poorest-half of Americans. Those three guys’ net worth is $248.5 billion, compared to $245 billion for the bottom 160 million of the United States.

This is the kind of society USA-groupies like Morrison, Frydenberg & Co want in Australia.

The “ideology” behind this scam is called “neo-liberalism”. It’s “liberal” in that the wealthy are at liberty to do whatever, and it’s “neo” in that the resultant economic inequality beats anything we ever saw before.

The agenda of these neos is to eliminate taxes on wealthy people and corporations while buying the rest of us off with occasional tax breaks, and to dismantle social spending except for the bits that benefit the wealthiest. So, abolish public health, publicly held spaces, and public education, while piling on the funding for waging war on the few foreign countries actively resisting the Agenda, and the even fewer homeland citizens who dare to say No.

The Agenda’s ultimate goal is to demolish governments in favour of no-holds-barred Capitalism in the name of Freedom. It is the dream of American “libertarians” such as Trump’s 2016 guru Steve Bannon, who these days travels the world flogging the Agenda -- especially in Europe, where the white people are. For Trump, Bannon, Morrison, and their henchmen (very few women buy this shit) saving our environment and our species is all a plot to deny them their right to trash the joint – any and every joint anywhere.

All of which brings us to the bald-faced con job of the “tax cuts” just passed by Morrison’s mob and the Coalition of the Spineless in the Senate, with only the Greens calling them out for what they were really up to.

Morrison, recently described by former Liberal justice minister Michael Keenan as “a complete arsehole”, described his tax con job this way: “This is a win tonight not for the government, not for the Liberal or National parties, this is a win for those hardworking Australians quietly going about their lives.”

So should we knock back the tax cut of between $255 and $1080 that will come to those of us earning under $60K, which is most Australians?

Of course not! Get it while we can!

But all the joy over this “tax break” and the “win” bullshit Morrison berated us with – this bloke berates in every sentence he utters, berating his fellow Australians is his way of life, he’d berate even if he was announcing it was raining beer – all misses the point that the people who are going to pay for these tax-day pay-offs is US. 

We will pay because the $158 billion in taxes Morrison and his henchpersons are proposing to cut – over the next 10 years – will be paid for by taking money out of that social spending we all depend on, well, all of us in the lower-income half of Australians earning under $60,000. 

Morrison, Albanese, and even Jacqui Lambie, who all voted for this Agenda, won’t go hungry when pensions are cut, won’t be forced to send their kids to increasingly under-funded schools, and won’t be smothered by the incomprehensible jargon and fiendishly ill-designed websites of Centrelink and the other essential programs doomed to death by a thousand funding cuts that will be inflicted on us in the next decade of flourishing Fuck-You Capitalism.

Is there any consolation in this dismal vision? 

Well yes, the fact is that the exponential upcurve of ecosystem disruption we are on right now – not just climate madness but also ocean-species extinctions by a billion plastic bags, plagues and epidemics rising up from the inundated sewers and down-sliding garbage mountains, and all the toxic excretions from all the orifices of our infested body-social – all that and the rising tide of our outrage and our instinct for survival will surely blow away the fantasies of the men with The Agenda, along with their Ferraris. They will go down with the rest of us if we fail to turn the planet around … and if we succeed they will wish we hadn’t because their roles will not be forgotten.

By now you may be reaching for a shot of Bourbon, or strychnine, on account of the somewhat down vibe this commentary on a tax break has taken – and I wouldn’t blame you for that – but this bleak prospecting is not a new thing, not as much a product of our 21st century times as we all may think. 

Consider this prediction from a writer in 1902 looking ahead:

“The energies of our system will decay; the glory of the sun will be dimmed, and the earth, tideless and inert, will no longer tolerate the race which has for a moment disturbed its solitude. Man will go down into the pit and all his thoughts will perish.”

Those were the words of Arthur James Balfour, 1st Earl of Balfour, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1902 until 1905. Yes he was a dour Scot, and usually I’m not.